LD24 August 24–27, 2012

Primordial Smackdown Postmortem

Hm… I felt like my performance was stunted to some degree, in part due to stress with the LD weekend having been the last weekend before school started, and in part due to my crippling addiction to British sketch comedy.  As for the game itself, I’ve been more creative, but the programming actually worked out pretty close to the way I wanted it to.  Here’s the link, so you can see what I mean.

http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-24/?action=preview&uid=8522

Evolution of my entry

I’ve had this idea for a while: to make a video showing how my entry came into being. It’s not a timelapse! (Your eyes won’t bleed.)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ay5IVWgZuxQ

I’ve gone through my version control and checked-out some important commits and cut those into a video.

If you’d like to share yours: it’d be fun to have a look at it!

ExoSlime Timelapse

Hello everyone, I’ve uploaded a timelapse a bit ago for the development of my game ExoSlime. If you haven’t played it yet, you should! Here’s a preview of what to expect:

Click here to play and rate if you haven’t already!

And here’s the timelapse:


Tags: gif, lua, moonscript, timelapse

Comments

reismann
07. Sep 2012 · 16:59 UTC
I saw that gif image on the front page and just HAD to go play this. The visual effects are excellent, well done!

Hack-a-Jam Comp Tonight!

Visit here!

Hey everyone! I am glad to announce that the third Hack-a-Jam will be starting today, and I am your host. In a few hours, the theme will be released, and the jam will start!

The Hack-a-Jam is a gaming jam that is different from others. Instead of one overall winner, there is an infinite amount of categories that you can win in, and there will always be multiple winners. Here are some examples of categories you can win in:

Most Psychedelic Visuals
Most Deaf People After Hearing The Game
Most extra items (dev logs, etc.)
Most Brainstorming
Most Rage-free
Most rage-induced
Most Suggestive Content Without Crossing The Line
Shortest Game
Best themed
Most Things On Screen Without Lag or Crash

The amount of time given in the jam is voted on by the community, along with the theme. You can submit themes, and most of them will be sent to the Polls section, where others can vote on themes.

The Hack-a-Jam logo

By winning, you will get a badge and bragging rights, along with your name listed on the website permanently as a winner. When this jam gets to be huge, you will be really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really famous (that’s a lot of “really”s!)! The rules are not very restricted, as the jam is purely for fun:

1. All game content must be created within the set time. Note: You can use other music, placeholder graphics, etc. as long as you are allowed to!
2. Your game is not required to follow the theme, but would greatly improve your chances of winning. Unless every other game is not following the theme, it is almost guaranteed that your game won’t win anything.
3. You must work alone, and you must create everything included in the game.
4. All game creation tools are permitted, such as GameMaker, Photoshop, Flash, Paint, etc. Note: By game creation tools, I mean any tools that can be used to create your game.
5. All game extensions/DLLs are permitted. If you want to make it multiplayer (if you are using GameMaker), go ahead and use 39dll.

The third Hack-a-Jam is in a few hours, so sign up and prepare now! Good luck everyone!

Comments

07. Sep 2012 · 19:42 UTC
Meh, I can’t use my Weebly account to sign in :'(
johnfn
07. Sep 2012 · 20:28 UTC
I should point out that although you emphasize all the different ways that I can win, winning isn’t really the reason I participate in game jams. I personally participate for the sense of community, and so I can compare my ratings with my past ratings so I can see if I improved.
mohammad
07. Sep 2012 · 21:22 UTC
I’m going to lose anyway.

I always lose at these kinds of contests.
theomnis
07. Sep 2012 · 21:33 UTC
I’ll be there!
mohammad
07. Sep 2012 · 23:02 UTC
It started!

I don’t have any idea to enter…
mohammad
07. Sep 2012 · 23:43 UTC
Whats the theme?!?!??!?

I want my hand at this!

