{"author_name":"LPGhatguy","cat":"LD #24","comments":[],"epoch":1346097180,"likes":3,"metadata":{"p_key":"51826","p_author":"LPGhatguy","p_authorkey":"14296","p_urlkey":"87524","p_title":"First LD: UNBOUND Post-Mortem","p_cat":"LD #24","p_event":"LD24","p_time":"1346097180","p_likes":"3","p_comments":"0","p_status":"UPD5","us_key":"14296","us_name":"LPGhatguy","us_username":"lpghatguy","event_start":"1345766400","event_key":"12","event_name":"LD24"},"text":"<p>You can play the product of my labor, UNBOUND, <a>here.<\/a><\/p>\n <p>With this being my first Ludum Dare, I (like every other first-timer) had no idea what to expect. I spent the entire Ludum Dare in a Skype call with a few friends, one of them also doing LD (also a first-timer.) Overall, I feel like I did alright, but a few weakpoints of mine (drawing) showed through. Also, I had an interesting time dealing with planning with no ability to write, as I have a broken wrist. But anywho, onto a chronological post-mortem.<\/p>\n <p><\/p>\n <h3>Day 1: August 24th<\/h3>\n <p>Right as the theme was announced, I felt I was in for quite the experience. I hadn&#8217;t a clue what I wanted to do until about 2 hours in, and it sounded like a great idea. It would be called BIND, and the mechanics were something along these lines:<\/p>\n <ul>\n <li>Controls were added as needed. For example, the first time you approach a ledge, whatever key you attempt to jump with would cause you to jump from then on.<\/li>\n <li>Things you did more often you would gradually get better at, at the cost of losing your skill in your least-used skill.<\/li>\n <li>Enemies would adapt and evolve to counter whatever you&#8217;re good at.<\/li>\n <\/ul>\n <p>And so I got to coding with these tools:<br \/>\n <b>Code: <\/b>Sublime Text 2<br \/>\n <b>Language: <\/b>Lua<br \/>\n <b>Framework: <\/b>LOVE2D<br \/>\n <b>Art: <\/b>Photoshop CS6<br \/>\n <b>Music: <\/b>MuseScore<br \/>\n <b>Sound effects: <\/b>Audacity, starring myself<br \/>\n <br \/>\n I had no real engine to use, but I had been experimenting with a few techniques in LOVE2D, and I was already extremely familiar with both, so I started the game engine. It had some great code; I got about 500 lines down and some sprites before heading off to bed at 3 AM, Mountain Daylight Time.<\/p>\n <p><\/p>\n <h3>&#8220;Day&#8221; 2: August 25th\/26th<\/h3>\n <p>I woke up about 10 AM my time, giving me about 7 hours of sleep. The night before I had completed the base engine (with much left to do, however) and a few sprites (a top-down guy running with\/without a gun, a tile floor, some dirt, and a couple mouse cursors.) After continuing work on the engine I decided that what I envisioned for BIND, which was to be a fast-paced gun game, would probably be too much. I also had made an error in the base of the engine that caused two issues I wasn&#8217;t happy with. First, I had a horrible flickering problem, but that was fixed by the helpful people in the IRC and a few minutes of fiddling about. Secondly, I hadn&#8217;t built the system with any sort of collision (let alone physics) in mind. Given the time constraints, I didn&#8217;t feel it was worth-while to either rewrite the engine and mirror every object into love.physics for easier interaction, or write the necessary components with my makeshift object system.<br \/>\n <br \/>\n And so I went with another idea: a boiled-down version of Dear Esther with a completely different base. I kept the sprites I made, despite the fact they were less-than-stellar. I also kept the engine, disabling, but not removing, all the functionality that would have made BIND, well, BIND. I added in simple tile collision, added a slight light-swell effect for atmosphere, and made an image-based level format with 4 layers: 3 visual (red, green, blue) and 1 collision. (Alpha) I decided that the main mechanic would be &#8220;notes&#8221; left by someone who had been there a long time ago. Why you were there wasn&#8217;t ever defined in-game, essentially leaving it up to you (until I posted the entry, where I declared you were a journalist.) From there, I patched the level format, adding support for &#8220;special&#8221; tiles: ones that either had metadata associated with them or could be interacted with. I added 3 such tiles: Paper, Start, and LevelChanger, which was going to have support for more than just moving you to the next level, but hey, time. I looked at the clock and noticed it was 6 AM, and determined I wouldn&#8217;t be sleeping until LD was over.<br \/>\n <br \/>\n I felt I had a relatively okay game base going there, so I went to compose the music. I came back after about an hour with a good few measures of a song that would define the feel of the game. I began working on more tiles and the first few levels. I added walls of various types, and made 5 levels that consisted entirely of tile floor. After adding my new walls to the first 3 levels, I scrapped the 5th level entirely and left out the 4th&#8217;s walls in the interest of time, because around that time it was 1 PM. I finished the music, giving a 1 minute loop, and began working on more sprites, such as a red-tint utility tunnel pathway that my friend Andy thought was &#8220;random rusted chain&#8221; &#8212; like I said, my art skills are lacking <b>heavily<\/b>. I started the actual writing about this time, which didn&#8217;t take very long. After all, I had finished many English writing assignments the night before they were due. I patched up the old tile levels with a new metal-floored access tunnel type floor for a couple parts and began working on the utility tunnel levels below.<br \/>\n <br \/>\n These maps were much quicker to make due to the difference in tiling needs (in the tile levels, if I needed an upper-right-inner-corner wall piece, I had to composite three tiles together in the image, which was slow.) For these levels, I hard-coded changes such as turning off the music and enabling ambient noises (which were myself vocally letting out the agony I felt and hitting my desk.) At this point, it was 5 PM and I needed an end. I won&#8217;t spoil it here, but it required a new special tile to trigger it. At about 6:20, I finished up minor changes and details, packed, and submitted my game.<br \/>\n <br \/>\n I then proceeded to celebrate quietly (because I was too tired to make much noise) just before falling asleep around the submission deadline passed.<br \/>\n <br \/>\n I&#8217;m more happy with UNBOUND as a personal project than one of Ludum Dare, partly because I didn&#8217;t believe I&#8217;d finish, but mostly because of the different interpretation of the theme and general personal emotional importance it had for me. In the game, I took a completely radical (and probably incorrect) view of evolution: that of the mind. How do people&#8217;s emotions evolve as time passes, and situations become more hopeless?<br \/>\n <br \/>\n I enjoyed Ludum Dare a lot, and I&#8217;ll surely be back for Ludum Dare 25. Thanks for your time.<\/p>\n <p>`<\/p>\n \n <p>Tags: <a href=\"http:\/\/ludumdare.com\/compo\/tag\/post-mortem\/\" rel=\"tag\">post-mortem<\/a><\/p>","time":"August 27th, 2012 2:53 pm","title":"First LD: UNBOUND Post-Mortem"}