I spent the day “working” on my warm-up MiniLD32.  I have the general design done, it’s a sort of gopher smash on the head game, except you are on a float throwing beads and doubloons at people in the crowd instead on hitting them on the head.  I was going to use Orthello2D with Unity but after some hair pulling figure out it hasn’t been update to 3.5.  Then, I started figuring out how 2D Toolkit worked, but it dawned on me an hour or so in that I couldn’t use that in a Ludum Dare because I can’t share all the code.  So, then I started floundering around trying to get some basic things working a la from scratch.  After Google-ing some problem I ended up watching 3 hours of YouTube Unity tutorials.  So, a most successful warm-up so far, as long as you think of warm-ups as making all the mistakes you can’t afford to during the actual Ludum Dare.  I’m headed to bed now, but I could still have something playable by the end of the day tomorrow, stress on the could.

Ludum Dare 22:

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!

Thanks all who voted and competed along with me! It was fun and exciting to finally join Ludum Dare, and I can’t wait to join again for the 10 year anniversary!

Once again, I’m going to honest (and critical) and try to make this mega-post interesting!

PLAY THE GAME HERE

My goals for Ludum Dare 22

• Before the competition started, I had some goals in mind that I wanted to make.

1. I wanted to make sure “Fun” was the best category, so that people could replay the game, and have a good time playing.
2. I wanted the gameplay to be smooth and the animations smoother.
3. I wanted to beat Notch in at least one category (knowing how hard that would be).

What software I used

• Unity 3d Game Engine
• Blender 3D Modeling Software
• Pixlr Photo Editor
• Cfxr Sound Generator
• Unitron Script Editor
• Garageband Music Creator
• Text Edit Text Editor

How I made the game

• I quickly had come up with an idea for each of the most likely themes before LD22 started. My theme for “Alone” was a game where you would be sometimes alone, and then all of a sudden, you would be crowded with people.
• After the theme was announced, I decided that the game would be first person (the easiest of all the persons) and that you would have to fight your way through endless hordes of cubes (the easiest of default shapes). You could only see the cubes when your glasses were on, but if you weren’t in a shaded zone when your glasses were on, you’d start burning. This was a way to keep the player moving, and a way to make them constantly nervous.
• I worked on the player controls and LockCursor, etc. But the gameplay does not complete a game. I needed an enemy. One that would appear only if your glasses were on.
• I whipped up a cube model and texture and soon came up with this:

• Whoo Hoo! Now I have a cube!
• Next I worked on making the cube look at the player, and then having it disappear when the players “glasses” (A semi-transparent plane) were off.
• By now my Unity Scene looked like this:

• Soon I got Health implemented, and then it started to look like a Test level.
• I kept at it, knowing it would soon look like a game.
• The cube could soon move towards the player, and deal damage at close range.
• The first “Shaded Zone” was created, (using a Trigger) and the player would not take damage while inside it.
• I worked on making the zone a little prettier, and expanding the floor plane. I added a skybox, and changed the ambient light to near black.

• All along I had been slightly working on a music track, but now I decided I needed to finish it.

• The level was extended, the cube had a spawn code and could replicate itself, and the textures for walls and the floor was created in Pixlr.
• I created a variety of sound effects in CFXR like jumping and enemy death noises (my favorite).
• I worked on making an in-game tutorial, by timing when the music starts with the same time that it tells you that there is no one there.
• The menu was easy, all I had to do was come up with a name and choose the font, and soon my game looked legit. (Sorry for the lack of photos here)
• I asked my friend if he could play a test version on his computer (a windows) and I’m glad he did. The font I chose was bugging out on his computer, so I changed it to something else, and it worked fine.
• Now I knew my game was compatible on Windows AND Mac

• I created another music track for the menu, a helicopter to go to as the goal, and a stats screen so you could try to beat your own score.

Rating Other People’s Work

• I specifically rated the games that had the fewest ratings and tried to give most of them a fair, solid score.
• Mostly I gave 3.0s when I thought something was average.
• For a few people that put little effort into it, I had to give some 1.0s.
• I was sad that Notch had not really implemented the theme and pretty much made a different version of Minecraft. (Most likely this was just because he wanted to, or he felt like it.)

How people rated my game

• I can thank my friends, family, and Ludum Dare community for playing the game and enjoying it, especially DontBeNoobish‘s Gameplay Footage:

• I was proud with how my game turned out compared to most of the other entries.
• People mostly liked the audio and innovation of the game, but there were a few things I could’ve made better (More enemies, options, etc)

The Results!

