Ludum Dare 32 Post-Mortem

So I have never written a post-mortem before. The theme for LD32 was "An Unconventional Weapon". I had a few ideas and I was down to 2 major concepts and was particularly excited about the one I didn't choose. In the end, I went with an idea for a tower defense game where you can turn your enemies into towers.

Spaced

Spaced is a top-down tower defense shooter where you turn your enemies into towers. You play as a stranded astronaut lost on an alien planet with no memory. Game play consists of a top-down shooting system where you fight off waves of enemies and protect your land rover. You have an alternate special fire that you can use to kill special enemies and turn them into totems, which you can then spend to place towers. (tower defense style)

Game play

The player is the cyan dot (bottom-left). Dots with a translucent aura are towers. Other dots are baddies. The baddies are trying to get to the rover at the top of the image.

The Good

People liked my audio. It was my highest rated piece. I used a music generator and mostly SFXR,  for some more sci-fi-ish sound generation. While the music was generating I would add complexity to parts I wanted (more high/low notes) to oversee and make sure it was more towards what I wanted. It made a pretty cool atmosphere.

My second highest was innovation, so that's good. Honestly, I didn't think the idea behind my game was all that innovative, but it seems like many compers use one of the first few ideas they had. Innovation was the second highest on my last submission as well, so Innovation might actually be one of my strong suits, which would be a pretty awesome strong suit to have. :3

The Bad

I tend to focus on the bad, but the bad is just a place where you can improve.

My game was really difficult. This has been an issue for me from the dawn of time. I usually cannot get a grasp on difficulty for some reason, not sure why, but my number one complaint was that my game was hard. I let a few of my friends play-test the game and 2 of them had an easy time, while 2 of them had a hard time. I'm not really certain how to tackle this concept. Many of the LD games seem to do stuff like, make the game last until you lose, so the challenge comes in time and you are eventually over whelmed and your skill level just determines how long you last, but some submissions do seem to have alternative ways of having challenge and they work it out well.

I also believe that conveyance was a huge place where I can improve. I had originally planned to have a narrative that would occur between every mission that would help to explain some of the mechanics and bring some questions to the player that they would want to finish the next section of the story to answer, but the narrative was dropped for time reasons. I had also wanted to work on a real UI instead of the text based UI that is currently there. I think that if I had a UI, that would show which button to press anytime you have at least one tower to put down, then it would have conveyed a large piece of the games mechanics to the player. A lot of people that played, did not even understand the game's core mechanic until half way through the second level. Also, each tower had a special thing that it would do that was intended for the player to figure out, but most people just felt it was confusing. Next time I think I will add a short tutorial beforehand and not rely so heavily on something that may not get into the game in the end.

Art for the Narrative that didn't make it in.
 I wasn't even excited about this idea until day 2 when I came up with a story.

Controls where also clunky. Playing on a Xinput, I had a twin stick shooter, but you had to press RTrigger or LTrigger to fire while also moving with the left stick and aiming with the right stick. It didn't work out so well. One of the totems required you to aim with the right stick and place it with the blue 'X' button, which was very hard. I also, left out keyboard and mouse controls, so many players couldn't play it at first. I later added them in, and they proved to be much easier to use than the X-input controller. Oh, and also, placing totems on the X-Input controller was based on the color of the buttons. So the Y button (which is yellow) would place the yellow totem, a lot of people didn't get this.

Conclusion

Overall I got in the 45th percentile. Not too shabby. Last submission I got in the 59th percentile, so I cannot say I am too satisfied with myself. In this LD I went with an idea that was fairly simple, had a little innovation, but mostly, was easy to polish do to the conventions it contained. During the pre_Ludum Dare hype, I had watched the shadow keynote from the button masher bros and they said that a good submission was functional, and polished. In my early brainstorming step, I came up with about 11 ideas, and later refined it to 2 choices, one being the one I used and the other being a more creative idea that I was excited about, but not entirely sure how I would execute. So, this LD I went for functional and polished over innovative. I really think I should have trusted my personal design sense and stuck with my normal creative process. Innovative & working is, in my opinion better than functional and polished. Next LD, I think I will go with the more innovative idea, especially if it is the one that I am most excited about.  I also succeeded in my personal challenge to not make a 2D platformer. Next time however, I don't think I will put such restrictions on myself unless I really notice a pattern forming.

