Since last LD I had the ambition to finish something that's not too bad in the next LD. Months passed, had some tough weeks and forgot to check the date for the 39th Ludum Dare. Fast Forward to this weekend. I was watching some streams on the evening, when i just saw that some guy is streaming game development for Ludum Dare...

Wooops forgot about it

I looked at the clock. Only a few hours remaining. Should I try to get anything done or go to bed?... I started my stream, worked on a small C++ project and forgot about participating. Half an hour later one of my viewers asked me if I know anything about game development and if I can give him any advice. I told him about Ludum Dare, explained how I just missed it this time... but he just said "Just give it a shot and try your best!"

I guess I made the right decision ;)

Link: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/39/snake-out-of-power

The Idea

After I discovered the topic, I had a few interesting ideas in my mind, but not enough time to finish any of these. Being a huge fan of old arcade games I just thought about implementing one of these and adding the "Out Of Power" mechanic...I choose you ~~pikachu~~ Snake! The basic idea was born. Losing power means that you screen will get dark. But how can you regain power? The idea of button mashing to produce power was floating in my mind, but somehow I just got hooked by the simple idea of pickups.

Development

The development was quite fun. As I mentioned earlier, I only had around 4-5 hours left to develop the whole game, make some art (well... not that much, but it is still art!), producing some sound effects and uploading it.

I touched C# for the first time after a couple of months. The first banana skin i discovered was declaring an two dimensinal array (just laugh about me, I feel embarrassed), but after i wrote the first cople lines of code I had no problems anymore. A short résumé what I did in each hour:

• First Hour: getting the idea, setting up Unity and VS, doing some UI
• Second Hour: developing the field, the movement
• Third Hour: implementing my Out Of Power-Mechanic, spawning the batteries and snake parts
• Fourth Hour: collision, more movement, fixing some bugs(FindGameObjectByTag is somehow not working for me in build versions), playtesting, uploading it

In the end i really enjoyed it! Even if I was not able to develop something big, I am amazed how much you can do if you just try it!

Tools I used

• Engine: Unity
• IDE: Visual Studio 2017
• Art: Paint, Pyxel Edit
• Sound: bfxr (Great for all kind of sounds...especially if you only have a few more minutes left and want to add some kind of sound)

Things I learned

• Using a calendar to not forget about the next LD
• Streaming the development is a great way to keep you hooked to your project, but it can distract you
• pg.lost is a great band!
• Just do it! You don't need all the time to get anything done ;)
• Don't waste time... One of my viewers was reminding me to not spend time on special features

Todo

• Polishing the graphics
• Some more challenge
• maybe a mobile port? :D