:)
laaph
08. Sep 2012 · 01:18 UTC
I normally have javascript turned off on my web browser, so when I first looked at the web page, I couldn’t find any evidence that the game jam was actually going on!

100 Games rated – Best Of

Just like the last few times, now that I’ve passed 100 games rated time to pick some favorites that I think could use a bit more <3 !  This time is a little different though, I’m not going to pick “overall” favorites, as to be honest this LD every game so far that i’ve loved in one way has managed to frustrate me in another, so I’m going to categorize some favorites based on what I think is their strong suit!

As always, in no particular order (games that would fall in multiple are only listed in the one i think they’re strongest in)

Best Use of Theme:

Most Fun:

Best Graphics:

Best Music:

Some of these still only have a handful of plays, go try them out and give them some feedback!

And as always, I could always use more feedback on my entry as well if you havent played it already !

http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-24/?action=preview&uid=7131

Tags: 100 club, best of, ld24

Complexitivity (Post-Compo): Version 1.2

The post-compo version with the improved UI and graphics is now playable here!

Users can now also adjust the volumes, change the control scheme, and tweak the mouse settings! A “How to Play” section has also been added for new players!

Kindly tell me if you encounter any bugs! Comments and suggestions are welcome!

Species Hunt Post-Mortem

Time for my post-mortem!

This is my 5th Ludum Dare entry, and my second 3D entry. Overall I’m very happy with the result. There’s still lots of work to be done to make it a complete and enjoyable game, but as a concept it’s nice and it shows what it’s all about. Play it here

What went right

– Choosing XNA again. It makes so many things much easier to do. With the experience I gained from last LD, it was a breeze to set up the initial 3D rendering and the billboard graphics for entities.
– Scoping. My minimum goal was to make a game where you have a camera that can take pictures, which can then be viewed in an album and be saved to disk. This is all possible.
– The birds. While they were a bit tricky to create, it’s fun (for a few minutes at least :D) to watch them do things. And without them there would be no fun at all taking pictures.
– Polish. I’ve added menus again, with keybinding, mouse sensitivity and inversion, sound options, etc. There’s also music and some sounds, and imo it looks and feels finished (as far as LD games go)

What went wrong

– The birds. Yep, they went right, but the process I used to create them took a lot of time (relatively speaking for a LD game), so I had no time to other types of animals. Having to create three separate views for them, and having to split up the body parts while keeping them aligned and ‘blendable’ so they could be animated was tricky. Speaking of animating them, that was horrible. They look decent though, but if I want to achieve something similar next time, I’ll have to rethink how I want to do it.
– Gameplay. Right now the only thing my game has is emergent gameplay. But it’s not really a game. There are no goals to achieve, only two numbers that can be increased. You’re dropped on an island and that’s it. I have no regrets skimping on gameplay, but it’s one thing in hindsight that I should’ve worked on a bit more. Basic goals with rewards to achieve would help a lot to improve the fun factor.
– That stupid glitch where the bird is moving forward, but is drawn backwards very briefly. Or vice versa. I completely forgot about it, but it’s so annoying. 😀

Things to keep in mind for next time

– The terrain. There are 4 ‘layers’ of the island. Only three are shown, which are the beach, grass, and snow. Due to limitations on the default XNA shader, it’s impossible to blend the textures together. So the transition between beach and grass is a bit ugly. Next time, if I want to achieve something similar, I’ll have to make my own shader modifications to allow blending. However, I’m very happy with what I achieved with the default shader and restricted settings for older video cards, as I now have an easy way to split any heightmap of any size into 4 different layers based on height, while still being supported by low-end machines.
– Collision and efficiency. As it is right now, it’s probably impossible to make birds interact with each other without a huge performance hit. So they don’t. But for next time I’ll really have to work on a proper way to make a large number of entities aware of each other.
– Animations. I’ll really have to compromise on something here and make a choice. I like the 2D billboards, but dynamically animating them is a pain. So I’ll either have to make that process easier, switch to full animated sprites, or move on to 3D models and animations. I don’t really want to go the 3D route, so it’s a choice between the other two. If I can make animating them an easier process, then that’s perfect. But it’s something I’ll have to investigate. Oh, and I should add 8 different view directions if possible, instead of 4.

