{"assets":[],"author_link":"author\/winterblood\/","author_name":"Winterblood","cat":"LD #22","categories":["LD #22"],"comments":[],"epoch":1325226960,"event":"LD22","likes":4,"metadata":{"p_key":"77564","p_author":"Winterblood","p_authorkey":"0","p_urlkey":"286415","p_title":"Lonely Island \u2013 Post Mortem","p_cat":"LD #22","p_event":"LD22","p_time":"1325226960","p_likes":"4","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\/30\/lonely-island-post-mortem\/","text":"

Well, regardless of how the voting goes, I consider my effort a failure. I\u2019ll explain why after breaking down the issues\u2026<\/p>\n

What went right<\/strong><\/p>\n

  • Theme \u2013 I drew a blank on interesting game mechanics for \u201cAlone\u201d, so decided to go for a mood piece with fairly conventional mechanics (especially since we had a new category just for that). I was happy with the general mood of the game.<\/li>\n
  • Mechanics \u2013 I created a handful of simple scripts that I could re-use to quickly add objects and interactions. This really helped in the final few hours, even though I lost a lot of that work.<\/li>\n
  • Art style \u2013 I was initially going for a desaturated, pastel look rather than completely grayscale. I abandoned this on day two because it was taking far too much time twiddling the colours to try to get the look I wanted. Grayscale was much simpler to implement and I felt it turned out more dramatic too.<\/li>\n

    What went wrong<\/strong><\/p>\n

  • Too much art \u2013 I spent the vast majority of my time building and lighting the environment. It\u2019s pretty, I guess, but when I look at what other entries did using much simpler art, I feel that was wasted time.<\/li>\n
  • Art first \u2013 I build most of the environment on Saturday, tweaked and polished on Sunday morning, and only started adding simple puzzles on Sunday afternoon. This was exceedingly stupid.<\/li>\n
  • Not enough to do \u2013 the flip side of overdoing the art. There\u2019s only three simple fetch puzzles to do, and no proper ending, which is pathetic. Because I wanted to make a story-driven experience and had already designed much of the enivronment, I struggled to come up with logical puzzles. At the last minute I realised that they could be emotional blocks rather than physical barriers to leaving, but didn\u2019t have time to properly evoke that.<\/li>\n
  • No backups \u2013 during submission hour, Unity crashed and corrupted the terrain data I\u2019d spent the bulk of day 1 sculpting. I had to revert to a test build I\u2019d done an hour earlier. Sadly, in that hour I\u2019d added a lot of additional text and a proper ending. Next time I\u2019ll make backups and bank test builds at regular intervals.<\/li>\n

    In this shot you can also see the debug plane \u2013 a quad with a mist texture on it that slices through the landscape (most obvious above the doorway) showing where the player can move. I used this to help sculpt the terrain and place objects on it, and intended to delete it before submission. It\u2019s a minor niggle, but it annoys me!\n\"Lonely<\/p>\n

    Self-analysis<\/strong><\/p>\n

    The main reason I consider Lonely Island a failure is that I made ALL THE SAME MISTAKES as in LD21. Read the post-mortem for that one here<\/a>.<\/p>\n

    You\u2019d think because I\u2019m a programmer by trade, I\u2019d be able to knock up working game mechanics in a few hours. And I can, if I try. But that\u2019s exactly what I do at work day-in, day-out. During Ludum Dare, I\u2019d far rather play around with the art \u2013 it\u2019s more fun, I learn new tricks and I get a pretty result a lot faster than with programming. And I guess that\u2019s fine, if that\u2019s what I wanted to do.<\/p>\n

    But what I really want out of Ludum Dare is to prove to myself that I can design and build my own games \u2013 not just implement highly-polished cogs that go into the big machine. And I\u2019m failing at that because I\u2019m doing the fun stuff instead of the important stuff.<\/p>\n

    So as far as I\u2019m concerned, the theme of the next LD is \u201cSelf-Discipline\u201d!<\/p>\n

    Play (Unity)<\/a> | Ratings Page<\/a><\/strong><\/p>","time":"December 30th, 2011 6:36 am","title":"Lonely Island \u2013 Post Mortem","title_was_empty":false}