{"assets":[],"author_link":"author\/ratking\/","author_name":"ratking","cat":"LD #22","categories":["LD #22"],"comments":[],"epoch":1324392300,"event":"LD22","likes":5,"metadata":{"p_key":"76715","p_author":"ratking","p_authorkey":"0","p_urlkey":"284551","p_title":"SOLILOQUY \u2013 Post Mortem","p_cat":"LD #22","p_event":"LD22","p_time":"1324392300","p_likes":"5","p_comments":"0","p_status":"WAYBACK","us_key":null,"us_name":null,"us_username":null,"event_start":"1323993600","event_key":"8","event_name":"LD22"},"source_url":"2011\/12\/20\/soliloquy-%E2%80%93-post-mortem\/","text":"

(This post mortem can also be found on our own blog<\/a>!)<\/p>\n

SOLILOQY \u2013 my LD compo game \u2013 you can play it<\/a> and rate it<\/a>!<\/p>\n

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Ludum Dare 22<\/a> was somehow pretty exhausting for me, and kind of depressing. I don\u2019t exactly know why, but I think that multiple factors brought in.<\/p>\n

The weekend before the compo I made a \u201cwarm-up game\u201d, even though I planned to do it long before PoV announced this kind of thing. I just wanted to make a game in 48 hours in order to help a friend (a 3D artist), who needed a programmer for his university project. The programming part wasn\u2019t wasting, but the fact that the game didn\u2019t get finished at this weekend (mostly because of my friend :P) left feelings of \u201cincompleteness\u201d inside me, which I hate.<\/p>\n

Another thing: I didn\u2019t like the theme \u201cAlone\u201d, and I still don\u2019t think it was the best or even a good theme of the ones in the final voting round. But, as I always have to live up to my own standards I wanted to follow the theme AND make a good game. And this often leads to a status-quo \u2013 as long as I don\u2019t have the right ideas I won\u2019t start, and as long as I don\u2019t start I won\u2019t have the right ideas. Or something like that. My mind was blocked and I did other things, like playing Skyrim and chatting on IRC (not in #ludumdare, though, that place was CROWDED). Later, I started Unity3D and tried to play out another idea I had days before, about some time manipulation gameplay. It wasn\u2019t feasible to do it in Unity3D, but due to the fact I did something concrete (game with 3D environment and FPS controls) I could develop another idea in my brain, which became the concept of the final SOLILOQUY.<\/p>\n

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I still think the best part of my game is this name! I thought of it before I thought of the gameplay (but it didn\u2019t give me any directions,), and I liked it so much, I wanted to use it in any case. I\u2019m quite happy nobody else named his\/her game the same, too.<\/p>\n

Even though I have some experience by participating at Ludum Dare before, I still don\u2019t really know how to cut back optimally. The concept of SOLILOQUY demands levels, and levels demand content and art and story and design and choosing colours and making 3D models \u2026 but I knew this would be hard for me, as it was when I made my Ludum Dare 20 game, \u201cTRI<\/a>\u201c. So I decided to do NO textures this time, and it didn\u2019t hurt much (on the game\u2019s side), but the benefits weren\u2019t that great either. I mainly put the levels together in Unity3D instead of 3dsmax (in contrast to TRI), but this didn\u2019t help me much, either. Altogether I have six levels now, where I really wanted ten, but at least seven.\nThe levels don\u2019t look that bad (abstract style for the win), even though I chose the colours quite randomly. On the other side, what I don\u2019t like much, the levels are all tutorial missions only. You just jump around in the first two, learn using your souls in the levels after that, press some buttons and work together with yourself. After this, the real levels should come, but I didn\u2019t have time to do any more content.<\/p>\n

I finished the last level three hours before the deadline, and I couldn\u2019t do any more creative stuff. I especially failed in doing sounds or anything like music, unfortunately. I thought about using inudge.net again, but it would sound like my other two Ludum Dare games, so I dropped that idea. At least this frustration encourages me to actually learn how to make simple songs with real tools. (Wish me luck.)\nThe reason why I couldn\u2019t do more creative work: This time, Unity3D was my enemy. Sometimes I really had to fight the engine, mostly when it came to the text you see in the game (story & hints) \u2013 Unity\u2019s GUI system still is awkward to look at, and it has bad effects on the performance. So I used someone\u2019s code which displays bitmap fonts via SpriteManager (the original one), but it didn\u2019t work out of the box with all my bitmap font generator tools (I decided to use \u201cTWL Theme editor\u201d). After those problems were resolved, at the very end of the process, suddenly my white text became gray in the webplayer version. Argh! I needed nearly an hour to find out why that happened \u2013 a plane with alpha (the dark overlay) had the same distance to the camera as the text, and somehow the editor sorted it differently than the webplayer. Whyever that is.<\/p>\n

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After the mixed (or even bad) feelings I had about my own game, I\u2019m really relieved that people actually liked it! The current feedback is mainly positive, and some things that were criticized are fixed in a post-compo version<\/a> (on Kongregate, for more attention)! Other things, like the jumping height \/ range being too crass, are somewhat subjective and unfortunately can\u2019t be changed without rearranging some of the levels.\nOf course, many people complain about the brain-hurting aspect of the game (gameplay and visuals alike), but that was expected. I could have done the double-soul mechanic with just a picture-in-picture style or something like that, but then the game would lose its uniqueness pretty fast IMHO. Also, as soon as dogbomb does his \u201cI play your game drunk!\u201d video, the whole game visuals will make much more sense, haha.<\/p>\n

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BTW, if you have a look at the source you will need Unity3D. The indie version should suffice for just reading the C# files and so on, but you need Unity Pro (or its 30 day test version) in order to actually start the game, because I used Render To Texture. Sorry!<\/p>\n

Thanks for reading this wall of text, and don\u2019t forget to PLAY THE DARN THING<\/a>!<\/p>\n

Tags: post-mortem<\/a>, postmortem<\/a>, puzzle game<\/a>, Rat King<\/a>, unity3d<\/a><\/p>","time":"December 20th, 2011 2:45 pm","title":"SOLILOQUY \u2013 Post Mortem"}