Second try at LD. Last compo “Tiny World” project… well… still working on =D

Go with Unity3D, Blender, GIMP and ModPlug.

Good luck to us all

Progress so far:

You control a creature that evolves hunting and collecting organs from other creatures controlled by AI ( that I had not time to code yet =D )

You start underwater and something is telling you that you mush reach surface, to the land and to the top of a mountain far right.

Each organ type have a power that helps you in the way.

Unlike in LD23, this time I had much much less real life issues… hope to finish for jam at least.

This is as far a human can go in 48hours. At least this human.

All organs and powers working, alien scenario done, no AI yet.

To Jam then

On the hard path of  learning about the sentence “FINISH A GAME IN 48 HOURS” in its full mystic meaning =D

Past LDs gave to me 2 projects that I’m still working on:

LD #23 Tiny World

LD #24 Evolution

Tools: Unity3D, PaintShoPro/GIMP, ModPlug and Faith

You are an immortal, indestructible vampire that suffers from the problem that your castle is not indestructible. You must hunt blood from local village to gain new powers and protect your castle from enraged humans.

Progress: 60%

After several hours of insane work:

http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-25/?action=preview&uid=6633

Sadly, no time left for music and sound. To be in post compo version.

This is the first time in 3 LDs that I managed to finish… finally! =)

It was a privilege to take part at LD25. See you at LD26! Thanks!

This was my 3rd LD and 1st time that I finished and submitted a game, so also my first postmortem =D (sorry about bad English as is not my native language).

The Last 2 LDs gave me nice projects to work with after the compo, but this time I made up my mind to lower features count, lower graphics and to bring something complete to deliver here.

Theme

I was expecting “End of the world” but hoping for “Construction” or “Ocean” as it fits very well with games that I like to create. “You are the Villain” came as a surprise at Saturday 00:00 here in Brazil and no idea was coming so I decided to went to bed and think better with the morning.

Ideas

The first idea was about an alien at his UFO tormenting a city. Brainstorm brings tons of features ideas like flying saucer upgrades, capturing and use human meat as fuel, land
off the UFO, weapons, tanks and soldier fighting against you and then I realized that would be another half year project.

So no flying saucer, maybe a lone alien. Then I thought that too many entries would use aliens, so no aliens… A vampire then. In his castle… at mountain’s top… Hunting at a village at night. Maybe turning into a bat at will? But if he can turn into a bat why not give him other powers? Maybe ones that he needs to research first… using blood as fuel.

He must fear some armed humans and use ambush tactics to succeed. Ok, so concept was ready. This came at something like 10:00 am saturday. Later I added a last feature that was the day/night cycle and sleep at coffin to protect from sun.

The Good things

Unity 3D: I’m on it since 2010 and it never stop to surprise me. Aside from the powerful 3D engine, the additive pattern (where you add a behavior to an object instead of descending sub classes)  gives a huge boost in productivity from reuse and was essential here. I managed to finish 100% of planned features, all 7 spells (Bat form, Invisibility, Speed, Sunlight resistance, Hypnosis, Charm and Fire bolt), the day/night system, human AI (poor right now), and so on.

Place holder graphics: From some tips that I did read from ancient LD masters, one fixed at my mind: THOU MUST FINISH THY GAMEPLAY SATURDAY NIGHT. So be it. Nothing except code all Saturday. By 01:00 am Sunday the gameplay was ready.

The “Could be a little better” things

Complexity: A nice portion of the game is hidden from casual players because it is behind a lot of work to research spells. Maybe I should have made the “Bat Form” to start already researched so this also would minimize the long way castle <-> village.

The BAD things

Vampire control: I was thinking of allowing the vampire to walk forward and cast spells with its view (aim) mouse controlled, like a tank. Bad idea. Now most people are disliking it and I agree.

No Sound, No music: Spent 1 hour on music at Sunday just to realize that would take like 5 hours to be ok. I left sound for Monday night and then I found some final creepy bugs to kill, so no sound.

A bug with graphic quality control: Unity have some controls to tweak with graphics quality and turn some eye candies off allowing wider audience. Well, I just left a debug line at starting code forcing quality to last level. I mean the ULTIMATE level. Now it just can’t run on low/med CPU/GPU.

Gameplay balance: To implement every feature that comes in my mind cost the miss of the 48 hours deadline and forced me to join as jam. Even worse it left few time to tweak simple gameplay values that would change a lot things: Like the tedious looong way from mountain to village and back to mountain every night.