Final words

<3 LD 😀

Super Darwin Post Mortem

Hi everyone! sev_inf (programmer, that did almost everything wrong) and KillToLive (artist, that did almost everything right) here and its time for our Super Darwin post-mortem.

First of all we would like to thank to everyone who played and rated game, your feedback was really great!

So, what went right:

  • graphics –  a lot of people liked game art and the design of the game page;
  • having a base code – allowed us to start creating the game as soon as we chosen the idea;
  • idea – we pretty quickly decided what we’ll be building and a lot of people loved our version Charles Darwin story;
  • features cutoff – initially we planed to do a lot more stuff, but when we realized that  we can’t get everything in time we dropped few of our ideas and spent the last day trying to make game to feel complete, and we think we did it right.
  • game is beatable, despite its difficulty.

Things that went neither right, nor wrong:

  • game engine – I’ve chosen cocos2d-html5 because I had previous experience with cocos2d-html5. In many ways this was right solution, but html5 version was in alpha stage during LD, so I spent few hours fighting wis game engine bugs;

And now, things that went wrong:

  • don’t having a collisions code in my base code repository – I spend almost all first day implementing the collisions;
  • jump physics – a lot of people complaint about it and we don’t like it either;
  • combat – it is difficult to figure out cane attack range, in few places Darwin lacks ability to duck;
  • enemy placement – lot of enemies are difficult or impossible to avoid;
  • difficulty – previous two items combined  + lack of the continues or checkpoints.

We’ll definitely participate in future LD. Here are few tips for the next time:

  • make a much easier game;
  • probably, try different game engine;
  • try to implement all game features during the first day and spend the rest of the time on level design and polishing;
  • and don’t forget about AZERTY and QWERTZ keyboards.

My own top 10 so far

Submitting Batch Files

Greetings to all Ludum Dare developers/judges/staff! I am not familiar with any major programming languages like C++, Java or C#. Yet I would still love to take part in the competition.

My only experiences with programming were (and still are) with CMD which is an integrated program in Windows. I do know this scripting technique very well and created countless files with it.

It would mean a lot to me if my games were accepted in this community even though they’re just written in this very limited programming language.

Hoping for good responses, Steinheide

 

Comments

Cipher
08. Sep 2012 · 11:19 UTC
Well, as long as its a game we have no problem with it. I’m guessing text based? :)
08. Sep 2012 · 11:41 UTC
A game as a command-line interpreter script file? This would be great! I love entries that use something different than common things, like XNA, Flash or Unity (though I love these too, of course)! I really would like to check out some CMD/bash based games, this would be pretty awesome!

Or, if you wanted to familiarize yourself with some similar language, you might wanna check Python (www.python.org). It’s really simple and can be used to write command-line scripts very elegantly (and has many cool libs). Either way, games in CMD? Bring’em on! 😀
08. Sep 2012 · 12:13 UTC
Here are guys which develop Ludum Dare games for emulators (gameboy etc.)… and someone did a boardgame and submitted the instruction-pdf instead of a runnable game – amazing ideas 😀 but you know, that there are people which can’t play your game. So if YOU can cope with less ratings and feedback, there is absolutely no problem to choose something special (as I do with XNA).
08. Sep 2012 · 18:36 UTC
Bring it on! There’s no rule as far as what is acceptable as long as it’s a game. Batch scripting was my first taste of programming, so there’s a special place in my heart for it. 😀
Steinheide
09. Sep 2012 · 11:23 UTC
Alright! Thanks for your awesome responds! When the next Compo starts, I’ll definitely join the lot. I’ve been developing a little engine with batch for the past 1 and 1/2 years, which now has about 5000 lines (minus some raw map scripts(33000 lines!!!)) . I made myself a map-creator with which (my English isn’t good. is “with which” a real phrase??) I can Quickly make some nice looking maps. Is it possible to post my little Game-Engine? I would love to have some feedback, since I worked on it for such a long time.

