{"author_name":"ddionisio","cat":"LD #27","comments":[],"epoch":1378060740,"likes":0,"metadata":{"p_key":"37993","p_author":"ddionisio","p_authorkey":"17724","p_urlkey":"73609","p_title":"The Chronicles of GitGirl \u2013 A Postmortem","p_cat":"LD #27","p_event":"LD27","p_time":"1378060740","p_likes":"0","p_comments":"0","p_status":"UPD5","us_key":"17724","us_name":"ddionisio","us_username":"ddionisio","event_start":"1377216000","event_key":"18","event_name":"LD27"},"text":"<p style=\"text-align: center\"><a href=\"http:\/\/www.ludumdare.com\/compo\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/09\/gitgirl_postmortem.png\"><img class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-294241\" alt=\"gitgirl_postmortem\" src=\"http:\/\/www.ludumdare.com\/compo\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/09\/gitgirl_postmortem.png\" width=\"330\" height=\"264\" srcset=\"http:\/\/ludumdare.com\/compo\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/09\/gitgirl_postmortem-300x240.png 300w, http:\/\/ludumdare.com\/compo\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/09\/gitgirl_postmortem.png 330w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 330px) 100vw, 330px\" \/><\/a><strong><a href=\"http:\/\/www.ludumdare.com\/compo\/ludum-dare-27\/?action=preview&amp;uid=17724\">(click me to play the game!)<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n <p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n <h3><span style=\"text-decoration: underline\">Intro<\/span><\/h3>\n <p>GitGirl is the game I made for the 48-hour Ludum Dare. It&#8217;s a 2D platformer game where you, as GitGirl, must resolve the conflict that plagues the repositories scattered across the galaxy. It doesn&#8217;t really make sense, but let&#8217;s just go with that! \u00a0In order to resolve these conflicts, GitGirl must throw a 5 megaton bomb into the heart of the conflict. \u00a0These bombs are designated to explode in 10-seconds and you must escape before that.<\/p>\n <h3><span style=\"text-decoration: underline\">About GitGirl<\/span><\/h3>\n <p>There really isn&#8217;t much story behind GitGirl, but there is a sort of history. \u00a0She was a character I designed for a game jam hosted by GitHub back in November 2012. \u00a0The theme of the jam is anything that relates to Git or GitHub. \u00a0The little metal face above her is suppose to mimic OctoCat(tm). \u00a0The intergalactic space hair represents pushing and pulling. \ud83d\ude1b \u00a0Let&#8217;s just say the game is pretty loosely based! \u00a0This is a significant history for me as it got me to discover Ludum Dare when I was researching about game jams.<\/p>\n <p style=\"text-align: center\">\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.ludumdare.com\/compo\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/09\/gitgirl_bookmark.png\"><img class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-294245\" alt=\"gitgirl_bookmark\" src=\"http:\/\/www.ludumdare.com\/compo\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/09\/gitgirl_bookmark.png\" width=\"512\" height=\"128\" srcset=\"http:\/\/ludumdare.com\/compo\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/09\/gitgirl_bookmark-300x75.png 300w, http:\/\/ludumdare.com\/compo\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/09\/gitgirl_bookmark.png 512w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 512px) 100vw, 512px\" \/><\/a>(GitGirl concept art, November 2012)<\/p>\n <h3 style=\"text-align: left\"><span style=\"text-decoration: underline\">GitGirl Ludum Dare Edition Postmortem<\/span><\/h3>\n <p style=\"text-align: center\"><a href=\"http:\/\/www.ludumdare.com\/compo\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/09\/gitgirl.gif\"><img class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-294247\" alt=\"gitgirl\" src=\"http:\/\/www.ludumdare.com\/compo\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/09\/gitgirl.gif\" width=\"320\" height=\"180\" \/><\/a>(Early Work-In-Progress of the Post-Compo, stay tune!)