⇒⇒⇒ Choo choo goes the LD hype train! ⇒⇒⇒

Ava and Marte are working on a game as always, this time not accompanied by Morten. Started a bit late after a good night’s sleep and most of the time on Ava’s part has gone to core systems, but we’re going strong. After some initial music work, Marte has for the first time done 3D modelling, in Blender, and has been churning out models with increasing speed as she has gotten used to the way it all works. c:

None of the models are featured in the below test room, but you can get an idea for how the game will work. You will be inspecting things and picking stuff up in order to progress and figure out what happened!

View post on imgur.com

A semi-intelligent system makes it relatively easy to add new stuff to the room and have it working as intended.

Our previous blog post this time around had Ava considering using p5.js for this LD, but as you can see above, we ended up using Unity instead, as 3D felt like the best way to cram stuff into a single room, and there wasn’t really time to delve into the 3D functionality of p5 this time. Better to focus on a better game using familiar tools!

Good luck to everyone! ♥︎

Tags: 3D, ava, detective, inspect, marte, one room, progress, unity, wip, work-in-progress

Previous (and first) update can be found here.

Half of our team of two has already gone to bed and the second half is just about to. Spent the last hour or so messing around with a cheap post effects shader to get a somewhat more interesting look to the game than default Unity stuff:

View post on imgur.com

Some of Marte’s models are finally in, tho not where they’re supposed to be in the end. This is still just a test room.

The contrast provided by this shader allows us to put details into textures rather than relying on stuff like normal mapping with a similar result, which is good enough, and saves a lot of time and effort. Will probably add some bricks to that fireplace, for example.

As you can see, the gameplay hasn’t really changed compared to the previous update. Back to working on that tomorrow. Will need to plan out the story and puzzle elements of this detective story a bit more too.

Good night! ☆

Tags: 3D, ava, detective, effects, graphics, marte, models, shader, unity, wip

It’s about 03:30 on the second day, nearing the morning of the third. We’re doing the jam, so there’s one day left for us. Nonetheless Ava is already in crunch mode while Marte went to bed hours ago—there’s so much stuff to add to the room! Mechanics are mostly in place but aren’t really used yet since the room needs to be filled first, so enjoy a temporary bit of silliness in the meantime!

View post on imgur.com

Tags: 3D, 90s, ava, blender, jam, marte, mystery, oldschool, retro, unity

Click here to explore the room! (ﾉ◕ヮ◕)ﾉ*:・ﾟ✧

View post on imgur.com

http://ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-37/?action=preview&uid=6155

An entry made in 72 hours by Ava and Marte. You find yourself with a severe case of amnesia in a locked room and need to figure out what’s going on. The story isn’t quite what we intended it to be, nor as long, due to time constraints, but hopefully you’ll get something out of it anyway! It’s a concept, after all! And it has wacky shaders and creepy audio, so who can resist? ♥︎

Click this post to read more than the excerpt, for some post mortem information and pictures of the process! ☆

Post mortem

So we did indeed not manage to squeeze it all in. The end result is a very compressed story. You were supposed to be finding stuff out about the owner of the room by examining things and trying to piece together a profile.

The reveal is still in there at the end, as we figured out as the deadline was approaching that it would be better to add the start and end of the game first, and then try to cram as much as possible in between, but the road is a bit lacking. However, it’s still a decent—albeit short—bit of room escape to be done! c:

Process port mortem

Won’t really be writing anything up about it, but found out today that someone else did their work in the complete opposite order of the way we usually do stuff. We usually start by blocking things out programmatically, with graphics being added as we go, and audio slapped on near the end. This other person had been focusing on final graphics and audio to begin with, and tying it all up with code later, and the result was gorgeous, tho no idea how much of the actual game/code got done that way.

Still something interesting to bear in mind and perhaps experiment with next time! Still, this feels like one of our more visually appealing/stylised entries, perhaps much thanks to the weird shader that requires less from the textures without looking bland! ᕕ( ᐛ )ᕗ

Here’s the link again: PLAY!

Tags: 3D, ava, blender, eerie, entry, escape, final, jam, lock and reload, marte, post-mortem, puzzle, puzzles, room, unity