All-in-all it was a great LD and I learned a lot and that is what's most important. :3

You can try out my submission Here.

I just wanted to share my thoughts on some things that have been going on.

So, I regret to say that I have not worked on my Starship game in a long time :\. After careful examination I noticed that the game sort of fell apart with the engineer and them doing things required other players to mess up, but if the other players where fairly competent, then the engineer had nothing to do. I tried adding in an upgrade gun that would allow the engineer to upgrade parts in their down time, but I'm not sure overall that it adds much. My lesson that I take away from this is that I should prototype ideas first and find out what makes them fun. Adding in features for swapping ship parts, swapping ammo types, dynamically breaking parts was all excessive things that I did not need to address yet, and having tested the prototype ahead of time, may have lead me to understand whether or not these parts of the game are important.
That being said I still love the idea of asymmetrical local co-op. I think it has a huge potential. Just take a look at games like Artemis. Someday I hope to develop something like this, and I am usually looking for great ways to include local co-op in general.

Other news: I am working on a small game jam thing for funzies with a friend. Its a multiplayer mermaid fighting game where you collect as many points as possible and you can kill other players to steal some of their points. Screen shot:

I also competed in the global game jam 2015.

The theme was "what do we do now?". Our idea was to make a game that starts at the end where you have all of your equipment and you start by defeating the final boss. After that you have to go backwards through the adventure and tie up all of the loose ends that where left over from your adventure. For example, you borrowed a sword from somebody, now you have to go back and return it. I think it had the potential to be something really awesome, but because of the death of one of the people managing the event the 48 hour game jam was post-poned 24 hours and we only had 24 hours left to program what we needed. Furthermore, I ended up working with a great 3D artists named Leonard Nicolas, so we went with a 3D art style and the game's coding complexity grew. In the end we only managed to complete the starting boss fight. We had to present and in our presentation our computer's sound wasn't working. We also juuuuust finished and worked very shortly on presentation materials. After the presentation, we realized in retrospect that the idea behind the game was not present in what we actually made.

Link

Furthermore, after skimming the globalgamejam website, it looks like other people had the same idea for a game, so it was not all that original, but I showed up late and just found a group to program for.

Now I am looking at making a prototype for this idea here that I documented.

Documentation

I'm going to finish up the mermaid game first. I'm also working on a small simple game for my senior project. I'll talk more about that later.

Quick plug for this awesome game:

SHELTER

In Shelter you play a mother badger who has to take her babies to a new area while feeding and protecting them. I just finished the game and while its still fresh in my mind I wanted to say that it does a fantastic job of conveying its feeling. My one concern was that the game didn't do a great job of showing new mechanics at certain points and it's easy to lose one of your young because you didn't understand how some of the new mechanics worked at first. Anyways, the game is 10$ on steam and is worth it if you don't mind paying for a game that is fairly short. also, it comes with a bonus mode where you can nurture your young in real-time by logging on everyday to feed them and watch them grow. this game was recommended to me by some people that I showed my game design documentation to.

Update 12/14/2014

Starship Game currently 12_14_2014

Here's a view of my current version of Starship Game.
New features since last post:

• Ship Parts out the butt! - I have implemented the following ship parts (in addition to creating the general shippart system), shields, shield recharge, artillery gun, ion gun, bridge, engine. (I still need to create some more parts to really fill this ship up.
• Multiplayer - you can play it multiplayer. It can register 4 xinput controllers and, with a slight editing of characters, it can play up to 4 players. The controls also work for the inside of the ship. Meaning that you can run your character up to the bridge and start piloting the ship. or you can go to the artillery gun and start shooting, etc...
• Ship parts breaking and fixing - the players have a space wrench tool that can fix parts. Parts have a percent change to break when the ship takes damage, based on  how much damage was dealt and how much of that damage was absorbed by the shield.
• Shields up! - shields work, for both the ship and enemy ships. For enemy ships, the ion gun will deal more damage to the shields.
• New enemy basics. The new enemies have shields that are visible. There are also a few variants, such as enemies that have green shields that are only destroyed by the ion gun, and enemies with hyper armor, that is only damaged by the artillery gun. I also have to set up some more things like missiles There will be some enemies that can only be destroyed by popping their shield with a missile and then blowing them away with bullets.