<\/p>\n <h4><\/h4>\n <h4>The Good Times<\/h4>\n <ul>\n <li><strong>Unity 3D<\/strong> &#8211; At this point, I have very little problems with Unity3D, in fact, I had no snags working on this game. \u00a0I&#8217;ve been accumulating a framework I pretty much use for every game development I do with Unity. \u00a0This framework is called Mate. \u00a0Mate pretty much started since the first Ludum Dare, accumulating useful utilities that I pretty much use a foundation for games I start. \u00a0Here&#8217;s the <a href=\"https:\/\/github.com\/ddionisio\/MateUnity\">repo<\/a>.\u00a0Mate has helped me get UI flows, scene management, save states, input done much much quicker than I would if I go with the bare-bones Unity. \u00a0I&#8217;m pretty happy with it thus far.<\/li>\n <li><strong>Production<\/strong> &#8211; Getting all the UIs, game-flow, and art assets working together was pretty fast during the compo, I pretty much blazed through those. \u00a0In fact, I had to&#8230;because putting them together was pretty much during the final hours! \ud83d\ude00<\/li>\n <li><strong>GitGirl<\/strong> &#8211;\u00a0After getting all of the mechanics of the game out of the way (which took a long while), I was pretty much demotivated. \u00a0I decided to think about what sort of character this game will have. \u00a0I was looking around for inspiration and seeing old sketches of GitGirl, I knew she was going to star in this Ludum Dare! \u00a0(mostly because she&#8217;s fun to draw)<\/li>\n <li><strong>Art<\/strong> &#8211; Speed drawing was the most fun I had for this entry, even though I still need to work on my art skill \ud83d\ude1b \u00a0I&#8217;m getting more comfortable drawing with a stylus and using Graphics Gale. \u00a0But for pixel art, I use mouse pretty much 90% of the time.<\/li>\n <li><strong>Music<\/strong> &#8211; I&#8217;m not a musician, so I heavily rely on cgMusic to compose! I was pretty lucky that it was able to produce some decent tunes after just a couple clicks. \u00a0All credits to music goes to the author of cgMusic, btw. \u00a0Also for those generating music with midi, look for a way to use custom sound fonts if possible, it makes a world of difference! Most noteably SGM v2.01. <a href=\"http:\/\/solmire.com\/\">Solmire comes with this<\/a>.<\/li>\n <\/ul>\n <h4>The Bad Times<\/h4>\n <ul>\n <li><strong>Late Start\u00a0<\/strong>&#8211; When the theme 10-seconds was announced (6pm PST), I had no idea what kind of game I would make. \u00a0I think I pretty much stared blank on the screen and doodled dumb things for an hour or two. \u00a0I had two thoughts: Make the obvious run before time runs out or something out of this world. \u00a0I pretty much decided on the former \ud83d\ude00<\/li>\n <li><strong>Complex Mechanic\/Level Design<\/strong> &#8211; I really wanted to get gravity fields working for this game, it looked pretty awesome as I was testing it. \u00a0The problem is, making levels with it. \u00a0Also plenty of edge-cases I still need to iron out. \u00a0Another issue is trying to implement too many gameplay mechanics. \u00a0At some point, I wanted grappling hook for this game&#8230;grabbing and throwing enemies\/objects&#8230;crazy moving platforms. \u00a0I ended up with just: jump around, gravity fields, throw\/grab bomb. \u00a0It wasn&#8217;t that bad at all and might be better off just being like this.<\/li>\n <li><strong>Random Computer Reboot<\/strong> &#8211; it was right during level creating when the computer just randomly froze and just reboot. \u00a0Considering I had the power on for 2 straight days during a pretty hot weather. \u00a0This actually took a good chunk of time and motivation. \u00a0First, Windows getting stuck during the start screen&#8230;so I have to do a restore from last recovery point (luckily it was fairly recent). \u00a0After that, the project was pretty much corrupted. \u00a0Luckily I have the project backed up recently from GitHub (considering where this game is inspired from!). \u00a0How recent that was however&#8230;is no levels and all of the tweaking I made gone. \u00a0Could have been worse, so always backup your project in good intervals!