{"assets":[],"author_link":"author\/null-dies\/","author_name":"Null DIES","cat":"LD #32","categories":["LD #32"],"comments":[],"epoch":1429564980,"event":"LD32","likes":4,"metadata":{"p_key":"83536","p_author":"Null DIES","p_authorkey":"0","p_urlkey":"294274","p_title":"A small Egyptian Team\u2019s experience in Ludum Dare","p_cat":"LD #32","p_event":"LD32","p_time":"1429564980","p_likes":"4","p_comments":"0","p_status":"WAYBACK","us_key":null,"us_name":null,"us_username":null,"event_start":"1429228800","event_key":"27","event_name":"LD32"},"source_url":"2015\/04\/20\/a-small-egyptian-teams-experience-in-ludum-dare\/","text":"

We are a small egyptian team called \u201cNull DIES\u201d\u00a0that\u00a0started way back in 2010 we\u2019ve been making incomplete games since then, and thanks to Ludum Dare this is technically our first \u201ccomplete\u201d game. We still can\u2019t believe that this game didn\u2019t exist 3 days ago (feels like a month\u2019s work!).Our name actually originated from the fact that we spent years just talking and thinking but doing almost nothing,\u00a0our output was \u201cnull\u201d \ud83d\ude00<\/p>\n

I don\u2019t know how the demographics of this LD event, but we feel that we are one of the few Egyptian teams here, and we really hope that we\u00a0did a great job a representing our country \":)\"<\/p>\n

The game we made called \u201cDrop It\u201d originated from the though \u201cwhat if the unconventional weapon is sound waves? what if it\u2019s \u2026 a DUBSTEP GUN?!!\u201d, soon after than various videos and music started inspiring us (specifically Corridor Digital\u2019s \u201cDubstep Guns\u201d video), we also had other good ideas like using Farts as a weapon but I\u2019m glad we didn\u2019t do that \ud83d\ude00<\/p>\n

One of the biggest issues we faced during the competition was the fact that in Egypt the weekend is Friday and Saturday, add to that the fact that we are UTC+2, this meant that for us the competition\u00a0happened during two work days, I was lucky to be able to take these days off but the other members of the team took one or no days off from work.\nAnother problem we faced was the fact that our awesome 2D Artist is currently doing an internship\/training abroad and he was busy with too many things so effective communication was very hard.\nBut apart from team management, one of the big problems we had was that we decided to make the game very music driven, we wanted the player to feel like a DJ jamming some crazy beats and drops,\u00a0so we basically had to learn how dubstep is made and we had to find a good free pack of samples that can be used to make dubstep music which proved to be very hard. On the upside though, one of our team members was part of a band so he had experience with audio editing which helped a bit even though he wasn\u2019t a dubstep kind of person.<\/p>\n

But in the end I\u2019m actually very happy with the result, it captures most of the ideas I had in mind when we were coming up with is, we wanted a colorful insane beat-driven experience and I think we delivered well on that (even though the\u00a0sound mixing need more work), I sadly didn\u2019t have time to make a highscores screen (with possibly online leaderboards) but\u00a0in a last minute change I was able to incorporate presistent \u201cbest score so far\u201d functionality.<\/p>\n

We\u2019re planning to publish the game to both the Google Play Store and the Windows Phone Store very soon so watch out for that \":)\"<\/p>\n

And finally, I\u2019d like the thank the whole Ludum Dare community for encouraging us to go through this and surpass our limits!<\/p>\n

\"928885_823158557737213_135583241_n[1]\"\n(<\/a>three members out of six, exhausted after all the work :D)<\/p>","time":"April 20th, 2015 9:23 pm","title":"A small Egyptian Team\u2019s experience in Ludum Dare","title_was_empty":false}