It's been a few years since my last Ludum Dare! I'm doing it mostly solo this time though with help from a few friends for some art :-)
Tools - Monogame - PyxelEdit - StudioOne 4 - assorted VSTs
I've only just started learning Monogame really so using this as a learning excerise. Hopefully I finish something and learn something along the way!
Now for a well earned rest :smile:
This was my first proper project in Monogame. I was nervous that I was biting off more than I could chew but we somehow managed to scope the game pretty much perfectly. 😅 In the past I have fallen into the trap of trying to go big and the final product losing out a bit. This was the first Ludum Dare that I finished with time to spare!
Something else that went well was the art. Me and Ollie both seemed to be on the same page with the character art from the get go and he did an amazing job. Lots of people are saying the eggplant faces will haunt their dreams. 😂🍆
This time round my fiancé got involved and did all the environment art and the UI. They turned out perfect and it was super fun to have her sat next to me working on the game together. 😁❤ I think we'll be working on something together again soon!
So Yeah! Please go play and rate and let us know what you think 😃
I thought I'd do one of these for anyone that might be interested! 🙂
Ubergine was made by 3 people in the UK, myself as the programmer and audio guy, my fiancé @curleyrach doing environment art and UI and our friend @olliemotion doing character art and animations.
Me and Ollie had done a few Ludum Dares in the past where I was just doing audio but it had been a few years since then!
I've bounced on and off a lot of game engines over the years for various reasons but I have recently been using Monogame and I absolutely love it. It fits best with how I want to program games.
The Idea
We ran through a few ideas at the start but settled where we did for a few reasons. As this was my first time programming in Monogame, I haven't got round to programming a working camera solution yet 😅 so we wanted to keep the game stationary if possible. We also chose a side on perspective to allow for sprite flipping to ease the amount that Ollie and Rachel had to do!
The Ubergine itself was originally a tree, but we thought to ourselves, "Why would vegetarians be trying to eat a tree?" and made the jump to vegetables. It was then a case of finding a long visually interesting vegetable to fit in the play space we had available, and well... 🍆🍆🍆🍆🍆🍆🍆🍆
We'd originally planned a basic arena shooter, but soon had the idea of splitting the controls. I was happy with this decision as it felt (at least slightly) original. It can be tough to control 2 characters at once, but I find when it clicks and you pull it off it feels great!
What went right
This was my first time building a complete game with Monogame as I've just been making prototypes and experiments for the past 2 months. With that in mind I'm very happy how the game turned out, seemingly bug free! 😲🤞 I did a lot of stuff that was new to me, but it all seemed to fit and work!
It's a little thing, but it was only when I got to spawning the enemies that I realised I was going to have to sort the sprites in a way so that things with a higher Y value would appear above other entities. This caused me some stress as I initially wasn't sure how to do it and thought it would cause the game to look very janky! It turned out to be as easy as giving the Entity base class a sortOrder property, having entities set their own sort order based on Y position every frame and then sorting the Entity list by the sortOrder property! Easy!
I also think the art was done really well and all tied together great. When Ollie sent me over the Ubergine graphics I knew we were onto something. 😂 It seems like people really responded to the art which is a great feeling. 😊
Also this was @curleyrach's first time ever doing pixel art and she picked it up really fast. This is definitely going to become a new hobby for us both. 🙂
The music turned out cool too and I was happy to have an excuse to whip out my banjo! 🪕🎶
What went wrong
One thing I feel could have been better were some of the sound effects. I woke up early Monday morning very tired and recorded those so I think some of them are a little lackluster but oh well. 😄
I took a shortcut with the particles also. I have programmed a particle system in Monogame before but I was a little scared to try it in a jam. So instead I opted to use this great tool Particle FX Designer by @Code Manu. Its a great tool that allows for quick output of nice looking particle effects to sprite sheets. So all the particles in the game are actually animations played with a random rotation value and some other modifiers to make them look different. 🙊
Another issue I had was my UI. I am scaling the screen for fullscreen and different screen sizes by outputting the render to a texture and then scaling the texture up with ratio applied. This worked great for gameplay as it allowed me to program in a consistently sized world. The problem was that this meant that my UI layer was actually very small in pixels so I couldn't use hi-res fonts as they would look blurry! 😢 Lesson learned for next time, I will be splitting the UI into a separate thing and scaling it differently to the game world to fix this issue!
