Sooooo… here’s this thing I’m writing I guess. My game is called “The Awakening of the Golem,” which sounds super serious, right? It’s not. Here’s the link if you wanna check it out: http://ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-36/?action=preview&uid=85560

AAAAANYWAY, here’s my PM on my game, based upon:

The Theme:

• I was honestly really disappointed that the theme was Ancient Technology, but I had thought beforehand that that would probably be the theme, so I had time to brainstorm a little bit for the days before LD.
• Even though I wasn’t a fan of the theme this time around, I think I was able to come up with something at least decently good (or at least decently fun, if not good.)
• I’m actually enjoying most of the other people’s games, which is good. Last time the games were a little less interesting I think but I’ve found at least a few this time which were really intriguing and fun, although most of the ones I’ve liked have had a veeeery stretched connection to the theme.

The Experience:

• This LD was a lot more of a friendly fun experience for me than the last one, since I was in a Skype call with my friend (Corinator, you should check out his game Dungeon Runes, I actually made most of the sound effects for it) pretty much the whole time I was working. It was good to be able to have someone to help me stay sane, and I was able to help him with a lot of the coding as well. We’ll probably work together next LD (as long as it’s on a vacation because school is a suck).
• My process was also pretty different this time. I did much more animation first than I did last time. In fact, I spent the whole first night and beginning of the next day only working on animation. THEN I got around to making some controls and basic AIs.
• I had some major issues, mostly with AI. I’m not the best when it comes to stuff like that. I tried to make tanks as enemies but ended up going with the red-shirted psychos instead because every which way I tried to get the tank’s script to work, it would either float aimlessly into the sky, glitch out of control and bounce around the map, or the turret would be rotated wrong EVEN THOUGH I TRIED ROTATION AND LOCALROTATION BLARGH! I actually got pretty down on myself when the tanks didn’t work since I didn’t think it would be interesting to just have more humans. I wanted something that took more than one hit to destroy. But I ended up taking the super-non-serious route and just making humans that can kill you with one hit from a knife, kinda as a joke.
• The game ended up much more humorous than I originally intended, which is why the intro seems a lot more serious than the game itself. I realized about halfway through that it takes a lot more effort to make a good serious game than a fun silly game, so I went with the latter. I made a serious game last LD anyway, so I feel okay with taking a different path.
• I have never made a 3D game with this many Rigidbodies in it before, and let me tell you. My computer is very old and doesn’t even shut down properly. Sooooo… It doesn’t like running games with a lot of physics objects very much. However, it definitely provided a reason for me to learn how to optimize my game, which I did some of (combining meshes was an easy one, increasing the pixel error on the terrain, cutting down on unnecessary Updates and FixedUpdates, etc.).

The Feedback:

• I felt pretty bad about my game when I first finished it, but a little while after I played it some more and felt pretty proud. I think it’s not bad for my first real 3D game. Sure, it would’ve been nice to have harder enemies or better controls, but I’m still a beginner and you can’t always have everything you want when you do the Dare.
• The feedback so far has been fairly positive. A lot of people have had problems with some of the minor control stuff (sliding, stopping when punching, etc). Most of these things are things that were worse when I started making the game, so at least it’s improved from its original state.
• A few people wish that the golem didn’t die in one hit from fire or knives. I see why, but that was mostly for comedic effect and not because I wanted the game to be super hard or because I didn’t have time to program health into the game. I suppose it’s a little unfair, but the game isn’t that hard. The real problem with the one-hit deaths is that the laser doesn’t get charged, and that’s something I could’ve (and should’ve) easily fixed. I should’ve made the laser only take 5 kills to charge instead of 10.

SO YEP! THAT’S ABOUT IT! I’m pretty satisfied with what I’ve done. It could’ve been better but at least I didn’t have to rush the end of it like I did last time. I’ll probably do another 2D game next time… who knows though. 3D is fun, too, it’s just harder to make levels in a 3D world since you have SO MANY DIRECTIONS the player can go… But anyway, I’m not gonna reinstate my satisfaction with this LD any more times. That’s it, and if you haven’t played my game yet, I’d love it if you’d give it a play (there is an end game, please try and get to it) and give me some more feedback! THIS POST IS SUPER LONG SO I’M GONNA END IT NOW.