{"author_name":"Izzimach","cat":"LD #23","comments":[{"author_name":"","time":"May 3, 2012 2:26 pm","epoch":1336073160,"text":"Neat monsters! <img src=\"http:\/\/ludumdare.com\/compo\/wp-includes\/images\/smilies\/simple-smile.png\" alt=\":)\" class=\"wp-smiley\" style=\"height: 1em; max-height: 1em;\" \/>","spam":"N"}],"epoch":1336071900,"likes":3,"metadata":{"p_key":"55853","p_author":"Izzimach","p_authorkey":"11739","p_urlkey":"91571","p_title":"Ethereal Isles Post Mortem","p_cat":"LD #23","p_event":"LD23","p_time":"1336071900","p_likes":"3","p_comments":"1","p_status":"UPD5","us_key":"11739","us_name":"Izzimach","us_username":"izzimach","event_start":"1334880000","event_key":"10","event_name":"LD23"},"text":"<p>This is my first Ludum Dare, although I&#8217;ve done several other game creating events including game-in-a-day (now defunct, apparently) and several TIGSource game competitions. So I had already learned the valuable lesson of limiting the game scope. Apparently I didn&#8217;t learn it well enough!<\/p>\n <p>The game is <a title=\"Play and Rate\" href=\"http:\/\/www.ludumdare.com\/compo\/ludum-dare-23\/?action=preview&amp;uid=11739\">Ethereal Isles<\/a>, with the &#8220;plot&#8221; that you are a wizard conquering islands floating in the great ether. Each island is defended by some monsters, and you conquer it by dropping some of your own monsters onto the island.<\/p>\n <p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n <p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.ludumdare.com\/compo\/2012\/05\/03\/ethereal-isles-post-mortem\/ld23_snapshot5\/\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-143273\"><img class=\"alignnone  wp-image-143273\" src=\"http:\/\/www.ludumdare.com\/compo\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/05\/LD23_snapshot5-550x430.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"495\" height=\"387\" srcset=\"http:\/\/ludumdare.com\/compo\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/05\/LD23_snapshot5-300x234.jpg 300w, http:\/\/ludumdare.com\/compo\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/05\/LD23_snapshot5-550x430.jpg 550w, http:\/\/ludumdare.com\/compo\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/05\/LD23_snapshot5.jpg 921w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 495px) 100vw, 495px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n <p><strong>Development Tools and Process<\/strong><\/p>\n <p>I got everything ready a few days beforehand. I had considered using <a href=\"http:\/\/haxe.org\">Haxe<\/a>\u00a0or Javascript to make a fully browser-based game but in the end decided to stick with Unity since I had already made a few games with it. I had Sculptris, Blender, and Inkscape for graphics and Wavasaur for audio. I hadn&#8217;t used Inkscape for game graphics before but I decided to give it a try since Inkscape filters made it easy to make good-looking UI components.<\/p>\n <p>I was a bit worried that the theme would be something I couldn&#8217;t riff off of, and in fact spent the first few hours after the theme announcement thinking about possible games. Many concepts were too large and complex; I finally settled on a simple &#8220;drop monsters onto a floating island&#8221; game. Even that was too\u00a0ambitious. However, the part of the game that I did get done was more fun to play than I expected.<\/p>\n <p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n <p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.ludumdare.com\/compo\/2012\/05\/03\/ethereal-isles-post-mortem\/img_1148\/\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-143246\"><img class=\"alignright size-medium wp-image-143246\" src=\"http:\/\/www.ludumdare.com\/compo\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/05\/IMG_1148-246x300.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"246\" height=\"300\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n <p><strong>What Went Right<\/strong><\/p>\n <ul>\n <li>Sketching out concepts. Surprisingly, this is the first time I sketched out some monster concepts on paper. Usually I just hop onto the computer and start fiddling with mesh vertices in Blender. But this time I was eating breakfast and decided to draw out some monsters on paper. This helped because drawing out a concept on paper is fast and I can see if the general idea is going to work, so I can quickly create a bunch of different monster concepts and throw out the ones I didn&#8217;t like.