{"assets":[],"author_link":"author\/laaph\/","author_name":"laaph","cat":"LD #26","categories":["LD #26"],"comments":[],"epoch":1368384420,"event":"LD26","likes":4,"metadata":{"p_key":"79291","p_author":"laaph","p_authorkey":"0","p_urlkey":"288301","p_title":"Adventure: A post mortem","p_cat":"LD #26","p_event":"LD26","p_time":"1368384420","p_likes":"4","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\/12\/adventure-a-post-mortem\/","text":"<p>I survived another Ludum Dare.\u00a0 Me and about 10 other programmers went to a <a href=\"http:\/\/themade.org\/\">museum<\/a>, ate pizza, drank soda, engaged in other unhealthy activities (actually I did mostly DDR:Max2 until we found DDR:SuperNova, but those were the healthy options, other popular options were playing Battletoads), and after 48 hours, showed off our results to each other, the founder of the museum, and a couple of other interested onlookers.<\/p>\n<p>I was highly disappointed I didn\u2019t finish.\u00a0 But I scrambled to get it done, and I submitted it in its unfinished state.\u00a0 As many people commented, I could have easily finished it up on Monday in the Jam time frame, but really I\u2019ve got stuff to do Monday and after marathoning all weekend the last thing I want to do is keep working on it.<\/p>\n<p>I submitted it, and I also wanted to take another look at its state.\u00a0 My first commentary on this game is that I had no idea the direction it was going, from start to finish.\u00a0 Well, at some point, I had the idea it would just be a collection of simple puzzles, something people would likely go through once to say \u201coh hey that\u2019s cool enough\u201d but highly unlikely play ever again (unless except they got bonked off of level two and wanted to retry to see the rest of the game).<\/p>\n<p>What went right:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>People seemed to like it.\u00a0 This surprised me, as it seemed to me that there was no game at all in this.\u00a0 No really, you like this?<\/li>\n<li>For having no plans, just laying stuff out, for just experimenting, everything went better than expected.\u00a0 I started thinking minimal: \u201cwhat could be more minimal than a cube on a plane?\u201d But then I thought \u201cwell there has to be something this cube wants, why not a sphere?\u201d\u00a0 After the sphere puts up the sign, well, there should be a castle that the princess is in, right?\u00a0 And it just flowed from there.<\/li>\n<li>3D models.\u00a0 I don\u2019t know if my skill in using Blender just went up three levels since the last time I used it, but I had no problem making assets in Blender and with \u201call those cubes\u201d in Unity.\u00a0 I mean, I don\u2019t think I\u2019ll be winning prizes on polycount.com any time soon, but considering that my usual experience with Blender starts with \u201chow do I use this thing again\u201d and ends with \u201cwell I guess that will do if people squint\u2026\u201d, I was quite impressed with myself.\u00a0 Of course, last time I was quite impressed with myself on graphics, the commentary was that the graphics were horrible.\u00a0 I guess that is more a commentary on how confident I am in my graphical ability than how good they really are.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>What went wrong:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>I didn\u2019t finish it.\u00a0 This fact bothers me a lot more than it should, but I guess that\u2019s personal.<\/li>\n<li>Camera.\u00a0 I kind of liked the Grim Fandango-esque of camera movement, but it really didn\u2019t behave, in almost all situations.\u00a0 I spent more time on it than I should and still got frustrated.\u00a0 If anyone has hints on how to deal with the camera in Unity I\u2019d appreciate it.\u00a0 I was trying to use the default third person cameras controllers in Unity (Assets-&gt;Import Package-&gt;Character Controller, then delete everything but the Camera scripts) which I thought would be better than rolling my own.<\/li>\n<li>More bugs.\u00a0 Most of the bugs I noticed but kept adding more stuff with the idea of \u201cwell if I take time to fix bugs, I won\u2019t finish\u201d, and I probably wouldn\u2019t have gotten as far as I did if I didn\u2019t just give up on camera, inventory, upside down signs, and other issues.