League of Ultranormal Detectives by Ghuyajil
I've received many comments asking how I managed to pull this off alone in 48 hours; so I decided to do a stream, showing how I did it, on Sunday, November 1st, which you can watch here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IxQHscMHGPQ
The world is filled with unexplained phenomena that can be very scary... But whenever someone has trouble with strange, unexplained things happening, they can always call the LUD, the League of Ultranormal Detectives, an elite organization of skilled investigators around the globe. They carry photo cameras with special film, capable of capturing Ultranormal Energy at night: they take photos of things that can't be seen or touched. Even time itself has an effect: echoes of past events can radiate Ultranormal Energy.
You're an Ultranormal Detective, asked to look into a mysterious threat to a wealthy man living in a mansion in the forest. Take up your camera and venture into the dark night to find clues, and solve the mystery in the daytime, in your studio where you develop the photos and link the discoveries you make in them on your investigation board.
Total tally: 31 work hours
Bugfixes done on Oct. 5th, 21.5 hours after submission: Q didn't trigger, message about venturing further into the forest didn't trigger, and the zoom button in the studio didn't work (which was a shame with all those high res photos ;) ).
If you can't play yourself or don't want to bother somehow, here is a complete playthrough: https://youtu.be/kRz1NkmXKlQ
Tools used:
- Engine: Unity / https://unity.com
- Planning: HacknPlan / https://hacknplan.com
- Writing: Google Drive / https://drive.google.com
- Vector art: Affinity Designer / https://affinity.serif.com/en-us/designer/
- Modeling & quick textures: Blender / https://blender.org
- Trees: Blender: Sapling Tree Generator / https://blender.org
- Texture images: Photoshop / https://www.adobe.com/products/photoshop.html
- Texturing: Substance Painter / https://www.substance3d.com/products/substance-painter/
- Human models: MakeHuman / http://makehumancommunity.org
- Night skybox: wwwtyro Space3D / http://wwwtyro.github.io/space-3d
- Music: Logic Pro X / https://www.apple.com/logic-pro/
- Sounds: Audacity + recordings / https://www.audacityteam.org
- Recorded an old Praktica camera shutter
- Recorded plastic deforming for the footsteps
| Youtube | https://svdf.nl/ld47source.zip |
| Youtube | https://svdf.nl/ld47windows.zip |
| Youtube | https://svdf.nl/ld47mac.zip |
| Original URL | https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/47/league-of-ultranormal-detectives |
Ratings
| Overall | 61th | 3.931⭐ | 38🧑⚖️ |
| Fun | 164th | 3.611⭐ | 38🧑⚖️ |
| Innovation | 114th | 3.764⭐ | 38🧑⚖️ |
| Theme | 327th | 3.542⭐ | 38🧑⚖️ |
| Graphics | 192th | 3.667⭐ | 38🧑⚖️ |
| Audio | 12th | 4.194⭐ | 38🧑⚖️ |
| Mood | 12th | 4.306⭐ | 38🧑⚖️ |
| Given | 38🗳️ | 46🗨️ |
The deadpan delivery of the wacky-weird dialogue was great.
I had big feels for "Press E to take a nap on the couch."
How the hell were you able to create such a polished game in 48 hours?! Amazing!
I wasn't able to finish the story, twice my UT meter did not work after I found out <SPOILERS> that I am the killer so I had to restart and again it did not work.
Thank you for the great game!
The next clue after grinding the Q did not work and I couldn't get back despite having a full film. Not sure if I did not photograph the right place/angle and therefore Q was disabled but I was essentially stuck.
I actually just uploaded a bugfixed version, as the Q indeed didn't work @listonos, and the hint showing you should venture into the forest to find the UE also wasn't triggering @indiequest - you could have finished it if you were more persistent :v:
As to how I managed this in two days: I'm a bit surprised myself that I totally finished it :scream: I guess it's knowing your tools and engine well, knowing coding very well, and making all first versions already as polished as they're going to get.
Tomorrow I'll get to reviewing at other games...
I could have fixed those issues in my bugfix update, but I think I'm not supposed to by the LD rules ;)
Checked out the company website too, looks like you all have your hands in a variety of markets all involving some very cool 3D stuff! Cheers :tea:
PS: that skybox resource is awesome! Thanks for sharing :)
https://youtu.be/01nA75SrbJs
@garys Thanks for letting me know, the requirement in the kitchen room is a bit too harsh, you have to really have both people fully on a photo. But I'll fix the unable to nap bug :smirk:. I didn't mention Shift to sprint anywhere, guess it's so common I forgot :sweat_smile: maybe in a bugfix version too...
