{"author_name":"AhNinniah","cat":"LD #25","comments":[],"epoch":1357155120,"likes":3,"metadata":{"p_key":"47333","p_author":"AhNinniah","p_authorkey":"7227","p_urlkey":"82996","p_title":"Mad Professor Post-mortem","p_cat":"LD #25","p_event":"LD25","p_time":"1357155120","p_likes":"3","p_comments":"0","p_status":"UPD5","us_key":"7227","us_name":"AhNinniah","us_username":"ahninniah","event_start":"1355443200","event_key":"14","event_name":"LD25"},"text":"

Idea <\/strong><\/p>\n

At some point, we have seriously decided to turn Super Mario Bros upside down and make a game called «Mario’s Nightmare.» Goomba was going to be the main character, with Mario and Luigi as enemies. Trying to develop this idea further, we even started to play our NES (.. instead of making the game).<\/p>\n

In the end, we chose one idea that we could implement in time. In the game we play as crazy professor. He had just made the discovery of his life. But because of the fear that someone could steal his discovery, the professor turns into an embittered sociopath. The player should help him to get rid of the pesky scientists who are eager to get the cherished formula.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Development<\/strong><\/p>\n

Initially I spent too much time creating the main background. The size of the characters and animation were corrected during the final hours. And that, as expected, did not make the animation perfect — the main character runs as if he has a broken leg.<\/p>\n

As for programming, at this time, we’ve decided to use a new approach. The prototype was written not with squares or rectangles, but with quite a real images taken from public sources. Later, it allowed us to save a lot of time on the sprites connection.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Music was written at night of the second day of development. Initially, the soundtrack was going to be funny and a little crazy. After several unsuccessful attempts, there was written a serious and heavy title theme about which we had some doubts. But as there has been spent too much time on the music, we decided to leave it as it is.<\/p>\n

Unfortunately, we forget to add some game tutorial. And at first, many people could not understand how to play the game. They had to read description on the community page. We immediately tried to fix it by adding to the page with the game information about controls, game elements, etc. Also, we’ve added a gameplay video, the ending of which came out very funny.<\/p>\n