<\/li>\n<li>Difficulty.\u00a0 I had intended to make the key a little harder to find, or just harder to find than the door (the idea is that you find the door and castle first).<\/li>\n<li>Blue on black text.\u00a0 This looks good in a web page, but a few people who didn\u2019t get the game from Ludum Dare and thus didn\u2019t read the commentary that you could play the text adventure without the rest of the game literally didn\u2019t see that there was a text adventure on the wall.<\/li>\n<li>Sound.\u00a0 What sound?\u00a0 I had great plans to add sounds all over the places, at least feedback sounds for when you pick up\/drop\/bonk in to things\/etc.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Random commentary:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>I\u2019m glad that everyone has enjoyed it, and this makes me want to rate everyone\u2019s games so I can get a rating too.\u00a0 When I was being mopey and just thinking that I should just push this off a cliff, I thought \u201cwell good, I don\u2019t have to be playing all your games and coming up with ratings\u201d.\u00a0 But now I kinda want to be rated, because others have indicated appreciation, and I wonder if I pull off enough ratings, even if I don\u2019t get top marks, maybe it would it be worth it.<\/li>\n<li>On that note, LD #26 has produced some awesome games!\u00a0 Normally it\u2019s a chore to rate games, but I\u2019ve played several games that were quite fun and I didn\u2019t just play them to rate them!\u00a0 (Despite this I think I have only played and rated about five games.\u00a0 I promise, I\u2019ll rate a few more!)<\/li>\n<li>Popular culture references:\u00a0 There was a post on here on ludumdare.com ranting about games using popular culture references.\u00a0 In this game, I blatantly steal ideas from the Atari game Adventure (including the title!) as well as referencing Super Mario Brothers \u201cI\u2019m sorry, but the princess is in another castle!\u201d\u00a0 I think this, plus text adventures, pushed \u201chappy memory\u201d buttons in some gamers.\u00a0 One person told me that if I had just made a 3D implementation of Atari Adventure he would have given it top marks.\u00a0 I don\u2019t know how much bump this gave my game, but I suspect some.\u00a0 To be honest, the whole Adventure theme came when I made that castle and I thought \u201chey, that castle looks quite a lot like the one from that old Atari game\u201d, and I replayed it to remind myself what it was like.<\/li>\n<li>Finishing post compo:\u00a0 I think the only reason I would do this is to feed it to my onegameamonth account, which is looking pretty dismal with only a game finished in January (but, eh, three unfinished games since then?\u00a0 I was doing better than this last year, without any 1GAM toys).\u00a0 It\u2019s probably true that it will take another day to finish to what I had in mind for LudumDare, but I really don\u2019t think that I will take the time to finish this.\u00a0 If I do, I will likely spend a little more time on it and add more Adventure-ish things, such as larger wrap-around mazes, additional castles, and a carryable bridge.\u00a0 Some of which might be very hard in Unity.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Once I get past the initial disappointment of not finishing, this was an awesome Ludum Dare!\u00a0 Thank you to everyone who came down to the MADE and worked on their adventures with me!\u00a0 (Hey I should rate those, since I\u2019ve played them all, that would give me an additional six games I can say I have rated.)\u00a0 Thank you to the MADE for pizza and soda!<\/p>\n<p>Also, since everyone else is posting their favorite games, I might as well too.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.ludumdare.com\/compo\/ludum-dare-26\/?action=preview&amp;uid=23016\">Looking for love<\/a> \u2013 by Filth And Money \u2013 made with me at the MADE!<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.ludumdare.com\/compo\/ludum-dare-26\/?action=preview&amp;uid=11045\">Gods Will Be Watching<\/a> \u2013 by GreyShock \u2013 I can\u2019t believe this was made in a weekend.<\/p>","time":"May 12th, 2013 6:47 pm","title":"Adventure: A post mortem","title_was_empty":false}