Since this is my first LD, I’ve been thinking a lot about my post-mortem, plus I’ve been working on “Stranded Again“, that’s going be my enhanced version of Stranded with improvements as suggested by the LD community.  Plus my Twitter Followers count is going up steadily, so I’ve been keeping up the pace

WARNING!  Some minor story spoilers ahead…

The Idea

When the list of theme topics was down to 20 or so, I got out a notebook and came up with single-sentence game ideas for ALL of them.  My idea for “Escape” was:

Escape: You are tiny brown spider, trying to escape from a research lab.

After doing this for all 20, I went back and came up with a list of Actions and Challenges.

Next, I asked myself, well what exactly do spiders do?  Thinking about Actions, I think,  is a good way to create core game mechanic ideas.

1. Catch insects for food
2. Spin webs to stop “bad guys” (bad insects?) from fleeing, or from attacking something or someone else
3. Collect DNA from insects they catch
4. Catch bad dreams
5. Collect nanites, grid-bugs, software bugs?

1. Web is destroyed by… fire, rain, people, wind, other insects
2. Web decays over time
3. Spider dies from hunger, or runs out of webbing

 

 

The Story

Then I took all this and wrote a tiny Story.  Every game, at its core, must tell a Story – no matter how simple it is.  This one I thought was about as simple as I could get.  I didn’t know this at the time, but keeping the Story simple made the programming much easier as well.

Escape: You are a tiny brown spider caught in a research lab.  You can collect DNA from insects.  Collecting DNA in the right sequence gives you special, but temporary, abilities.  There is a girl trapped in the lab too.  The girl is “dangerous” and “different”, but you don’t know why.  THEY have taken DNA samples from her too.

“I can’t leave here without getting them back — I can’t collect them all in time, but I know a little spider who can.”

I actually thought, of all my ideas, this one was  really  s-t-r-e-t-c-h-i-n-g  it to match the theme – probably the worst match-up of the 20 — and the LD community echoed these sentiments, but not in a mean way — the whole community has been awesome.

The Ruleset

Next I started to think about rulesets.  Which came up with this list of rules:

These are the ones I was able to implement:

1. You win each level by collecting all the insects before you run out of web strands
2. Your web strands do not carry-over from level to level, but are refilled when you start a new level
3. You lose a level if you are unable to catch all the insects with the strand allotment you are given
4. Levels can be replayed if they are lost
5. When you lose a level, your strand allotment and all the insects for the level, are reset
6. You will always have at least 1 more strand than there are enemies, but the ratio of strands to enemies gets smaller as you progress in levels
7. The story of the game is told through dialog, that is “unlocked” as you complete each level

1. Change the ball colors and the fly colors so that you would have to jump from ball Blue to ball Yellow to catch Fly Green
2. Create bonuses that you could catch that would change color of the ball you are either jumping from or jumping to in combination with 1 above.
3. Create obstacles that you don’t want to have your web touch — like fire. If your web touches fire, the fire goes back and disintegrates the ball you just came from.
4. Create “safety” bonuses that you can catch — like water. Water and other bonuses could be caught and stored for later use.
5. More of all of the above, but with other opposites. Might be quite challenging to get the right combinations.
6. Mutations! Each bug represents a different DNA code, catch the bugs in the right combination and your spider gets a temporary mutation.

What Worked

Prioritizing the rule-set from the design above helped tremendously.  When I initially came up with the list of rules, they weren’t in the order shown above.  It took about 2 hours to work out all the inter-dependencies between them all.  Each time a rule was identified as a prerequisite for another rule, it got a +1 — the rule that it relied on it got a -2.  When I sorted this list from highest score to lowest score, I had my to-do list in order of functional dependency.  This really worked because at each step of the way I had a “working game”, so I could stop adding features almost at any point in the list as soon as I ran out of coding time — which is exactly what happened.

