All previous Ludum Dares that I’ve tried to participate in have failed miserably. For the first one I had no experience. For the second I had very little time. For the third I had no good idea.
For this one I had a good plan that I followed through with, and I managed my time well. I didn’t try to make anything more than I was planning on from the beginning.
Due to my inexperience with exporting Java programs, I didn’t manage to export the game with the sound library, so the submitted version has no audio. This is however something that I’ve “solved” afterwards using somewhat of a workaround.
The submitted version can be played here:
Limb by Limb
When I saw the theme I immediately came up with this idea (I don’t really know why). This was probably the first Ludum Dare I’ve entered where I actually liked the theme, and also came up with the concept even before starting to program.
The idea was to not only use an unconventional weapon, but also to use it in an unconventional way; I didn’t just want to make a normal shoot-em-up game and just switch the gun textures for a banana or something. I actually wanted to use the weapon as more than just a weapon. So I used it as both a health system, and as a level-puzzle-thingy.
In the beginning I planned to actually have enemies in the game, but I didn’t manage to add that in time, so I settled for making a puzzle platformer (although a later version of the game probably will include some simple enemies). So I guess I failed in making it a “weapon”, but rather a tool.
I quickly knew that I wanted to use the limbs as a health system, because it added a lot of possibillities regarding level design. I also came up with the idea of only being able to interact with levers if you have arms to further support level design.
In earlier projects I’ve saved all levels using a png file, but it has its limitations. And since the fun part about Ludum Dare is to always learn or try something new, I decided to use Tiled as level editor and implement methods that read json files. Which made level designing a whole lot more fun to do.
I’ve decided to work on this project a bit more, but I want to finish it in a couple of weeks.
Some updates/changes that I plan on making (and have done) are as follows:
– Make sound work (done)- Add a new type of lever, further enhancing level design (done)
– Add falling damage (done) as a comical effect, and also to enhance level design
– Make some new bigger, more difficult, and more thought out levels (done)
– Add some sort of enemy
– Add some sort of trap block
– Add particle effects
– Add usable items (maybe)
– Add more decorations
– Add more cowbell
– Add sound effects
– Add pressure plates (works without arms, obviously)
– Fix the bad platform physics (done)
– Remix the music (I made it in a very lazy way)
– Add fullscreen mode
ps. Some alternate titles I thought about using were “ARMageddon” and “Man at Arms”. Sadly I think that “Limbo” has already been taken…
Tags: ARMageddon, post-mortem