Something missing...:
overall I have felt throughout the designing of this game that there is some crucial key element to the game that is not quite there. There is intended to be a lot of teamwork, and many of the mechanics are intended to supply the need for that, but I am worried that there is a certain sparkle to the game mechanics that is not present. I really have to play test to be sure, which is difficult to do since I need 4 players every time I want to do it. I have sat down and dissected the game several times and concluded a certain something:
This game is about communication and teamwork
One of the major components that this game has been about since the beginning is sitting down together with your friends and playing a game on the couch. That is one of the major reasons I wanted to include Couch Co-Op. In fact, really the game has been a tool to create such a situation. I have wanted players to be able to vest in their own character and express themselves through their play style and leveling options, and I have wanted to create a very close feeling between the team and the team being an expression of the players. One simple way this is done is by having the players name their team, and their ship, and choose team colors that each character will wear. So this is a crucial piece of the puzzle that I will be tackling.

Onwards, to space!

On Loraine:
I am still working on this project it is just low on my list of priorities. I have been trying to trouble shoot an issue where the actor won't accept any dialogue choices. To no avail so far. Looking into adding dialogue.


Ludum Dare # 31:
I entered it! ^^
This was my very first LD. The theme of this year's LD was "Entire game on one screen", so I created this game Game System. The game features an entertainment System mechanic. You are essentially playing video games on your old game system. You have three possible games to play Lava Mountain, Space Man, and Tree Runner. I won't say much more but there is a mechanic involving the different cartridges that you use to beat the game. This was my first LD, and many first time dev's (even some long time devs) don't finish their submissions withing the 48 hour time period, so I am already calling this a success for me.

I really enjoyed the competition and I plan to join again next compo.

And with the introduction of my submission to the LD comes...



Ludum Dare #31 feature!
I am going to just name a few games that I played from the competition that I thought were worth mentioning. I'm not claiming these games are good, just that they were unique or significant in some way.

Please note that in the Ludum Dare (pronounced Loo-dumb Dar-ray) there is the 48 hour compo(Left) where there is one developer and all assets must be created within the competition time-frame, and there is the Game Jam(Right) with as many developers as you wish, a 72 hour period, and you may use assets created from before the competition time-frame. Okay, now that that's clear, here we go!

Owls Ever After - Jam - 20 mins gameplay

A cute game about owls. You can view this owl family through out the Christmases of their lives, and uncover secrets about their past to find out how things have gone for them through out the years. Very cute.




WASD - compo - 15 - 20 mins gameplay
A very simple game where you play as a blip on a screen moving through a maze. As you move through the maze the path around you becomes visible. The developer has some very humorous text that you uncover and plays a lot with the player's expectations this entry is amazing to me because the developer was able to do so much with a simple game where your only interaction is moving.




CoinSlot - Jam - 5-10 mins gameplay
This game is more neat then fun. Essentially, if you've ever seen one of those movies where somebody puts a coin into a coinslot and then a Rube Goldberg of events happen inside with the coin, this is a game about that. You have to build a Rube Goldberg for the coin. Afterwards, you can upload your Rube Goldberg, and it is placed with all of the other Rube Goldbergs. At the link you can actually watch everybody's Rube Goldbergs together. It takes forever to load though the image of everyone's Rube Goldberg. It'll even slow down your internet if it's in another tab.

Orion - compo - 5 mins gameplay

This game is very short. It's essentially a shuttle launch simulator. There is not much you can do working by yourself in 48 hours. I really appreciate this game for the mood it creates within the development time limit. If you've ever wanted to simulate a shuttle launch from the cockpit, I recommend you give this a shot.




Leaving - Jam - 30 mins gameplay (some people said a lot less)
Leaving is an interesting game because it is fun, and has nice art. It also seems to make a statement on business. In the beginning of this game, you mine rocks with your hammer. Once you have enough money though, you start paying the villagers to dig for you. Eventually you can pay villagers to spread propaganda to each other, and abuse that propaganda to get the villagers to buy dumb things from you for outrageous prices. You even convince one villager to sell their house to you, by means of propaganda, all in an attempt to rebuild your spaceship and escape the crazy one screen planet you've landed on. So, I like this game because it's fun and it has real world statements, which is really hard to fit into a 72 hour dev cycle.

