{"author_name":"Ted Brown","cat":"LD #24","comments":[],"epoch":1346190180,"likes":1,"metadata":{"p_key":"51672","p_author":"Ted Brown","p_authorkey":"12485","p_urlkey":"87367","p_title":"Buffalo Joe: Post-Mortem","p_cat":"LD #24","p_event":"LD24","p_time":"1346190180","p_likes":"1","p_comments":"0","p_status":"UPD5","us_key":"12485","us_name":"Ted Brown","us_username":"oreganik","event_start":"1345766400","event_key":"12","event_name":"LD24"},"text":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.ludumdare.com\/compo\/2012\/08\/28\/buffalo-joe-post-mortem\/buffalo-joe-postcard\/\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-178538\"><img class=\"aligncenter size-large wp-image-178538\" src=\"http:\/\/www.ludumdare.com\/compo\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/08\/Buffalo-Joe-Postcard-550x248.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"550\" height=\"248\" srcset=\"http:\/\/ludumdare.com\/compo\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/08\/Buffalo-Joe-Postcard-300x135.jpg 300w, http:\/\/ludumdare.com\/compo\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/08\/Buffalo-Joe-Postcard-550x248.jpg 550w, http:\/\/ludumdare.com\/compo\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/08\/Buffalo-Joe-Postcard.jpg 825w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 550px) 100vw, 550px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n <p style=\"text-align: center\">The Buffalo Joe LD 24 Compo Post-Mortem<\/p>\n <p style=\"text-align: left\">A common question I get is, &#8220;What does Buffalo Joe have to do with Evolution?&#8221; That&#8217;s a good question! Because, I mean, all concepts evolve, right? And, well, the evolutionary concept at the heart of the game sort of caved in to outside pressure and, you know, didn&#8217;t survive?\u00a0It&#8217;s actually sort of meta! Right? \u00a0=D<\/p>\n <p style=\"text-align: left\"><strong>The Numbers<\/strong><\/p>\n <p style=\"text-align: left\">Ludum Dare Competition Count: Second<\/p>\n <p style=\"text-align: left\">Tools: Unity (C#), Blender, Photoshop, Audacity, iPhone Voice Memo<\/p>\n <p style=\"text-align: left\">Hours spent on:<\/p>\n <ul>\n <li>Sleeping: 9<\/li>\n <li>Meals with wife: 3<\/li>\n <li>Exercising: 1<\/li>\n <li>Solitary Eating Rituals: 1<\/li>\n <li>Wondering about it all, man, like: 0.9<\/li>\n <li>Fruitlessly Flogging Flocking Fixes: 2<\/li>\n <li>Audio: 1.1<\/li>\n <li>Texture\/Model Creation: 3<\/li>\n <li>??? (missed time due to likely abduction by forces unknown): TBD<\/li>\n <li>Fire (Discarded): 1.5<\/li>\n <li>Level creation\/design: 1.5<\/li>\n <li>Remainder: 23 hours<\/li>\n <\/ul>\n <p><strong>Choosing the Concept<\/strong><\/p>\n <p>My wife and I went on a dinner date right after the theme was announced, and because she&#8217;s a bubbly font of creativity, we soon had a long list of good ideas. Ultimately, I had to decide between:<\/p>\n <ul>\n <li><strong>Polytoad<\/strong>: Evolutionary Frogger! Your body adapts to match the cars which crush you. Mack truck? Throbbing metal hindlegs. Speedbike? Tapered waist. Honda Accord? More beige!<\/li>\n <li><strong>Guy On A Buffalo<\/strong>: &#8220;Evolutionize&#8221; your flock in unspecified ways to meet unspecified dangers!<\/li>\n <\/ul>\n <p>Really, in my heart of hearts, I knew Polytoad was the game to choose. It was Doable. But this damn song kept playing in my head: \u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.ebaumsworld.com\/video\/watch\/81845314\/\">Guy On A Buffalo<\/a>! Right. Who could resist the Call of the Buffalo?<\/p>\n <p><strong>\u00a0F*cking Flocking<\/strong><\/p>\n <p>Right away, I made an LD n00b mistake by wasting time on tech I&#8217;d never used before. Flocking is a pretty basic computer science thing, but I was an English major. Oops. That time could have been spent on getting evolution in the game. Speaking of&#8230;<\/p>\n <p><strong>The Original Game Design<\/strong><\/p>\n <ol>\n <li>A fire is raging across the plains. You must escape across the river to safety.<\/li>\n <li>There are packs of wolves \/ Indian hunting parties \/ Pioneer wagons barring your way. You can run them down if your herd is strong enough.<\/li>\n <li>Eat grass to get baby buffalo and grow them.