Just to get it out there a little more.

https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/38/pizza-avventura

Preamble:

First of all, I would like to say that this is my second Ludum Dare, and the second game I've ever worked to completion. I participated in the compo with my entry, "Space Shooter".

Personally, I am very happy with how it came out. I will not deny that there are issues, however. At the time of my writing this, I've received 3 comments giving criticism, which I fully endorse. Some of the aforementioned issues which were mentioned were what I had expected to hear; The player moves too slowly, some things are too bright, and insta-kills are frustrating.

Play it here: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/39/space-shooter

In the game, I tried to make things fair. The most notable features showing this are:

1) Enemies and the player alike can collect and utilize item pickups, whether they be health restores, battery restores, or a new kind of projectile.

2) Both enemies and the player require power to function (as per the theme), when the player runs out of power, they explode. The same goes for any enemy.

Let's discuss what went wrong:

Firstly, when addressing player speed, I had experienced and thought the same thing in development, but never changed the variable that controls speed. During my time play-testing, I did notice there was rarely a time when I wasn't holding the shift key, which increases speed by a factor of 3, which should have been a huge red flag that the movement speed was far too slow. I can't say I have a great reason for leaving it the way it is. In the scale of the game, it does feel as though the player moves incredibly slowly, but that is only because everything in the game is actually very big (as the game is set in space, it felt appropriate). But that meant reducing function in order to appeal to no one at all, thus making it not worth it. In hindsight, I should have made the movement speed much faster and I wall keep this in consideration for the future.

Second, things like the stars and quasars are too bright to see the player. That is a problem that I had encountered since I implemented those features. I tried to justify why I left it the way it is, but I honestly couldn't find a good reason. There are even counter-intuitive systems in play involving bright objects; on one hand, they are very bright and give off a signal that you should stay a decent distance away from them. On another hand, the player ship has solar panels on it, encouraging the player to move closer to bright objects. Another reason one would have to go near stars is that some of the random events occur ON TOP of these really bright objects. That is what you call truly poor decision making on my part. Things I could have done to fix this problem: simply making the objects less brilliant, or I could have weakened the bloom effect from the Post-Processing Stack. Again I would like to say, there is no good reason whatsoever that I left it the way it is.

Thirdly, one-hit kills. This is simply a balancing issue. Most of the projectiles that insta-kill the player can extremely easily be avoided at any distance. There are some, however, that you would need to be a fair distance away from to avoid. This is why I implemented the shielding system; hold the spacebar and you take only 10% damage. I also, very late in development, added a collectible object that increases the player's max health permanently (for the remainder of the current run). I will admit that I think this is a hard game. Generally, a good gauge for difficulty is to take what you (the developer) think is easy, and release that is "hard mode". The "floaty-ness" of the controls does not at all help the difficulty. The controls paired with the previously mentioned blinding brightness makes for artificial difficulty, which is never a good thing.

The lesson I learned? If you feel as though something needs to be changed to make the game more enjoyable, don't try to find an arbitrary reason not to change it.

As for what went well:

Graphics, first of all. I love how the game looks. The skybox which I found on the Unity Asset Store, is exactly what I needed. Unity's Post-Processing Stack is also great for the (somewhat problematic) bloom effect and the vignette. This was my first time attempting the low-poly look for my 3D models, and I can only say I'm happy with them.

Combat. The simplicity, I feel, is perfect for the style of this game. Run, block, shoot. That's all there is to it. The tiny bit of added depth from the battery and health pickups, along with pickups that change your bullets, add a little more strategy into the mix.

Music. The music, while I would absolutely love to say that I made it myself, I did not. I used some pre-made, public, royalty-free loops that I found at https://www.looperman.com/ and I apologize for failing to initially link that in my entry. As far as I am aware, the use of assets from this website does not violate any of the Ludum Dare rules.

Mistakes that I made:

I particularly want to mention that, on Sunday, July 30, I had accidentally published a development test-build of the Windows version and the source code. The Mac version, however, was correct. I changed it the next day, unsure of whether that violated any rules (I deeply apologize if it does, in which case.... oops. nothing I can really do about it now). The test build that I had accidentally released did not contain a single line bug-fix that unlocked a fair portion of content. As I said, the Mac release was the current, correct version, and I didn't actually add any new content, which is why I don't assume I broke any rules.

I'm here for my fourth time, and I have no idea what I'm going to do, but I am excite.

This will be my fifth LD. Just got back to the U.S. from Europe, so I hope jetlag doesn't stop me!