{"assets":[],"author_link":"author\/cominu\/","author_name":"cominu","cat":"LD #24","categories":["LD #24"],"comments":[],"epoch":1347258120,"event":"LD24","likes":8,"metadata":{"p_key":"78221","p_author":"cominu","p_authorkey":"0","p_urlkey":"287231","p_title":"Cuboid Sandbox \u2013 Postmortem","p_cat":"LD #24","p_event":"LD24","p_time":"1347258120","p_likes":"8","p_comments":"0","p_status":"WAYBACK","us_key":null,"us_name":null,"us_username":null,"event_start":"1345766400","event_key":"12","event_name":"LD24"},"source_url":"2012\/09\/10\/182078\/","text":"<p><em>Original post is <a href=\"http:\/\/www.subvertgames.com\/blog\/65\">here<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n<hr\/>\n<p><em>I\u2019m back with some (good?) news!<\/em><\/p>\n<p>This time I\u2019m going to talk about a little experimental game made for the 24th Ludum Dare. The game is called <em>Cuboid Sandbox<\/em> and the description in the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.ludumdare.com\/compo\/ludum-dare-24\/?action=preview&amp;uid=14628\">contest page<\/a> is something like this:<\/p>\n<div><em>Half game and half simulation, this sandbox let you discover the beauty and wilderness of the different Cuboid species fighting for food and territory control in a constantly evolving environment.<\/em><\/div>\n<p><em>Wait. Whaaat?<\/em><\/p>\n<p>Well\u2026this 3 days long experiment ended up being more like a simulation than a game. But, what is really a game? When I was a child I always found entertaining to watch ants movements and this game probably have been influenced by that experience <img alt=\":)\" class=\"wp-smiley\" src=\"http:\/\/ludumdare.com\/compo\/wp-includes\/images\/smilies\/simple-smile.png\" style=\"height: 1em; max-height: 1em;\"\/><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.ludumdare.com\/compo\/2012\/09\/10\/182078\/ld_08_bright\/\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-182079\"><img alt=\"Cuboid Sandbox\" class=\"aligncenter size-large wp-image-182079\" height=\"406\" sizes=\"(max-width: 550px) 100vw, 550px\" src=\"http:\/\/www.ludumdare.com\/compo\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/09\/LD_08_bright-550x406.jpg\" srcset=\"http:\/\/ludumdare.com\/compo\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/09\/LD_08_bright-300x221.jpg 300w, http:\/\/ludumdare.com\/compo\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/09\/LD_08_bright-550x406.jpg 550w, http:\/\/ludumdare.com\/compo\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/09\/LD_08_bright.jpg 1091w\" width=\"550\"\/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>So, what happened during the development? Here\u2019s a video timelapse (3 development days compressed to 3 minutes) and little postmortem:<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center\"><strong><a href=\"http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?feature=player_embedded&amp;v=HIb4owykn-A\">Cuboid Sandbox Timelapse video (youtube)<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n<h3>What went right<\/h3>\n<ul>\n<li>Familiarity with the tools<\/li>\n<li>No time-consuming graphics and 3d models. Almost everything was made with a combination of cubes and simple texturing<\/li>\n<li>Everything is procedural, no time wasted on making levels or story<\/li>\n<li>Side effects are good: the \u201cheatmap\u201d can be used to create abstract paintings \ud83d\ude00<\/li>\n<li>Making a very small warmup game the days before the competition helped me to focus more on tangible things and less on \u201cunder the hood\u201d geeky stuff <img alt=\":)\" class=\"wp-smiley\" src=\"http:\/\/ludumdare.com\/compo\/wp-includes\/images\/smilies\/simple-smile.png\" style=\"height: 1em; max-height: 1em;\"\/><\/li>\n<li>The unity integrated profiler rulez: sometimes you have to optimize and it\u2019s better if you know what part of the code is really slow. I can\u2019t live without it\u2026<\/li>\n<li>Coroutines! I used extensively coroutines to spread the workload across different frames avoiding cpu load spikes.<\/li>\n<li>The still-in-beta Linux exporter of unity4 worked without a single problem.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<h3>What went wrong<\/h3>\n<ul>\n<li>Too many hours of work. For the next Ludum Dare I\u2019ll try making something smaller or reusing code libraries from other projects.<\/li>\n<li>Unfortunately Marco had some problems and I worked almost solo for the 2nd and 3rd day <img alt=\":(\" class=\"wp-smiley\" src=\"http:\/\/ludumdare.com\/compo\/wp-includes\/images\/smilies\/frownie.png\" style=\"height: 1em; max-height: 1em;\"\/><\/li>\n<li>We didn\u2019t really like the theme and we wasted 8 precious hours deciding what kind of game to do.<\/li>\n<li>Handling a large numbers of dynamic objects is hard and need time to optimize the code.<\/li>\n<li>Too many hours wasted tweaking values to balance the simulation.<\/li>\n<li>Lack of interaction with the simulated world.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<h3>Conclusion<\/h3>\n<p>This was the first time I entered a similar competition and I learned a lot about the time needed to complete something playable and the disastrous side-effect of sleep deprivation.<\/p>\n<p>I really had a good time stepping out of my comfort zone for a while and making something completely different from Blackreef Pirates and I think this little experiment will receive some extra work in the future with more emergent behaviours spawning from different cuboid AI rules and more ways to influence the simulation.<\/p>\n<p>\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Still awake? What are you waiting?<strong> <a href=\"http:\/\/www.ludumdare.com\/compo\/ludum-dare-24\/?action=preview&amp;uid=14628\">Go play and rate the game<\/a>!<\/strong> \ud83d\ude00<\/p>\n<p>\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Tags: <a href=\"http:\/\/ludumdare.com\/compo\/tag\/post-mortem\/\" rel=\"tag\">post-mortem<\/a>, <a href=\"http:\/\/ludumdare.com\/compo\/tag\/postmortem\/\" rel=\"tag\">postmortem<\/a>, <a href=\"http:\/\/ludumdare.com\/compo\/tag\/timelapse\/\" rel=\"tag\">timelapse<\/a><\/p>","time":"September 10th, 2012 6:22 am","title":"Cuboid Sandbox \u2013 Postmortem","title_was_empty":false}