Got some sleep and some coffee and an egg toastie in me.

Back to work!

If anyone wants to continue to watch me draw moar furnishings, check me out on twitch: http://www.twitch.tv/taunia_sabanski

Rachel has gone from ZERO to INTEGRATED INVENTORY in less than a weekend.

(Keep in mind that this is the first time she’s ever used Unity… or even created a video game. Period.)

BEHOLD THE FRIENDLY TEST DRAGONS. THEY ARE DRAGONS, FOR TESTING. THEY ARE ALSO FRIENDLY.

I’m also off on a good start with our murderer. (He’s not so friendly.)

We’ll have to see how those shoulders square up when I size him down. He’s like a brick house at the moment.

Going to bed now! Twitch stream will be back up once I’m up — and, most importantly, caffeinated.

Signing off.

5 hours left in the Jam and unfortunately we’ve started to experience problems.

Hopefully they magically right themselves before 6 PM.

If you want to watch me draw things, I’m up on Twitch! http://www.twitch.tv/taunia_sabanski

TWO HOURS BEFORE DEADLINE WE HAD NO ACTIVE GAMEPLAY!! RACHEL DID IT!! OMG!!

You could have photo-finished our upload. We got it submitted with two minutes to spare.

 Play “A Fine White Line”!

I honestly can’t believe Rachel made this playable. (Actually, I can! She worked really hard!) Hammering away on her keyboard, she literally learnt how to do all of the Unity programming this weekend. Unfortunately, she got really stuck, and we couldn’t find any answers to the logistics problem online — we were just about to throw in the towel completely and chock it up to experience.

AND THEN … she figured it out!

 

With 1.5 hours left on the clock, we managed to throw in some win/lose conditions, music, more art and added an extra variable. It likely needs some washing up! But it’s done.

We’ve tried to incinerate all the bugs we can for the time being. Hopefully they will all (mostly) be squashed. For now, enjoy the bugs! They are horrible and only around for a limited time. Like the McRib!

Enjoy, everyone! This game really is one of those little miracles.

Tags: 2D, a fine white line, afwl, artistic, blueprint, ld, Ludum Dare, ludum dare 31, WASD

Play “A Fine White Line” Here!

I think something happened during the upload process and there was a misunderstanding with the files, so we ended up with a downloadable Web game but nothing that popped up in the browser. Of course, the individual with all the files set up had long passed out from exhaustion, which left the poor, defenseless, sleep deprived artist to set up a Web link at 1 am.

And then my internet went down. :C

It’s fixed now, though! 😀 Not only can you play from the web, you can download and play as an embedded media file right on our entry page!

Small victories.

I’m going to chill, drink some tea and play/rate some of your games for awhile.

If you want me to play and rate your game, hop into my stream and post a link in the chat box!

Here’s your Twitch Taxi: http://www.twitch.tv/taunia_sabanski

 

Tags: a fine white line, afwl, games, ld31, Ludum Dare, now with more web, playing games, twitch

What’s better than a Christmas Party Potluck and a late night spent playing games? Not much.

I can’t move because food.

Since I’m pinned under the weight of my own gut, I might as well make myself useful and play some of your games!

It’ll be a short night tonight — but it’ll be a good one!

If you haven’t already, make sure to play and rate “A Fine White Line!”

Tags: #31, a fine white line, afwl, feedback, i'm not hungry anymore, ld, Let's Play, Ludum Dare, rate and review, stream, twitch

Feeling a little under the weather today — but that doesn’t mean I can’t play some games!

Not been too great today. As we get closer to Christmas, it starts turning into a perpetual wave of get-togethers and celebrations and food and a lack of a spare 6-8 hours where I can sit and give more feedback! I’m getting close to the end of my list though. Once I run out of games (I’ve played, rated and given loads of feedback to 79 games at present), or when I make it to 100 (whichever comes first, dependent on how many people continue to add to the list and how many games I’ve had my eye on but haven’t played yet), I will stop. I need to get back to my RL work — oh. And —

THE FULL POST-LD VERSION OF “A FINE WHITE LINE” IS IMMANENT!

That’s right, everyone!! I’ve finally gotten some things straightened out, and a full-on, post-LD version of “A Fine White Line” is NOW in production!

(I swear I WILL make a Post-Mortem. Eventually.)

Don’t forget to play, rate and comment on the LD entry!

Daniel Snd , who worked on “BUGGED OUT” during this LD has been graciously taking his time to help me with a well-thought out programming structure for the game. I have so much heart-felt appreciation for this, like you WOULDN’T BELIEVE.

Go! Play “Bugged Out” if you haven’t yet!! It’s fantastic!

 

 

Check out Daniel Snd’s YooToobs! He makes tutorials! GOOD ones!

Tags: #31, a fine white line, afwl, bugged out, daniel snd, feedback, ld, stream, twitch

Almost there. Almost there. Come watch me on Twitch!

My goal is to a) run out of games on my list or b) get to 100 Coolness — whichever comes first!

If you still want your game played and rated and given some amazing-tastic, in-depth feedback, there is still a chance!

There’s also still a chance to play and rate the original prototype of “A Fine White Line”!

Tags: #31, a fine white line, afwl, amazing-tastic, feedback, ld, Ludum Dare, stream, twitch

CLICK HERE to play EX-SWORD-STENTIAL CRISIS!