Walkthrough

It seems that many people has/had some problems with my game. :( Today i sit and recorded whole game step by step.

I think this should solve all problems. :)

Comments

DavidErosa
09. Sep 2012 · 19:54 UTC
I do really understand you. I had to make the same with my game, as most people commented to say the can’t pass the first game…

100 entries rated!

Actually I wanted to write my favourites, but scrolling through the list of my rated games, I got sad because there are at least five in my list that have less than 10 ratings :/. and not (!) because they made unrunnable entries (ok, it applies to _some_ of them)

Please consider rating those as well!

Legend of Marilia post mortem

I know it’s late but is it okay if I post my post-mortem now?

OMG a slime!

If you haven’t already you can play it here. Legend of Marilia is a 3D first person Zelda like game. The game has 2 levels where you get new weapons and items that make you able to progress and a boss at the end. The final level is just the last boss fight, I really wanted to make it a complete level too. At first I also wanted to make a decent story to get you going and make an overworld to link the dungeons, but had no time for it.

What went right:
– Unity: Unity is the engine I’m using the most right now, and I like it a lot. The best thing about it is that it’s so widely used, any questions you might have have probably been answered already. Not only that, it’s really easy to use once you understand how everything works, and it can port to windows, web and mobile.
– Pixel “art”: Making 2D enemies was really fast and even though they look simple no one complained about them being ugly, which is good I believe (hope my graphics rating isn’t very bad haha). I used the free Sprite Manager to use 2D sprites in my game, and it was really easy. One day before the compo I tried it out and learned everything I needed to know to use it.
– Learned a lot: One of my goals in this Ludum Dare was to learn a lot of different things, like 3D modeling, making music, using Sprite Manager and more about Unity in general. I accomplished all of these, so it was a great success!

What went wrong:
– Theme: I didn’t like the theme very much. In my past LD entries, I was very bound to the theme, and after the competition got a little annoyed that some people just threw the theme away and made a game they wanted to make. This time I had to do something like this. I wanted to make a 3D game using Unity, and all I that came to my mind about the theme were organic life forms evolving. Needless to say, making a 3D model about this would be too difficult for me. After some time I decided to make a Zelda like first person dungeon crawler, since I would be able to do everything I wanted with it: 2D sprites for enemies, 3D models for the weapons, and use Unity to make the camera and controls very fast. Some people did complain about my game having nothing to do with the theme and might penalize my score because of it, but I don’t care much, I had fun making it and I guess this is what it’s all about :)
– Music: Unfortunately I had to make sounds and music in the last hour, so it isn’t very good. Music was made in less than 10 minutes, and I was a bit nervous, so it’s small and might hurt your ears lol. I was sure to put a mute button because of that.

One last thing, I decided to put my game in the Kongregate contest and I’m glad I did. By now it has more than 2000 plays and a lot of good feedback, some people even said it was the best LD game they’ve ever played, and reading this just made my day. At first I was skeptical about the contest, but when PoV pointed out that it was an attempt from former LDers that made Escape to help the community, I decided to give it a try, and I’m happy I did :) If you want, you can play it here.

This was my 3rd Ludum Dare, and I can say it was really enjoyable. Not only did I make a game I’m proud of, I got to play
great games and saw that the community is awesome. I’ll definitely be here next time :)

Stickman Evolution – post mortem



Another post-mortem!

So I’ve decided to do a post mortem about our Jam entry “Stickman Evolution”, which is my second ludum dare entry and already a lot better than last time.

