{"author_name":"LukeRissacher","cat":"LD #23","comments":[],"epoch":1335999780,"likes":1,"metadata":{"p_key":"55859","p_author":"LukeRissacher","p_authorkey":"10956","p_urlkey":"91577","p_title":"Microbial Post-Mortem","p_cat":"LD #23","p_event":"LD23","p_time":"1335999780","p_likes":"1","p_comments":"0","p_status":"UPD5","us_key":"10956","us_name":"LukeRissacher","us_username":"lukerissacher","event_start":"1334880000","event_key":"10","event_name":"LD23"},"text":"

OK, been meaning to write this for a while – a post-mortem for my game\u00a0Microbial<\/a>.<\/p>\n

This was my first Ludum Dare – my first game jam also, and the first time I ever released a finished game for people to play :). Really enjoyed it – and enjoyed hearing people’s feedback and experiences playing the game. I was hoping it’d re-energize my game development enthusiasm which was waning a bit, and it totally succeeded at that.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

I have been working on a “bigger” indie game project for a while, after a couple prototype games I decided to kill off, so have some game programming experience under my belt (and debatably some art experience). Plus a career’s worth of business web application programming (lots of forms and lists \":)\" ).<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

What worked:<\/h2>\n

Exploratory development approach: <\/strong>I was really inspired by Jon Blow and Marc Ten Bosch’s talk Designing to Reveal the Nature of the Universe<\/a>, where they outline a process of starting with an idea (a game mechanic, a detail, a desired result) and exploring it’s space of possibilities completely – then present the best of what you discover to the player. I tried to take that approach with this game. A lot of people have commented on the great learning curve \/ progression, and surprisingly it didn’t take any deliberate effort on my part – I developed the levels pretty much in the order they appeared in the game – when one mechanic or game object felt “tapped out” in terms of what kind of unique puzzles and level types I could make, I’d try introducing a new mechanic. So really, the learning curve the player is experiencing is the same learning curve I as the designer was going through during the making of it (or maybe the same state of mind in the cases of level 27-30 \":)\" )<\/p>\n

The 80\/20 principle: <\/strong>With a 48 hour teeny timeframe I tried to stick to this mindset, also known as the Pareto principle – that in many areas of life, 80% of the effects come from 20% of the causes. E.g. 20% of the stocks produce 80% of the gains – 20% of your clients provide 80% of your business. I tried to focus on the 20% of to-dos that would make the most difference to the game.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Blender as a level editor, with hot reloading: <\/strong>I love me some Blender. I have an ultra bare-bones script that exports just the world transform matrices and names of the objects in a Blender scene into a simple XML file that my game engine can parse while it’s running. Upshot is, I can use all of Blender’s fancy tools for moving, rotating, copying, deleting, hiding, snapping to a grid etc. (way more than I could implement in some fancy level editor of my own) and hit a key to export the XML file, which I can then hot-reload in a running copy of the game. So, like, instant level iterations. Woohoo.<\/p>\n

Engine I know well, with some prep beforehand:<\/strong>\u00a0I adapted the game engine from my larger game, which was helpful – it’s not as fancy as something like Unity or GameMaker, but it took away a lot of the chores of managing game objects and components, playing sounds, handling input cleanly, doing basic 3D rendering, etc. So I could focus on gameplay programming and content creation when the contest started.<\/p>\n

Using real recorded sounds:\u00a0<\/strong>Got a lot of compliments on the soundscape of this game – most of it was me doing weird things with my iPhone. E.g. the bubbling noises were from a bowl of water and a straw with some post-processing in Audacity and FL Studio for added ominousness (I tried putting the iPhone in a sandwich baggie and submerging it underwater, but all I got was plastic bag noise \":)\" ).\u00a0It was all very quick and dirty, I’m happy it came out sounding as good as it did.<\/p>\n

\"Ye

Ye Olde Triple-A Sound Studio<\/p><\/div>\n

Having to do it in 48 hours:<\/strong> I can tend to geek out too much on perfecting my game engines, polishing little features, etc. and take forever to get things done – so having a fierce deadline was good to keep my dawdling under control :).<\/p>\n

Using 3D:\u00a0<\/strong>Ironically I’m a little unknowledgable and shaky on 2D programming, having dived headfirst early on into the hardcore 3D stuff. So I stuck with what I was comfortable with on this entry. I think the 3D rendering it might have set the game apart visually a little bit from the majority of entries, even though it’s mechanically a very 2D game.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

<\/h2>\n

What didn’t work:<\/h2>\n

Crashes \/ problems on some systems:<\/strong> I got a mix of positive comments from those who could play and frustrated comments from people who couldn’t play the thing early on. I tested things out on a wimpy laptop and it ran OK, so figured I was good to go, but there were some weird GPU and other incompatibilities on certain systems. Anyway after being scared that I’d disqualify myself, I eventually made post-compo fixes and workarounds in a separate 2nd version (e.g. in Poland the default .NET floating-point parser will choke on “12.5” – it’s expecting a comma thanks to it’s helpful worldly awareness \":)\" ). Big thanks to the folks that helped me debug.<\/p>\n

XNA excluding mac \/ linux folks: <\/strong>XNA is by far what I have the most experience in, so for this compo it was the only real choice I had, but I know it bummed out some people. Don’t want to get too far into this debate as it’s covered elsewhere – but I might give MonoGame a try next time, which allegedly brings XNA to Mac and other platforms (though it’s 3D support is apparently not that great).<\/p>\n