Phew !

I wasn't sure I'd make it for the compo ! Yet somehow I made it.

I'm especially proud since last time I had to submit for the Jam since I had to take some extra time to polish the game.

Without further ado, I present to you: Press the Buttons !

Hey everybody! :smiley:

As per usual, the time has come for me to write a Post Mortem for my Ludum Dare submission.

This time, I am proud to introduce to you:

Press the Buttons

Press the buttons is short escape game with a twist. In addition to looking around for some way out, you must also regularly press some buttons in a sequence. Doing so will prevent a timer from reaching zero. Which would be a dire turn of events, indeed! (Or so a charming disembodied voice will tell you)

Press the Buttons was conceived with the following tools: - IDE : Visual Studio 19 - Game Engine : Unity 2019 - 2D Graphics : Paint & Gimp - 3D Graphics : Blender - Audio : Audacity, Fruity Loops 20

Press the Buttons is my 4th game I managed to ship for Ludum Dare, but only the 2nd I could submit for the compo. My other 3 submissions were done with another account for LD 24, LD 27, and LD 46. Managing to ship a game for the Compo is a big deal to me. Especially since I somehow managed to do so without compromising too much on the quality of the game.

What went well?

• First and foremost, I glad that I spent very little time coming up with an idea for the game. I usually have several ideas piling up over the first morning. So I end up coding some generic features such as Menus or Game Flow. This time, the idea to make an escape room with a twist came merely minutes after reading the theme. I first imagined it as a joke but the more I thought about it, the more I liked the idea.
• Of course there are still a few bugs remaining in the game, but compared to previous LD submissions, I am quite satisfied with the level of polish of the game. Especially for a game submitted for the Compo.
• In addition to having a satisfying level of polish, I'm also glad to have had the time to implement several "Nice to have" features such as Subtitles for the voice in the game (there are a few more but you'll have to look for them :wink:).
• Last LD, I wasted a lot of time figuring out several things in Unity since It had been a long time since my previous project with Unity (I'm more of a C++ programmer). This time, having learned from my previous game, 3D Modeling and Animating was a lot faster (so much so, that all 3D models were ready by the end of the first day).
• I'm especially proud of the sound design of the game. Very often, sound is done at the end. This time, I decided to spend much more time thinking about sound. In the end, I managed to compose a small background music loop, record several lines for the voice of a character in the game, and implemented some feedback sound effects for most interactions of the game. All of this resulting in something quite satisfying.

What didn't go so well?

• First and foremost, I guess I should talk about my attempt to code my own 1st person controller. It worked for the most part. But collisions were weird. A few hours before the end, I completely scraped it and made one handling physics a bit better. But since it was a last minute change, it caused several bugs I had to fix in a short amount of time.
• One of the biggest causes of time loss during this Compo was that I didn't take the time to use some prefabs. Because of that, any later changes to objects such as chests were costly in time since in many cases, I had to manually setup each object one by one.
• Some of you have mentioned that, the ending was somewhat underwhelming. The reason for that is that for most of the Compo, I focused mainly on the game mechanics without thinking too much of what the ending should look like. A few hours before the dreaded submission hour, I had to do something, so I ended up making an ending screen in as little time as possible.
• As mentioned before, changing 1st person controllers at the last minute cause several bug. Those bugs, I fixed in some shamefully hacky way. For example, the safes in the game used to open towards the player and push him/her if necessary. With the new controller, the player would sometimes be pushed outside the game boundaries. I ended up changing the animation so that it wouldn't even touch the player.
• At first, I had hoped to add more interactions to the game such as pulling out books, or entering passwords in a terminal. Time wasn't really lacking here. I just didn't take the time to think out my level design enough to have something coherent. So when the time came to finalize the level, it was already too late to add anything.

What to do next time? or what should I keep doing ?

• Use Prefabs. Seeing how much time I lost, prefabs will definitely help me next time.
• Keep spending at least a bit of time thinking about Sound Design. It makes a huge difference!
• Spend a bit more time on the Level Design. This time around, I placed many elements pretty much at random.
• Next time, I'd like to try to simplify the game loop of my game and perhaps even toy with procedural generation. Hopefully, that'll leave me more time to work on the game. And perhaps increase the lifetime of the game.
• Finally, I want to keep having fun taking part in Ludum Dare. :wink:

That's all I have to say for now. I hope you've had as much fun making games as I have!

Got a bit of a slow start. I have a very basic menu flow ready and started experimenting with procedural level generation.

At least now I have a pretty good idea of what I want to do! :)

Heya ! :)

After a day of work, I have made: * a fully function game and menu flow; * a procedurally generated world; * a player controller to move around and dig; * a store to upgrade the player stats.

Tomorrow, I must: * Find a name for the game; * Implement the game end; * Polish the sprites; * Compose at least one song for the game; * Finalize the stats system; * Configure the world generation; * Balance the game progression.

Here's a little peek at my work so far:

Best of luck to everyone! ;)

Hey ! :)

I made a short playthrough of my game, Search for the Undergem.

