{"author_name":"Kalakian","cat":"LD #28","comments":[],"epoch":1387089600,"likes":0,"metadata":{"p_key":"35400","p_author":"Kalakian","p_authorkey":"2609","p_urlkey":"70965","p_title":"So much for day 1","p_cat":"LD #28","p_event":"LD28","p_time":"1387089600","p_likes":"0","p_comments":"0","p_status":"UPD5","us_key":"2609","us_name":"Kalakian","us_username":"kalakian","event_start":"1386892800","event_key":"20","event_name":"LD28"},"text":"<p>And so, my day 2 begins, and I have a hell of a lot of work to do.<\/p>\n <p>I really didn&#8217;t get much done yesterday, even though I was working at it for ages. Spent most of the day tweaking a couple of features rather than moving on to the next ones, and I never really had a plan either.<\/p>\n <p>Here&#8217;s roughly how it went:<\/p>\n <ul>\n <li>Spent a couple of hours trying to get an idea I was happy with, which wasn&#8217;t easy given the non-theme (it&#8217;s a mechanic, not a theme). I didn&#8217;t want to do a roguelike or endless runner as they were too obvious and likely to be loads of them made, and my other ideas were far too big.<\/li>\n <li>Took about an hour and a half to create a player sprite. Nothing fancy, just a single 32&#215;32 frame, but I suck at art and I just couldn&#8217;t get it to a point I was happy with.<\/li>\n <li>The rest of the day was taken up with creating a basic environment for the player to move about in. Again, this took way too long as it&#8217;s just a single screen with blocks around the edges (2D top-down). There were a couple of points that I focussed on far too much:<\/li>\n <\/ul>\n <ol>\n <li>When the player hit the blocks diagonally, he tended to stick. I&#8217;ve had this problem a few times on other projects, and stupidly decided that now was a good time to get it sorted. I eventually got the player sliding properly though, with just the occasional stickiness on the top wall.<\/li>\n <li>I wanted to implement darkness and have the player&#8217;s vision limited. This is quite easy to do in 3D, or even in 2D with other toolchains, but I had never got it working satisfactorily in GameMaker: Studio. I have now though! The bit that really took the time wasn&#8217;t the actual implementation, but getting a torch\/vision shape that I was happy with. I started with a circle, feathered at the outside, and then struggled for ages trying to get a decent arc shape that was both bright enough and didn&#8217;t have hard edges.<\/li>\n <\/ol>\n <p>So, after about 11 and a half hours of work, this is what I managed:<\/p>\n <p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.ludumdare.com\/compo\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/12\/Torchlight.png\"><img class=\"size-full wp-image-314901 aligncenter\" alt=\"Torchlight\" src=\"http:\/\/www.ludumdare.com\/compo\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/12\/Torchlight.png\" width=\"180\" height=\"188\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n <p>It&#8217;s not much, but I did have fun, and have learned some new stuff in GameMaker: Studio, so not all bad.<\/p>\n <p>Today, I&#8217;m going to do things a bit more like I usually do:<\/p>\n <ul>\n <li>Create an issue list of things for me to work through.<\/li>\n <li>Implement basic functionality for each of the desired features, rather than polishing one or two.<\/li>\n <li>Try and get a proof-of-concept or first playable build.<\/li>\n <\/ul>\n <p>I may need to make this a jam entry rather than compo as I doubt I&#8217;ll have much by the end of today, but I&#8217;ll see how far I do get first.<\/p>\n <p>Anyway, time to get to work!<\/p>","time":"December 15th, 2013 1:40 am","title":"So much for day 1"}