If the world not end (post compo)

I will resize the island, there are lot of space not being used in game. Smaller castle <-> village way will be nice.
I also will add features to improve fun: Give more value to surprise element (like human frozen if catch from behind unaware ; Improve combat system allowing vampire to block sword/arrows with claws; Introducing wizards with strong long range attacks to give something to REAL fear and avoid (or incentive the research for more power); New spells (heat sensor, teleport, raise zombies); Some bonus drop from humans like research bonus; Better meshes (animated), better textures, better HUD, Music and sounds; AND YES, BETTER VAMPIRE CONTROL.

Now some gameplay of a powerful vampire in action:

Thank you!

See you at LD26 (theme: Ocean =D )

Tags: post-mortem, unity3d

Nice to be able to join another LD, counting the hours for it.

Previously on LD:

LD #23 Tiny World
Organelle

LD #24 Evolution
Flagellum

LD #25 You are the villain
Moonrise

Tools: 

Code/Engine: Unity 3D 3.5 Pro
Art: Corel PaintShop Pro X5
Model: Blender 2.65
Music: ModPlug
Idea/Design: CrossDoc (i will talk about this one in next post)

From CrossDoc webpage:

CrossDoc was built to help game developers on transforming abstract game ideas into an executable real world, task to task project. In its core view, a game project can be mapped as a hierarchical tree of elements and individual tasks can be estimated from the interactions between them.

This cross analysis process not only helps to measure the work effort more efficiently but also brings unforeseen ideas on table in design time while showing problematic or too expensive features from start. On these collected tasks, the time effort can be estimated and the time spent on it recorded (either realtime or post work). With these data CrossDoc displays the done/total tasks number, estimated/worked time and overall project completeness in a nice progress bar.

Many otherwise nice game projects falls on lack of motivation and stamina because sometimes people tend to underestimate the complexity of implementing so many nice features planned in the enthusiasm of the brainstorm. To help in avoiding this is the reason behind CrossDoc existence.

Of course it was built for long term projects but this little tool has been helping me since my first Ludum Dare on game design, time estimation and quick project control.
I took some time to polish it and finally share it with the world, so here is it, at time for LD26.

http://www.arcadiumplayware.com/crossdoc/

Tags: tool

Work estimation: 142 tasks, 26:59 hours
And of course that HydroponicFarm produce potatoes.

GO

Minimalism: The art of releasing a game with placeholder graphics =)

http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-26/?action=preview&uid=6633

This was my 4th and my best LD by far, as I managed to bring Alien Raid to very close of what I planned from start.
The theme was a real challenge but the idea came quickly: Simple 2D RTS with crude graphics (despite my lack of artistic talent forced me to put more details in sprites that a “minimalist” would like).

The use of the new version of CrossDoc (shared at LD start) really helped to keep features in “possible” realm.

This is my first game at LD that used full Unity physics. Took me a time to tweak it for 2D-frenetic-lunar-battle scenario what prevent me from submitting Alien Raid for 48 hours compo. It’s done for the Jam at least.

The music was composed literally on the last hour.

What went right

• To have a solid idea from start and a clear path of work
• Like in last LD, gameplay base was ready by Saturday night. This leave the whole Sunday to graphics, sounds, music and to balance rules.
• Unity 3D once again proved to be an invaluable ally.
• Alien Raid code is heavily based on component pattern (like Unity). Things that would be hard to implement other way came free from this.
• Music (I liked it =D)

Bad things happens

• Graphics could be better. At least better suited for the game atmosphere.
• This game is too easy when you learn to play (quicker alien re-spawn will solve) .
• To play it well one must be in full will to figure it out.

Thanks! See you at LD 27

I have to say – This is my 4th (or 5th?) LD and this theme really pushed the overall creativity level.
So many smart theme usages, so many cool gameplays with so little.

For now, 15 games that really worth mention in my opinion:

Blinked’s ProductionVille

Simple resource management nicely done.

GertJohnny’s You Must Escape

Awesome concept and nice interpretation of the theme.

gilmore606’s hru

Nice gameplay, relaxing sound and music. A reward at end.

keksdev’s Tzatzauberer

After you figure out its mechanics you just cant stop playing.

kernel panic’s Ant Commander

Find the path to the food for your ants on an endless world.

leafo’s Moondar

Amazing music, furious gameplay. A bit too hard but worth trying.

mortus’ True treasure of Kartoffelschloss

Amazing music, amazing graphics and a powerful message that it delivers about true minimalism.

NostraDamon’s Merkaba

A little hard to control but rewarding with nice scenarios and fantastic music.

Ranmara’s Critical Failure

Clever theme usage, nice graphics and music.

rezoner’s QbQbQb (cube cube cube)

This one is getting famous around there and is in justice, really nice visual, gameplay and music.

