Hi! I’m looking forward to participate in Ludum Dare 30 compo. This will be my first time

Tools:
Engine – Unity. I’m using it at work and for personal projects.
Graphics – Photoshop.
Sound – I’ll give sfxr a try.
Coding – C#, but mostly I plan to use uScript for visual development.
Libraries – uScript Personal Learning Edition and NGUI Free Edition.
Other stuff: Tortoise SVN for version control, pen and paper for design.

I like to make text-based highly interactive game prototypes with multiple actions, choises and consequences and I hope to improve my motivation skills due compo

Tags: unity

I slept during the first 4 hours of compo, but the last week was very hard. Connected Worlds is an amazing theme. I’m going to open mindmanager and start brainstorming some ideas. From the first look I’ve started to think about few destroyed civilizations, connected through some kind of portal and transfering resources to each other. Or going to war, because their world is dying. That’s a good start. My main problem right now – I missed warmup weekend and didn’t try old free NGUI version for Unity. I really don’t know how this is going to work. But let’s start with brainstorm.

After ~half an hour, I’ve got myself a much clearer vision of a game I want to make. Now it’s time to start some prototyping. Unity, NGUI Free and uScript Personal – I hope everything will be alright

Tags: mindmap

I really hope my game won’t be called Connected Worlds at the end…

Anyway, I made a clickable button and updatable (is it a word?) text label. I believe, you can make anything with this tools. Also I made my first ever sound effect in SFXR and simple button image for NGUI. To my relieve, old version of NGUI works well and pretty similar to the last one. I’m expanding idea of  two Realms – one with food and another with fuel. I even made some intro story for them, but since english is my second language and my grammar sucks… you get the idea.

Now it’s time to actually make some gameplay.

Tags: mockup

Almost 5pm here and I just started to actually make some gameplay mechanics. But I won in insane battle versus UI, buttons, fades and interaction. Some problems took almost half an hour to find a simple solution. But now the fun part begins, you can actually click on button and get some gameplay-related result. I hope to finish three major game parts today and leave tomorrow for polishing and improving.

After almost 12 hours, I’ve got something playable. You can check latest web build (Unity web player). Select Greens and go for it. But Reds are almost the same in terms of realised features. Tomorrow I need to finish trade system (more random results and options), combat system and end game conditions – for now you can actually trade negative values… Basic AI will be fine too, but I’m not sure I’ll be able to finish it in time.

Tags: compo, ld48, progress, screenshot, unity3d

I don’t think I can make anything else today and so my “Two Worlds” game is out. Yay. It’s even playable and fun (sometimes). You can check it on compo page.

In a few words – it’s a text-based strategy about two worlds, connected through the Portal. One has food, another has fuel and they trade with each other each month. But their resources aren’t infinite, so one Realm will fall at the end. You can choose a Realm to play with (and actually you can control the other realm if you want – buttons are clickable). Also there is an “automate” function – it will produce some goods and select trade option for both Realms – you just need to enable it and click on “Open Portal” button. Also there is a restart button in the top-right corner. Have fun

Tags: LD30, ld48, progress, screenshot, Two Worlds, unity

I’d like to write a few a short post mortem about my LD 30 entry called “Two Worlds” (second prize for original title?). I think if I’ll wait a few days longer I’ll never finish it. So… This was my first Ludum Dare and I’m very happy with my results – I’ve made a finished – but pretty simple and unpolished – game. I was able to overcome my usual difficulties with game making – low motivation, focusing on some time-consuming useless features and, mostly, unfinished, half-working parts.

Two Worlds – interactive “strategy” game.

What went right:

1. Fixed GUI. I was using old version of NGUI for Unity and wasn’t sure how it will work with modern scaleable UI. I decided to use fixed elements size and position. And that was one of the greatest discovery for me. On my another project I spend about 70% of time making “cool” interface, with scaling, draggable elements etc. If only I made something simple and fixed before – I think that project would be finished by now, not frozen for X months. For my compo game, I’ve made UI in about 2 hours and didn’t change it at all for the whole two days. And that was amazing.
2. Feature cut. I’ve got a lot of elements planned. Most of them made it into a game, but wasn’t as deep and complex as I wanted at first. Usually, i’d like to make some complex system with many elements, random text generation, results etc. For the first time I said “Stop!” to myself and made everything just simple and fuctional.
3. Focus. I’ve spend two days just. making. a. game. I think I was going to a shop for some food, but that’s all. Good sleep, comfortable room and no distractions – I think that’s all you really need to make something.

What went wrong:

1. Presentation. Black screen with colored buttons just doesn’t look cool. And it’s completly lost on screen with other competitors. And it doesn’t look interesting at all. Also, I’ve spend too much time in development, missing all the “Developer Logs”, streams, discussions etc. I think things would be much better if I spend 1/4 of my time just writing about game, talking with other devs, and maybe improving my visuals a little.
2. Playtesting. I didn’t understood that some of my cool features like “second trade option” was used by really low percent of players and the most used game options are the least fun. I think it’s really important to give someone your prototype and watch how fun it is to play and what actions the player will actually do instead of what YOU think he’ll do.
3. Polishing. Everything is working, that’s a good thing. But there are many parts to be improved. And thou feature cut saved me a lot of time, some parts could be better.
4. Progress bars. I always loved turn-based text games, like my own. But in some compo game I saw progress bars. You click on action, get the progress bar and just wait a little. And then you can click again. And then I realised, that I should use progress bars instead of turns and actions too! This can really improve game dynamic. You can have one huge progress bar for portal opening (like 30-45 seconds) and cooldowns on each possible action (grow resource, train troops). This can be really fun! And it’s really easy to balance the whole thing just by adjusting time! But then I understood that 48 hours passed about two days ago and became sad. But I’ll use progress bars and cooldowns in some future project.

