There are many possible answers, even some impossible ones, but only one’s accurate.

I’m ridding myself of perfectionism.

Every time I start a project, I get stuck at worrying over every detail obsessively, to the point where the actual progress suffers. Ludum Dare with its strict time limit forces you to cut down on excess and only bring the meat to the table.

You can’t just wait for inspiration to strike out of nowhere. Inspiration comes when you’re actually doing and refining things. I was in a dead end in the night of day 1, but now I have a game I’m happy with. Perfectionism at its best is quality control for things you’ve already created, not a toll that blocks you from creating because “it won’t be good enough”. And LD always gets me in that sort of flow.

Also,

I told you it’s possible.

http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-22/?action=preview&uid=5551

Right, I got something done after all. And it feels good. Both the result and the process, that is.

Been quite a rollercoaster again. A highly recommended experience. I’ll write a more detailed analysis after I get some sleep.

May contain kittens. But much more too.

My ony technical problem right now is that the player has Parkinson’s. The bubble is really bouncy and sensitive and I can’t get the physics right so he’d stay still when needed.

Well, that, and even after my optimization, the framerate bounces up and down a lot. Wonder what’s up with that, there’s no heavy math going on. I’m just going to pretend the problem’s just on my end and ignore it until everyone starts whining about it post-release, shattering my optimistic mood.

Besides coding, I’m messing around with visual styles, looking for something simplistic and readable, as well as creating more levels. Always more levels. Even when there’s all the levels. A level editor would be fine so I could indeed include all of them, but I don’t think there’s time.

I know you can do better than this

I think I’m going to have something to submit after all.

Namely, a tricky Marble Madness sort of game (but not really) about a boy in a plastic bubble who’s developed psychokinetic powers to draw borders for use as platforms and shields against enemies.

After a good night’s sleep, I’m feeling optimistic again. I couldn’t continue with my original idea and didn’t want to scrap it either. I figured out a compromise when lying in bed this morning: a way to alter the game mechanic to make it more interesting from both the developer’s and the player’s point of view.

I might not make it this time. I’m in a dead end with my project, and staring dumbly at the screen with no gameplay ideas is just making me feel pissed. And the last thing I’d do would be to scrap it and start over again.

Like I said I do have a working prototype, but it’s embarrassing at best, and I’m not going to submit junk I’m not even satisfied with myself.

Okay, so I’ve got a somewhat unique and fitting idea, a scrolling map with no size restrictions, some clumsy graphics and level sketches, and the core mechanics are working. With code that actually seems to be from this planet.

Then why are you feeling anxious, Jiggawatt? Surely you’re better off than many other participants?

Well, here’s the thing: it just doesn’t feel right. The whole “isolation tank” mechanic needs more limitations and for it to be fun and even remotely challenging. Right now it’s really hard to think of gimmicks and situations where you can’t just brute force your way through. Which is bad, since I was aiming for this game to have puzzle elements. Time’s running out and I feel like I’ve only worked on little details lately.

Wait, this isn’t indie enough.

MAKE THE PIXELS LARGER

The black borders around the player would be the limits of the triple scaled screen following the player. And it’d be filled with cute NES/SNES style art. Not just for looks, it would also give a very natural limitation to the “drawing” game mechanic.

Too bad I can’t ever get the camera to work right.

If you’re blind and can’t see the image, I’ll just describe it for you: lots of rectangles, lasers, and a blue redrawable “isolation tank” that blocks said lasers, lets you stand on it, and informs me that Pygame’s built-in cheap collision detection only checks the corners of rectangles.

So I’ve woken up. This means the hard part is over with.

Now I’ve got a couple of game ideas based on isolation. Since I figured most people are going to do artsy and depressing metroidvanias, I’m going to occupy the puzzle faction.

Basically, you get to draw a rectangle and the player has to be isolated inside it at all times. I’m still not quite sure if I should do a real-time, platformer type thing or a turn-based strategy one. We’ll see which one works better.