<\/li>\n <li>Don&#8217;t neglect the graphics. As a mostly-programming guy, I usually make some crappy-looking squares or blobs so that I can spend all my time on the &#8220;real work&#8221; of programming. But I&#8217;ve since come around and decided that bad graphics and\/or audio really degrade the entire game experience. So I spent a lot of time making, texturing, and animating monsters so that even if the gameplay is bad, at least you get to see little monsters punching each other.<\/li>\n <li>Don&#8217;t neglect the audio either, at least not <strong>too<\/strong> much. I decided that bad audio is better than no audio but was under a lot of time pressure. Instead of spending a lot of time fiddling with sfxr and various audio processor effects, I just recorded myself making various odd noises into a microphone. This turned out better than I expected, and having any audio improved the general game experience.<\/li>\n <li>Learn some new stuff. I actually learned a lot about texture painting in Sculptris and in Blender. I also learned to make vector-based GUI buttons and icons in Inkscape, which looked loads better than any stuff I had made previously with raster-based editors. I&#8217;m sure that you can use a tool such as GIMP to make good GUI elements, but I personally found it faster and easier to build them in Inkscape.<\/li>\n <\/ul>\n <div><a href=\"http:\/\/i.imgur.com\/pkjax.png\"><img class=\"alignnone\" src=\"http:\/\/i.imgur.com\/pkjax.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"383\" height=\"277\" \/><\/a><\/div>\n <p><strong>What Went Wrong<\/strong><\/p>\n <ul>\n <li>Scope was still too big. I ended up cutting out some mechanics since I ran out of time. Specifically, each monster was going to have a special ability randomly chosen from a pool of abilities like &#8220;does more damage when fighting lots of enemies&#8221; or &#8220;sometimes knocks enemies up in the air.&#8221; These abilities would have made the combat more interesting and given the game a bit more depth. I&#8217;m in the process of adding in these abilities for a post-compo version.<\/li>\n <li>Too much time on the art. I really went gonzo on the art and made four different monsters. Each monster has a mesh, a texture, and an animated skeleton. This stuff takes time. I actually <a title=\"practice monsters\" href=\"https:\/\/p.twimg.com\/Aq0ZZ7ZCEAA0jLs.png\">spent the previous week speed-modeling a bunch of sample monsters<\/a>\u00a0to make sure I was up to snuff in the modeling department. Still, if each monster takes about two hours and I make four monsters, that&#8217;s eight hours spent just to model the monsters. Plus I had to make some trees and the island. The game looks good for having this much variety, but I can&#8217;t help but wonder what else I could have added if I had made only 2 or 3 monsters or made simpler animations.<\/li>\n <\/ul>\n <p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.ludumdare.com\/compo\/2012\/05\/03\/ethereal-isles-post-mortem\/ld23_snapshot4\/\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-143247\"><img class=\"alignnone size-large wp-image-143247\" src=\"http:\/\/www.ludumdare.com\/compo\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/05\/LD23_snapshot4-550x285.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"550\" height=\"285\" srcset=\"http:\/\/ludumdare.com\/compo\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/05\/LD23_snapshot4-300x155.png 300w, http:\/\/ludumdare.com\/compo\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/05\/LD23_snapshot4-550x285.png 550w, http:\/\/ludumdare.com\/compo\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/05\/LD23_snapshot4.png 914w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 550px) 100vw, 550px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n <p>All in all, I think the game has some potential even if the official compo entry is a little light on game mechanics. With some extra gameplay elements and more cute monsters, it will probably be worth publishing somewhere.<\/p>\n <p>&nbsp;<\/p>","time":"May 3rd, 2012 2:05 pm","title":"Ethereal Isles Post Mortem"}