While Isolated Assault was huge success in my eyes considering it was my first Ludum Dare game, and by the scores it received, I’m struggling to come up with a Post-Compo version. You see, I’m just not feeling the motivation to work on it. Every time I sit down, I just feel, “Wow, this is old.” It’s like one of those projects I just gave up because I had no motivation for it.

That’s how it went with Dunnet (My most worked on game), and with my First Person Shooter (My first professional game), and with all those projects I started but never got around to.

Currently my Unity Project Folder looks like this:

Where “Abandoned” have been worked on for a while. I could always go back to the “Abandoned,” but I haven’t, and why should I?

My Problem:

I need a due date on projects.

Some people can never get work done knowing there’s time management involved. For me, it’s the other way. Knowing that there’s no time to procrastinate, and that there’s a reward for finished, I can get a lot of good things done.

I also have problems focusing on one idea and getting it implemented quickly. All of focused ideas I have are too complicated even for top-notch game companies.

Therefore, Ludum Dare was perfect for me–it gave a theme for the game and a deadline. I now know my best work will probably come from future LDs.

Will there ever be an Isolated Assault 2?

Not now. And probably not from me. Anyone familiar with Unity (That means you, reader!) can take my Isolated Assault Source files, and add some new levels, as long as I receive credit.

I have no motivation whatsoever to make an Isolated Assault 2. All my ideas were expressed in the first one. You are a guy. That fights cubes. That wears glasses. The only thing added to this game would be gloss.

Will you participate in LD 23?

Of course! Ludum Dare is the best way to manage time and get good games squeezed out!

Will you stop asking yourself random questions?

Never!!!!

Now I ask you, do I stick with deadlines for making games, or do I learn to get around them?

Do I use Ludum Dare to create all my of my work?

For some reason, I need some sort of reward/time limit for everything I make, because that’s just how I work.

Either way, I’ll obviously still be doing LDs, and I can’t wait for LD23!

And here we have some iTunes promocodes for iOS version for you:
KHR9P4PX3RFY
K9MWRLLMXKRH
LTKJM46T3E4X
XXH3A3YJAXLT
KPXWAYNLPMTP
NA4XKYLH376T
FFMWKPM6LJTN
KK96AHAPXW9A
3ETLFW37RJRE
3PPF7HX9YFXA
F4NTMMEPLXXP
FR7T4E49J44M
XLY9F766ARTK
J7TAPMYNT6NT
3KAR3TPJFNN7
EAWF6KN9YA3A
XN3M6JA7JNWF
APMP79EL9XWM
YKKMHPT7XYTF
ATHM7F7AMHF6
NL364AH6MPAY
JLLKLYNXWHMT
L7W7N9LKXA3R
EXKATMLPFLER
NN4K6MTL3YY7

Have fun!

Good Points

• I developed more than 22 games (as a contract developer), but this is the first time I took part in Ludum Dare and managed to submit a game to the competition! This was one of my 2011′s goals.
• First time I ever did graphics for a game. All the games I worked before were done by hired artists. I could say I was always scared of doing art, and doing these graphics lighted up a flame inside me, that now wants to make me a better artist.
• I came up with the idea in less than an hour after the competition started and I may consider of taking it further and making a commercial game from scratch with this idea.
• When doing 2D with Unity I always used a 3rd party commercial library. Since I took part in the competition I had to come with a solution by myself, so I ended up learning how to “do 2D” in Unity without external help.
• I liked the concept of a linear comics-style navigation I made.

Bad Points

• I worked only 8 hours, I didn’t use the available 48 hours. For this reason, my entry can not even be considered a “game”. Let’s consider it “an interactive short animation“.
• Due to the short amount of time worked, I didn’t manage to make all the scenes: there are 3 scenes; being 2 playable levels and an animation one. The initial plan to make the game “complete and playable” was to have 6 scenes. So we have 3 scenes that are out.
• The rocket cat was meant to be controllable, so you could kill the dragon.
• In the 8 hours I worked, I coded for only 2 hours. That means there are bugs, mostly on the messages system.
• My lack of knowledge in Unity for 2D without a 3rd party library left some bugs on the graphics, mostly due to scaling.
• The linear comics-style navigation can be confusing, since you can end up going to the wrong side.