How do you expect democracy to work when everyone’s opinions are so much worse than mine? I mean, it’s like you guys don’t even realize it. Let me just tell you how to vote.

First of all, you should be able to derive a game mechanic from a theme. The point of a theme is to inspire participants as to what kind of a game they should make, as well as narrow down the game mechanics so that games can actually be compared in the voting process. “Escape” as a theme was very vague last time, a lot of people just seemed to make random games and then lazily explain what the player was escaping from.

And themes like “moon”, “dinosaurs” or “beards” describe art styles more than mechanics. Is a moon a game mechanic? Not on my watch. Participants are informed there’s something going on on a moon, but they still don’t get any ideas for the actual gameplay, so there’s not much point in having such a theme in the first place.

How about doing it the other way around, giving participants the core concept of the game, and letting them decide what context they’re applying it to?

I agree, let’s do that.

But there’s a fine line to walk between guidance and freedom. “Self-replication” describes a mechanic alright, but it’s restrictive rather than inspirational. You’re basically going to see the same game over and over again: that puzzle game where the player clones themselves to clear obstacles.

For the record, “kittens”, “evolution” and “territory” are some of my favorites out of the current ones. They help the creative process instead of leaving you unsure. I can come up with many games utilizing those themes creatively, interestingly, even unexpectedly.

(So, to sum it up, vote for Ron Paul.)

Hi, I’m Troy McClure, and you might remember me from such events as Ludum Dare 21 and surreal IRC conversations.

Last LD was my first, and I wasn’t disappointed. If you ask nicely, I’ll go for it this time too, but with a slight change: I’ll be using my IRC name Jiggawatt consistently now. Last time I was called “ointment” on the site and everyone started bumping into walls.

Python+Pygame turned out to be a winning team, so let’s not change that. It’s just much more suitable for speeddev than, say C++ and SFML, since it lets me focus on concepts rather than mechanics. This time I know some of the landmines to avoid and I’m even prepared to package the game correctly.

I just wish I managed to get some recording software working this time. Whatever you’re going to suggest I’ve already tried.

I guess I’m going to write a bit of a post-mortem here about Escape the Fate. My other blarg post focused on bugs, this is more about the development process.

See, I’m a first-timer on Ludum Dare. I initially didn’t think I’d have a finished game in the end, I just wanted to try it out and see how far I’d get in two days. It turns out I can work quite efficiently under pressure. Simply having a submission exceeded my expectations, but not being ashamed of it was even more of a milestone.

I did know about Ludum Dare before, but I hadn’t thought about entering. The TIGSource community mentioned it shortly before it started, and this time I went with the flow. There were some promising themes in the voting; I was hoping for something specific enough to narrow down the entries a bit, but also something general enough to not produce gimmicky games. Waking up and finding out about the “escape” theme was satisfying in that sense.

The event started at 5 AM local time, so luckily I had gone to sleep early enough to wake up at 7 AM. Didn’t even need an alarm clock; it’s as if my body was ready for the competition.

I realized most games would take the theme literally, as in there would be a threat you’re escaping from. I wanted to do something different, and the idea of “escaping your body” by killing yourself quickly struck me. It took me just about half an hour from getting up to getting down to business.

I decided to follow others’ advice and do most coding on Saturday, leaving the fancy presentation stuff for Sunday. Since I’m still a bit hazy in the C++/SFML department, I went for the safe choice of Python/Pygame. Once I had a basic engine running, I started designing levels.

So indie.

Then ideas just started flowing, and I repeated the cycle of adding a level/programming a game mechanic for the rest of the day. Moving platforms, switches, blocks activated by them, collectibles, springs… They’re very universal and recognizable features, but in the context of a suicide game, I managed to give them whole new meanings. It was interesting trying to prevent the player from killing himself before the intended part. I paid special attention to the level progression: the first levels are more puzzle-like, the later ones require more reflexes.

I found myself ahead of the schedule, so I started making graphics and music in the evening. It was an okay decision for me. Meanwhile many other people, even previous participants, were still only trying to think of an original idea at this point. This reaffirmed my previous beliefs that schadenfreude is motivational.

