I feel like this time I got much closer to a really fun game. While the game that I made: Dungeon Overlord: Master of the Queue is missing some important balance components, Most of the “must have” features made it into the game.

Submission Page

 

Tools

• Engine – Game Maker: Studio Professional + HTML5
• Graphics – The GIMP
• Sound – BFXR
• Timelapse – Chronolapse

This was my second LD that I used Game Maker on. While I’m beginning to get comfortable using the engine, there was still a lot of research needed during the whole process to get features working. I’d say I spend 3-5 hours during the compo just fighting with my lack of knowledge with the engine.

 

Graphics:

I had no real plan for graphics during the development, they just basically evolved from one item to the next.  I wish I had spent the first few hours sketching out artwork and a color palette. That would of course lead to using Inkscape to develop the art and then export to bitmap for final finish in The GIMP.

I also wish I had made time for doing animations as well. My first bit of animation was just manipulation of the x and y offset to reflect stricks and hits by the players; and that was way things were going to be until after 3-4 hours of developing my animation base on those offsets I discovered that the HTML5 runner for GameMaker didn’t like how I used local vars for this. As I didn’t want to try and port all of that into something that worked, I ditched the mechanic and side-tabled animation to be picked up later (frame animation coupled with particles + sound… which didn’t actual happen due to time constraints).

 

Sound:

I really only had time do the first stab at game sounds; had I made more time for it, I would have had layered sounds so that they didn’t sound so weak.

 

Music:

My plans were, if I had time, to bang out a tune in Sunvox; that generally takes 1-2 hours, so I had to sacrifice that time to get the game to  a playable state.

 

Gameplay:

All through development I wanted to get the game to where it was at submission time, then take time out to develop additional content. After that I would have balanced out the gameplay to something enjoyable. I ran out of time there.

 

What worked:

My toolchain

 

What didn’t work:

My time management skills

 

Conclusion:

As has been said time and time again, get a working game in your first 6-8 hours. If it takes longer than that, you will be late. The problem was that I let the bithead in my try to use engine mechanics that I had never used before; so that resulted in inflated development time.

 

Credits:

• Idea – Squidi’s Tiny Crawl 3.0 – Dungeon Defense
• Timelapse Soundtrack – Isoteric (with permission).

 

Timelapse:
Youtube