Other than that, I had a lot of fun, and I’m feeling fulfilled for completing one of my 2011′s goals: take part of Ludum Dare

A while ago the October-Challenge was held. It went over the entire month, with the simple rule “make 1$ with a game.”

I planned to enter this game, but unfortunately the port wasn’t ready in time. So now, with a slight (and very miniscule) delay I present my iPhone-game!

Unstoppaball DX is a marble-style puzzler, in which you roll a ball (by tilting the iPhone, no less) through 30 varied levels.

Check out the trailer if you’d like to know more.

Also features a new soundtrack and ball-customization, with 36 balls available.

It’s now up on iTunes. Some say it might be the Best Game Ever. (it’s not) (it’s still fun, though )

-Matthew

What went right

Graphics

Creating graphical assets is a time-consuming task, so I immediately dropped it and only concentrated on stuff I could efficiently produce. The current style is a nice trade-off between detail and costs.

Level-Design

I started this thing from the ground up on tiles, which allowed me to make changes and updates right till the end. Having everything based on clean tiles also meant I could easily add objects, like the lamps, which effortlessly clamped into the architecture.

Intro

I /love/ the intro. This is the closest I have ever come to a cut-scene, and even now it’s completly gameplay, not a video.

The original idea had everyone dying in a scripted explosion, while the player could do nothing (but walk around). Having the player actually kill the reamaining crew (be it by accident, admittedly), would only further compel her to save the cat.

The cat

Your only companion is a cubic cat (no time to model, as mentioned above), which is aptly named Boxy. You have to feed for it to survive, but doing so will deplete your own ressources.

Title-Cards

The game starts with a cold open right in the action. The title is only seen after the first room, and then perfectly sets up the story.

My original title was ALONE. After the player would have watched his friends die / kill them, she would be ALONE. But because the name would probably be overused, I changed it to 11 DAYS. Eleven turned out to be too long, so I shortened it to 5.

I love how the title 5 DAYS becomes a chapter-card, turning into 4 DAYS, and so on. I contemplated putting the title at the end (Hot Fuzz/The Dark Knight-style), but only few people would see it then. I guess this doesn’t work in games.

The only downside of this title is that I already made a game called 5 Days in Charleroi. I was already trying furiously too get the gameplay to work, so this didn’t even occur to me . Oh well.

Timelapse

The video went alright. If you comapre it to my previous ones, you’ll notice I frown a lot in this one.

Music

Instead of composing my own background-music I was forced to try out Wolframtunes, where I found some interesting ambient-tunes. I was able to reverse-engineer those, and created a fitting soundloop in comparatively little time.

Also notice how the sounds picks up after the title, further signalling that the game has “begun”. Nice effect.

What went wrong

Initial idea

This was actually my first idea, but I classified it as “way too ambitious”. I had some others, but none of them impressed me as “stuck with a cat on mars”. So I begrudginly started, planning to either switch to a new project a few hours in, or use what I would have built in that time to make a smaller version.

I had a crisis after 8 hours, when I decided this was too big, and tried out other ideas. „Lone asteroid in space“ I actually started, when I realized switching to that would be even more work. It was quite a dilemma. I (not crying, completely manly) went back with further resolve to finish this project (in a manly way), and soldiered on.

After 32 hours everything then came together and started working, which lifted my spirits, and caused the classical game-design-high.

Gameplay

I noticed near the end that I unable to create the payoff every time. If the cat dies very early, the player will have a lot of food, thus eliminating the conflict and creating a boring game/ending. Typing this I realize I could’ve built it so that the reserves will adjust. ARGH THIS WOULD’VE BEEN PERFECT

Then there is the thing that re-playing it offers little incentive, as the gameplay already was rather un-action-y, expecially should the player die. Even a nightly checkpoint wouldn’t have worked, as resetting the player each death would reail-road them to the „desired“ ending, which is strictly against my principles.

There things stem from the initial idea, and show how much I tried to fix this issue but ultimately failed (see timelapse).

No pointer/cursor/crosshair

Here’s an important thing: We are a lot better at playing games than the average player, especially at playing our own games. It didn’t even occur to me add some sort of crosshair/targeting-thingie, as my aim was always spot on. This stuff you only realize after one day not playing it.