• Coolness – 52% Bronze medal | At first I thought that the bronze medal meant third place, but then I realized Coolness didn’t have the same rating system. Oh well, it was still good to see that my playing of all those low effort games went to good use!
• # 40 Community – 3.55 | Wow! Community? I didn’t realize I was that popular! I guess this rating makes sense because of all the excited posts I made with links to this game. I did a LOT outside of the game (Time-lapse, post mortem, gameplay video, tips)
• # 108 Innovation – 3.20 | Good, people liked my idea of the sunglasses and whatnot!
• # 113 Mood – 3.20 | I think the music accomplished the overall feel of the game.
• # 118 Audio – 3.00 | Once again, the music, but also the enemy death noises made this count.
• # 113 Theme – 3.33 | Well, you are sometimes alone…
• # 202 Humor – 2.29 | I wasn’t even going for this (other than the ReadMe) so I have no clue how it ended up higher than overall.
• # 323 Graphics – 2.67 | Although mine was one of the few 3D first person games, I guess people didn’t really like the low effort GUI and enemy textures.
• # 435 Overall – 2.50 | Oh no! Overall score seemed like an important one…
• # 487 Fun – 2.06 | Really? This was the category I was focusing on, but yet it got a 2.06! Yes, I guess I did better than almost half of everyone else, and I’m not complaining, but this ended up at the bottom of the list, when I had worked for it to be the top.

Comparison To Notch

• My goal was to beat Notch in at least one category, and it turns out that was too easy:

• I ended up beating Notch in 7 different categories!
• A comment on the community rating: Last LD, Notch won third place (if I recall correctly) in the community category, but now he received a #49! And I received a #40! So after all the years Notch has spent on Ludum Dare and Minecraft, and the entire fan-base he collected from the Top Computer Game Of 2011, I was able to receive a better score than him from 3 weeks of posting on Ludum Dare!

I send out a huge thank you to all who rated my game (yes, even those of you that got me that horrible “Fun” score) and hope to join again for LD 23! Please remember Rob Productions again for next Ludum Dare, and you can expect a post-compo version coming in time!

Links:

TIPS ON MAKING A UNITY GAME

POST MORTEM

TIMELAPSE

THE GAME AGAIN

Eyes of the Exorcist was made as the first collaborative effort
between six strangers from who met through the San Diego Game
Developer’s Meet-up Group. The team consisted of 3 programmers, two 3D
artist, and one 2D artist/musician. We spent the full 72 hours of the
Jam in the living room of one of our member’s home. On a whole it was
an incredibly fun learning experience.

What went Right:
* The Location – Caryn and her family were gracious enough to let 5
strangers take over their living room for the weekend. Sharing ideas,
sketches, and code face to face was far more productive than a more
technology based solution.
* Concept Voting – Once the theme was announced we brainstormed for a
while but had not reached a consensus. We agreed that main proponent
of each idea would do a final pitch, then we would vote on all the
ideas. Voting was handled by anonymous paper ballet. Each participant
wrote the numbers 1-8 next to each of the eight ideas. Eight indicated
their favorite idea and one was the least favorite. Each idea’s ballet
score was added up, and we picked the one with the highest cumulative
value. This process allowed all of us to air our ideas, and choose one
that we could agree on.
* Team Energy – Working face to face and having other people depend on
your output brought about a tremendous energy among the group. Two of
us had participated in prior Ludum Dare’s as individuals. We both had
far more energy and drive working as a team than our individual
experience.
* Using Unity – We used Unity for game development. We were able to
take advantage of the input, GUI, character controller, particle
system, and camera components that unity provides. This saved us a
great deal of time not making basic game control objects.
* Art Asset Naming Convention – Despite using Unity for our project
our artists used the Unreal Engine’s naming convention to organize the
art assets. This naming convention allowed us to keep track of who was
working on what, and what stage it was at.
* Division of Labor – Since our team was comprised of programming and
art specialists the programmers could focus on the scripts while the
artists could focus on the art.
* Food – Prior to the start of Ludum Dare the team acquired a large
quantity of sushi, sticky rice, tea, coffee, and chocolate covered
banana chips. We were able to graze off this bounty over the course of
the contest and only had to go out for food three times.

What went Wrong:
* Ambition – When we selected our initial concept we voted on the idea
that we felt would be the most fun game, not what we could complete in
the time limit. This concept involved a spooky ghost town, two
different vision modes, multiple attacks, power ups, inventory items
and a leveling system. In retrospect this was way too much for a Ludum
Dare.
* Lack of Documentation – We kept verbal and mental track of what
features we wanted to implement and in what order. As development
progressed new features were added to the list, but there was no clear
indication as to which features were vital to the build and which were
nice add-ons.
* Tool Familiarization – Since this was our first collaborative
project the artists and programmers were not familiar with each
other’s tools. As such we spent valuable contest time figuring out how
to get art assets into the game. Also we could not utilize the
artist’s time to do level design due to their unfamiliarity with the
unity editor. These things should have been resolved prior to the
start of the event.
* Lack of Leadership – We did not have one person in over all control
of the project, and instead spent a lot of time debating amongst
ourselves over the proper course of action. Also we were unable to
incorporate some of the art assets since the programmers were too
focused on programming tasks.
* Lack of mile stones – We had an idea of what we wanted the end
result of our project to be and when it had to be done. We did not set
time limits on the intermediary steps to get to that final goal. There
were two attempts to have working builds by a certain hour, however we let
both those deadlines slip trying to get it to work perfectly instead of
Kludging together something so we could move on.
* Wasted time on Kitty – One of our team members (Wilson) was insistent on
getting kitty bonus points and wasted valuable time creating scripts
for an NPC cat that did not do much for the end game experience. This
feature was cut from the contest build and all that time was wasted.

Conclusion:
Ludum Dare Game Jam was an incredibly fun learning experience. Working
as a team kept us incredibly motivated. Sadly we bit off more than we
could crew and the end result suffered for it. We now have a better
idea of each other’s capabilities and what can be accomplished in 72
hours.

We are happy to announce that our little LD 22 game - Alone in the Crane – was published to Android Market and App Store!
So now you can try:
- Android version
- iOS version (for iPhone, iPod and iPad)
- Windows version
- Mac version
and Online version

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!

This is a very short post mortem about my entry Loot Alone.

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.

I’m going to be honest (and critical) with you on this one, and some of you may hate me for writing this, but it is the truth (of what I mostly saw with Unity Games for LD22), and it should help everyone next time around. I’m going to make it simple with a list:

What You Should Avoid

• Texture-less, poorly lighted levels
• Ambient light being left at the default grey
• Poor usage of physics (ex: the player being the only physic object in the game)
• The default player movement setup (With the player having extreme jumping abilities and almost no gravity)
• Menu-less, single scene, test games
• Places to fall out of the world
• A default sky-box or default light blue background
• Lag
• 3D text with the default font
• Support for only 1 resolution

Little Things Some Games Have That Make ALL The Difference (AKA: What you should have)

• Lock Cursor and Pause capabilities
• Animations on items in hand
• Ragdoll physics or physics objects
• Sprinting
• Crouching
• Multiple Items to hold
• A menu
• Sound
• Options (Ex: mouse sensitivity, quality settings (to remove lag), fog distance, clipping distance, etc)
• In-game Instructions
• A good GUI (Displays health, ammo, instructions, etc) Not the default GUI skin
• Complete usage of Player Settings (Company name, logo, game name, app name, resolutions, config dialog banner, etc)

I could go on and on with this list, but you get the idea. Basically the main thing to worry about is Making it an actual game and not a “Test”. I recommend you don’t send in your “Test” to a Ludum Dare competition, unless you want to get this endless list again by play testers…

When I did LD22 I pretty much tried to focus on all the little things that made it look like a good game. Although while I’m being extremely critical about games, I have to say my entry Isolated Assault did not follow all these lists… but I got the important ones out of the way (Lock Cursor, pause, animations, physics, many resolutions support, menu, instructions………. just play the game. )

But I never said you have to follow the list exactly, just keep it in mind!

Stay critical, and I hope all of you (Just a general statement. I noticed a few Unity games stood out that actually had these) actually keep in mind the little things next time around!

Hi there,

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

So I made an ego-adventure-story-cat-experiment called 5 DAYS. Allow me to recap.

 

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

My entry for LD22 (ISOLATED ASSAULT) was somewhat of a wave survival game, getting harder with each death, until you reach the goal, the escape chopper.

I had a lot of fun, and, after being my first time, I will most definitely do this again.

Here’s the “Proper” Post-Mortem:

How I Spent My Time

Timelapse here if you want to take a look.

Basically I came up with an idea while I was making the game. I had already pretty decided it would be first person. And also I had pretty much decided the enemies would be cubes. (Just to make it easier on myself)

I didn’t particularly like the theme, alone, but it was better than kittens.

Mainly I worked on getting the character movement to be as smooth as possible, that’s where most people messed up, to make the game fun and re-playable. I tried to make the sword animations as hectic as possible, just to make it look a little more stylish. I made the wall and floor textures 8 bit and repeatable. I made the music overdone, with a lot of instruments (using garageband) and very complicated. I did this because I remembered all those 2d games with catchy music but terrible graphics.

I implemented the theme by having enemies appear if you put on sunglasses, but disappear if you take them off. The catch was that in the sunlight, without sunglasses, you burned. So you had to find shaded “safe” areas to take off your sunglasses and regenerate health, while the enemies disappeared.

The sound effects were done in CFXR (I especially like the enemy death noises). The language I used was Javascript. The game engine was Unity Indie. The 3d modeling software was Blender. This cannot get any simpler.

I chose these programs because, well, they were free, and also because they’re proper towards making an indie game.

What I Learned

• The smoother the gameplay and character movement, the better
• Sound is a very important part of game development
• Don’t over-complicate things, keep your main code in as few scripts as possible
• Particle effects make the game seem more complete

What Went Right

• The music was mostly catchy and was repeatable
• The gameplay was smooth and the sword attacks blended together well
• The implementation to the theme (being alone, only when your glasses are on)
• The sound design was okay, especially with the enemy deaths

What Went Wrong

• There should have been more enemies
• The enemies should have been easier to fight
• There should have been more things blocking your path
• There should have been better GUI controls and being able to change the mouse sensitivity
• The level design should have been worked on better
• The game should have been longer

All in all, I think I did an okay job, maybe not the best, but it was fun enough to please my friends, and good considering the amount of time I had. (Less then 48 hours, more like 30, I had to go to some places)

Try it out here.

I made a video of SOLILOQUY, especially for Linux users which can’t use the Unity3D webplayer plugin.

(This post mortem can also be found on our own blog!)

SOLILOQY – my LD compo game – you can play it and rate it!

Ludum Dare 22 was somehow pretty exhausting for me, and kind of depressing. I don’t exactly know why, but I think that multiple factors brought in.

The weekend before the compo I made a “warm-up game”, even though I planned to do it long before PoV announced this kind of thing. I just wanted to make a game in 48 hours in order to help a friend (a 3D artist), who needed a programmer for his university project. The programming part wasn’t wasting, but the fact that the game didn’t get finished at this weekend (mostly because of my friend ) left feelings of “incompleteness” inside me, which I hate.

Another thing: I didn’t like the theme “Alone”, and I still don’t think it was the best or even a good theme of the ones in the final voting round. But, as I always have to live up to my own standards I wanted to follow the theme AND make a good game. And this often leads to a status-quo – as long as I don’t have the right ideas I won’t start, and as long as I don’t start I won’t have the right ideas. Or something like that. My mind was blocked and I did other things, like playing Skyrim and chatting on IRC (not in #ludumdare, though, that place was CROWDED). Later, I started Unity3D and tried to play out another idea I had days before, about some time manipulation gameplay. It wasn’t feasible to do it in Unity3D, but due to the fact I did something concrete (game with 3D environment and FPS controls) I could develop another idea in my brain, which became the concept of the final SOLILOQUY.

I still think the best part of my game is this name! I thought of it before I thought of the gameplay (but it didn’t give me any directions,), and I liked it so much, I wanted to use it in any case. I’m quite happy nobody else named his/her game the same, too.

Even though I have some experience by participating at Ludum Dare before, I still don’t really know how to cut back optimally. The concept of SOLILOQUY demands levels, and levels demand content and art and story and design and choosing colours and making 3D models … but I knew this would be hard for me, as it was when I made my Ludum Dare 20 game, “TRI“. So I decided to do NO textures this time, and it didn’t hurt much (on the game’s side), but the benefits weren’t that great either. I mainly put the levels together in Unity3D instead of 3dsmax (in contrast to TRI), but this didn’t help me much, either. Altogether I have six levels now, where I really wanted ten, but at least seven.
The levels don’t look that bad (abstract style for the win), even though I chose the colours quite randomly. On the other side, what I don’t like much, the levels are all tutorial missions only. You just jump around in the first two, learn using your souls in the levels after that, press some buttons and work together with yourself. After this, the real levels should come, but I didn’t have time to do any more content.

I finished the last level three hours before the deadline, and I couldn’t do any more creative stuff. I especially failed in doing sounds or anything like music, unfortunately. I thought about using inudge.net again, but it would sound like my other two Ludum Dare games, so I dropped that idea. At least this frustration encourages me to actually learn how to make simple songs with real tools. (Wish me luck.)
The reason why I couldn’t do more creative work: This time, Unity3D was my enemy. Sometimes I really had to fight the engine, mostly when it came to the text you see in the game (story & hints) – Unity’s GUI system still is awkward to look at, and it has bad effects on the performance. So I used someone’s code which displays bitmap fonts via SpriteManager (the original one), but it didn’t work out of the box with all my bitmap font generator tools (I decided to use “TWL Theme editor”). After those problems were resolved, at the very end of the process, suddenly my white text became gray in the webplayer version. Argh! I needed nearly an hour to find out why that happened – a plane with alpha (the dark overlay) had the same distance to the camera as the text, and somehow the editor sorted it differently than the webplayer. Whyever that is.

After the mixed (or even bad) feelings I had about my own game, I’m really relieved that people actually liked it! The current feedback is mainly positive, and some things that were criticized are fixed in a post-compo version (on Kongregate, for more attention)! Other things, like the jumping height / range being too crass, are somewhat subjective and unfortunately can’t be changed without rearranging some of the levels.
Of course, many people complain about the brain-hurting aspect of the game (gameplay and visuals alike), but that was expected. I could have done the double-soul mechanic with just a picture-in-picture style or something like that, but then the game would lose its uniqueness pretty fast IMHO. Also, as soon as dogbomb does his “I play your game drunk!” video, the whole game visuals will make much more sense, haha.

BTW, if you have a look at the source you will need Unity3D. The indie version should suffice for just reading the C# files and so on, but you need Unity Pro (or its 30 day test version) in order to actually start the game, because I used Render To Texture. Sorry!

Thanks for reading this wall of text, and don’t forget to PLAY THE DARN THING!

First, link to this game:
http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-22/?action=rate&uid=7264

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:

Hey guys,
So here’s a video of me frowning and cursing at my computer for two days, while drinking 5 pots of tea and occasionally working on a game. Enjoy

 

Go Play | Entry-Page

-Matthew

Damned Unity first bluescreened my laptop, and then hung while trying to make last-minute text tweaks. After the second reboot, I found that the hand-sculpted terrain data had vanished. I am NOT BEST PLEASED.

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.

Hi people,

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

I planned to make 5 levels, but I couldn’t continue working on the game, so here it is with 3 levels and half of the planned story. It is playable with a surprise on the end.

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

Bit of a late start to day 2, courtesy of an unexpected excursion to the pub last night.

So, this game thing then. Well, Alone was the theme I was _really_ hoping wouldn’t win, because I couldn’t think of a damn thing to do with it, but eventually I came up with something.

Borrowing somewhat heavily from Spectrum classic Ant Attack, you play a lonely robot whose only friend, an adorable kitten, has been lost in an ancient city populated by hostile killdroids.

So far I’ve got a fairly acceptable random map generator and a controllable player character wandering the empty ruins.

First order of business for today then is to put some game in there. Knock up a couple of evil looking killdroid models and a fluffy kitten and get them in there, then I can start looking at adding some general polish, like sound, music, title screen and win/lose sequences.

*Looks at clock* Crap! I’d better get busy!

 

Quick update…I’m succumbing to the temptation to spend the weekend tarting up a non-game. Need gameplay, stat!

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”.

You may notice the character looks a bit like the one in Fireflies. That’s because blobby cartoon figures are really quick to model. He’s a bit more egg-shaped than the last one though.

Day 1 feels like it’s already over, but I have a few more hours. I wasn’t very productive, because I don’t like the theme and it didn’t inspire me. But at least I have some kind of idea now, and did a first test:

You play two souls at the same time which have to find each other by synchronizing. You can play the first test here, it’s Unity3D.

 

Eating cheap spaghetti right now. FYI.