{"author_name":"deepnight","cat":"LD #27","comments":[{"author_name":"","time":"August 28, 2013 9:39 am","epoch":1377700740,"text":"I agree that the 10s time was a bit frustrating to work with. It&#8217;s too long to be good for twitch action games or intense situations, but too short a duration for the player to really adapt and adjust to whatever you&#8217;re throwing at him or her.","spam":"N"},{"author_name":"Brian Stegmann","time":"August 28, 2013 10:07 am","epoch":1377702420,"text":"I was ultimately satisfied with where I ended up for for the theme, but I agree with you Arcana, it&#8217;s a challenging limitation to work with. Some of the games I&#8217;ve been rating essentially restart after 10 seconds, and it makes it hard to play it until the end. Especially the ones that has a bit of a learning curve.","spam":"N"},{"author_name":"","time":"August 28, 2013 11:52 am","epoch":1377708720,"text":"I liked the 10 Seconds theme. Actually, I rated high like many other people (apparently). I didn&#8217;t have any idea of what we could do with it if it were to be chosen, but I&#8217;m fine it did <img src=\"http:\/\/ludumdare.com\/compo\/wp-includes\/images\/smilies\/simple-smile.png\" alt=\":)\" class=\"wp-smiley\" style=\"height: 1em; max-height: 1em;\" \/>","spam":"N"}],"epoch":1377698460,"likes":16,"metadata":{"p_key":"38154","p_author":"deepnight","p_authorkey":"2982","p_urlkey":"73770","p_title":"Proletarian Ninja X post mortem","p_cat":"LD #27","p_event":"LD27","p_time":"1377698460","p_likes":"16","p_comments":"3","p_status":"UPD5","us_key":"2982","us_name":"deepnight","us_username":"\/author\/deepnight\/","event_start":"1377216000","event_key":"18","event_name":"LD27"},"text":"<p>Play and rate the game <a href=\"http:\/\/www.ludumdare.com\/compo\/ludum-dare-27\/?action=preview&amp;uid=2982\">here<\/a> <img src=\"http:\/\/ludumdare.com\/compo\/wp-includes\/images\/smilies\/simple-smile.png\" alt=\":)\" class=\"wp-smiley\" style=\"height: 1em; max-height: 1em;\" \/><\/p>\n <h2>What went wrong<\/h2>\n <p><a href=\"http:\/\/3.bp.blogspot.com\/-FWjWnT9DQEk\/Uh4cleTF9xI\/AAAAAAAACQU\/nAEZ09wdZGQ\/s1600\/b2.png\"><img alt=\"\" src=\"https:\/\/images-blogger-opensocial.googleusercontent.com\/gadgets\/proxy?url=http%3A%2F%2F3.bp.blogspot.com%2F-FWjWnT9DQEk%2FUh4cleTF9xI%2FAAAAAAAACQU%2FnAEZ09wdZGQ%2Fs1600%2Fb2.png&amp;container=blogger&amp;gadget=a&amp;rewriteMime=image%2F*\" width=\"478\" height=\"147\" border=\"0\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n <p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n <ul>\n <li><b>3 games in a weekend. <\/b>My first idea was to make a <i>Dungeon Master <\/i>like game where the labyrinth changes every 10 seconds. But I gave up the idea after a few hours because of some problems I encountered with the pseudo-3D engine. Then I switched to a top down arena shooter where the gameplay rule changes every 10 seconds (like &#8220;pick the enemies to score and avoid bonuses&#8221;, &#8220;going to the left is forbidden&#8221;, &#8230;). The idea seamed cool in theory but proved to be really frustrating and <i>not <\/i>fun to play. Gave up again. And I finally got the Proletarian Ninja idea. I lost almost one entire day on these.<\/li>\n <li><b>Motivation problems.<\/b> After the second abandoned idea (arena shooter), I decided to give up completely and went back home. I was really really down&#8230; Until I found my third gamedesign idea. I&#8217;ve been doing the LD for almost 3 years now. I love making games, and when I felt &#8220;bored&#8221; by the second game idea, I was <i>really <\/i>depressed. But I misinterpreted that feeling: it was not me <i>being bored<\/i> by Ludum Dare, it was just my game idea <i>sucked<\/i>.<\/li>\n <li><b>Music &amp; sounds. <\/b>I used <i>LabChirp <\/i>for the sounds, and tried a few things with <i>AutoTracker<\/i>. The final result is pretty weak and I didn&#8217;t keep the music part (sounded really too &#8220;AutoTracked&#8221;). I will definitely HAVE to work that part for the next LD.<\/li>\n <li><b>The theme. <\/b>This theme had, in my opinion, a major problem. Most of the games you could make with a 10s constraint were actually better and funnier <i>without <\/i>the 10s constraint.<\/li>\n <li><b>A good friend of mine gave up.<\/b> <a href=\"http:\/\/benjaminsoule.fr\/\">Benjamin<\/a> was working on a point-n-click game, verb-based like Monkey Island. The art and the idea were both amazing, really. But he had to give up because of technical and code architecture problems. Point-n-clicks are <b>really <\/b>tricky to create.<\/li>\n <\/ul>\n <h2>What went right<\/h2>\n <p><a href=\"http:\/\/3.bp.blogspot.com\/-jpysdBajwYk\/Uh4csf7XbdI\/AAAAAAAACQc\/YaB0CRytjg8\/s1600\/b1.png\"><img alt=\"\" src=\"https:\/\/images-blogger-opensocial.googleusercontent.com\/gadgets\/proxy?url=http%3A%2F%2F3.bp.blogspot.com%2F-jpysdBajwYk%2FUh4csf7XbdI%2FAAAAAAAACQc%2FYaB0CRytjg8%2Fs1600%2Fb1.png&amp;container=blogger&amp;gadget=a&amp;rewriteMime=image%2F*\" width=\"470\" height=\"144\" border=\"0\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n <p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n <ul>\n <li><b>LD 24h.<\/b> In fact, because of all of the motivational problems listed above, I actually made Proletarian Ninja in about 24-30h. Which is really cool <img src=\"http:\/\/ludumdare.com\/compo\/wp-includes\/images\/smilies\/simple-smile.png\" alt=\":)\" class=\"wp-smiley\" style=\"height: 1em; max-height: 1em;\" \/><\/li>\n <li><b>Stealth and action.<\/b> I&#8217;m a total fan of games like <i>Thief<\/i>, <i>Dishonored <\/i>and <i>Trilby<\/i>. So I&#8217;m really happy and proud of the way Proletarian Ninja X plays and feels. I would really love to expand this gameplay further (probably without the 10s time constraint).<\/li>\n <li><b>Level design.<\/b> Creating the levels was rather easy (not fun, but easy), and I liked the fact that, even without real intent from my side, there was usually always a solution. So I usually created a level quite randomly, tried it, and if I could complete it, it was validated. Then i roughly sorted the bunch of levels based on a difficulty &#8220;feeling&#8221;.<\/li>\n <li><b>Haxe 3. <\/b>The new features of <a href=\"http:\/\/haxe.org\/manual\/haxe3\/features\">Haxe 3<\/a> are really cool: abstract types, macro, maps&#8230; I will post a few articles about that soon.<\/li>\n <\/ul>","time":"August 28th, 2013 9:01 am","title":"Proletarian Ninja X post mortem"}