So, what went right:

  • Physics:  The physics engine was done a lot faster and better than I thought. It only took about 40 hours to create the entire engine,    including the shooting physics as well as the terrain and the (really weird) physics for the enemies. The Physics engine for the enemies is based on line-to-line-distance function to find collisions between the each two “bones”, which can be represented as thick line segments.
  • Graphics: The graphics based on DirectX didn’t cause as many problems as last time, and making the models went well. We had used Gimp to create heightmaps for the environment as well as a colormap and a detailmap for each world and a small scripting engine to define light settings as well as the fog options. For models we used Blender and images of  the weapons used in the game to create goodlooking and well-textured models.
  • Sounds: Despite the problem of not having a gun or something, I managed together with a friend to create suitable sounds for the guns. Of course they are not too realistic, but I like them better than the sounds that sfxr or something generate.

 

What went wrong:

  • Enemy behavior:  I haven’t had enough time to create more interesting enemy behaviour (such as jumping, flying or running), so they now just try to form a grid around the player.
  • Music: Knowing that I had to add a HUD and improve the menu, I only put two hours into the music. It didn’t turn out too bad, but I believe it could have been better.
  • Sleep: Due to the complexity of the game and its physics we had almost no time to sleep, so we ended up with around 14 hours of sleep in total each, but I think that’s kinda normal.

What I have learned:

  • Creating a physics engine like that surely was a difficult task, but I managed to create something pretty impressive, which gives me more motivation to do more stuff in that direction.
  • The graphics of this game are basically nice, but I somehow felt a need to improve them, so I decided to add some post-processing effects into this game afterwards, which made me learn a lot about post-processing.

In total, this game has become a lot better than last time and I’m really happy with our result. If you have ignored the link on the picture, heres another one: http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-24/?action=preview&uid=12046

The evolution games – unnatural selection postmortem

It took a far amount of time but I’ve finally gotten down to posting this.

I knew I wouldn’t have a lot of time for this one due to museums that needed seeing and other stuff I won’t be getting into, so I decided to cut corners and go for a unity game. The second bigger-than-a-test attempt at it as well, it didn’t turn out too bad.

The good:

 I decided to go for a simple graphic style since I was neither inclined nor had the time to learn how to properly make 3d models, so I’ve made everything 2d, stuck them on panels and duct taped them together. It made for a nice explosion effect on death as well.

I think the enemies and weapons have a nice variety: cats which are fast weak and have shotguns, raptors which are slower stronger and have rocket launchers, sharks which are even slower have more health than you can shake a stick at and have m0ar rokkitz! and turtles which lob grenades at you.

I also managed to squeeze in an attempt at a gui and structure which is always nice considering I tend to leave those out.

 

The bad:

The graphics took more fiddling than I had anticipated since everything has so many parts, and some colors got messed up for reasons unknown.

The weapons aren’t as balanced as they could be.

And worst of all the various creatures have a tendency to blow themselves to pieces, which I fixed for the kongregate version.

 

The ugly:

Not good, not bad, but unsightly are the sounds, courtesy of sfxr and aviary music creator. Oh randomize beats button you are my hero. Music and sounds are two things I keep struggling with with no obvious resolution in sight.

 

PLAY/RATE by clicking this text here which you are now reading with your eyes.

Calling all graphic and music mages! GotEL wants to evolve!

We are half way through the rating phase and so far – from the comments – I think the idea is good enought to build on. For this I need a graphician and a musician – and I take the part of the programmer. :) The application is simple. Send me concept art and some music ideas. Full details are below…

Basically the game mechanics will be the same as now but there will be improvements and I try to describe them below.

Graphic:

  • seamless tiles needed
  • forests will be animated to simulate wind (not real time wind but maybe there will be several animations to play)
  • I consider having transitions between the different land types within the tile, so transition is not a separate tile (but this is a tremendous amount of work so we will see)
  • character and vehicle will be animated  (vehicle will be a jeep)
  • there will be 2 guy and a girl character (at least and maybe they will have different special abilities)
  • I don’t want to go with 3D rendered gfx

 

Music & sfx:

  • absolutely NO Dubstep!!!
  • I plan to have different genres of music in the game (I don’t know yet if it will be mission or character specific)
  • mood will be the most important aspect
  • yes, there will be a lot of sfx and I don’t want to go with simple bleeps and blops

What do you need to do?

