Hey everyone,

Now that three weeks have passed and the judging is over, it’s probably time for me to get around to my post-mortem for LD26. Let me start off by saying that it was an absolute blast! I’ve been a teaching assistant in the Computer Graphics Technology at Purdue University for a year now, and during that time I have taught and been part of the development of two game design classes. Yet, I had not made a game to date despite guiding several student groups through the process. So I set off to challenge myself with ludum dare 26.

What went well

• I was fairly confident in my ability to have a functional game. I’m relatively familiar with C# scripting in Unity so that’s what I went with. Though there were a few bugs, and some HORRIBLY formatted code due to time constraints + feature creep, everything managed to function the way I intended it to.
• The art style was a success. I even managed to score #100 overall in the graphics division! I haven’t ever done pixel art before, so I was pleasantly surprised at the positive feedback I got from it. I spent probably 60%-70% of my time on the graphics since that was the part that intrigued me the most. I knew that pixel art alone wouldn’t stand out – the minimalism theme was going to make sure of that. I added shadowing to every sprite, which made the implementation take a little longer but Photoshop actions helped tremendously.
• 3 Character sprite sheets. About 3-4 hours before the competition ended (time lost all meaning somewhere around 8am that morning), I decided that I wanted the character to get his color sucked out – requiring a greyscale and full black/white sprite sheet to be made. Not terribly difficult but my sprite code wasn’t the greatest and it was quite a rush to get this finished. I’m also not the strongest animator so adding wings at the end really pushed me. Luckily I was able to pull through as that last burst of energy carried me across the finish line
• Skype! I know this is a bit odd, but I had the longest Skype conversation of my life with Sakuyan and jgnilka (look up their entries, they did a great job!) I think it ended up being 27 hours long at the end. Chatting with friends who were also working on their own Ludum Dare games really helped when we started getting tired or frustrated. I attribute the relative success of this project to them as much as myself for being supportive and keeping me (mostly) sane.

What didn’t go so well

• Everyone complained about the theme enough, so I won’t go into that. Let’s just say that I found it hard to be inspired.
• I didn’t really focus on gameplay, sound, or story. Nearly all of my efforts went into having pixel art that actually looked decent. It was my first attempt so in the future I know that my art speed will improve – leaving me more time to make my game more of a game.
• About that story – I threw in incoherent thoughts in the background as text to give some semblance of a story/deeper meaning. I really wanted to try to come up with something good but I just kept drawing blanks.
• I would have loved to incorporate 3D graphics somehow, but there’s simply not enough time for me to to model/rig/animate a character. I’m a lighting/shading/rendering guy so anything that doesn’t come at the end of the pipeline goes pretty slow for me.
• Bugs. But hey, they weren’t too noticeable. Lots of people seemed to have lost the long elevator platform but I haven’t been able to reproduce it.
• The ending – or lack thereof. It left a lot of people wondering if the game had ended, which is a bit of a sour note to hit right before your audience is about to rate the game.

Things for the future

• I’ll definitely think about sound for the next competition. While I believe it should really be the last thing priority-wise, it can be the extra finishing touch that really makes a game stand out.
• No more Unity for 2D games. It’s doable, but the engine isn’t really made for it and it shows when you’re trying to work with it. The lack of a built-in 2D character controller seems really strange to me with all of the other wonderful features it has, and using 3D assets in a 2D environment lends itself to another host of problems. I’m working on a project in Construct2 now, so I intend to be fluent in that before the next competition starts.

Thanks everyone who played and rated my game, and thanks to everyone that keeps the competition running smoothly!

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Andrew Kennedy