Finally got a chance to reflect back on my second ldjam attempt. I haven't done much of game dev since last event and I thought I would try to get some practice doing graphics, modeling with blender and deving in unity. But alas, real life commitments made practice time non existent.

Day 1

As I'm not afraid of challenge I started somewhat late, and came up with a decent idea for the game about a dog who has to juggle a balloon by bumping it with his snout. Again not being afraid of some challenge I decided that 2d graphics would be a good idea, even though I haven't done any for the last 15 years.

So here's the progression of drawing my first sprite since 15 years:

Started by quickly drafting some sort of dog form. Ended up pretty scruffy.

Adjusting some proportions and adding shading. I was satisfied with the first sprite.

Then it was time to look into animating the sprite... This is why one would need the practice, I ended up wasting couple of hours looking at dog running videos, tutorials about dog locomotion and what not, while trying to block out even a simple run animation. So it was time to go back and redo the first sprite and go simpler:

I liked the simpler look and it had some nice character to it. And most importantly it was much faster to do, so I started to work on some simple animations.

After an hour or so I finished some initial animations for running, jumping, blinking and panting (which didn't end up in the game). I finally fired up unity, created a 2d project and started looking at how to get the sprites in game and moving. By the end of the day I had working prototype where you could move the dog around, jump and bump the balloon over some simple background. I was quite happy with the progress although it felt a bit slow so far.

During the night I was playing around with ideas what to implement in the game, the main problem I had was how to let the pleyer actively keep the balloon within the play area. I finally came up with the idea of having to bite a wire that controls traffic lights, biting the wire makes a truck drive by which will push the balloon to the right. For the right side I had couple of ideas, but finally settled on the seagull who protects her nest and bumps the balloon to the left. I felt all the other ideas were too hard to implement or draw.

Day 2

The next morning I started by doing the start and end screens and the game loop itself. I'm not super happy with how they turned out, need to practice ui work to get some nicer ones made in the next jam. They do really give the first impression for the game.

Whole of day 2 was maybe 5 hours of work as I had other commitments. I made some moving clouds, grass sprites and a simple parallax for some of the background elements. Quite a bit of the time was spent trying to get the camera movement limited in such a way to hide all the cut off sprites and stuff outside of the play area. I had to go back on day 3 and day 4 to do some more fixes for the camera as it didn't quite work right when the screen aspect ratio changed too much.

Day 3

Had to go to work on day 3, however after work it was crunch time. There was around 12 hours left so I had to get a move on. I first got the truck and traffic light sprites and mechanism working. Next I spent an hour or two making some sound effects, I had some trouble with my Rode mic generating some weird hissing when recording on the laptop, so I had to record the sound by recording vide on my camera.

The game was still missing a lot of gameplay features and I knew that I couldn't get most of them in so I started working on the seagull and decided to do one more "Dog thing" to do, which ended up being the mark your territory as I had made the sound effect for it. This was basically the minimum to make the game playable, unfortunately time was running out and I couldn't make any animations for the dog, it would have made the game a much more fun experience.

If I had used 5 more hours on second day I could have done more gameplay testing and balancing as the final game ended up being too easy and a bit too slow paced to be alot of fun. I think the idea and gameplay could be quite fun, perhaps I'll spend a weekend to do some more work on it for practice.

Final words

If you read all the way here, thanks for your attention I really appreciate it. If your game needs some reviews hit me up and I'll check it out. Looking forward to playing everyones games and having a fun time.

This was my third time participating in Ludum Dare! Here's a short introduction to my game and a recap of the event from my point of view.

retry10

You were tasked to work on a new experimental teleporter system. Unfortunately you make a mistake when programming the teleporter which results in a teleport retry loop every 10 seconds. To end the loop and fix your mistake you must make your way to the teleporter programming tool and workstation to reprogram the teleporter. However it will not be easy as you must use the teleport loop to your advantage to overcome some obstacles on the way.

Check it out here: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/51/retry10-a-bug-in-the-teleporter-code

Behind the scenes

This was my third time participating but it was not to be that I would make the compo timing yet again. Few hours before the compo ended I was still somewhat hopeful but as it seems, finishing a game takes quite a bit of finagling and I ended up needing maybe 5-10 hours more time. I think I could have hit the timing if I worker longer on the first day as I started late and ended kind of early.

I was somewhat happy with preparation this time as I did prepare by installing all the software before hand and refreshed my memory a little bit on blender and unity during the week before. Also I did a little bit of brainstorming on the day before and came up with some ideas for all the potential themes that were on the vote.

As it happens I was kind of expecting the final theme and actually had a decent idea for it even before the start so I didn't have to spend too much time on the game idea. The basic idea was a teleport loop where player would be returned to the teleporter every 10 seconds. To finish the game the player would have to solve some puzzles that (hopefully) involved the teleporting mechanism.

All in all I'm fairly happy with the end result. The modeling and texturing was super fun as I probably made 5x the amount of models that I'd ever done before the event so I got a lot of practice this event. What I could've improved on would be to have some more sound effects, couple more puzzles and some hints or visual cues for the player for what they should do next. And the title screen once again kind of sucks :D, atleast this time it has some elements from the game but the buttons and game title look out of place. I really need to practice making some title screens and menus and such for the next event.

I really liked working on the game and got really inspired to work on some new games as well.

Thanks for reading and checking out my game, leave a comment and I'll check out your game as well!

Have you not had enough farming for this event yet? Do you like potatoes? Do you like potato games? Well here's Potato farming simulator to save your day, check it out!

Potato farming simulator

https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/52/potato-harvesting-simulator