{"author_name":"aaronjbaptiste","cat":"LD #29","comments":[{"author_name":"Sparrow","time":"April 30, 2014 3:09 pm","epoch":1398888540,"text":"Played and voted\/commented. Awesome work!","spam":"N"}],"epoch":1398887700,"likes":3,"metadata":{"p_key":"30116","p_author":"aaronjbaptiste","p_authorkey":"19914","p_urlkey":"65585","p_title":"Dead men tell no tales \u2013 Postmortem","p_cat":"LD #29","p_event":"LD29","p_time":"1398887700","p_likes":"3","p_comments":"1","p_status":"UPD5","us_key":"19914","us_name":"aaronjbaptiste","us_username":"aaronjbaptiste","event_start":"1398384000","event_key":"22","event_name":"LD29"},"text":"<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n <p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n <p>Play and review my submission:\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.ludumdare.com\/compo\/ludum-dare-29\/?action=preview&amp;uid=19914\">Dead men tell no tales<\/a>. Comments &amp; critique very welcome.<\/p>\n <p>Ah, my first LD. It was awesome, I&#8217;m definitely hyped for doing it again. I&#8217;ve been meaning to do one for awhile but there was always something getting in the way. This time I had been learning Unity for 2-3 weeks and with a free weekend ahead of me and an itch to make something fun, I jumped all in.<\/p>\n <p>I wanted to do a SIM \/ tactical game, where you didn&#8217;t have direct controls over the player. I decided to go for a defence style game, but instead of the usual defence turrets, you spawned AI controlled characters (Pirates, Yaargh!) \u00a0to fight for you.<\/p>\n <div id=\"attachment_353238\" style=\"width: 424px\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\"><a href=\"http:\/\/www.ludumdare.com\/compo\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/04\/DeadMenTellNoTales-4.png\"><img class=\"wp-image-353238\" src=\"http:\/\/www.ludumdare.com\/compo\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/04\/DeadMenTellNoTales-4-300x190.png\" alt=\"DeadMenTellNoTales-4\" width=\"414\" height=\"262\" srcset=\"http:\/\/ludumdare.com\/compo\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/04\/DeadMenTellNoTales-4-300x190.png 300w, http:\/\/ludumdare.com\/compo\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/04\/DeadMenTellNoTales-4-550x349.png 550w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 414px) 100vw, 414px\" \/><\/a><p class=\"wp-caption-text\">Dead men tell no tales<\/p><\/div>\n <h3><strong>The good:<\/strong><\/h3>\n <ul>\n <li>Was able to get it into a fully playable &#8220;finished&#8221; state<\/li>\n <li>Really pleased with how the visuals turned out considering the problems I ran into with animations and sprite sheets (see below)<\/li>\n <li>Has been well received in the reviews, thanks!<\/li>\n <li>Love how the boat rocks in the background, I was actually playing around with random values trying to align my camera when I noticed the cool effect rotate was having. I was able to code up a quick script to get the boat rocking in about 5 minutes.<\/li>\n <li>Put the 3 weeks of unity tutorials I had been doing into solid practice.<\/li>\n <\/ul>\n <h3>The bad:<\/h3>\n <p>As many of you can relate, I had too many\u00a0ideas and ultimately had to cut many of them out to get it done in time.<\/p>\n <ul>\n <li>There were some critical gameplay elements missing:\n <ul>\n <li>Able to upgrade the pirates &#8211; this would have added a whole new level of gameplay<\/li>\n <li>Different enemy types &#8211; all the code was done for 3 more different types. Some flying enemies poisoned you, others were like bosses with high hit points and damage. I didn&#8217;t have time to do the visuals though, quite gutted about that!<\/li>\n <li>Music &#8211; Even something simple would have added much\u00a0in terms of immersion<\/li>\n <li>UI \/ Interface &#8211; again, ran out of time.<\/li>\n <\/ul>\n <\/li>\n <li>Struggled with Unity&#8217;s animation system &#8211; I just didn&#8217;t have any experience with it, it slowed me down quite a bit on the Sunday<\/li>\n <li>Ran into problems with image \/ sprite sheet resolution &#8211; again, due to lack of experience with Unity this took up alot of Sunday&#8217;s time.<\/li>\n <li>The difficulty balance is\u00a0whack. Unless you know what you&#8217;re doing, the first 7 waves are brutal. If you make it past that you pretty much have unlimited cash and barely a chance of dying. Still, it&#8217;s quite fun steam rolling everything in sight, kinda feels like you just trained the baddest ass Pirates the world has ever seen.<\/li>\n <\/ul>\n <h3>The future:<\/h3>\n <p>I&#8217;m pretty sure I&#8217;m going to continue working on it. It&#8217;s quite far from how I imagined it, so with a little luck and a big push I&#8217;ll get it there. I&#8217;ll post again if there are any updates or you can follow me <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/aaronjbaptiste\">@aaronjbaptiste\u00a0<\/a>\u00a0and i&#8217;ll keep you posted there.<\/p>\n <p>See you next time<\/p>","time":"April 30th, 2014 2:55 pm","title":"Dead men tell no tales \u2013 Postmortem"}