Labyrinthia - compo - 20 mins gameplay

This game I believe is probably gonna run for the top position for this competition. The game features an interesting mechanic. You are in a very dark maze like building and the structure of the building moves around when you turn your not looking. It plays with your senses and has a very deep mood of horror and confusion. At some points you just have to trust that the game will take care of you, which gives a feeling of unease until you verify to yourself that something will work. Also, multiple endings...


Lots of great entries into the Ludum Dare this Competition. I was very excited to enter for the first time, and I was amazed at how much content I was able to complete in the time set before me, including the 7.5 hours I spent working at my job. This competition has charged me to delve deeper.

Thank you all for reading my article! Feedback and other comments are really nice! I hope to talk to you all again soon!
-Catwheel

10/1/2014

Update!

10/1/2014 version

Starship:
Here's my Starship game as is. I have not been able to get myself to sit down much. between this, school, work, Loraine, and helping someone with a script on Skyrim Nexus I have been pretty busy. Here's a list of new features since last update:

• Ship parts at the bottom are now stored in an Array for referencing and place themselves on a function call. This also means it's pretty easy to add stat adjustments to the ship parts and then iterate through them.
• You can also now run around inside the ship (bottom half of the screen)
• Sound effects are in the game now, including a free sci-fi music track I found online. I'll try to link the sci-fi soundtrack later. The unity assets store is down atm.
• Enemy ships can shoot bullets. Bullets impacting the player ship on the top screen cause the ship to shake on the bottom screen and play a good classic star trek ship impact sound (not the literal sound but something like it.)

I'm really hoping to flesh out some more visuals. I am sure drawing the races should be fun to see. However, I think that getting the core mechanics and making a single test level should prove to be a lot more productive.

Loraine:
I Finally got all the models of Loraine set up to the newest version. I have been sent a mondo file of VA lines which represent a lot of possible quest ideas. I also have figured out how to fix a bug that has been an issue since it's first release. I'm hoping to fix another bug but it will need testing. Additionally, I am helping out another modder on the Nexus with scripts and he told me he'd be willing to help me with any textures I want. I'm considering using that for some Loraine content to make some cool looking stuff.

Other stuff:
If you haven't checked out Ludum Dare, you should. It is a contest that is held twice a year. They give you a prompt and you have 48 hours to make a small game based on it. You also have to create all of your assets yourself and post the source in the end. Alternatively, you can work with other gam devs, and you recieve more time. There are tons of free games on there. I particularly recommend:

(Top-Left) Hop, (Bottom-Right) Slide

HopSlide: which is a game that has two executable files that you load up. The two files create two windows and the objective of the game is just to collect 6 items. However to get these items you have to figure out how the two executables(windows) are connected.





Driver's License: This is a game where you play as Buff guy who has just crashed his car on a deserted island. The island has a few items on it, and you can craft new objects by throwing two items together in the air. You can also throw items into the sea and attach notes to them. They will then go out to sea and to someone else's island. The more items you throw in the sea, the more you will receive.



SuperDimensional: The last contest's winner and it's easy to see why. In this game there are multiple worlds all connected (going with this contest's theme of "Connected Worlds") In the basic world everything is a blue hue and there is a rock rolling to the right slowly. But there are rifts in the world, and by using your mouse you can make a rift cover the ball and cross it into, say the second dimension, which is a green hue of an underwater world which in my mind seems apocolyptic. In the underwater world, the Rock ball is a squid which moves slowly to the right and also upwards. So to jump a gap you can let the rock roll towards the edge and then cross the world into the underwater world so that the ball becomes a squid and floats up until it cross the gap in the blue world, where you can switch back to a rock. You really have to play it to understand.

Twitch: I have been considering doing twitch channels of indie games and small unity games. This would let people have the chance to check out a bunch of games while sitting back and eating chips, and let game developers get a chance to have their games seen. It also gives me a chance to use Facerig, which I so dearly want to use.

