{"author_name":"DustyStylus","cat":"LD #26","comments":[],"epoch":1367404860,"likes":3,"metadata":{"p_key":"42886","p_author":"DustyStylus","p_authorkey":"15902","p_urlkey":"78521","p_title":"Post Minimalist Mortem","p_cat":"LD #26","p_event":"LD26","p_time":"1367404860","p_likes":"3","p_comments":"0","p_status":"UPD5","us_key":"15902","us_name":"DustyStylus","us_username":"dustystylus","event_start":"1366934400","event_key":"16","event_name":"LD26"},"text":"<p>When the theme first came up, &#8220;Minimalism&#8221;, I wasn&#8217;t happy or sad&#8230; I was more like&#8230; whaaaa? So, off to Wikipedia I verily did trundle. The part of it that I was most familiar with was art&#8230; and art discussion&#8230; and art discussion makes me think of art critics, and art critics make me think of the wonderfully plummy-voiced UK art critic, Brian Sewell, so I decided early on that the game would have him in some way.<\/p>\n <p>This is not the game I intended to make!<\/p>\n <p><img class=\"alignnone\" alt=\"\" src=\"http:\/\/www.ludumdare.com\/compo\/wp-content\/compo2\/233892\/15902-shot0.png\" width=\"444\" height=\"288\" \/><\/p>\n <p><strong>Original Plan<br \/>\n <\/strong>&#8230; was to have Brian as a sprite and similar to Ghostbusters (on the ZX Spectrum), you&#8217;d move around a grid city, except this would be London and you would be chasing art students who are turning London&#8217;s lovely landmarks (&#8220;St Paul&#8217;s Cathedral&#8221;, &#8220;Nelson&#8217;s Column&#8221;, etc.) into Minimalist versions and you had to race to correct them, all the while with Brian shouting &#8220;ghastly, you rotters&#8221;!<\/p>\n <p><strong>What went wrong<\/strong><\/p>\n <p>Well, it soon dawned on me the amount of sprites that I would have to draw to do this. There was (at a minimum) 4-directional Brian, a series of buildings, detailed landmarks (in both real and minimalist version).\u00a0So, if Brian wasn&#8217;t going to be running and shooting, he could be talking!<\/p>\n <p>My flat is rather small, and I was embarrassed that my neighbours might hear my Brian Sewell impersonations, so I took my little Zoom H2N into my office as no one was about and went BRIANTASTIC without a care in the world.<\/p>\n <p><strong>What went right<\/strong><\/p>\n <p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.ludumdare.com\/compo\/2013\/04\/27\/its-all-ghastly\/brian_dance\/\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-237573\"><img class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-237573\" alt=\"brian_dance\" src=\"http:\/\/www.ludumdare.com\/compo\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/04\/brian_dance.gif\" width=\"128\" height=\"128\" \/><\/a>I started with a small sprite before I even got the game together and very much built it on the fly (as you tend to do in LD).<\/p>\n <p>A fair bit of time was spent in Unity3D learning how to draw dynamically on a Texture2D. As I was pressed for time, I ended up using the native Texture2D.SetPixel, GetPixel and SetPixels(Color[] ) functions&#8230; which actually turned out to be really fast!<\/p>\n <p>The more I use Unity (which I only started using for the last LD), the more I fall in love with it, and how it makes it so easy to get your ideas moving as quickly as possible.<\/p>","time":"May 1st, 2013 5:41 am","title":"Post Minimalist Mortem"}