Ludum Dare 26

(It was clear that by Spring of 2013 the cracks were starting to show. Disillusionment, depression, and exhaustion were taking their toll. The real tragedy was that I had reached an envious level of functional competence in video game development, yet lacked the direction to do anything with it. Today, I cannot recall at all what this Ludum Dare entry was about. –Ed.)

POST-MORTEM

What Went Right

1. Apolicy

For 3 Ludum Dare 48 competitions in a row I’ve shunned the theme selection process, & each time my result & overall motivation to succeed have been stronger. Seeing participants puss out because they don’t like the theme always bothered me, so I stopped following all the related social networks. It seems that the ultimate solution was total non-participation in the vote.

2. Undocumented

I used to worry a lot about updates & timelapses. There’s a strong trend now to stream the development process. If that works from some developers, great. These days I’m not interested in the social aspects of game development—if ever an oxymoron there was, that’s it—& I’m less about empowering other wannabe developers. As far as I’m concerned there are too many people making videogames these days & the less the better. To that end I’ve eschewed the “talking about the process” in favor of focusing on “making the process happen”, & the results speak louder than I ever could.

What Went Wrong

1. Flawed Audio Production

I wanted to run “streamed audio” to keep compression low/quality high while reducing the download load on the player. In the end I compressed the hell out of the audio streams & cut the final build size from 25 megabytes down to 5. Still, it would have been fancy to use some of Unity’s streaming capabilities.

2. Single Mode Play

The initial design called for a “challenge mode” that timed the players & ranked them on their efficiency. I don’t really think the game lacks without it, but it would have been a nice addition that enabled a bit of replayability. Mind you my modus operandi has been “play once, don’t waste any more time than you have to” for a while now, so at least this entry jibes with that.

To me the Ludum Dare 48 compo has always been a sort of mid-term exam in a never-ending course on game development. It was one of the first public jam events I participated in when I first went independent back in September of ’10, & now with 8 in a row under my belt there’s a lot of positive retrospection to be had.

LD48 no.19 was nothing but sweat & stress. LD48 no.26 was a calm & considered process that left room for polish & testing. The improvement is palpable, & with each passing one—in addition to the terrifying amount of entries indicating the depressing growing number of developers out there—I find myself wondering why I haven’t buckled down & started to make real money with this craft.

LIVE UPDATES

0:00:05 Minimalism. That’s fine.

[Lost content: image]

0:05:43 Posted an image to the social networks. At this point I have a full working game system.

[Lost content: image]

1:03:27 Posted a second image to the social networks. By now I’m just building levels & iteratively developing.

1:22:45 Submitted with confidence an hour & 15 minutes early. This marks the first early submission.

PROJECT STATUS

2013.04.26 – 2013.04.29

Previous: VAULT
Home
Next: Ludum Dare 27