Currently playing: Starbound, The book of Unwritten Tales, Killing Floor

9/11/2014

Hi Everyone!
I've been cooking up a new game. It is the Starship game. I finally decided to start going for it and it's been a blast. I keep thinking about it and what to work on next, it's exciting. Here is what I have so far

     It's hard to tell from the picture, but I've got the basic starship up and running with controls. I've done a ton of scripting, I'm already at the point where you can aim the ship's turrets using the two control sticks and fire them with the R and L bumper, I'm talking xbox controller here. You can also drive the ship around using the D-pad. The controls set up is just for debugging and making sure things feel fun to do. You can see in this image that there is a little yellow rectangle near the middle. That is an enemy ship for debugging purposes. I'm hoping to make it really fun for each player in the game. I intend to make the artillery have some really fast shots and just be able to fling out bullets like crazy. I also want to include some really good sound effects to make the shooting feel just right.

     I also have the idea of having some ships that have a super shield which will be a green shield covering them instead of blue. This shield can only be damaged by the ion gun. This gives the ion gunner some importance in some situations. You'll still be able to fight most things your self pretty easily though, but occasionally you'll run into a green shielded guy whom cannot be harmed until his shield is taken down by the ion gunner. There will also be something similar for the artillery gunner with a ship that cannot be harmed except by the artillery shots. This will be represented by a special armor pattern that is a dark gray but has some red cracks on it (red for the artillery gun).

Lastly: Rhowington over at SkyrimNexus has informed me that his Parkinson's has gotten so bad that he cannot work with the creation kit anymore. It's very sad news because I had just messaged him back to say "hey" because I was getting to missing Skyrim modding. He asked me to take over for the mod we worked on. I said I would and then he contacted a moderator to transfer me to being mod owner. I logged on and I got a big "Congratulations! You now have over 1,000 downloads on your mods! You are now a recognized modder! Here's a bunch of special features for you!" I was shocked by that. Partly because I worked for about 100 hours on my other mod and only got 200ish downloaders, and here I had put in maybe 30 hours to fix together some quest stuff and dialogue things and I was now recognized as a modder. The following day or so, Rhowington sent me some files to put up and I just threw them up on the site waiting to hear from him what was on them. He eventually told me but before I could post about it somebody had already asked what was on them. I was utterly flattered at this point. Just to hear that someone cared enough about the mod to be curious what was in the update within a few hours. I eventually posted the update information and contacted SeRidicaLup and asked her what kind of complaints she's heard. hearing complaints about the quest markers I set out and fixed them within a few hours and asked Rhowington how to set up the files for UNP. I was ecstatic to be working on a mod that people noticed, but then l hadn't heard back from Rhowington. SeRidicaLup said last time she talked to him it sounded like he was saying goodbye. Its strange. I've never really had to deal with death like this (not that I know he's dead at this moment), but this is a person I talked to for a long time and worked with, it's weird. my grand parents have died and I went to their funerals, but it wasn't like this. This is something personnel because this is someone I worked with. I'd like to care for everyone I touch in my life but I wasn't prepared for this.

Anyways, sorry to bring you all on a downer on the end there. I'm hoping to update weekly now. I also have a twitter which I will post a link to. I'm going to try to do some updates on my Twitter daily or maybe bi-daily. Everybody stay cool!
Twitter: https://twitter.com/TheRealCatwheel

8/16/2014

So, just an update. Unfortunately not much has been going on with me. I've got this client project that I've been slaving away on for a long time. It's got me overwhelmed and anxious as I did not realize it would involve graphics programming and to such an intense depth. I have been reading all over the place about direct3d9 and general graphics programming information. Gah! I'm also working with a deadline and I've been hitting brick walls since the beginning.
Anyways, if you have any interest in graphics programming or how it works, I'd recommend you check out this article I found on Reddit/gamedev here

It's a lot of information and the guy who wrote it is an artist whom spent 2 months reading on the subject of draw calls which is closely entwined with graphics programming concepts. Mostly around the hardware level. However the guy who wrote it is an artist and has writen it in an easy to understand format with animations to help.

Anyways, I have found a big desire to create my Starship game. Thinking about working on it the same amount that I have put into this client project (About 30 hrs a week. On top of my part time job at Starbucks.) But man, I really need to get this graphics programming job done! I had no idea when I started that the subject would be involved, or that it was so in-depth. It is always surprising to me to think that I can do something simple, like make a copy of the screen, and then find out that its another new can of worms to do that. On top of that, I learned C++ for this project. I just learned it about two weeks ago and I am using it, and further more, having to discover a pipeline, and a whole new conceptual subset of programming. This is also my first client, so I have no frame of reference on whether this is normal or I have gotten myself into a mess, or this is just a project that is way beyond the scope of the place I am at right now. I am gonna tell my client that I need someone with more experience with graphics programming to work with on the project. Not sure if it is normal practice to do something like this or not.