<\/li>\n <li>Find special plants &#8212; Fireweed, Cloudpuffs, and Rustleaf &#8212; to start adding special DNA to your new baby buffs.<\/li>\n <li>These plants will evolve your herd into stronger, faster, more powerful animals, which you&#8217;ll need for later levels.<\/li>\n <li>You are personally a man on a buffalo who can shoot bad guys (slowly) and can&#8217;t get killed.<\/li>\n <\/ol>\n <p>This had everything I needed:<\/p>\n <ul>\n <li>A clear goal (get across the river)<\/li>\n <li>A clear obstacle (enemies blocking the river will try to kill you)<\/li>\n <li>A clear way to overcome the obstacle (grow the herd so you can overrun them)<\/li>\n <li>Time pressure (fire, which was effectively a timer)<\/li>\n <li>Dynamic pressure (wolves would spawn at an increasing rate)<\/li>\n <\/ul>\n <p>The one problem I recognized &#8212; but hoped would solve itself &#8212; was that evolution was not necessary for this game design. It would make your buffalo stronger, helping you achieve certain goals, but it wasn&#8217;t\u00a0<em>necessar<\/em><em>y.<\/em> But instead of solving it then and there, I stuck with production, hoping I&#8217;d figure it out.<\/p>\n <p><strong>Issues Encountered<\/strong><\/p>\n <ul>\n <li>I made sloppy states for my leader, buffalo, and wolves. This made finding bugs difficult. I ended up rewriting everything as components, making it more like a state machine. <strong>LESSON: Start with state machines.<\/strong><\/li>\n <li>I got fire working, functionally (burned plants, animals, moved across the plains), but there was no way to make it look good in 3D in the time I had. That was about 60 to 90 minutes wasted right there. <strong>LESSON: Make sure game objects can be visualized in your game for a low cost. Cut them if they can&#8217;t.<\/strong><\/li>\n <li>I spent a lot of time getting wolf and buffalo interactions to feel more life-like. In other words, buffalo would kill wolves if hit head-on, otherwise wolves would hurt buffalo. And wolves would eat dead buffalo, so you could sacrifice a buffalo to get away. Oh, and baby buffs would be weaker, right? And maybe couldn&#8217;t kill wolves&#8230; TLDR: Too complicated. Did not contribute to high concept, nor was it required. <strong>LESSON:\u00a0Core gameplay must be simple systems. Expand later.<\/strong><\/li>\n <\/ul>\n <p><strong>Final Game Design<\/strong><\/p>\n <ol>\n <li>Get your herd of buffalo over the deep canyon to escape the marauding wolves<\/li>\n <li>Do this by eating enough Cloudpuffs to give your buffalo wings, so they can fly over.<\/li>\n <li>Baby buffalo eat grass to make more buffalo.<\/li>\n <li>Wolves kill baby buffs. You kill wolves.<\/li>\n <li>Wolves will spawn at a continually faster rate, creating time pressure.<\/li>\n <li>Your base score is number of buffalo divided by time.<\/li>\n <\/ol>\n <p>This was a great design for a Ludum Dare. Too bad I figured it out so late!<\/p>\n <ul>\n <li>Goal is still clear and physical (get over there).<\/li>\n <li>How to achieve goal is clear (fly).<\/li>\n <li>Wolf \/ Buffalo \/ Leader interaction is simple and clear.<\/li>\n <li>Resources make sense (grass = health, blue grass = power up)<\/li>\n <\/ul>\n <p>Everything got in&#8230; except the cloudpuffs and flying! So then the super final game objective became:<\/p>\n <ul>\n <li>Protect your herd while it eats grass to create more buffalo. Win when you get ten!<\/li>\n <\/ul>\n <p>Ah well. Had fun, made some stuff, let&#8217;s do it again!<\/p>\n <p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.ludumdare.com\/compo\/2012\/08\/28\/buffalo-joe-post-mortem\/oreganik_icon_embossed\/\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-178622\"><img class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-178622\" src=\"http:\/\/www.ludumdare.com\/compo\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/08\/oreganik_icon_embossed.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"74\" height=\"74\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n <p style=\"text-align: center\">Ted Brown \/ <a href=\"http:\/\/oreganik.com\">oreganik.com<\/a><\/p>\n \n <p>Tags: <a href=\"http:\/\/ludumdare.com\/compo\/tag\/post-mortem\/\" rel=\"tag\">post-mortem<\/a><\/p>","time":"August 28th, 2012 4:43 pm","title":"Buffalo Joe: Post-Mortem"}