Hm. I guess Notch simply, or just accidently pushed me over to it. Also everyone else that randomly yells “JOIN LUDUM DARE”. Theres quite a lof of those people.<\/p>\n
And there I was, having a registered account, voting for themes, hoping it wouldn’t be Twilight Fandom, with barely any game making experience more complex than if statements.<\/p>\n
But it turns out I had an idea for exploration. A simple one even I could realize with a bit of experimenting around. How that idea came, I don’t know anymore. I think it was a fluent process after opening Game Maker and simply starting by making a platformer engine, kind of. Saturday was kind of depressing in the beginning. I think Iwas trying to figure out how I could use FMOD to use the simple stuff I wanted it to do. That took about 6 hours of my time. I have found simple solutions to my problems by not using examples of how it could work but instead of just doing my own shitty code. But it worked like I wanted it to! And that makes me… a tad happy.<\/p>\n
If I would make another game like this, I probably would rely more on the 3D stuff FMOD has. It gives you more of a feeling where you are going to. Would I have tried to figure it out while being in Ludum Dare, I guess it would have sucked all my blood, eh, time away.<\/p>\n
The way the game looks was something that evolved naturally too. At first I had some kind of placeholder graphics for the very beginning. But the rest never changed.<\/p>\n
Hm, I seem to have overwritten most of it. Ah, here is how the game start initially looked like. After I got to the endings on sunday, changing the cheesy look of this was kind of a good idea.<\/p>\n
![\"heylisten\"](\"http:\/\/www.ludumdare.com\/compo\/wp-content\/uploads\/2009\/12\/heylisten.png\")
<\/p>\n
I think most of the time was spent on sound. I didn’t notice, but making 36 sound effects and master them so they kind of have the same volume or destroy speakers, that takes a lot of time.<\/p>\n
Look at the mess of project files I created.<\/p>\n
![\"ludum\"](\"http:\/\/www.ludumdare.com\/compo\/wp-content\/uploads\/2009\/12\/ludum.png\")
<\/p>\n
For people that are interested, I used Ableton Live Suite 8. Lots of it’s internal Synthesizers and Effects. Also FM8, Absynth 4, Reaktor 5 and Massive. All VSTi from Native Instruments. Yeah, I own that shit. God damn, I’ve spent too much money on this.<\/p>\n
I’m very happy with the sound results. I think some loops are really cool.<\/p>\n
What else… after I got my code working, everything was just straightforward work. I actually worked most of the Ludum Dare. Although it’s such a small game. I blame my shitty coding. I could have made scripts so I don’t have to repeat steps over and over. But I was fast enough to finish what I have initially kind of planned, so it’s not that bad. Okay, to the pros and the cons!<\/p>\n
PRO!<\/p>\n
- \n
- I MADE A GAME.<\/li>\n
- Good sound!<\/li>\n
- Interesting experimental experience!<\/li>\n
- Happily finding out 2 days are exactly the time needed<\/li>\n
- Replay value!<\/li>\n
- I MADE A GAME.<\/li>\n <\/ul>\n
CON?<\/p>\n
- \n
- The controls are confusing. Some people get it instantly, some don’t even know there are in total 8 different routes.<\/li>\n
- The sound is sometimes confusing. Sometimes you don’t really get the difference. Using “3D” sounds or panning would have deminished this.<\/li>\n
- The game is quite short. Some people might give it a shot once and then never open it again.<\/li>\n
- The visuals could have been more involved.<\/li>\n <\/ul>\n
Do I have something else to say?<\/p>\n
APRIL.<\/p>","time":"December 15th, 2009 12:27 am","title":"A little bit of Post-Mortem in the morning"}