Robots Save the Day<\/a>! One of the hardest things after LD is probably coming back down again ![\":)\"](\"http:\/\/ludumdare.com\/compo\/wp-includes\/images\/smilies\/simple-smile.png\")
thankfully there is the review period. I have to say I\u2019m absolutely humbled by the quality and creativity of the games out there. Everybody did a phenomenal job and this sets the bar very high \u2013 which is a good thing.<\/p>\nI\u2019d like to talk a bit about the tools \/ the environment I used for my game.<\/p>\n
Technology Choices \/ Lessons Learned<\/h2>\n
The game is completely browser-based, native HTML and JavaScript. Originally I had planned on making a 3D game for this LD, but alas I had to give that up halfway through because otherwise I couldn\u2019t have finished on time (again, this happened at LD 26). Anyway, I want to sing some praise for HTML games now:<\/p>\n
Even without a game framework HTML\/JS is a combination that lets you get things done very quickly. My one headache though was I didn\u2019t know how big the browser support for both CSS transitions and CSS element rotation is, as the game relies very heavily on it. So far, no complaints, the robot gods be thanked. Here\u2019s the stack I ended up using:<\/p>\n
\u2013 JQuery for DOM manipulation\n\u2013 Handlebars.js for JS-enabled templates\n\u2013 CSS effects for pretty much everything\n\u2013 oh, and: PHP as a backend resource compiler<\/p>\n
The graphics were made entirely in Cinema 4D, no post processing. Aligning the level layout with the grid had been somewhat of a challenge, but in the end I ended up liking how objects were often just a leeeeettle bit misaligned. That made the levels look more organic. For a bigger game, I\u2019d have used tile-based levels, but for this one it was enough to render most of the scene in one go and use sprites for the rest.<\/p>\n
I made the soundtrack with Garageband, it\u2019s basically just some mellow synth throbbing, but it kinda works for the atmosphere I wanted. Again, this was absolutely the right tool for the job to get things done quickly.<\/p>\n
As for the sound effects and the robot speech, that\u2019s just me with a microphone and some Audacity effects\/editing. The most complex one was Captain Hannigan\u2019s \u201cAbandon-Ship\u201d message that plays over and over on the abandoned bridge. But even that was created just with my mouth \ud83d\ude09<\/p>\n
So all in all I\u2019m actually glad how everything turned out, even though I didn\u2019t follow through with the original plan for WebGL. It\u2019s actually kind of shameful how easy this project was to do with just HTML and I\u2019d like to encourage more people to try it. I know the game dev frameworks out there enable great things, but it seems equally as often they\u2019re stumbling blocks for the dev to fight against.<\/p>\n
Which brings me to my final point on web games. I have to confess a certain bias towards trying and rating browser-playable entries way more often. A downloadable game on the other hand has to look very good in order to motivate me to download it. And even then, there\u2019s about a 30% chance the executable just won\u2019t run on my system. I feel very bad for these projects, because \u2013 more often than not \u2013 interesting games run into trouble at this point.<\/p>\n
So that\u2019s kinda my lesson from LD27: HTML for the win!<\/p>\n
Plug: Try out Robots Save the Day<\/b><\/a> and let me know what you think!<\/p>","time":"August 28th, 2013 11:28 am","title":"Web Development Confessions","title_was_empty":false}
![\"bridge](\"http:\/\/www.ludumdare.com\/compo\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/08\/bridge-shot-2.jpg\")
<\/a><\/p>\n