All in all

Although this had a very bumpy ride, I believe it was a succesful experiment. Those who actually manage to get through to the end all agree, calling it „amazing“, „brilliant“, and me a „meany“. On Kongregate this is already my second most-played game, Ludum-Dare-ratings are doing well, and I even got a review.

Play here | Entry-page

-Matthew

I wrote some thoughts about my weekend on my blog, but generally: very happy with how I managed to get to grips with Unity, and very much looking forward to using it again in future. As for the game… I hope people see where I was going with it, even if it is a little unfriendly to the player! But overall another great Ludum Dare weekend (that’s 5 now :O).

Edit: Oh yeah, the game page is over here! http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-22/?action=rate&uid=1626

Then, a screen:

This night i went to sleep at 3am, i woke at 5:30 and went to work (i start at 7am), my head hurts a lot and i feel i need more than two hours of sleep tonight. I played my game a couple times again and this is my post mortem:

The Good

A complete game: the game had everything. Start Menu, Game Intro, Actual Game, Game Ending.
Graphics: My Achille’s heel, i don’t know how, i don’t know why, but i found a graphical style and i made a couple simple animations. Achieving this gave me enough satisfaction.
Sound: I’m really happy about the game sounds. Bfxr was a good choice and this music generator completed the work.
My first Ludum Dare: Since I found out about Ludum Dare in 2009, I always wanted to participate in this competition, and this was my first entry. I really enjoyed it!

The Bad

Crap story: The story intro/ending were made in the last 3 hours, i never thought about them till the very last and i wrote some cheap texts.
The game is too short: There’s only one level, it’s kinda boring and it can be finished in less than one minute and a half.
Tools: My Unity3D and C# knowledges are low, i started toying them about a couple month ago. I got struck a lot of time trying to figure out how to progress (eg 2+ hours for jetpack physics).
Bad programming techniques: Using copy-paste between objects and spaghetti antipattern is usually a bad thing, trough i think it may be ok for fast developement. I wrote really few comments on my code, which is always a bad thing.
Timing: I had other things to do in this weekend, I stopped once in a while to eat and I slept enough during the first day. I managed to work 20-22 hours and submit my entry ten minutes before compo end, but probably that’s was only luck. Having added at least one or two level and a boss fight could have improved my game a bit.

And last but not the least, my timelapse:

Go Play | Entry-Page

-Matthew

Its got bugs and a ton of stuff didnt make it into the 48hr limit, but the time pressure was an amazing push to get something done.

I’ll continue working on it for the next day to the point im happy with it, I forced myself to submit something even though I might be alittle emberassed by it, because I said I was going to do something from scratch in 48 hours.

Participating in LD 22 is an amazing learning experience. I made my entry with unity, which i’ve been learning seriously for about a month now.

I also bit off more than I could chew by going outside my comfort zone and trying to code some complex dialogue flow to create a ‘mood’ which is something i’ve never tried before. that part alone took way more time than it should have.

Luckily, I had a test submission build, which is functional…but missing the majority of the flavour text and a proper ending. I’ll upload the source assets (sans terrain) in the morning when the rage has subsided.

Lonely Island

I’m done. This was a taxing challenge, but I am proud of what I just created. I present

5 DAYS

A game about being stranded in on Mars with barely any ressources.

Go Play | Entry-Page

-Matthew

Entry: http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-22/?action=preview&uid=2465

Made with: 
- Unity3D (C#, iTween)
- cfxr
- Audacity
- Garage Band
- Photoshop

Timelapse: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f5ItVDEzuzY

Meanwhile baby is burning up the place:

Definitely going to change the wall texture soon…

Time for some sleep… 3:19 AM.

That said, I have prepared a handful of tools to help me get gameplay content in faster tomorrow, and I’m WAY ahead compared to my LD21 effort, “Fireflies”.

LD22 Work in progress

Anyway, initial controls and camera logic is ready, you can play it (VERY SHORT DEMO).

CONTROLS:

• A, D: move Left and Right.
• Space: action.

Are you sure there is no one there?

Slow progress on the environment…

Modeled in Modo, textures with Photoshop and FilterForge, rendered in Unity