Conclusion
We're in a very strange time a the moment and I didn't realise how much I needed to output something! It has been extremely satisfying to finish this project, be happy with the result, and have a really positive response from the community! Thanks for all the reviews so far! ♥♥
Please play and rate Ubergine if you haven't already 😄 https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/46/ubergine
Big Moment this morning! We made it to 100 downloads on Itch.io which was amazing for us. 😄 It's a cool thought that so many people have ran the little project we made. 😄 Here's to more! 🍾🍾🎉
Check out Ubergine if you haven't already! ♥
We really enjoyed participating in this Ludum Dare! 😁 I definataly needed a win in these strange times and finishing a project like this was very rewarding. I very much enjoyed playing all the games I did, there was lots of fun and interesting ideas.
Hopefully we will be back for another Jam 😃🍆
My wife, a friend and I will be participating again! We last competed in LD46 and had a great time. Hoping to have just as much fun this time around! :smiley:
Tools: - Monogame - Aseprite - StudioOne 4 - assorted VSTs
I've learned a lot more about Monogame since last time so excited to get stuck in!
We had an idea and we are running with it!
Here's a sneak peak:
Well that's another Ludum Dare over and we are over the moon with the result. 😁
This was created using Monogame and my own engine/framework thingy on top of it so it's great to know it works!
I will write a post-morterm in a day or two once I have caught up on sleep 😴
Hello!
Another Ludum Dare complete and another game made! We're really happy with how this one turned out so I thought I'd write a little post-mortem.
Trenchrunner
The game idea came from all three of us on the team. My wife (@curleyrach) had the idea of setting the game in WW1 in the trenches (We've been very into war movies recently). I said about making it a runner game with the gas chasing you and @olliemotion had the idea to strap a bomb to the main character! This tied the whole thing together and made it have a point. It brought the theme in nicely too!
The original drawing
What went right
I wrote the game using Monogame and my own framework on top of it. I have been making it since the last time we entered a Ludum Dare (LD46). This was a nice test to see all the pieces come together and see if it worked 😂 It turned out great, easy to use (mostly) and it was very fulfilling!
I was able to get lighting and particle effects into the framework just in time for the jam which i think really added to the game!
I was also happy with the design of the venting mechanic. It added a layer of depth to the game that I didn't see coming until we were half way through. That's one of my favourite things about game jams, it feels like I'm discovering the game whilst I'm making it. 😃
Another thing that went well was the art. My boy Ollie always knocks it out of the park with the character art and animations and this time was no exception. When he sent over the main character, I was like 🤩🤩🤩 My wife (who is fairly new to game development and pixel art) did an amazing job making all the environmental art and info screens for the game. She even made all the posters and the itch.io page too!
I spent some time making sure the art sat well together and we are really pleased with the result.
People also seem to like the music, which always feels good as I started my game making journey (10 years ago 😭) as a sound guy. 😃 I think the sound effects turned out neat too.
I also was able to get levels loading in from Tiled this time so we could have multiple levels and I had a lot of fun making them.
This was also the first game where I have been able to add a boss! Every Ludum Dare I'm like "yeah this time, I'll add a boss and it'll be dope!" but this is the first time I've managed it! It turned out great and was super fun to make!
What went wrong
Not a lot! I felt pretty relaxed about it the whole time and there wasn't anything major that blocked development. The collision of the enemies can be a little bit janky sometimes, but I was rushing it! In a perfect world I would have made it clear that the bomb builds up pressure over time as it took people a death or two to figure it out 😂 Another enemy to encourage shooting the gun would have been good too but its Ludum Dare so I'm just happy with what we finished!
I also wish I had automated the tile placement a bit as each level consists of: a top layer, a bottom layer, a sandbag layer, a shadow layer, and objects. This was quite time consuming to hand place for each level!
If I could do it again I would change the balance slightly, as the game ended up too easy for some. It's a hard balance to strike in a jam, you want it to be easy enough for people to complete in a jam setting but not so easy that they can just blast through the game. We found submitting the game to streamers and watching them play a huge help in this regard!
Lessons Learned
I will be taking some of the new developments from this game and implementing them back into my framework so for future games it'll be even better!
I think we'll put out a post jam version with a little balance update to make the game more challenging and add a few particle effects in a few places so I will post about that when it's done!
Bonus photo of husband+wife+cat gamedev desk set up 😁😺
