{"author_name":"laaph","cat":"LD #25","comments":[{"author_name":"Dining Philosopher","time":"December 28, 2012 5:47 am","epoch":1356691620,"text":"Haha, too bad I don’t have OSX here, but this was one of the ideas that I considered too! So oldskool ^^
\n Judging by the images, you simplified the original Donkey Kong game, which makes sense. I figured programming Mario’s AI to react correctly to barrels rolling down the slopes would’ve been too hard for a weekend.","spam":"N"}],"epoch":1356657480,"likes":1,"metadata":{"p_key":"47363","p_author":"laaph","p_authorkey":"3320","p_urlkey":"83026","p_title":"Misunderstood Monkey postmortem and thoughts","p_cat":"LD #25","p_event":"LD25","p_time":"1356657480","p_likes":"1","p_comments":"1","p_status":"UPD5","us_key":"3320","us_name":"laaph","us_username":"\/author\/laaph\/","event_start":"1355443200","event_key":"14","event_name":"LD25"},"text":"

This is the first time I really completed a game for Ludum Dare!\u00a0 I’m quite impressed with myself now.\u00a0 \":)\"<\/p>\n

\"ScreenShot_v3_000\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Misunderstood Monkey, as the title turned in to, is a game where you play a monkey trying to defend his princess from the forces trying to take her away from you.\u00a0 I basically took the idea of Donkey Kong, and had little Marios coming up to snatch her away from your gentle touch.<\/p>\n

The game idea didn’t come up immediately – my first reaction was to make a game in which you play an evil villain out to kill innocent kittens.\u00a0 I spent most of Friday night starting out on this game.\u00a0 I wound up with a kitten image and a kitten-spawner and a blob that couldn’t yet shoot things and thought “this game is gonna suck.”\u00a0 And then I started bemoaning about how I don’t know any good 2D engines.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

What went right:<\/p>\n

Objective-C and Cocoa: I had planned on using Unity3d; my last entry used that, but as I was experimenting with my ideas I realized that I did not want to do a 3D view and it would be cumbersome to implement in Unity3d.\u00a0 So, I switched to Objective-C\/Cocoa. I did not want to; I wanted to use something a little more crossplatform so that more people could use my code, but I couldn’t think of a nice framework for 2D graphics that I know and can do stuff quickly in; except maybe C\/SDL which I hate and wouldn’t be able to get it done in 48 hours.\u00a0 I hope making the wrong prediction doesn’t disqualify me from any awesome prizes I might win.\u00a0 \":)\"\u00a0 However, ObjC\/Cocoa was super easy to use and I got stuff done very quickly.<\/p>\n

Super Pixel Time:\u00a0 I don’t know what his user name on Ludum Dare is, but super extra happy extra special thanks to the guy who made Super Pixel Time.<\/a>\u00a0\u00a0 Let me show you how that website transformed impressively bad programmer art in to fancy pixelated art!<\/p>\n

\"hero_v0\"<\/a> became \"hero_v2\"<\/a><\/p>\n

thanks to Super Pixel Time.\u00a0 For another image, here is the original monkey:<\/p>\n

\"DKv1_wBarrel\"<\/a><\/p>\n

I may need to put together another build with the original art.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

What went wrong:<\/p>\n

Idea:\u00a0 My originally idea was that you were going to be a guy who runs around murdering cute innocent kittens.\u00a0 I spent Friday night sketching out the ideas and plans, and late Friday night (past my bedtime) I decided it wasn’t going anywhere before switching to my new plans.\u00a0 While I like my new idea much better than the old one, I really didn’t start coding until Saturday morning.<\/p>\n

Fast and sloppy coding:\u00a0 As an example, the level is a hard coded array.\u00a0 Changing level design is not easy, especially the first iteration involved some of the ladders in places that made the game much too hard.\u00a0 I have moved them, and now the game is too easy. I decided not to move them back because it was too much work, however, I really would have liked easier-to-edit levels.<\/p>\n

Sound: I had planned on using cfxr.\u00a0 It’s actually not all that great.\u00a0 I found Audacity with its noise generators and editors much easier to use.\u00a0 There are random tutorials on using it for more than the things it comes with out of the box.\u00a0 I recommend it.<\/p>\n

Difficulty:\u00a0 In my editing layout\/speed\/speed of barrel reloading\/other tweaks, it seemed I had no choice between making it too hard or too easy.\u00a0 I settled for “faster but easy”, but I would like some appropriate challenge.<\/p>\n

Rating other games:\u00a0 I had a final exam after Ludum Dare, and then the time after the exam I thought I’d be playing games, I got super sick instead.\u00a0 I tried to rate games – I just got queasy!\u00a0 I’m starting to feel better but I haven’t started on rating any games today (I’ll get at it soon, though, I promise!).<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Future plans:<\/p>\n

I have an artist working on this with me, and the vague plan is to replace the programmer art with his fancy artwork.\u00a0 This is in progress, as it will require me writing up some code to alternate directions of heroes and add animations (the images will actually animate as they move!).\u00a0 A screenshot in progress:<\/p>\n

\"ScreenShot_v4_000\"<\/a><\/p>\n

A further update, possibly as the October challenge, will be to port it to the iPad.\u00a0 Also, I’d like more levels.<\/p>\n

All in all, I’m quite thrilled with what I made, even though some of the other people out there made far more impressive games than I did.<\/p>","time":"December 27th, 2012 8:18 pm","title":"Misunderstood Monkey postmortem and thoughts"}