So I have been busy working on a better and improved version of my ld48 compo entry.

With better hacking feedback and visual clarity, along with improvements to make it more fun and less random.

Aswell as better and less insane controls so the game is more focused on the game and not keeping yourself from flying into walls, plus a better far away indication on usable objects by just looking at them.

With future additions being a bit longer and full story along with an extension after the current ending.
A new additional type of hacking minigame that is more of a puzzle than the reflex-based minigame that is in now.

Playable here

Last time around I had jumped feet first into flash and actionscript3, knowing very little, but learning a lot. This time I was going for a way more graphical project, and I was going to make it within unity.
The theme ‘alone’ hit and it meant I would be doing a space themed game, with no other people, and a lone astronaut. I love that kind of sci-fi.

The good

Using unity.
The Unity engine turned out to be the most useful thing this time around, the amount of prototyping that could be done rapidly, the seamless exportation from blender which meant I could make a change to a model and it would instantly appear back in the game.

Graphical tricks
Most visual things in this game is pulled off with sloppy tricks, like focusing the detail I made where you actually see it on the player and leaving other areas largely untouched. Textures were made less to ideal, but still functional, so that I could get them in and pull a consistant visual rather than just ending up with two models.
All environmental station parts are built from a tiny piece of texture with enough variation to pull it off, the outside is nearly a crime, but works. Leaving the shading very flat overall gave me the ability to paint in more details into the textures themselves rather than having to rely on shading, which would add more work on top of the much I already had on my list.

Modular reusable gameplay elements
I made a few objects and wrote scripts for them in a way that I could just spread them out and connect them to things, such as doors to any amount of hacking panels, which at the point of writing the story I was able to squeeze out a few datapads within the last hour or so, and alter around hacking panels for different effects such as hotspot movement/shrinkage, difficulty, and amount of hacking stages.

The terrifyingly bad

Late actual prototyping
The first day was spent entirely just thinking of a setting and making art, with the first thing being a fully textured player model, could’ve only been worst if the first thing I made was a menu. The effects of this can be seen in the game itself, while the setting worked out nice and looks pretty, the gameplay is rushed and largely untested, with the hack-minigames lacking the variety they could’ve used. Prototyping early will be my goal for the next ludum dare.

Heavily visual project
Aiming to make this very visual and 3d project was a bad idea and still is, but still totally worth it. The effects were that of spending a majority of the time on art, which essentially makes the game an interactive story rather than a game.
Making a simple 2d project will be my goal for next time, but I know I will most likely end up doing another full on 3d project.

Lack of testing
Large parts of the game and story was implemented late the last day, which means they went untested, I wasn’t able to give it a proper gradual increase of difficulty, and instead it jumps around.

Bonus

Overall I was quite satisfied, from learning, pressing myself and eventually not giving up, which I was close to doing early the second day. My marriage also survived another ludum dare!
Definitely doing this again next one!

So after squeezing in the story and ending in the last few hours I finally have an entry that can be played from start to finish. It ended up almost an interactive story with reflex-based hacking minigame at its center, which I wish I would’ve extended a bit more to include more puzzling.

I’ll be writing up a big post mortem on this shortly.

Nonetheless, no regrets!

Play the game here: And then, alone at epsilon-1

Yep, I’m in that club now.

Modular stationparts, animated airlocks and now I need some gameplay surrounding these.

So I realized I should’ve warmed up a bit more on unity, as I’ve spent far too much time hitting a few brick walls, but hopefully I might be able to pull through in some way.

Good new though, fully textured and hastily rigged and animated astronaut, so it’s on to environment pieces and the rest of the game now.

A first playable, sans much gameplay, can be found here: http://www.eldpack.com/ld22/

And a reminder to myself: artheavy = disaster waiting to happen.

So my game is about having to be left all by yourself in the middle of nowhere in an escape-pod, but luckily ending up near an outpost.But, unluckily it’s been abandoned for quite some time, so it will be a game about navigating zero gravity in a clunky space-suit, to and from a derelict space station.

And, some further texture work in progress:

Working on the astronaut main character for my ‘alone’ entry, I’m already regretting my plans to have the entry be graphically heavy!

oh woe.

This time around I’ll be using:

Unity, photoshop & blender.