And I’m done! have fun playing “Freedom”  a prequel to my LD#23 game Predicament :

Had some requests for a post-mortem, so ..uhm.. okay I guess.

Game is Predicament:
http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-23/?action=preview&uid=12805

This was my first LD entry, I usually don’t have the time for it and even for this one I only decided to enter 8 hours later. It’s obviously not my first game, and also not the first time doing a game in a weekend, so luckily I knew what to expect from a 48 hour maximum (and ended up with 11 hours left on the clock)

What went right:

I had my idea in about 10 minutes: a small environment (tiny world) and a little metaphor for living your life in a tiny world build into the short story (complete it, and you will understand)

Had a lot of fun getting the graphics done and the interaction of the various items. Was a first for me trying to write a game like this (adventure-y?), and I learned a couple of things that I might use in a larger version of this game in the future.

I normally create games for Android and iPhone, so writing it in HTML5 was refreshing and interesting. HTML5 has come a long way, and using a browser like Chrome you get all these debug tools without compilers.. pretty awesome for prototyping and competitions and just having fun.

What went wrong:

I had music build in there done with WolframTone generator, but people pointed me towards the terms-of-use on the Wolfram site.. still not sure if it’s not allowed to use for such free stuff.. but I figured I better remove it and go without music.

Some small bugs near the end of the game, I had time enough to fix it, but I was basically done with it and wanted to enjoy rest of my weekend. So you CAN get stuck gameplay wise, and would have to restart, but most people luckily don’t get stuck  It’s a bit sloppy and could have probably handled it better if I just put the time into it.

Sound effects had various issues, I didn’t write my sound code cross-browser, so the sound really only runs in Chrome. However I do blame HTML5 and browser-builders for this. I stuck to the standards, and only Chrome really works. With audio-file formats also being a pain in the behind I chose to go for OGG to stick to the open-spirit.

What I learned

HTML5 is cool. It’s not ready for commercial stuff if you ask me, but for prototyping, or just having fun, it’s really good. You don’t need fancy libraries to get going. Just find out how to render parts of an image onto the screen, and go with it! All very simple, very open, and quick results.

Ludum dare compo’s are fun! If I have time again for the next one, I’ll sure give it another go, and I’ll even try to make time from now on.

Music.. I really should start learning to make music..

and finally there is an AWESOME community of  ”game developers for the love of game developing” out there, and I enjoyed the interaction with many people I didn’t know yet.

No go give my game another try

Did some final tweaking and removed the music (done with Wolframtones, but seems their ToS doesn’t allow this type or any type of usage).   It’s fully done now, HTML5 source included,  audio only works in Chrome (preferred browser!) but game should run in Firefox and Safari also.

> Play here <

Screenshot from the running code, in Chrome. Still some stuff to add to the gameplay, and then more polishing with sounds, effects, etc.

A lot of progress made the last few hours, running into a slight gameplay obstacle (not knowing where to go from here) but all the stuff in the below screenshot is live and playable/interactive .. just need to get the final gameplay idea done.  Writing it in HTML5 cause it’s very easy for prototyping and quick coding.

Had a slow start, so figured using HTML5 would be the easiest and fastest route to having stuff moving!   (more up to date ramblings on the progress on twitter @orangepascal)