{"author_name":"Frib","cat":"LD #26","comments":[],"epoch":1367665200,"likes":0,"metadata":{"p_key":"42746","p_author":"Frib","p_authorkey":"3939","p_urlkey":"78381","p_title":"The Void \u2013 Post Mortem and Post-compo release","p_cat":"LD #26","p_event":"LD26","p_time":"1367665200","p_likes":"0","p_comments":"0","p_status":"UPD5","us_key":"3939","us_name":"Frib","us_username":"frib","event_start":"1366934400","event_key":"16","event_name":"LD26"},"text":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.ludumdare.com\/compo\/2013\/04\/28\/finished-135\/gimme-a-hug\/\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-245371\"><img class=\"alignnone size-large wp-image-245371\" alt=\"gimme a hug\" src=\"http:\/\/www.ludumdare.com\/compo\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/04\/gimme-a-hug-550x333.png\" width=\"550\" height=\"333\" srcset=\"http:\/\/ludumdare.com\/compo\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/04\/gimme-a-hug-550x333.png 550w, http:\/\/ludumdare.com\/compo\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/04\/gimme-a-hug.png 903w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 550px) 100vw, 550px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n <p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n <p>After waiting until 4 AM for the theme, I was a little disappointed it was minimalism. So the next morning I brainstormed for some ideas. In the end I came up with The Void, a horror game where your default view is minimalistic, but enhancing it brought danger with it. If you can see the monsters, then they can see you as well, basically.<\/p>\n <p>So I started out with the end result of my previous LD and stripped all the content so I had a half-assed engine with a rudimentary level editor. Perfect for two days of mayhem, but not without its issues. Since the &#8216;engine&#8217; is basically the end result of 3 iterations of previous entries all bolted on top of each other with different features, it&#8217;s a dirty mess, but it worked!<\/p>\n <p>After bolting even more crap onto it, my entry was done. I&#8217;m very happy with the result! Even during development those things creeped me out when they (or I) got too close. So that&#8217;s nice \ud83d\ude00<\/p>\n <p><strong>What went right<\/strong><\/p>\n <ul>\n <li><span style=\"line-height: 13px\">The sounds. I was afraid that the voice acting would be terrible, but it isn&#8217;t! \ud83d\ude00 Also the atmosphere feels perfect, with the only other sounds coming from the creeps when they get closer and closer. But the voices add a lot to the game, I think. I tried to go for the original Deus Ex infolink effect, also with someone talking into it that shouldn&#8217;t be.<\/span><\/li>\n <li>The story. Because of the voice acting, I could add a story to an otherwise bland first person run-away-in-terror game. And since it&#8217;s all happening while you&#8217;re playing, there&#8217;s no stuff to read in order to understand what&#8217;s going on.<\/li>\n <li>The development itself. Things went fast, and I had about 7 hours left until the deadline when I was done. The scope was perfect and I didn&#8217;t have to scrap anything due to the deadline.<\/li>\n <li>Managed to sneak a potato AND a cat into the game! Yay! \ud83d\ude00<\/li>\n <\/ul>\n <p><strong>What went wrong<\/strong><\/p>\n <ul>\n <li><span style=\"line-height: 13px\">Playtesting. As developer, I could cruise control through the game because I knew every secret. I did let two other people playtest it, and they had relatively few problems as well. But after release it became apparent that the tutorial talks in levels 1 and 2 were very annoying as they were unskippable, ruining the flow. In hindsight I had 7 hours left to discover and address this issue, but I didn&#8217;t. The post-compo version I released fixes\u00a0that, but it&#8217;s too late \ud83d\ude00<\/span><\/li>\n <li>I could only do the sounds once. After recording them in Audacity, and cutting out or redoing the parts that were bad, I used a lot of filters and other things to get what I wanted. Both the dude and the voidling had lots of effects and filters added. But I didn&#8217;t keep track of what I did to them, so later on I couldn&#8217;t add more voices because I couldn&#8217;t reproduce the exact same actions that I did to them. Oops!<\/li>\n <\/ul>\n <p><strong>What&#8217;s next<\/strong><\/p>\n <p>I&#8217;ve just released a post-compo version with a level selector and the ability to skip the tutorials in levels 1 and 2. I&#8217;ve also fixed a bug where monsters would always see you if you used your goggles and if they were already hunting you, regardless of if you could see them.<\/p>\n <p>I&#8217;m also working on a Oculus Rift version, but this is problematic because I don&#8217;t have a Rift yet. \ud83d\ude00 So far I&#8217;ve managed to get the stereoscopic view into it, and it should use the variables sent by the Rift to render things properly based on the Rift&#8217;s setup. It&#8217;s also technically possible to rotate your head, but without a Rift to test things with it&#8217;s been difficult, and at this point I can&#8217;t continue integrating it until I get the device itself. However, optimizing the menus and other things are mostly done, so that&#8217;s nice, but I&#8217;m stuck now until I finally get mine <img src=\"http:\/\/ludumdare.com\/compo\/wp-includes\/images\/smilies\/frownie.png\" alt=\":(\" class=\"wp-smiley\" style=\"height: 1em; max-height: 1em;\" \/><\/p>\n <p>Anyway, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.ludumdare.com\/compo\/ludum-dare-26\/?action=preview&amp;uid=3939\">here&#8217;s my entry<\/a>, with post-compo download link. And\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=tF0FgzUfwXc\">here&#8217;s the rift preview vid<\/a>.<\/p>\n <p>&nbsp;<\/p>","time":"May 4th, 2013 6:00 am","title":"The Void \u2013 Post Mortem and Post-compo release"}