So yeah that's what's going on with me right now. I thought I would write a new update. I hear that people like to know the developers and feel like their human so I figured I'd let a bit of my problems show through. I'm really hoping to get back to game development. On the Save the animals project, we just got a committed artist to work on it with us. I'm hoping things will get rolling there, but I am also afraid that with this current project, I will have trouble keeping up. Man I haven't really had a day off in a while. Alright well, stay cool peeps!

P.S. wanted to show two games:
One is an indie game that's becoming more popular called "Five Nights at Freddy's" In this game you work as a security guard at a place that is like Chuck'e Cheese, but all the animatronics come alive at night and try to stuff you inside them. The game is a mixture of Horror and resource management. You can check out the demo Here

The other game is one my friend told me about called We Need To Go Deeper. It's is very similar to my Starship game idea, in that you are multiple players working together to pilot something. I thought it was interesting. The game has been Greenlit, and the videos on the Greenlight page are pretty self explanatory if you want to know more. Although I think my game is more like Space Team in it's communication based teamwork, but anyways.

I hope to talk to you all soon! Stay cool :3

Update 7/19/2014 also Elemental Tetrahedral

Update!
So!

I've gotten a lot of progress done on Save The Animals! I talked to Dave and it seems to be what he needed. We've have two sessions where we sit down and get work done. to top that off, I have imported animations, and we are looking at sound effects for the animals.

Yay!

In other news! I have talked to my friend Dale about his project. It sounds cool but all together too far out for something I want to work on. I'm sure I'll end up working on it anyways cuz I love games but that's further down the road.(if at all) He's going to introduce me to a friend of his who is working on some sort of Occulus rift project. I won't say more as I am not signed on to either project so I can't really give anything away, but if I do get on one of the projects I will be sure to talk about the issues involved and any interesting revelations that I hear.

Now then I wanted to talk about something interesting I read from the book The art of Game Design: A book of lenses. This is about the elemental tetrahedral of game design. It says that there are four basic elements to just about any game and they are: Mechanics, Asthetics, Story and Technology. The latter one is the least obvious. It refers to the technology you use to interact with the game. For example, a controller or a joystick or a mouse or even a rollerball such as at an arcade machine.

These elements are crucial to any and every game. You can be very good at one and bomb another one. However, typically, on a team of developers, you don't need to be good at all of them, because it is likely that one of the other developers is good at one of the other ones. Unfortunately, as a indie game dev I kind of need to be good at all of them. Being one of the only two people on a team means I need my bases covered. Not complaining just saying that it requires a wide field of understanding to do indie game development.

more on the elements:

Mechanics: These refer to game mechanics. Such as currency systems, and character skills, or just general gameplay mechanics. These are crucial to a game that it has good game mechanics or the game will feel boring.

Aesthetics: These refer to visual aesthetics as well as audio. It also refers to aesthetics both in game and out of game (Think box art, or art on the side of the arcade machine). Aesthetics are important for a lot of reasons. It gives pleasing visual appeal. Some players will want to play through a level, even if its not so interesting, just to see a cinematic or because they like the look of their character. Think of the last time you had a choice between characters or gear and you made a decision because you liked the way some thing looked! Some people will even buy a crappy game because it looks nice!

Story: This should seem obvious, but its importance may not. Story is a great way to give meaning to pixels. It's also one of the best ways to give a game a sense of progression. Rather than just beating level after level, each level is actually a part of a story and you are going along through this story, one level at a time. This is a great element!

Technology: Technology can cause all sorts of restraints on processing speed, or definition of visuals, memory size, etc. It also can create a tactile sense of game interaction. A game where your a ball that rolls around on a level feels very different when you are playing that game with a rollerball. papers please is played on mouse and keyboard (mostly mouse) and moving the mouse around, gives you a sense of moving papers around on your desk. This tactile sense end of the technology element falls almost simultaneously into the Aesthetics element.

These elements are greatly useful for dividing your game design up mentally, and ensuring that each element feeds well into each other element, and to think about what parts of the game you have designed for each of the elements to ensure none are lacking!

Awesome. Keep gaming my peeps!