Now that a few days have passed since the end of the Jam, I'd say it's about time for me to write the post mortem of my submission.
Bibou is a Tamagotchi-like game in which you must take care of little Bibou, a cute little red panda.
The twist here is that you can't directly interact with this cute little creature since you are locked at home.
That is why you have at you disposal a computer to monitor, feed, and entertain little Bibou.
You can play Bibou here.
To work on this game, I used the following tools:
* Game Engine: Unity 2019
* IDE: Visual Studio 2019
* 2D Graphics: Gimp
* 3D Craphics: Blender
* Sound recording: Audacity
* Music Composition: Fruity Loops 20
* Project Management: Trello
This is the 3rd time I manage to ship a game for Ludum Dare.
The first time was for LD 24 and the second for LD 27. Since then, I either would be busy during Ludum Dare week-ends or I would not manage to finish my game in time.
Since it had been so long since my last contribution, I absolutely wanted to participate this time.
Compared to my previous submissions, I had a lot less time for the Jam since I wanted to spend some time with my girlfriend.
Furthermore, I hadn't used Unity and Blender in a long time. As such, I ended up having to learn over again how to do some texture painting, rigging, animation.
Learning those over again ended up taking several hours of the little time I had.
As a result, I was unable to finish the game for the compo and had to cut several elements I would have liked to keep.
In spite of all that, I am suprisingly satisfied with the end result.
For the first time, I managed to ship a 3D game for Ludum Dare. The previous times, I'd use Game Maker as a game engine so i'd end up making 2D games.
As such, my confidence in making a 3D game from scratch was fairly low. Especially since I haven't used Blender much those past years.
Making a rigged model for Bibou was probably the biggest challenge of the jam.
Managing to make it in a reasonable amount of time helped raise my confidence in making 3D games.
Also, for the first time, I composed the music of the game. In previous jams, I'd either have no sounds or rely on randomly generated music.
The main song of the game took me about an hour to make and I'm happy with how it turned out (for the most part ;)).
Finally, code wise, I managed to make my code modular enough to allow me to easily iterate & add new activities for the little red panda.
Adding a new activity takes about 30 minutes. No code needed. It requires only a 3D model, an animation for Bibou, and some UI.
Day 1:
On the first morning, I focused mostly on the menu system and the cameras.
By the end of the morning, It was possible to navigate in the menus and change the camera position using the UI.
In the afternoon, I composed the main song and made most of the 3D models of the game.
By the end of the day, the level design was mostly done.
Day 2:
On the second day, a lot remained to be done. I still needed to fully implement Bibou.
I the morning, I made his 3D model and in the afternoon I handled the AI.
By the end of the day, the game was fully playble, but I was not satified with the result.
That is why I ended up deciding to submit the game for the Jam rather than the compo.
Day 3:
On that day I had to my day job that took most of my time.
On my free time, I managed to polish the game to a reasonable level of quality.
Furthermore, I had the time to fully redo the UI.
Good:
* First 3D game
* First game with composed music
* Code flexible & allowed quick iterations
Bad:
* Game easy and probably not very fun
* Wasted time on learning how to use tools
* Had little time to make the game
I hope you enjoyed this Jam as much as I did !
I look forward to playing as many games as possible !!!