Creating a schedule in a spreadsheet ahead of time and marking off hours for “sleeping”, “eating”, “family time”, etc…  I had one row for every hour of the compo, and for the most part stuck to that schedule.  My development time went into just a little bit more detail (but not much more) and had rows for “Game Artwork”, “GUI Artwork”, “Sound Effects”, “Music”, “Coding Win/Lose Conditions”, etc…  I also had two hours each day (one in the afternoon, one in the evening) allocated as “DO NOTHING” where I had to get up from my computer and take a break.  That had a HUGE positive impact on my productivity, my mood, and I think I solved a half-dozen coding issues “in the back of my head” each time I did this.  Also, writing down any “hairy” coding issues during the day and then reviewing them before I went to sleep really worked — I woke up knowing the solution

Leaving LOTS of time at the end.  I left a full 6 hours at the end to run final bug-testing, upload my game, ask friends and family to play to make sure it worked, make any last minute fixes, write my forum post ahead of time, write my entry, announcing via all the social media channels, IMing with people about it, etc…  I think those last 6 hours were the most busy and I may actually allow myself more time in future compos.

Using classes for everything.  I have a class for “spider”, another for “bug”, another for “strand”, etc…  I used my UML/OOP books as guides and came up with a complete list of objects I’d need for the game, and then attached all the methods to them as I went along.  This worked exactly the way it’s supposed to and it made the actual coding a breeze (which in total I think was only about 8 hours).

What Didn’t Work

Thinking that GUI programming would be easy.  It wasn’t!  GUI programming ended up taking nearly 4 hours more time than I had initially thought.  And in the final product you can see that there just aren’t a lot of GUI controls to help with gameplay.  There’s a reason why most AAA game studios have entire teams dedicated to GUI programming (even when using a “GUI engine”) — it’s very tedious work.  Unity GUI makes it as easy as it can possibly be, but it still just takes a set amount of time to create all that GUI functionality — GUI systems are inflexible in their time demands.  In the future, I’ll be able to estimate this better I think.

Using the dialog system as a means to control the game progression.  Such a bad idea!  This is where I really fell down in my technical design.  I should have created dedicated and separate classes for “game” (to control the game state) and created instances of a “human” class (one for the male scientist and one for the female scientist).  I realize now that I was so focused on the game mechanics (which mostly involved the spider, the strands, the anchors, and the insects), that I simply forgot about these classes.  I ran into some problems about mid-way through that I solved with a “gameManager” class that contained all the variables and methods to handle the gamestate and dialog… but it was all mashed up together.  In the future, I need to be more thorough with my technical design.

Not leaving enough time for additional levels.  The final product has 6 playable levels (and then a 7th level that can be replayed as much as the player wants).  Seven levels might seem like a lot for a Ludum Dare compo entry, but in my case, levels only took 5 to 30 seconds to solve.  So, all-in-all I had maybe 5 minutes of gameplay — that is IF the player stopped and read the dialog    I should have done those calculations ahead of time to know how many levels I would need to create.  Originally I wanted to provide about 30 minutes of solid gameplay.  So using that calculation, it should have told me that I would have needed 60 or 70 (!!!) levels.  That, of course, would have been a big Red Flag telling me that the gameplay is too easy and goes by too fast.

I’m in the middle of writing my Stranded Post-Mortem, and unintentionally created this – I knew people here would understand

perma-link and larger version here: http://twitter.com/#!/tulrath/status/112004655785050112/photo/1

I’m planning on releasing an updated version of Stranded called “Stranded Again” that will include a lot of the suggestions I’ve been receiving from the Ludum Dare community!  This release will be free, and will include all the original content, plus episode two, and more puzzles and more fun gameplay.  The original Stranded was made for the Ludum Dare 21 (48 hour compo), so there’s really not a lot there right now — I want to fix that and bring a lot more of the story to the community.