@flying-basement-studios and anyone else reading this: I've received many comments asking how I managed to pull this off alone in 48 hours; so I've decided to do a stream some time soon, showing how I did it. It will be on https://twitch.tv/virtualplaynl - so if you follow that or https://twitter.com/virtualplaynl or follow me here on the site, you'll get notified.
@michael-feldman I used to love working with actual film, didn't do that for a long time... Happy to share resources!
@vlad-mgc No problem, nice to see you playing it! I've seen your video and it helped me notice some explanation issue at the start (no playtesting time during LD jam haha)
The photo taking was a really fun mechanic to play around with. Though sometimes I honestly wasn't really sure what 'ultranormal' stuff i was seeing in the photos. I ended up just clicking them and the story just progressed even though I didn't see anything in the photo.
Seriously good job!
Did you memorize what you saw in the 'real' world? And did you use the Z key to zoom in on the photos? If I had more time, I could have made it more clear per clue... Maybe we'll expand this into a full game with my company, then I'm thinking you're going to have more ways to study the photos and more mechanics where you actually have to remember what you saw in the 'real' world and point out the difference with what you see in the photo.
Any criticism here is just nitpicking, so here goes: first, the scene in the forest absolutely killed my graphics card. I am aware I don't have the most powerful computer, but it dropped to 5-10 frames, I assume because the trees or shrubs are too intensely high-poly, and you don't do any LOD. The other issue is that I probably missed some clues that make me understand the story: I don't understand why I kill the guy in the end, or who the people in the blockhouse were.
This also means that I don't understand how this game ties into the theme: there's some generic time-travel going on here, and I suppose you are in a "loop" of finding clues and developing them in the darkroom, but that all seems very tangential.
These really are just minor concerns though, this is still a massively impressive entry!
The clues are intentionally a bit vague - tried to do "show, don't tell" as much as I could, it makes sense that you didn't fully get it, no time to playtest them with people haha.
And yeah, I didn't have time to do a lot of performance testing... I did make two LODs for the trees though, but I think it's probably rendering settings and postprocessing as well, could you try running it once on a lower setting for me? When you're holding the camera up, it's actually rendering everything twice, so at that point it makes sense that performance is not very good...
@walpolea Thanks very much, glad you liked it - so you got the clues a bit better than Elysia did... ;)
Or do you think that was because you'd already seen how it worked?
And yeah I know by now, the start it could have benefited from some playtesting ;)
I would love it if you could review our game as well! Also, nice to see some Dutch Game Developers on here haha :smile:
Will play+rate your game (I usually that for anyone who leaves feedback here) I've put it on my list!
Groetjes!
I can only imagine the insane amount of work you had to squeeze into 2 days. Very inspiring
Well done.
Cheers.
If you want to see how I did it, come check out my stream on November 1st!
If you’d like to rewatch the playthrough, you can find it here:
https://www.twitch.tv/videos/767505473?t=2h35m51s
Good luck on your ratings, see you next LD! :D
💜 Elysia Griffin AKA Button Feedback Lady
https://www.twitch.tv/elysiagriffin
@namidasai Thanks, glad you enjoyed it! I have tons of ideas for more interactions and puzzle elements and types of clues, to make the core loop way more varying, indeed. For these 48 hours, this was it ;)
@dmitry-mozgin Thanks, I'm glad you enjoyed it! (It's not only a one man entry but also compo, 48 hours and everything made from scratch) Like I said to someone else too, I have tons of ideas for more interactions and puzzle elements and types of clues, to make the core loop way more varying, indeed. For these 48 hours, this was it ;)
The theme was actually also more hidden in the loops that the Ultranormal Energy creates in time, both forward and back...
There was only so much testing I could do, alone in 48 hours...
By know I know about the bug with not getting good photos and then not being able to take a nap, might do a little bugfix. But could you explain what you mean with the 'Display change' thing?
I will definitely talk about my planning process in the postmortem stream on November 1st, hope to see you there then! (link is at the very start of the page)
Noah you probably didn't get a photo with everything that needed to be in there, after that there's a little bug that can prevent you from taking a nap. If you want to see how the story ends, there's a playthrough in the description!