I hope you’ve got something interesting from my post

Tags: Two Worlds

My second LD, yay! I participated in LD30 and I hope the theme for this LD is not going to be about Connected World again :)

Compo, UE4, Cubes as characters. Some Blender and FL Studio, just for fun.

I know how to finish the project, that is a nice skill. But now I want to try to make something that looks and sounds good.

So, it's Sacrifices Must be made. Not my favourite theme, but it's ok. I remember now, that I failed one LD because of some really uninspiring theme.

After some brainstorming (sorry, it's in Russian, but I'll try to explain it), I've got few ideas. Monsters demanding a sacrifice from the village (meh), Saw-like puzzle with characters with different abilities (sounds ok, but it's overkill for two days), Evil God who needs fresh sacrifices - you can sacrifice your own people or raid other villages for them (meh x2).

And finally - escape capsule in space, with survivors. You must keep them (at least, some of them) alive before you're getting rescued. You can toggle oxygen, power, heat and other stuff in different capsule sectors. And you just don't have enough power for all of it. That sounds like fun and you can jettison dead bodies in space - how can I not try to make this game? :)

So, it's time to launch Unreal and start prototyping.

Well, I think it's all for today. My concentration is getting low. I made almost everything that I planned, but still failed to make a complete game loop (it was the plan!).

A few Cubes are locked inside the escape pod. They are waiting to be rescued, but the fuel is getting low. Ship systems are failing and can't sustain all of the survivors.

• You can jettison dead and alive cubes to space
• You can turn on and off various space ship systems (oxygen, heat, power)
• The Cubes consume resources
• Some cubes need more resources to be alive (and maybe they are the ones you can send to open space)

I still need to make game loop - start scene with tutorial and the final scene with statistics. That's for tomorrow's morning.

Also there are a lot of minor stuff (graphics, sound, music) left. I'll try to cover it tomorrow too.

My game in action: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uRioN4-t_Ao

Gameplay is finished. Now it's time for music and extra polish.

I'm done for this compo, yay!

Lost in Space is ready and uploaded. And that's great!

Play and rate my game!

What was right

• Management. I’ve spent two days just working on my game. I’ve had enough sleep, food, fresh air and even managed to rest and finish the last few mission in Red Dead Redemption 2!
• DevStream. I streamed the whole process on twitch. It was a little bit scary and I haven’t stream with audio and camera for five or six years. But now I’ll try to do it more often.
• “Okay, that’s good enough” - I told this to myself several times during the development. And it REALLY helped to keep things simple and just move forward wthi stuff. You can spend 10-20-40 hours working on “perfect” soundtrack, or you can stop after 1.5 hours and say “That’s ok, I can live with it”. And just move to the next feature. Amazing.
• I made everything. Sounds, music, VFX, UI, Start and end game screen, tutorial, testing, achievements, analytics… That’s my most complete indie game at the moment and I’m happy :-)
• The game is completely realtime and 3D. That is a huge step from my usual “2D turn-based prototypes with text as a placeholder for everything”.
• Replayability. I can’t say that making the game round length so short (60 seconds) was a completely good decision, but because of this, many players can try to play this game two, three or even five times in a row. I was thinking about two tries per player, but I saw 5+ on streams, with full ten minutes of gameplay. That’s really cool!

What was wrong

• Balancing and difficulty. Noone managed to save all the 10 cubes (I think it’s still possible and the main menu tells you it’s not, but still…). It’s way too hard and chaotic. The short game session makes every mistake fatal.
• Playtesting. There was none. And when I saw the first streams with people trying to play my game, I was laughing and facepalming at the same time. It was terrible. They were completely overwhelmed with UI and stuff to do and dying cubes and then the time is already up and everyone is dead. And I thought it is so simple! Some cubes with health and needs, four rooms and just 60 seconds to save them all. But your first playthrough is taking you 30-40 seconds to just get around, click some stuff and it’s already too late to win.
• UI. OMG. Again, I first saw this on the stream. And it hit me. I tried to make everything SIMPLE. I made icons in photoshop and progress bars for each parameter - so you can watch it with ease! How wrong I was… The game starts. You have 4 sectors with 2-3 cubes in each. 10 cubes in total. Each cube has three params with three possible state + health bar. That’s 30 params to estimate at first seconds of the game. Each sector also has three parameters - oxygen, heat and power. They can be turned on and off by three interactive objects. And you can open the doors between sectors and move cubes. And there is also fuel progress bar and time to evacuation timer.

• So… it’s 30 icons, 23 progress bars and 26 interactive objects (which you can HIGHLIGHT with TAB, yay!). It’s easy, right? No. I think I could make a few simpler levels with smaller capsules and less cubes to watch for. And the current game level should be the Last ExtraHardcore YouCantSurvive Boss stage.

• Exhaustion. That was really unexpected, but after 25 work hours at the weekend I was really exhausted. And that completely ruined my work week. You just can’t think clear. Now I understand how important the rest is.And I’ll try to take a day\week off after the next LD :-)

It was very inspiring and entertaining LD. I hope you can find some time to play and rate my game ;-)

Hi everyone! Some progress video from Day 1. We were quite inspired with the Fishing theme and combined it with Summoning and some Madness. More to come, stay tuned and subscribe :D

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=clL60s-eYV0

We honestly wanted to finish today (though it's a Jam entry, we all have work tomorrow :D), but there are still a bunch of tweaks, bugfixes and improvements + tutorial. So, going to do some extra work tomorrow. But I'm very happy with the current result.

Honestly, it's a bit disappointing. The feedback was pretty good and the overall result is solid - definitely not The Best Game, but still. Well, next time will be better :-)