{"author_name":"quadtree","cat":"LD #33","comments":[],"epoch":1440529920,"likes":2,"metadata":{"p_key":"13461","p_author":"quadtree","p_authorkey":"4024","p_urlkey":"48718","p_title":"Vale of Embers: Post Mortem","p_cat":"LD #33","p_event":"LD33","p_time":"1440529920","p_likes":"2","p_comments":"0","p_status":"UPD5","us_key":"4024","us_name":"quadtree","us_username":"\/author\/quadtree\/","event_start":"1440115200","event_key":"29","event_name":"LD33"},"text":"<p>My entry 48 hour compo entry was <a href=\"http:\/\/ludumdare.com\/compo\/ludum-dare-33\/?action=preview&amp;uid=4024\">Vale of Embers<\/a>, a game where you play as a raid boss and must fend off various raiding guilds:<\/p>\n <p><a href=\"http:\/\/ludumdare.com\/compo\/2015\/08\/25\/vale-of-embers-post-mortem\/ss2-90\/\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-494498\"><img class=\"alignnone size-large wp-image-494498\" src=\"http:\/\/ludumdare.com\/compo\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/08\/ss23-550x318.png\" alt=\"ss2\" width=\"550\" height=\"318\" srcset=\"http:\/\/ludumdare.com\/compo\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/08\/ss23-300x173.png 300w, http:\/\/ludumdare.com\/compo\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/08\/ss23-550x318.png 550w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 550px) 100vw, 550px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n <h2>What Went Well<\/h2>\n <ul>\n <li><strong>The HTML5 port:<\/strong> Nearly every previous time I&#8217;ve done an HTML5 build I&#8217;ve had some nasty last minute issues. It hasn&#8217;t just been with UE4, but with any of the previous frameworks I&#8217;ve used (PlayN, libGDX). I was sure this was going to happen again so I delayed the HTML5 build until after the compo. But in the end the only thing I really had to fix was a couple minor\u00a0lighting issues.<\/li>\n <li><strong>Using UE4.9 Preview: <\/strong>The current stable version of Unreal Engine is UE4.8. But UE4.9 Preview has a much improved HTML5 lighting engine.\u00a0This was a big risk, but in the end it paid off. While I did encounter a bug where config files didn&#8217;t save correctly, having access to decals and better lighting in HTML5 mode more than made up for it.<\/li>\n <li><b>The top down view:\u00a0<\/b>At the beginning, I had to decide between a more &#8220;Diablo like&#8221; top down view or a more 3rd person view. In the end I decided to go with the top down view as it does a better job of disguising how crummy my modeling job was, and I think it worked.<\/li>\n <li><strong>The Idea:<\/strong>\u00a0The theme was one of the ones I voted for, although it probably wouldn&#8217;t have been my first choice. I quickly came up with three ideas: A Godzilla like game where you&#8217;re a large monster smashing up a city, a horror movie like game where you play as the monster, or a game where you play as a raid boss in a fictitious MMO. I essentially rejected the first two ideas because they&#8217;d need to be &#8220;serious&#8221;, and I judged that my lousy art skills created too much danger of <a href=\"http:\/\/tvtropes.org\/pmwiki\/pmwiki.php\/Main\/Narm\">narm<\/a>.<\/li>\n <\/ul>\n <h2>What Did Not Go Well<\/h2>\n <ul>\n <li><strong>Time Management:<\/strong> Every time I do the LD, I tell myself that I&#8217;m going to come up with a plan that&#8217;s simple enough that I will not have to stay up till 5AM on Sunday. Yet, this time I ended up staying up till 5AM on Sunday anyway getting the models ready. At this point it&#8217;s starting to feel like a tradition for me.<\/li>\n <li><b>Meteor Balance:<\/b> While I&#8217;m fairly happy with how game balance turned out, the Meteor spell is still underpowered even after I tripled its damage and halved its mana cost. The problem is that meteor is the subject of a joke where it&#8217;s supposed to be easy for the raiders to avoid it so they look stupid when they get hit. The problem is that it really\u00a0<em>is<\/em> easy to avoid, so they usually avoid it. I really should have gone with my original idea, which was to have certain raiders be extra stupid and fail to avoid meteor.<\/li>\n <li><strong>No Difficulty Scaling:<\/strong> Originally as you killed off raiders they were supposed to go get their fire resistance gear and eventually alert more elite guilds who would teleport in. In the end I didn&#8217;t have time to implement any of this so difficulty is essentially flat throughout the game.<\/li>\n <li><strong>AI Issues:<\/strong> The raiders&#8217; AI is pretty complex, and I think there are a few bugs remaining where they&#8217;ll fail to attack the boss properly. Still, I am happy that they usually manage to attack the boss despite the bugs. See chart below:<\/li>\n <\/ul>\n <p><a href=\"http:\/\/ludumdare.com\/compo\/2015\/08\/25\/vale-of-embers-post-mortem\/ld33_state_machine-dot\/\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-494564\"><img class=\"alignnone size-large wp-image-494564\" src=\"http:\/\/ludumdare.com\/compo\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/08\/ld33_state_machine.dot_-550x229.png\" alt=\"ld33_state_machine.dot\" width=\"550\" height=\"229\" srcset=\"http:\/\/ludumdare.com\/compo\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/08\/ld33_state_machine.dot_-300x125.png 300w, http:\/\/ludumdare.com\/compo\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/08\/ld33_state_machine.dot_-550x229.png 550w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 550px) 100vw, 550px\" \/><\/a><\/p>","time":"August 25th, 2015 2:12 pm","title":"Vale of Embers: Post Mortem"}