So it’s been 3 weeks now I released my LD entry. Here is a quick post-mortem for Minnie & Malism: Budget Squad (hey did you play it already?). Sorry for my bad english, as always.

What went wrong

• theme: I was definitely NOT confident with the Minimalism theme. I like to spend lots of time of particles & art, and most people actually expected minimalist games to have minimalist art, which is a shame, imho. I really regret I didn’t take this opportunity to work on another kind of art style.
• gameplay: as I gave up on the minimalist art style, I only had one solution left for the theme. The gameplay. I didn’t have any idea until satursday evening, which is incredibly late for a LD… Therefore, I didn’t have much time left for polish and to develop the themed gameplay properly. Anyway, I really believe the gameplay fits the theme (a minimal equipment that creates lots of constraints in a shoot em up). It’s not as obvious as other entries, but I think it’s still ok. Actually, I was planning to give up if I couldn’t fit the theme into my game (which I believe is the essence of Ludum Dare).
• state machine: the way I handled game sequences (intro, gameplay, dialogues, outro) was… horrible. Seriously, the code works but it was a little Vietnam to write maintain. I will HAVE to use a better architecture next time.

What went right

• scoring: I didn’t have time to put more focus on the combo based score system. Anyway, it really works well imo and adds replayability. Usually, that’s not something I have in my LD entries, so I’m proud of that.
• level design: once again, my level editor was Photoshop. Color coded pixels in a grid that define wall positions & enemies. The result is a really big level with lots of secret places to discover… and a potato
• sounds & music: as always, LabChirp was an amazing tool to create nice sfx quickly. I also used AutoTracker with some modifications, which also works great. However, autotracker musics tend to sound like each other, so I’m not sure I will use it again.
• intro: I had some spare time to make a proper intro… which is cool

Yes there is actually a story… I totally hate drawing characters, but this time I had pretty much no choice.

Gameplay footage, still lots of things to do

http://youtu.be/x0t7_xNThvo

Despite being a under-equipped Elite unit, Minnie & Malism are always ready to kick asses!

The pink submarine is Minnie‘s: she has the Lamp and an invincible armor.

The orange one is Malism‘s, he has a torpedoes but 1 single life and no lamp…

The game is quite funny right now, which is cool Minnie is played as a tank, kitting mobs, while Malism try to kill them. I was desperate few hours ago as I didn’t have any gameplay idea for this LD…

You control 2 heroes, Minnie & Malism (one at a time). Space bar is used to swap the hero you control.

Minnie (big yellow ball) is heavily armored, and has a light, but no weapon.

Malism (small yellow ball) has the weapon but no armor & no light.

Defense budget restrictions, you know.

The red ball is an enemy placeholder. Shoots are automatic.

Things are shaping up quite nicely.. BUT I still don’t have any gameplay fitting the theme…

Right now, I still have some time to find one, but it will quickly become urgent…

So far, I’ve been working on the rendering part to create the effect I had in mind:

Some explanations: the upper part is the sky, the dark zone is underwater. It’s blurred, based on the distance, you can drop lights (limited stock) to explore the deeps. Right now it’s running fine (full fps), but the lightning system is quite cpu consuming.

Especially because it is standard flash, no 3d acceleration.

It took me a whole night to figure out an idea, but now I’m almost ready to go. The game will take place underwater (mostly because I’m interested about the ambient and the fx in such an environment) and you will control… something… Later for details

Sometimes it’s better to take time…

Hopefully.

I’m soooo happy that Ludum Dare is finally happening again
So count me in!

I will use:

• Haxe (Flash) as language (see haxe.org)
• Photoshop for the art
• Asfxr + LapChirp for the sounds
• Autotracker-c for the music
• Chronolapse for the timelapse

I will post my libs later this week, but they will roughly be the same as previous LDs (with few updates)

Any better idea for game title?

The game is a “Gauntlet got raped by Dungeon Keeper” in which you protect your Orbs of True Evilness from a righteous paladin.

I still need lots of balancing here, sounds, intro, tutorial.

I’m really happy with the things I have right now. It’s fun to simply watch the Hero who explores the dungeon, kills mobs, taunts you and steal all YOUR loot.

But now, you can spend the anger he generated stealing your stuff to cast minions or traps.

Ghosts slow down the hero, Golems hit really strong but are slow, Chests can lure the hero into dead ends… Yours to kill this pretentious paladin the way you want.

The paladin runs your level to destroy “dark orbs of true evilness”, you call minions to stop him.

He taunts you.

You send bigger minions.

Time for some gameplay dev now that everything works fine

It’s all about violence.

You can click in the darkness to spawn mobs and try to kill the righteous green circle. Die die die!

Try tech demo here :  https://dl.dropbox.com/u/4952054/ludumdare25/demo04/index.html

The barbarian is still a green ball and the ghosts are still red dots, but walls received some love.

Even a horde of ghosts (red dots) can’t stop the cupid barbarian (green circle)!

I spent 3 hours coding the collision engine. Now it works just fine and everything is repeled in a nice way

The green barbarian walks around the labyrinth, pushing away the red ghosts. Phew!

The green ball is a cupid barbarian, crawling my little labyrinth, looking for the exit & some coins to steal from my treasure.

There’s nothing to stop him right now. But soon… Oh yeah soon… Dozens of minions will run over his dead body…

My game will be a reverse Gauntlet. One hero among the four archetypes will try to reach the exit. You will be able to spawn mobs on his way using Rage as mana. If the hero picks your gold or kill your minions, you gain Rage.

Now it’s time for some sleep…