{"assets":[],"author_link":"author\/timtipgames\/","author_name":"timtipgames","cat":"LD #26","categories":["LD #26"],"comments":[],"epoch":1367379360,"event":"LD26","likes":7,"metadata":{"p_key":"78913","p_author":"timtipgames","p_authorkey":"0","p_urlkey":"287923","p_title":"Post MONO","p_cat":"LD #26","p_event":"LD26","p_time":"1367379360","p_likes":"7","p_comments":"0","p_status":"WAYBACK","us_key":null,"us_name":null,"us_username":null,"event_start":"1366934400","event_key":"16","event_name":"LD26"},"source_url":"2013\/05\/01\/post-mono\/","text":"
Screenshot taken from my game. The eye is the \"main character\" you controll.<\/a>

Screenshot taken from my game. The eye is the \u201cmain character\u201d you controll.<\/p><\/div>\n

MONO is an art inspired game that I think is pretty relaxing. You control an eye through a series of levels which feature puzzle and skill based elements.<\/p>\n

You can watch a video at the end of the post or play it on my entries page<\/a>.<\/p>\n

So here\u2019s how it went for me:<\/p>\n

Day 1:<\/strong><\/p>\n\nI had a really hard time to come up with a good idea. I changed my game-mechanic again and again because several times I felt like hitting a wall. This was until the end of the first day when I decided to use all the features that I had implemented during the first day and to make the best of it. Not the best way to do a game.\n

But in retrospective that was the best thing I could do because I had quite some stuff working already.<\/p>\n

So what I had were some not too exciting level elements like bouncy walls, gravity zones (that\u2019s probably one of the more interesting elements), teleporters and triggerable spinning doors. So all I could do is some best-I-can level design to turn it into something good.<\/p>\n

I really hated my game, and the theme, and everything by that time. Luckily that did change.\n<\/em>\nI started to use Tiled<\/a> as my level editor but didn\u2019t use the tiles at all. But it also has some nice meta layer facilities to create objects that are not tile based. I created layers for all kind of objects and was able to get up a level design workflow by the end of the day.\n

\"A<\/a>

A screen showing the map in tiled and the final result with lighting on the right.<\/p><\/div><\/p>\n

Day 2:<\/strong><\/p>\n\nI had an amazing amount of time left to do level design, music and sounds and polishing. So my goal was to have a few levels that aren\u2019t repetitive and I wanted each of them to look like a painting that fits the theme. The \u201cmain character\u201d became an eye as I imagined the level to be a painting. \n

So it\u2019s like the viewers eye in the painting is starring back at the viewer, cause it\u2019s all about reflection. Or something like that \ud83d\ude09\n<\/em>\nBeing in that mood I started recording the music that you can hear in the game with my Korg e-piano, Reaper and the awesome Sonatina Symphonic Orchestra VST<\/a>. I could have used just an actual recording of the e-piano instead of MIDI and VST but that wouldn\u2019t have been so easy to edit. I jammed like 3 hours and ended up using the recordings that I did in the first minutes of the music session. But it was a lot of fun \":)\"<\/p>\n

I spent the rest of the time with level design and exploration of good looking color palletes. I did a lot of polishing and minor tweeks to give the game a nice feeling and I am quite content with the result. Most people who played it think so too, I am really happy about that.\n

\"Some<\/a>

Some screenshots and menu gfx from MONO<\/p><\/div>\nBottom line<\/strong><\/p>\n\nI used\nlibgdx, artemis entity framework,box2dlights,universal tweenengine,sfxr, reaper, cosmigo pro motion,tiled and a bunch of energy drinks. \n

What was bad:<\/strong><\/p>\n