{"author_name":"JackASquires","cat":"LD #26","comments":[],"epoch":1368147540,"likes":3,"metadata":{"p_key":"42666","p_author":"JackASquires","p_authorkey":"507086","p_urlkey":"78301","p_title":"Mondritron: 2026 Post-Mortem","p_cat":"LD #26","p_event":"LD26","p_time":"1368147540","p_likes":"3","p_comments":"0","p_status":"UPD5","us_key":"507086","us_name":"JackASquires","us_username":"JackASquires","event_start":"1366934400","event_key":"16","event_name":"LD26"},"text":"

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Mondritron: 2026 Post-Mortem<\/strong><\/p>\n

Ludum Dare #26 was the first Ludum Dare I’ve ever participated in.\u00a0Mondritron: 2026 is also\u00a0the first real game\u00a0I’ve\u00a0ever made by myself and released for people to play.\u00a0Through this combination of little experience in game development and a rushed project, I found Ludum Dare to be incredibly beneficial to how i’ll go about designing games in the future and the what it’s like to develop with a deadline. While it was incredibly hard to do and even stressful at times, by the end I was able to create an actual game that people can play, and that fact that I can simply say that is incredibly validating and fulfilling. I have been trying to jump into the world of game development for about a year and a half now, and this ludum Dare really pushed me to finally create an actual game, and to get over my hangups of coding, programming languages, and the stigma I created in my mind that games made in Gamemaker are inherently low quality and un-inspired. I made Monditron: 2026 with Gamemaker and I’m incredibly proud to say that. Regardless\u00a0what\u00a0I used, I created a game and that’s a hell of \u00a0a lot better than sitting around thinking about creating a game.<\/p>\n

I really owe it to Ludum Dare for actually encouraging me to make something, and I highly recommend participating if\u00a0you’re\u00a0trying to get into game development. Regardless of how you make the game, by the end you’ll actually have a game, and that\u00a0realization\u00a0is wonderful.<\/p>\n

Anyways, about my game…<\/p>\n

Theme<\/strong>: I started development by looking at the theme, reading some definitions of minimalism, then looking at some\u00a0Google\u00a0images, one of which was the work of Piet Mondrian – which would go on to inspire the concept for my game. After that I did a free-write in my super secret book of game development, and came up with a few ideas such as, minimalist renditions of other video games and a game where you collect music notes to create a song (both not very original). However, I quickly came up with the idea for Mondritron: 2026 – a robotron inspired top down shooter with a twist of complementary color battle, similar to that of “Ikaruga”, but more focused on the theme of minimalism and the color theory that goes into minimalist art.<\/p>\n

Here’s all the notes I wrote:<\/p>\n

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Development:\u00a0<\/strong>Development went fairly smoothly, I ran into a few problems regarding how to change the color of the player, and how to\u00a0create\u00a0the enemy spawns, but I eventually figured them out and got the basic structure of\u00a0gameplay\u00a0down by\u00a0Sunday\u00a0morning. For the rest of Sunday I worked on level creation\/design and polishing, however as a result of all the time I spent on the basic structure, I did not have enough time to add all the levels I originally planned on having, and did not get to play test a whole lot and figure out that the game was actually incredibly hard, and that a better progression of difficulty would have benefited it immensely. However, such is the way of Ludum Dare… the fact that I was able to actually create the concept I drew up on paper to a good extent is very nice, regardless of the problems that it has. \u00a0The last problem I ran into was music, I don’t have a lot of experience with music so I opted to use inudge.net, However, once I created a song I was happy with, I tried to export it as an audio file but couldn’t find a way to do it (or didn’t know inudge doesn’t have that feature). Pressed for time, and not able to make a new song in another program, I unfortunately had to play the song through my speakers and record it with my microphone(MINIMALISM!(sort of)), that’s why the song sounds weird in the game.<\/p>\n

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Conclusion<\/strong>: By the end most things worked out well. There’s definitely room for polish in the areas of difficulty progression and lack of levels. I’m also now working on my FL studio skills so that I’ll be able to make better music in a nicer way. Through this experience I created something that I am\u00a0incredibly\u00a0proud of, and have been pushed over the hump of awkward pre- game development hangups all as a result of the motivation that Ludum Dare created for me. If anyone is going through the same phase of game development loss, I highly encourage you to participate in Ludum Dare, it’s incredibly motivating, inspiring, and rewarding. don’t worry about what\u00a0you’re\u00a0using to make games, just make games, and things will eventually fall into place.<\/p>\n

Now that I know I’m capable of making a game, I am incredibly inspired and I can’t wait for the next Ludum Dare to\u00a0utilize\u00a0everything\u00a0I learned during this one, and everything I hope to learn in between. See you all there!<\/p>\n

Oh, and if you want to play Mondritron: 2026, here’s the link:\u00a0http:\/\/www.ludumdare.com\/compo\/ludum-dare-26\/?action=preview&uid=17685<\/a>\u00a0(Oh my god, that’s awesome that I’m able to say that).<\/p>\n

 <\/p>","time":"May 9th, 2013 7:59 pm","title":"Mondritron: 2026 Post-Mortem"}