Just send me concept arts, sketches, mock ups and samples of your music ideas – or anything that shows enought – so I can decide who I want to work with. You can send any amount and please do. We will go with the best one, thats all. My contacts are in my about box here in the blog. Oh, and I don’t care about your CV, I want tangible things only. :)

What do you need to consider before sending application

I need exactly 1 graphic and 1 music mage in the team. Ones who willing to work on the project continuously. So if working together not going well or if it turns out that someone can’t make the quality stuff the project needs then he will be replaced with someone else – I hope this thing never happens though. We will discuss business and other things in private.

To start this project I thought we can go with the October Challange. I can’t work on this before the 1st of October but keep sending stuff to me until then. Naturally we will not finish this game in 1 month – so count on that too!

 

I hope I was clear. :) Thanks for the interest!

 

Tags: artist, GotEL, graphic, music, needed

Art and Usability Tips

Hey guys! This is Cake, the artist of the Cake&Code. :D Now that voting has begun to wind down, I thought I would chirp in with my own personal art and usability tips so that YOU guys might be able to use them for the next Ludum Dare! (Because you guys are totally in, right? RIGHT?! I know we are. :D)

Visual Design Tips
- Gather your inspiration early on! You waste time by trying to decide how to make your game look during the jam, so take the time a week or so beforehand to just go around the internet and collect things you think are visually pleasing. Not just images from games you think are nice. Anything! You like the colors on that one website? Save it! You like the way the colors complement each other in that magazine ad? Save that too! Anything can be inspiration, and it helps to keep your mind in gear when the jam starts. (Note: Pinterest is GREAT for keeping your inspirations together.) Below is a mashup of the different inspiration sources I used for AvRvE. Some have more obvious components than others, but I’ve picked and pulled through bits and pieces of all of these.

- In terms of colors, pair something Bold with Neutral, or Neutral with Neutral. NEVER Bold on Bold. In this case, neutral colors are generally grey, white, off-white, and SOMETIMES light soft colors. So if you have a button that’s Teal, DON’T put Red or Yellow on it. It’s harsh on the eyes.

- Make sure your colors and those “touches” help tell the story of your game. I know, vague and weird tip, but it’s something that I think is really essential. If your game has that sort of dappper-man-victorian feel, do your research and see what other games, books, and works of art execute in order to pull of that same feel. It seems like extra work, but it REALLY helps draw players in.

Usability Tips
- Always ALWAYS ALWAYS add these in to your game if you’re able to: A pause screen and a skip button during cutscenes. Everyone and their mothers will thank you and love you. Nothing is more irritating to your users than the inability to pause or having to sit through cut scenes that they really don’t care about.
- Do your users a favor and provide feedback mechanisms for different parts of your interface. Buttons? Add hover and active states. (See diagram if you’re not sure what that means.) Provide sound blips to let players know that what they’re doing is right and that it’s happening at all.


- Don’t forget your players who are coorblind! Although AvRvE is slightly guilty of this, if your game is dependent on colors…be sure to provide a feature that helps those who are colorblind to make it through the game.

- Keep in mind the keys you make available for players to use! If they can use WASD, it might help to also map the same keys to the arrow keys. Also, some international keyboards have placed keys in a different location than you may expect. ie; the German keyboard has placed the “z” key where the US “y” key is.