<\/li>\n <\/ul>\n <h4>Fun Stuff<\/h4>\n <p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n <p style=\"text-align: center\"><a href=\"http:\/\/www.ludumdare.com\/compo\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/09\/rejects.png\"><img class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-294256\" alt=\"rejects\" src=\"http:\/\/www.ludumdare.com\/compo\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/09\/rejects.png\" width=\"170\" height=\"64\" \/><\/a>Characters that didn&#8217;t make it into the game&#8230;for now!<\/p>\n <p style=\"text-align: center\">\n <p style=\"text-align: center\">\n <p style=\"text-align: center\"><a href=\"http:\/\/www.ludumdare.com\/compo\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/09\/level_design.png\"><img class=\"aligncenter  wp-image-294258\" alt=\"level_design\" src=\"http:\/\/www.ludumdare.com\/compo\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/09\/level_design.png\" width=\"538\" height=\"269\" srcset=\"http:\/\/ludumdare.com\/compo\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/09\/level_design-300x150.png 300w, http:\/\/ludumdare.com\/compo\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/09\/level_design-550x275.png 550w, http:\/\/ludumdare.com\/compo\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/09\/level_design.png 896w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 538px) 100vw, 538px\" \/><\/a>Designing a level<\/p>\n <p style=\"text-align: center\">\n <p style=\"text-align: center\">\n <p style=\"text-align: center\"><a href=\"http:\/\/www.ludumdare.com\/compo\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/09\/tweak_galore.png\"><img class=\"aligncenter size-medium wp-image-294259\" alt=\"tweak_galore\" src=\"http:\/\/www.ludumdare.com\/compo\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/09\/tweak_galore-300x263.png\" width=\"300\" height=\"263\" \/><\/a>All sorts of values for tweaking physics!<\/p>\n <p style=\"text-align: center\">\n <p style=\"text-align: center\">\n <p style=\"text-align: center\"><a href=\"http:\/\/www.ludumdare.com\/compo\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/09\/timeline_editor.png\"><img class=\"aligncenter size-large wp-image-294260\" alt=\"timeline_editor\" src=\"http:\/\/www.ludumdare.com\/compo\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/09\/timeline_editor-550x345.png\" width=\"550\" height=\"345\" srcset=\"http:\/\/ludumdare.com\/compo\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/09\/timeline_editor-300x188.png 300w, http:\/\/ludumdare.com\/compo\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/09\/timeline_editor-550x345.png 550w, http:\/\/ludumdare.com\/compo\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/09\/timeline_editor.png 849w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 550px) 100vw, 550px\" \/><\/a>Timeline editor. \u00a0If you guys hate the animation editor in Unity (who doesn&#8217;t), this is a great alternative. \u00a0It&#8217;s a plugin I revived after the author abandoned it. \u00a0Here&#8217;s the link to its github repo: <a href=\"https:\/\/github.com\/ddionisio\/MateAnimator\">MateAnimator<\/a><\/p>\n <p style=\"text-align: center\">\n <p style=\"text-align: center\">\n <p style=\"text-align: center\">\n <p style=\"text-align: center\"><a href=\"http:\/\/www.ludumdare.com\/compo\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/09\/old_new.png\"><img class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-294263\" alt=\"old_new\" src=\"http:\/\/www.ludumdare.com\/compo\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/09\/old_new.png\" width=\"129\" height=\"90\" \/><\/a>The old and the new, they grow up so fast! Or shrink in this case!<\/p>\n <p style=\"text-align: center\">\n <p style=\"text-align: left\">Thank you for reading, and don&#8217;t forget to give this game a try! \u00a0 Also stay tune for the post-compo edition of the game with loads of improvements!<\/p>\n <p style=\"text-align: center\">\n <p style=\"text-align: center\">\n <p>&nbsp;<\/p>","time":"September 1st, 2013 1:39 pm","title":"The Chronicles of GitGirl \u2013 A Postmortem"}