{"author_name":"Redream","cat":"LD #29","comments":[],"epoch":1398849540,"likes":2,"metadata":{"p_key":"30151","p_author":"Redream","p_authorkey":"504344","p_urlkey":"65621","p_title":"The Quest for Unobtanium \u2013 Postmortem","p_cat":"LD #29","p_event":"LD29","p_time":"1398849540","p_likes":"2","p_comments":"0","p_status":"UPD5","us_key":"504344","us_name":"Redream","us_username":"Redream","event_start":"1398384000","event_key":"22","event_name":"LD29"},"text":"<div id=\"attachment_357899\" style=\"width: 436px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><a href=\"http:\/\/www.ludumdare.com\/compo\/ludum-dare-29\/?action=preview&amp;uid=7800\"><img class=\"size-full wp-image-357899\" src=\"http:\/\/www.ludumdare.com\/compo\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/04\/mines1.gif\" alt=\"The first GIF I posted. Click to play the game.\" width=\"426\" height=\"249\" \/><\/a><p class=\"wp-caption-text\">The first GIF I posted. Click to play the game.<\/p><\/div>\n <p>This was my third time around with Ludum Dare &#8211; after having watched notch create Prelude of the Chambered and minicraft, I (and likely a lot of others here) were inspired to join in on the fun. I really couldn&#8217;t have enjoyed these past LDs more.<\/p>\n <p>So this time, with the added knowledge of the mistakes I made in LD24\/23, I took the task head on and dedicated a full weekend to completing my game. Soon enough, &#8216;The Quest for Unobtanium&#8217; was born.<\/p>\n <p>I started off with a completely ambitious idea in my head &#8211; a mixture of an RTS with a mining component. I soon realised how insane I was by even contemplating that, so I scrapped the RTS and went with a fairly generic mining game.<\/p>\n <p><strong>What went well:<\/strong><\/p>\n <ul>\n <li>Polish. After realising the importance of polish in my past LDs, I started adding particles, smooth animations, paint upgrades and all the cool little things which make a game feel complete. The comments I&#8217;ve gotten since (&#8220;Surprisingly complete&#8221;, &#8220;Really polished&#8221;) show this.<\/li>\n <li>Scope. I knew exactly what I wanted to make from early on, and I somehow managed to time it very well. I got all of the features in that I wanted, even though I cut it fine at the end with 20 mins to spare.<\/li>\n <li>Art. The art was simple enough for me to make it quickly while being attractive at the same time. Nothing too complicated, I was able to make art when I needed to implement it in the game.<\/li>\n <li>I was prepared. The day before the compo, I did a bit of a warm up as well as checking my workspace\/framework and making sure everything was intact. I hadn&#8217;t actually done any major game dev for about 18 months prior to this LD (!), but I was able to pick it up very quickly.<\/li>\n <li>It&#8217;s fun! The game is reasonably satisfying to play, and the progression feels good. Once you reach each rock &#8216;barrier&#8217; and you see the valuable rocks behind it, you feel motivated to continue. This managed to keep people entertained for &gt;20mins, which I was surprised at.<\/li>\n <\/ul>\n <p><b>Not so well:<\/b><\/p>\n <ul>\n <li>I waited\u00a0<em>way\u00a0<\/em>too long to implement the core gameplay. The compo finished at 1pm for me, and I started getting all the different rocks added only at about 11pm the night before. That meant that I only had the next morning to balance the gameplay, which was fairly difficult. This also meant that..<\/li>\n <li>The game was fairly slow paced. This is the only real complaint I&#8217;ve gotten, and I&#8217;m lucky that the core mechanic was enjoyable enough to keep people interested. Dialogs weren&#8217;t skippable, the trips took too long to go to the surface, and you had to make several trips early on to make any real progression.<\/li>\n <\/ul>\n <p>I feel like I&#8217;ve done really well overall &#8211; I was actually\u00a0a lot more productive this time around, writing &gt;3000 lines of code in the 48H. Complaints were minimal, and the gameplay was attractive. Check out my creation timelapse below:<\/p>\n <p><iframe width=\"500\" height=\"281\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/Ct9IbUk9Njc?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n \n <p>Tags: <a href=\"http:\/\/ludumdare.com\/compo\/tag\/postmortem\/\" rel=\"tag\">postmortem<\/a><\/p>","time":"April 30th, 2014 4:19 am","title":"The Quest for Unobtanium \u2013 Postmortem"}