I've been wanting to take part in this event since the day I started programming (2 years ago) and I'm so glad I finally did.
I had an amazing team with me and we got through it together with a lot of coffee along the way. :coffee: Please check it out on itch.io, it would mean a lot to us :heart:
https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/47/beyond-death
Since it was our most requested feature, we are currently working on camera rotation for Beyond Death and making sure that we have some script that can handle all of the scenarios we are planning it to do. It's a simple feature to add, but it has a lot of side effects.
Right now, most of the map did not exist because the static camera prevented the user to look around, so there was no need to put rocks and walls everywhere. Also we don't want the camera to go inside walls and we want it to adjust if it's about to. There's a lot more we have to think about, but one step at a time!
If you haven't played the game yet, you can do so here and leave us a feedback :heart:
I created a Discord server for my team and I made these for the server icon. Just thought I'd share.
Open Project -> Build Settings -> Switch Platform to Windows -> Build. GGWP
If you want to give it a try, feel free to follow this link and give us a rating. We have a Global leaderboard waiting for you to be one it! (we'll update the ludum page every day, so you're name might be there forever :open_mouth: )
Hey, thanks everyone for playing our game and for your comments! Now, I just wanted to share with you the story behind our Leaderboard - The why it was a a good choice and yet, why I would not recommend it.
The leaderboard was never supposed to be part of this Game Jam. I was just feeling tired on Sunday at 1:00 AM, so I started to play this Compo game, and for a compo, it was still a pretty solid entry with minimalist visuals, the bare minimum of inputs - basically the kind of game that you could easily play on a smartphone.
For a full 10 minutes, I played the game and just COULDN'T STOP. Some guy had posted his score on the game page and all I wanted was to beat it. That's when I realized that, even if our game turns out ok, people will still play it again just to beat someone, or be the best at it. Then came the idea of adding the leaderboard.
Now, that's where I must be honest and say that, even though it was a good move, it was a risky one. The leaderboard didn't make it into the game until 5 minutes before release, and even then, it was an insanely stressful time. Thing is, it was a big move and if it hadn't worked out, I would've wasted a whole day for nothing. This is why, before actually doing the feature, I had to consider most of what it implied:
It finally took 7 hours of nightmare to make it barely work, and 20 for the full integration. It could've taken less time, but the backend I used provided an SDK for Unity (Parse) that looked really easy to implement. I mean, look at that:
c#
ParseObject gameScore = new ParseObject("GameScore");
gameScore["score"] = 1337;
gameScore["playerName"] = "Sean Plott";
Task saveTask = gameScore.SaveAsync();
Turned out that the it had been deprecated for 4-6 years and wouldn't compile in Unity because of some code in the DLLs that already existed in Unity. Luckily, they provided the actually source code, so I went in Visual Studio, removed the broken bit, recompiled the DLLs and VOILA. It worked.... ... ... In the Editor.
I was smart enough to build the project and run it in WebGL, which crashed immediately. That's when I remembered that WebGL is not a fan of Threads, and the DLLs were using Tasks… Don't use Tasks in WebGL kids. ... I ended throwing the SDK out and do simple HTTP request calls to the database using UnityWebRequest (since it's single-thread). The database documentation on how to use Web Request was scarce, but it provided a way to use cURL, which was.. kind of alright to understand...
console
curl -X GET \
-H "X-Parse-Application-Id: 8ffbed6523c84319a7ae17979fbea93b" \
-H "X-Parse-REST-API-Key: 0b34122ce4fd4997b5993cc447cbfd1f" \
-G \ --data-urlencode 'where={"title": "My post title", "likes": { "$gt": 100 }}' \
https://parseapi.back4app.com/classes/Post
I mean.. not great, but... alright. After all of the painful debugging and integrating, I finally had something that worked. I was really proud of it, the UI was done, I could post data and it would show up in the leaderboard... but when it was time to actually use it, we realized something...
No one did the scoring system.
It's one hour before release. We have to implement the tutorial scene, the scoring system, hook it up with leaderboard, show some UI to display the score, build, distribute, test-test-test and hope everything holds. It's pretty easy to guess that we did not do it all.
So this is the story, or part of it. I guess I learned new things, but 21 hours before deadline is not the time to implement a new massive feature!
I need to free some space on my hard drive, but while I do that, Imma play some browser game :stuckouttongue: Reply with your game's link and I'll play and rate! And as per uzz', here's our game if y'all wanna lay some eggs on some turtles :egg: :arrow_right: :turtle:
