Ludum Dare 24

PLAY-THROUGH & TIME-LAPSE WITH COMMENTARY

POST-MORTEM

What Went Right

1. Apolitics

I didn’t vote, didn’t look at the themes. I assumed there was one or two about kittens in the running, but for the most part I didn’t care to check. Coupled with my recent decision to stop the majority of the social network trawling, I was in the dark about what the theme would be until the moment it was announced. I had a clean slate from which to start development. It was glorious.

2. Tools Mastery

I’ve spent the last few months really digging deep into Allegorithmic’s Substance & Autodesk’s CAT tools. Substance is a procedural texturing program that can produce life-like results using vector-based math & iteration. It’s expensive, but it’s paid for itself a few times over & I expect it to continue to do so. The final size of “EVOL” was 700kb before sound. The space saved on textures is massive, and for web-building this is a huge boon. The only downside is if your player’s graphics card isn’t up to snuff they’re not going to have a good time with your game. CAT is an auto-rigging tool within 3D Studio Max that makes animation of 3D models a breeze.

3. Simplification Process

The initial design underwent only a few iterations, & those were all prunings of features. I started from a wide enough base that by the end of the 48 hours my process looked a lot like an inverted pyramid with a functioning game at the fulcrum.

What Went Wrong

1. Shit Controls

Yes, they’re bad. They function well if your brain handles isometry or if your computer has a gamepad plugged into it. At the top tier of any development are two key components – Camera & Controls. I freely admit the controls are weak. It’s an easy enough fix, just not one I focused on before submitting my entry.

2. Shit Collision

The core feature of the game is resource gathering to upgrade abilities. I went with a combination raycast-collider system that works as intended but is frustrating as hell. Perhaps a friction fix would make it a bit easier to glom onto resource nodes, but it was overlooked in the final submit. The game works, and is “winnable”, but it is a very uncomfortable experience.

3. Unnecessary Day/Night Cycle

It looks cool, but does nothing for the game. It’s a little sad that I fell victim to this too, as it’s one of the mantras from my art development days – “looks cool is NOT a design choice”. Oh well.

LIVE UPDATES

00:00:00 The theme is EVOLUTION. I know a lot of Ludum Dare competitors have been eagerly awaiting this one, we should see a lot of good designs coming out of this compo!

00:00:52 First build posted. Basic movement and camera enabled, and minor rendering effects.

00:01:13 Second build, with improved day/night handling.

00:03:36 Third build, some minor resource-gathering handling in place. Very humble beginnings, but I can see the design unfolding before me. Time for a sleep.

00:12:20 Awake and the design still makes sense. Now to do a little scope pruning and implement a bit more of the core.

[Lost content, image: alt-text “Uniform randomization of resources.”]

00:16:00 Getting the basic random placement of resource nodes going, layer one of uniformity in.

[Lost content, image: alt-text “Little red wagon”]

00:19:47 Wrestled with CAT for a bit, then getting proper 8-way animated motion and defaulting into idle on the main character. Working now.

[Lost content, image: alt-text: “EVOLs and greens.”]

01:02:09 Another pass on the randomization of terrain objects plus some work done on UI handling of resources.

02:00:00 Completed and submitted on time. The streak continues. A rest before cleaning up the pages and recording the video-related stuff.

SCREENSHOTS

(There was a deck of dozens of screenshots stored on a Google service that no longer exists. –Ed.)

PROJECT STATUS

2012.08.24 – 2012.08.27

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