When the theme was announced on Friday evening, Team Infection’s Daniel Snd and Thiago Adamo (PXLDJ) hurriedly sat down with Rachel Rios and I (Taunia Sabanski) and we immediately had troubles coming up with a simplistic concept that people likely would not have thought of yet. After ditching an overly-ambitious idea about WW2 and bird poop, we ultimately resorted back to one of the first concepts that were pitched: “You are the weapon.”

At this point, I expressed extreme frustration at how most people seemed to be falling into the trap of handling the concept of “An Unconventional Weapon”. With this sort of theme, most people were focusing on what their weapon was going to be, rather than how the weapon would function in terms of play and fun-factor. Instead of going from game play concept to weapon, people were going from weapon to game play — I wanted to be extremely adamant about not falling into that trap. Game play and fun-factor would always come first — the weapon design would then follow.

As we began pondering exactly how to implement the sort of game play we wanted, Daniel started messing around with Unity. It was then that he made a simple sword shape, enabled movement on the sword shape, and began laughing.

He then sent us this.

The collective shouting of “THIS IS PERFECT!!”, “OH MY GOD YES!” and “LET’S DO THIS.” could likely be heard from orbit.

The concept of the game simply fell into place after this. Naturally, it was decided that the sword should cut grass. Now, not wanting this to be “Lawn Maintenance Simulator 2015”, we decided that this would be an unconventional sword — an enchanted sword, with a face, a name and a personality. A pacifist sword, that disliked killing things.

Our sword was then named Rusty, and given real googly eyes.

Why googly eyes? Because we could.

At this point, we were pretty pleased with ourselves, but we couldn’t start work on the game yet. Unbeknownst to most, there was another game that needed to be finished and submitted to another contest (Daniel Snd’s “Rocket Fist”) on Saturday evening that was monopolizing Daniel’s (and Thiago’s) time. I helped where I could, but our Ludum Dare development was tied up until the submission deadline for “Rocket Fist” wooshed past.

In the meantime, I worked on some concept art, as I knew Rachel Rios needed solid references to assist in creating 3D models. I also decided this would be the best way to solidify our color palette, stylize the graphics and map out exactly what we needed in terms of “loose” assets.

  Here’s Rusty.

I had initially wanted to give Rusty hand-drawn/animated eyes, a mouth and eyebrows. I’d also wanted to position them on the blade of the sword. I realize now that you likely would not have been able to see the eyes. I wanted the hilt to look like the collar of a shirt, and be representative of his body, but with how the googly eyes got placed, the hilt still looks like the collar of a shirt — but the blue jewel and blade look like a giant tie. So, you end up cutting grass with his tie. Which is awesome.

Here is the concept art/3D reference and color palette for the animals.

As you can see, we also planned on having chickens, but simply ran out of time. The method behind the madness of having goats and sheep is that we could use one rig and one set of animations for both, as well as use a modified goat mesh for a sheep mesh. With minimal alteration, we could have two animal types meandering around instead of just one. I’m fairly sure that if we had chickens, they’d also ABSOLUTELY HAVE TO lay eggs. There is simply no working around that.

Environment concept art/3D reference and color palette.

As you can see, the trees also didn’t make it past the cut. Simply not enough time. Also, we had planned to have a “sword in the stone”-esque platform to act as a “start and/or end level” — this also didn’t make the cut, though it was simply superfluous to have it in the first place. We wanted everything realistically destructible to be destructible. We wanted sign posts to become chopped up, and trees to leave stumps when hit multiple times. We had also planned destructible fences. Again, all superfluous.

I’m starting to really realize that all my years experience scaling down and scaling down and scaling down projects has really been worth its weight in time and effort. It really is something you need to learn to do — simply, how to strip projects down, realize what you don’t need, get rid of it as quick as you can and implement what you do have to its utmost potential. Figure out what can be re-used, reconfigured or most easily created, and prioritize accordingly.

More on that in my next post.

 

Tags: 32, 3D, Ex-Sword-Stential, goats, gold, grass, landscaping, lawn care, LD #32, Ludum DaVengers, mowing lawn, sheep, sword, Team Infection

LET’S GET READY TO RUUUUMBLEEEEEE!!

That’s right, ladies and gents, me and my trusty Twitch channel are back to rate, review and give feedback to your games!

I’ll be going at least a couple hours tonight, and will hopefully get through as many games as I can.

Click HERE for your portal to Awesome-ville. Population: YOU.

Don’t forget to play and rate EX-SWORD-STENTIAL CRISIS!

Tags: awesome-ville, ex-sword-stential crisis, feedback, LD #32, play, rate, twitch, You

Walk right in, sit right down, we’re gonna play some real cool games.

Night two and I’ve already got quite a substantial list to work through.

Don’t worry — if you don’t want me to play your game until you’re around, I will keep it on the list until you are! We’re cool about that ’round here.

I also had some curious people watching the stream last night — feel free to pop in and just discuss game development if you wish. It’s totally awesome and completely acceptable to have micro-discussions and the more people other than myself giving feedback , the better. I go over a lot, but I can’t discuss everything! It’s simply not humanly possible. 😀

See you soon!

Don’t forget to play and rate EX-SWORD-STENTIAL CRISIS!

Tags: 32, all welcome, awesomesauce, Ex-Sword-Stential, feedback, Ludum Dare, play and rate, twitch, walk right in sit right down