{"author_name":"Kenny G","cat":"LD #22","comments":[],"epoch":1324738980,"likes":0,"metadata":{"p_key":"60029","p_author":"Kenny G","p_authorkey":"1022","p_urlkey":"95781","p_title":"Alone In A Crowd Postmortem","p_cat":"LD #22","p_event":"LD22","p_time":"1324738980","p_likes":"0","p_comments":"0","p_status":"UPD5","us_key":"1022","us_name":"Kenny G","us_username":"kenny-g","event_start":"1323993600","event_key":"8","event_name":"LD22"},"text":"

Re-posted from my blog:\u00a0http:\/\/www.kennygoff.com\/post\/postmortem-alone-in-a-crowd-ludum-dare-22<\/a><\/p>\n

Last weekend’s\u00a0Ludum Dare<\/a>\u00a0was, in my mind, the best thus far. For over a year now, I have been trying to get the game development club at my college (SGDC, Stevens Game Development Club) to get together and participate in a Ludum Dare. Well, last weekend it happened! Thanks to a new dedicated room on campus for the club, and me bringing it up at every meeting for a month and spamming our email list with reminders, we had 3 people come by to work on games, and a few other’s come by to hang out and brainstorm. Unfortunately, I was the only one to finish, although one guy made a game on his TI calculator that was pretty cool (he didn’t submit though). Not only that, but I believe this is the best game I’ve made so far in a Ludum Dare, and my time was best spent during the weekend.<\/p>\n

The Weekend<\/strong><\/p>\n

When the night first started and the theme, Alone, was announced, I couldn’t think of anything good. I thought of a lonely kitten platformer, but I hated that idea, and wanted to avoid doing a platformer (my fallback game type). I wanted to do something different this time. However, after talking with the guys who were at the SGDC room with me, a few ideas flew around. One being a game where you repulse people, and you have to corner them and make them your friend. Another, where you are trying to be alone, and you have to escape the people following you (basically the opposite of the previous idea). And a few other small ideas came to mind but I liked none of them. It was only about an hour and a half into the competition, and not late at night, so I figured I’ll start programming a simple platformer and make a kitten sprite so I have something to branch off of the next morning. After that it was about 12:00pm EST, and 45 hours remaining. I decided to take the night to sleep it over, as I typically have a better idea in the morning.<\/p>\n

I woke up the next morning with a spark that I did not have the night before. It seemed like a more generalized version of the repulsion\/attraction ideas. Basically, the game would be top down, with the screen being one room, and the player had to travel through to other rooms, and in each room was a different situation. Each situation would deal with emotions, and specifically for the theme; loneliness, love, togetherness, loss, and some others. I had been playing a lot of\u00a0Edmund McMillen’s<\/a>\u00a0The Binding of Isaac<\/a>, so I thought of the rooms in the same style as they were in Isaac. One basic rectangular room taking up the screen, with the possibility of one door on any given wall. The difference was, you could not go back through a room you came through.<\/p>\n

Once I though of this I immediately got hit with all the different types of rooms I could do. Death, crowds, repulsive to others, getting a girlfriend, and losing a girlfriend were some of the first to cross my mind. I went to go scrap my old platformer and start fresh with this game. I decided to keep everything as different colored squares. This was not placeholder graphics though. I wanted everything to be representational and simple, in order to allow the player to image it all, and put him or herself in the game. Also I’m not that good at drawing top down characters, but I’ll stick with the simplicity angle as the main factor in the decision. The most complex thing in the game was the kitten, who was a small square with big pointy ears and a tail. As I started to put this together I also thought of naming each room something unique and displaying the name of the room on the bottom of the screen (which ended up being the most fun part of coming up with new room … and was totally taken from\u00a0Terry Cavanagh’s<\/a>\u00a0VVVVVV<\/a>).<\/p>\n

I had to take a break during the day because I had a final exam and my roommate and I took a trip to New York City for a couple hours. Once I got back there was just over 24 hours remaining. That was enough time to put together a few rooms, clean up bugs, and submit on time. I ended up with 10 different types of rooms, which are randomly generated when you enter a new room.<\/p>\n

What Went Right<\/strong><\/p>\n

    \n
  1. This was the first Ludum Dare where I\u00a0prioritized gameplay over art<\/em>, and made sure to get everything that was needed for the game to be fun before even thinking about art.<\/li>\n
  2. Chose an idea that was\u00a0easy to implement<\/em>\u00a0and rooms took a very short amount of time to create.<\/li>\n
  3. Talking to people and going out<\/em>\u00a0was an important part in my design process, and the game wouldn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t be where it is without that. I got some good ideas for rooms from my friends in SGDC and my roommate came up with a few good ones, including one of my favorites “Size Does Matter”, where a bigger blue square steals your girlfriend from you.<\/li>\n <\/ol>\n

    What Went Wrong<\/strong><\/p>\n

      \n
    1. Gameplay relied on a lot of content<\/em>. Although the rooms were easy to implement, I still needed a lot of rooms to make the game fun, and at 10 room types, I think I was short a few.<\/li>\n
    2. No Sounds… again<\/em>. I didn’t have time to work on sounds or music, and a simple ominous tune would have sufficed for background music.<\/li>\n
    3. “The Answer” was kind of controversial, and people seemed to take it to an extreme. That room was a room you could not leave, and had a noose in the center, and when you touched it the game ended with a screen that said “Death: Forever Alone.” This was one of my earlier ideas, and I obviously didn’t think how people would take it. I was not at all trying to imply that I support suicide. It was merely a realistic look at the path some people take when faced with deep depression. I actually planned to add an exit if you didn’t touch the noose after a few seconds and other ways to end the game, including two tombstones if you have a partner, in a room called “Old Age” or something. I simply ran out of time and didn’t have time to implement the different death cases for each setup possible (alone, with girlfriend, with cat).<\/li>\n <\/ol>\n

      Looking To The Future<\/strong><\/p>\n

      Overall, I think that this was a great Ludum Dare and my best and most unique LD game yet. I want to make a fully realized version of Alone In A Crowd, with a lot of rooms, marriage, divorce, more loss, friends, kids, afterlife, and basically anything in life that could effect a person. I already have 20 or more ideas for rooms, and any time I think about or talk about the game I come up with a new one. The full version of Alone In A Crowd won’t be something I’ll be done with soon. Rather, I’ll be adding to the current version over time, until I feel like I have enough content to release it. I’ll be sticking with doing it in AS3 with flixel, because I think it will be a good online game, and am also considering doing a mobile version, since it is very easy to implement on any platform (and my next few games in mind are going to be mobile and I’ll be in the groove).<\/p>\n

      I look forward to the future of\u00a0Alone In A Crowd<\/a>\u00a0and the next Ludum Dare, which is the 23rd LD and the 10th Anniversary for Ludum Dare.<\/p>\n \n

      Tags: postmortem<\/a><\/p>","time":"December 24th, 2011 10:03 am","title":"Alone In A Crowd Postmortem"}