{"author_name":"LTyrosine","cat":"LD #28","comments":[],"epoch":1389014280,"likes":0,"metadata":{"p_key":"34019","p_author":"LTyrosine","p_authorkey":"6633","p_urlkey":"69563","p_title":"Hard Point Post-Mortem","p_cat":"LD #28","p_event":"LD28","p_time":"1389014280","p_likes":"0","p_comments":"0","p_status":"UPD5","us_key":"6633","us_name":"LTyrosine","us_username":"ltyrosine","event_start":"1386892800","event_key":"20","event_name":"LD28"},"text":"

Hard Point<\/a> puts you in a small\u00a0archipelago\u00a0in control of a tank to battle 3 super vehicles with upgrades acquired\u00a0from smaller enemy vehicles.<\/p>\n

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Only one upgrade can be used at a time at the tank’s hardpoint and the player must choose wisely in order to beat the game.
\n These upgrades are weapons (machine gun and cruise missile) or devices that extends the tank capabilities (rotors to fly, boat to cross water and armor to protection).
\n Each enemy vehicle drops one or two kind of upgrades only (helicopters drops only rotors for example)<\/p>\n

\"HardPointPowerUps\"<\/p>\n

The compo version features 5 types of enemy vehicles and 3 “boss” super vehicles<\/p>\n

\"Hard<\/p>\n

This is a hard game (an unintended constant in my LD entries) but IS winnable.<\/p>\n

Went right<\/strong><\/p>\n

Modularization as a design principle. Vehicles and devices are assembled from independent parts. There are no special cases for the player or AI controlling things for both uses the same input interfaces over many controllers. This yields lot of work at start but begins to unfold advantages at latter stages as some features comes “for free”.
\n AI is working nice. Land vehicles knows how to keep themselves dry in solid land and water vehicles knows how to keep themselves wet in water. Enemy vehicles knows how to hit things at distance but it is designed to miss at random.<\/p>\n

Went bad<\/strong><\/p>\n

Hard Point was very very close to miss the Jam deadline and even that I managed to deliver it in time its overall incomplete.
\n From ballistics to buoyancy, AI aim, AI navigation, I guess that every single function in Unity Quaternion and Vector3 was used in this game.
\n Sadly, a problem with AI aiming took me 6 hours to solve (with an unforeseen trivial solution). This turned the project from “going well” to “emergency mode” and choices had to be made – no sound, no music, no texture at models, no cool effects, too few instructions of how to play and no time to polish some hard corners.<\/p>\n

Post compo version<\/strong><\/p>\n

Post compo version is almost ready with sounds, music and visual effects, bug fixes and a new vehicle (submarine) with a new power up that allows the tank to submerge and fire torpedoes.<\/p>\n

\"HardPointSub\"<\/p>\n

I’ll write a post when it is ready.<\/p>\n

Thank you all for another great LD.<\/p>\n

See you at LD 29.<\/p>","time":"January 6th, 2014 8:18 am","title":"Hard Point Post-Mortem"}