Shigor’s Screaming Cubes

Not so polished entry but with original gameplay and lot of upgrades. With more work, the potential of this game is huge.

TylerGlaiel’s Geneva Convection

Very fun, challenging, good graphics and music.

Volute’s This is not a minimalist game

Another very original theme usage.

s0ulcrusher’s MIN

This is the result of going to another dimension while drunk and this is a good thing to try. Liked this game a lot.

Benjamin’s Four Scepters

Deep, complex game with lot of powerups and strategy packed in nice minimal graphics.

Here I am for my 5th LD

Previously:

LD #26 Minimalism (a.k.a. release games with placeholder graphics =D )
Alien Raid

LD #25 You are the villain
Moonrise

LD #24 Evolution
Flagellum

LD #23 Tiny World
Organelle

Tools: 

Code/Engine: Unity 3D
Art: Corel PaintShop Pro X5
Model: Blender
Music: Fruit Loops
Idea/Design: CrossDoc

10…9…8…7…6…5…4…3…2…1…

Player take off from earth.

Must lead it to moon, land/flyby and return earth ocean.

Every single control from inside lunar module.

Very very bad chances of finish it in 48 hours =D

Player start with 10 seconds countdown and must control the rocket to the moon, take pictures to proof alien presence on dark side and return safe to earth ocean. The craft is fully controlled from inside resulting in one of the most insane hard games I ever coded :).

The above picture shows 2 huge efforts. Firstly, to bring the game to this point (about 70% ready). Second to maneuver the craft and find the moon on main window 😀

After a 10 seconds countdown you will be launched toward the moon to take pictures and proof alien presence on dark side and then return safe to earth ocean (after deadly atmospheric reentry). There is no keyboard control – every single action in game is done inside the craft with the mouse (and luck).

This game is hard – aliens aside, there are many challenges on controls, fuel, battery, O2, onboard device usage and the constant chance of getting totally lost on what button does what.

http://blogs.unity3d.com/2013/11/12/unity-4-3-2d-game-development-overview/

Looking forward to see LD 28 entries using the new 2D framework of Unity.

Here I am for my 6th LD

Previous entries:

LD #27 Ten Seconds – Mission Luna

LD #26 Minimalism – Alien Raid

LD #25 You are the villain – Moonrise

LD #24 Evolution – Flagellum

LD #23 Tiny World – Organelle

Tools: 

Code/Engine: C# /Unity 3D
Art: Corel PaintShop Pro X6
Model: Blender
Music: Fruit Loops
Idea/Design: CrossDoc

Here is the current status of my entry: Hard Point.

I had very hard time to find something to do with theme but finally reached on something to work on.

Player controls a tank fighting enemy vehicles in these islands. Each destroyed vehicle have a chance to leave a special device to be installed at tank’s single hard point (you get only one).

Hard Point puts you in a small archipelago in control of a tank to battle 3 super vehicles with upgrades acquired from smaller enemy vehicles.

Only one upgrade can be used at a time at the tank’s hardpoint and the player must choose wisely in order to beat the game.
These upgrades are weapons (machine gun and cruise missile) or devices that extends the tank capabilities (rotors to fly, boat to cross water and armor to protection).
Each enemy vehicle drops one or two kind of upgrades only (helicopters drops only rotors for example)

The compo version features 5 types of enemy vehicles and 3 “boss” super vehicles

This is a hard game (an unintended constant in my LD entries) but IS winnable.

Went right

Modularization as a design principle. Vehicles and devices are assembled from independent parts. There are no special cases for the player or AI controlling things for both uses the same input interfaces over many controllers. This yields lot of work at start but begins to unfold advantages at latter stages as some features comes “for free”.
AI is working nice. Land vehicles knows how to keep themselves dry in solid land and water vehicles knows how to keep themselves wet in water. Enemy vehicles knows how to hit things at distance but it is designed to miss at random.

Went bad

Hard Point was very very close to miss the Jam deadline and even that I managed to deliver it in time its overall incomplete.
From ballistics to buoyancy, AI aim, AI navigation, I guess that every single function in Unity Quaternion and Vector3 was used in this game.
Sadly, a problem with AI aiming took me 6 hours to solve (with an unforeseen trivial solution). This turned the project from “going well” to “emergency mode” and choices had to be made – no sound, no music, no texture at models, no cool effects, too few instructions of how to play and no time to polish some hard corners.

Post compo version

Post compo version is almost ready with sounds, music and visual effects, bug fixes and a new vehicle (submarine) with a new power up that allows the tank to submerge and fire torpedoes.

I’ll write a post when it is ready.

Thank you all for another great LD.

See you at LD 29.