 

That’s it for now! Feel free to add in your other tips and tricks for art and usability. :D

Helpful Resources

http://colororacle.org/ (For color blindness testing)

http://www.colourlovers.com/ (Colour palettes and combinations for you to take inspiration from)

And if you can, please do play and rate our game, AvRvE!
http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-24/?action=preview&uid=10976

16

This entry was posted on Saturday, September 8th, 2012 at 11:14 pm and is filed under LD #24. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

Goo: The legend of Goobert. Post Mortem

I planned on waiting till i had 100 rates before doing this to wait for alot of feedback, but it looks like its not gonna happen. So, im gonna do this now 😛 .

I’d say my game was a successful first LD! People kept saying how the intro was a bit too long, and i cant help but agree. Other than that, they said it was fun…I couldn’t believe it when my game was one someones list of “Most Fun Games on LD”. I am definitely joining the next dare!

The good

1)Game-play was what i had worked on first, and it looks to be a very good decision because some other first timers said they concentrated on everything else and couldn’t get good game-play (but very awesome graphics) which i think is the core to every good game.
2)Graphics were okay. Considering the fact that i have never animated anything in my whole life (always had a friend to do this for me) the graphics were…okay

The bad

1)Intro too long . I might have gone overboard with this…
2)Intro text was hard to read. This one was weird since it looked fine on the PC i developed on but not on any other PC.

I might be working on a post-compo but i might also not

Well, i guess that’s it for this post! Thanks for taking the time to read this!

Mighty-chondria post-mortem

This is our second time entering Ludum Dare! Our previous game was Macro Marines, and you can read about how we got on. We’ve learned from some of our mistakes, and we think that this time our game is better! Please play and rate it!

 

See how we made it:

 

Good

Unity is brilliant, and easy to use! We had great fun learning to use it in LD23, so we used it again this time and had a better idea of how to use it properly. It does everything for you and lets you get on with making the game, we love it!

We got plenty of sleep and decent food!The Jam started at 2AM UK time, so we decided to get an early night and wake up bright and early to discover the theme in the morning and think of ideas over breakfast.Each night we slept enough to be refreshed the next day.This is in contrast to how we’d do things at university, where some of us would try and go the whole weekend without sleep! (it didn’t end well)

Nice graphics!There are still some rough areas in the GUI, but overall the game looks good and the bacteria shaders look like proper scanning electron micrograph images.

You can only tell this isn’t a real blood vessel because of the health bar

Catchy music!Just listen to the groove on that DNA upgrade screen, yeah!

Good time management!Although we didn’t get a “basic but finished” version of the game uploaded and submitted 4 hours before the deadline like last time, Ricky did drive us to finish before the deadline and concentrate on the important features.

Decent gameplay in a short amount of time!We programmed the basic flight and shooting controls in an hour or two, allowing us to spend time tweaking and making sure they felt good. The bacteria AI took longer, but was working well by the end of Day 2. This left us with a day to implement the DNA upgrade screen – the key to the “Evolution” theme (although the bacteria do mutate and exhibit natural selection) and something which makes the game more complex and interesting than a simple shooter. But does that make it more fun?

The cubes are supposed to be segments of DNA

Title screen – pwnz deus ex

Bad

Spent too much time on procedural environment generation. We thought that generating the “tunnels” in code and having junctions or “rooms” between them would allow us to either create a large level for the player to explore, or allow the computer to generate the level for us. In the end, neither happened, we just created a small level with three joined tunnels. For the work we put into it, we could have created an equivalent level in Blender in half the time, but when we extend the game beyond the competition it will come in very handy…

Mmm, splines

No jokes or silly voice acting, the bacterial theme didn’t really lend itself to that although I suspect we just weren’t trying hard enough to fit them in. Also we were running out of time and this was low on the priority list.

Upgrades aren’t balanced, it’s too easy to become too powerful too quickly. We need to learn how to pace a game properly.

These bacteria were busy dividing behind my back while I cleared out another infection

Conclusion

We had great fun making a game with Unity, and I think we’ve learned from our previous Ludum Dare and made a better game this time!

Please play our game, leave some feedback and help us see what we can do better next time!

Tags: ld24, post-mortem, postmortem, timelapse, unity3d