*/!\ Spoiler Alert: This video shows the end of the game. /!*

I recommend you play the game before watching this. ;) https://youtu.be/VVNbA6emWt4

Have fun watching the video or playing the game! ;)

Hey everybody!

It's this time of the Game Jam again! It's time for me to do the post-mortem of my game, Search for the Undergem.

This time around, I wanted to experiment with a video format.

I hope you'll enjoy watching it, and have a wonderful day! ;)

https://youtu.be/DPiWda6p5M8

Hey everyone!

I've finally had the time to prepare a few improvements for my game:

Search for the Undergem

You can also check out the Post-Mortem here.

Change Log: * v1.1 * Displaying some stats at the end of the game (earned money, elapsed time, death count). * Implemented a timer in the HUD. * Slight upgrade name change for better comprehension.

You can find my Compo entry, Runstable, here.

Good luck to all participants ! :wink:

Version 1.0.2 has arrived. It fixes a bunch of bugs including: - Fixed HUD disappearing in some cases. - Fixed Wall run failing in some contexts. - Fixed incorrect tutorial in front of the first Jump Pad.

Runstable is a platforming game where you must find a precious gem in the depths of a cave. But be careful, the path may be treacherous!

Play Runstable here

Have fun and congrats to all other participants! :smiley:

I made a short trailer for my entry. Enjoy ! :wink:

Trailer

Runstable is a platforming game with elements of parkour where you must find a precious gem in the depths of a cave. But be careful, the path may be treacherous!

Play Runstable here

Have fun and congrats to all other participants! :smiley:

It's Post-Mortem time again! This time, I'll be talking about my 6th LD game Runstable, a 3D platformer with elements of parkour where you must find a precious gem in the depths of a treacherous cave.

This game was conceived using the following tools: - IDE : Visual Studio 19 - Game Engine : Unity 2020 - 2D Graphics : Krita - 3D Graphics : Blender - Audio : Audacity, Fruity Loops 20

Previous LDs

Before I talk about this edition of Ludum Dare, I figured it could be nice to talk about previous editions I have participated in. More specifically, the takeaways of those previous editions. After all, Post mortems are theoretically here to list some lessons so that we can keep doing what is good and stop doing what isn't. Here's a short list of lessons I have learned (which may or may not have been applied): - FPS Controllers can be a pain when poorly done. This seems to be amplified in WebGL versions. - Taking the time to explain game mechanics in-game can be a huge UX booster. - Use prefabs! When you don't changes to level design can be a huge pain. - Taking some time on the Sound Design makes the game look more polished. - I should spend more time on my Level Design. - 48 hour isn't a long time. It's best to settle for a simple but fun game loop. - Procedural generation can save some time.

What went well

So now that I have listed some lessons from previous editions, let's see what went well this time. - First of all, I'm glad that making levels was easy. Both in design and in testing. This was greatly allowed thanks to the use of prefabs for each section of the cave. As such, to build a level, all I had to do was put together a sequence of cave sections. - Secondly, I'm happy to have though of using *procedural generation* to decorate the levels. Rather than placing manually hundreds on props in the levels, I made a script that would randomly place props at predefined positions. As such, to decorate levels, I only had to specify those specific positions on the prefabs. So I guess I've learned my lesson on more Level Design and procedural generation. :wink: - Finally, I'm mostly satisfied with the Sound Design of the game. There are of course a bunch of sound effects that feel out of place. But for the rest, I feel that the audio improves the game experience.

What didn't go so well

Of course, game jams aren't just fun and rainbows. So what didn't go so well this time around? - Firstly, I should have learned my lesson the previous time. On some computers/browsers FPS Controllers can be a pain when running in WebGL (or at least the poorly coded ones :wink:). This makes the game harder to play. - Secondly, I've noticed that the game has many bugs. Most of which are due to the FPS Controller and the collision detection, but there are also a few related to weird UI animations. - Finally, even though I am satisfied with the level design, I still feel that it isn't hugely diverse. Initially, I had planned to have some biomes and some vistas. I sadly had to cut those to submit in time.

Next time

So with all of that in mind, be it good or bad, what lessons have I learned? What lessons do I already know but really should consider applying? - Being highly opposed to crunch time in gamedev, my biggest pet peeve is that I spend way too much time making the game during game jams. This time, I spent a bit more than 12 hours per day on the game. In the future, I should aim to make simpler games or use more procedural generation. - Going for a simpler idea should also allow more time to polish the game. That means more time to detect and fix bugs, but also to implement some quality of life features. - And finally, I want to experiment even more with procedural generation. This time around, it was mostly used for level decoration, but given how I'd organized my prefabs, I could easily fully generate the levels by randomly selecting sequences of level sections.

Overall, it seems I've remembered a few lessons from previous game jams, but there still are a few I have yet to apply. :laughing: Anyway, I hope you’ve had as much fun making games as I have! See you next time! :wink:

But what if we could delay both as much as possible?

This is the direction I will be taking for this edition of LD 50. Good luck to you all ! :)