I went to sleep early and quite optimistic, with something playable and occasionally fun on my hands. But as you might expect, Sunday was more problematic. My code was fast becoming unreadable, and even worse, broken. The pushable blocks in particular caused incidents that were hilarious when they happened, but tragic when I realized I have to fix them somehow.

Luckily, I managed to avoid that for a while by derping around on IRC and polishing the presentation to what it looks like now. I fell into a coding trance in the evening and escaped my own body, but I did eventually have something to submit. Little did I know it wouldn’t work on anyone else’s computer.

I’m impressed by how py2exe packaging was still incomplete after all the added weight. I did manage to isolate the cause to the freaking font and repackage painfully, making unnoticeable perfectionist tweaks after each upload.

-

The consensus on my game seems to be “polished and challenging” in a nutshell. The concept is distinctive, the levels are memorable, the controls are responsive, the graphics are a step up from programmer art, and the audio suits the mood. However, people have asked for more instructions on the experimental game mechanic. While figuring out level solutions is in the spirit of a puzzle game, I think it’s a reasonable response, and I now know what concerns to address if I ever do an improved post-compo game.

What I regret most is that I had a bit of a rough release. At least I’ve tried to swiftly fix any game-breaking bugs that didn’t show up on my end. If I could do something differently, I’d make more people test my game before submitting, so I would have to do less patches afterwards. Even though bugfixes are allowed after the deadline, I’d love to have just tossed the game on the site before running away and not looking back.

Fixed the event in the fifth level, which was broken by bugfix 1.0c. Squish a bug, create a new one, it’s the circle of life. Go try it now.

Escape the Fate

I was relieved to get everything in Escape the Fate working in due time. However, some problems arose after entering.

One tester quickly reported the game crashes for him on startup. I spent a while Googling about py2exe’s quirks and isolated the cause to the font. Had to include that in the download (it’s a free font, don’t worry) and force users to install it before playing.

Later on, people complained the game was confusing with its two different types of falling. Instead of throwing the player straight into the action, I added an intro level which limits the interaction to a minimal amount of tiles. It’s amazing how the mechanics of falling suddenly became self-explanatory. This was on the extended time, so with the slight addition, the game still qualified for the compo.

Just a moment ago, I was giving tips to a player who seemed a bit lost. I wondered why, he hadn’t even gotten to the tricky part yet. Apparently, the game was too big for his laptop screen, and parts of it were cut off so that the level was unplayable. Yesterday I realized this might happen, but I kind of forgot about it when I was busy fixing collisions. That goes under bugfixes, so it won’t get me disqualified from the compo either, especially when I posted it as an alternative download. I should know since I’ve answered several questions about an update’s validity on #ludumdare.

Speaking about IRC, my username is different between the site and the channel. I’m also known as Jiggawatt; I simply failed to predict I’d be using the IRC channel much, so I registered here with something else than my standard issue IRC nick.

For those who actually got the game working and even understood what’s going on, the feedback’s been positive. So go try it.

Escape the Fate, a suicidal puzzle game, is now done with a handful of hours to spare. I’m surprised I made it considering the roadblocks. It was certainly a motivating experience and I’m willing to do it again.

Not right away, though.

Escape the Fate: http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-21/?action=preview&uid=5551

ARE YOU SEEING THIS

ARE YOU SEEING THIS

I’M PUSHING THE CRATE AGAINST A SOLID OBJECT AND NONE OF US IS FLYING ALL OVER THE PLACE

http://www.mediafire.com/?255xu6275h5afhb

With 10 hours to go, here’s a beta with collision bugs and an unfinished level. It’ll however give you a good sense of what you’re going to get. I’m going to be able to submit something alright, but I’d feel dirty if this were the finished one.

Tee hee. While this level is fun, it also shows how damn buggy collisions are.

Animations done, sounds working, some more tricks on the way. Can’t think of any major changes I’d have to make, so I believe I’m in the clear! I haven’t tried py2exe before, though, so time will tell if I’ll be able to package this thing properly.