{"author_name":"mrspeaker","cat":"LD #27","comments":[{"author_name":"mychairhasalooin","time":"August 29, 2013 5:32 am","epoch":1377772320,"text":"As my warm up for ld27 i wrote a raytracing engine in stencyl, then added textures. took me maybe 4 hours all in, but has no use outside of novelty value (unsurprising performance issues even though it will happily render any res from 20*15 up to 640*480), whereas your ray casting, is actually useful and looks awesome.","spam":"N"},{"author_name":"","time":"August 29, 2013 5:57 am","epoch":1377773820,"text":"Yeah – it was awesome fun to play with, but when you start getting the fear that you’re wasting time it gets scary! I’ve been afraid to look at the crazy hacks I put in there when things got tough \ud83d\ude09","spam":"N"},{"author_name":"","time":"August 29, 2013 9:50 am","epoch":1377787800,"text":"This game is one of my favourites so far. Really interesting to read your post-mortem. Thanks!","spam":"N"}],"epoch":1377769080,"likes":8,"metadata":{"p_key":"38103","p_author":"mrspeaker","p_authorkey":"9199","p_urlkey":"73719","p_title":"Time Flies Straight. Kinda.","p_cat":"LD #27","p_event":"LD27","p_time":"1377769080","p_likes":"8","p_comments":"3","p_status":"UPD5","us_key":"9199","us_name":"mrspeaker","us_username":"\/author\/mrspeaker\/","event_start":"1377216000","event_key":"18","event_name":"LD27"},"text":"

A non-usual mind-warping game starring Carl Sagan<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\"9199-shot0\"<\/p>\n

I’ve done a few Ludum Dareses now, and I have one rule in my brain for getting a game done in time: Don’t try and do something you haven’t done before.<\/strong> You waste far too much time troubleshooting and learning, and not enough time polishing and tweaking. But alas, when the theme was announced I knew<\/em> I had to break this rule. I knew I had to figure out how to write a raycaster.<\/p>\n

The reason was simple: Before the comp I complained about the theme “10 seconds” on IRC. I posited that it too-heavily implied a core mechanic – and avoiding this implication would only lead to novelty or quirky entries. Determined to come up with something different I formulated a plan; a plan that involved fractals, and crazy colourful graphics, and Carl Sagan. A plan that would eventually become Time Flies Straight<\/a>: a novelty, quirky entry. Ah well.<\/p>\n

The post-mortem<\/strong><\/p>\n

The game ended up pretty close to what I had in my head, which I’m really happy about. I had hoped to add some bad guys to stalk you through the labyrinth, And I planned for the little green guys and the related “happiness” and “wellbeing” level to actually<\/em> mean something – but I had to scale things way back, having wasted so much time trying to do something I hadn’t done before: write a raycaster.<\/p>\n

I had written the actually “ray raycasting” part for my last LD game<\/a> and I thought the rendering part would be easy, especially thanks to this article<\/a> which I was following closely. Alas, it took me much of Saturday to get a satisfactory texture mapping algorithm working.<\/p>\n

After this hiccup, things went much more smoothly. The crazy wobbly time effect was nice and I had made some cool sounds to accompany it. The sounds were supposed to be chopped up and the various arpeggio speeds would relate to your depth into the maze – but, thanks to the time I lost on Saturday – it ended up as a straight looping mp3. Still, the randomness of it is kind of nice… suddenly, for no reason, things start speeding up and lends a strange air of expectation.<\/p>\n

\"TimeFlies\"<\/p>\n

I had to work right up to the deadline – and was exhausted by the end. It was a bad time to be trying to do “level design”, especially when I was working with a massive 2D array directly in my text editor<\/a>. The sea of integers pulsating and wobbling in my brain – made worse from having to playtest the results. It was an odd few hours.<\/p>\n

Overall, I’m really happy with the result. I actually made a game that I had in my head – a game that has a “feeling” to it. I’m not going to work on it anymore after the comp… I think it’s just a nice experience more than a game. Now I can’t wait for LD28!<\/p>","time":"August 29th, 2013 4:38 am","title":"Time Flies Straight. Kinda."}