Here’s the deal – I’m new to Twitter and I’m trying to build up followers who are honestly interested in unique, fun, challenging games; and have strong opinions on game design that they don’t mind sharing.  I’m sure I could find a few people that fit that description somewhere around here

Let me know that you want me to keep working on Stranded Again by following me on Twitter @tulrath

The more followers I receive, the more features I’ll build into Stranded Again:

• 50 Followers:  Episode Two Story, improved game graphics, new backgrounds and effects
• 75 Followers:  Everything above plus Enhanced Puzzle Mechanics for the core gameplay
• 100 Followers: Everything above plus Additional Puzzle Mechanics for the advanced game play (100 Follows is my goal)
• 125 Followers: Everything above plus 3 Mini-Games that can be played at specific points of the story (once unlocked, can be played at any time)
• 150 Followers: Everything above plus Achievements System with at least 18 Achievements that can be earned
• 200 Followers:  The 200th follower gets to CHOOSE what he/she wants added to the game from this list: 2 Additional Mini-Games; or 10 New Achievements; or 2 New Enemies of your own design; or 5 New Story Branches that provide more back-story around the core game story.

As I gain more followers, I’ll add more features — so the game will just keep getting better!  Plus, people following me on Twitter will automatically get special access to try new features before anyone else, and it’s all free

48 more entries viewed tonight, trying to do 2 pages a night

So far I’ve tried 21 of the competition entries — I’m going to try to play everyone’s entry at least once.  Lots of good entries, even the “partially finished” ones.

Gameplay video of Stranded, my Ludum Dare 21 competition entry

Stranded Gameplay

Stranded \”Behind the Scenes\”

Compo Entry Here:

http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-21/?action=preview&uid=4703

Play it Now Here:

http://sandbox.lakehomegames.com

Stranded is an arcade-style game where you are a tiny brown spider living in a research lab, and you’ve recently gotten a new resident… a teenage girl was  throw into the room last night by some very angry men.  She cried and screamed all night, pounding and kicking at the door, throwing things around the lab.  She finally exhausted herself, and fell asleep on the floor.  She awoke this morning, sobbing.  She wants to run.  She wants to Escape.  You will help her Escape, and free yourself as well.

You can play it now here:

http://sandbox.lakehomegames.com

And you can see my entry and leave comments here:

http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-21/?action=preview&uid=4703

The walls are re-enforced concrete, at least 2 feet thick.  There are no windows.  One locked door, pneumatic bolts with their own backup power system that “fails closed”… but there is a tiny gap.  Under the door — it’s no higher than a piece of paper.  But it’s there.  If you were… somehow… smaller…

Stranded is an arcade-style game where you are a tiny brown spider living in a research lab, and you’ve recently gotten a new resident… a teenage girl was  throw into the room last night by some very angry men.  She cried and screamed all night, pounding and kicking at the door, throwing things around the lab.  She finally exhausted herself, and fell asleep on the floor.  She awoke this morning, sobbing.  She wants to run.  She wants to Escape.  You will help her Escape, and free yourself as well.

My first LD, and here’s what I’ve got done so far…

• Brainstorming theme into core game mechanics (just four simple ones really).  Done.
• Mechanics into ruleset.  Done.
• Story of game to support ruleset and mechanics.  Done.
• New Unity project created.  Done.
• Base classes created (just stubs).  Done.
• Core game objects and “game field of play” created.  Done.
• Fleshed out the first stub into a working class to interpret player input into gameplay actions (playerInputManager).  Done.

I’m really having fun with this, even though it’s only been 1.5 hours

Next is 30 minutes of “what could possibly go wrong” brainstorming to try to come up with a list of possible problems I may run into from all of the above, then (I’m at -6 GMT), it’ll be 7 hours of sleep

Tulrath Dev Snapshot 1

This is my first LD, so running a few checks…

I’d be eternally grateful if any fellow LD’s could trying loading my sandbox at either of these addresses (just hosting a Dev Snapshot of ZCP there right now):

http://sandbox.lakehomegames.com

http://173.160.112.173

…and let me know which one worked and if everything loaded correctly.  You should end up controlling a zombie, running around a city.

Getting ready for LD21 by cleaning my office.  Yes, cleaning my office — it’s going to put me in a good, positive mood and I’ll be surrounded by, and reminded of, this accomplishment while I’m coding

After that, plan to test my art pipeline by building a mini-, mini-, mini-game in Unity.