{"author_name":"Yoman","cat":"LD #22","comments":[{"author_name":"SonnyBone","time":"December 21, 2011 1:20 am","epoch":1324448400,"text":"AWESOME READ! I played and rated your game. It rocks! KEEP WORKING ON IT!","spam":"N"}],"epoch":1324439880,"likes":3,"metadata":{"p_key":"60121","p_author":"Yoman","p_authorkey":"7360","p_urlkey":"95874","p_title":"A Manor of Speaking \u2013 Post Mortem","p_cat":"LD #22","p_event":"LD22","p_time":"1324439880","p_likes":"3","p_comments":"1","p_status":"UPD5","us_key":"7360","us_name":"Yoman","us_username":"yoman987","event_start":"1323993600","event_key":"8","event_name":"LD22"},"text":"

First up, here’s the voting link:
\n http:\/\/www.ludumdare.com\/compo\/ludum-dare-22\/?action=rate&uid=7360<\/a><\/p>\n

Here’s the Game Maker sandbox link, if you\u00a0prefer:
\n http:\/\/sandbox.yoyogames.com\/games\/191280-a-manor-of-speaking<\/a><\/p>\n

I don’t have a video because none of my machines are capable of recording and playing with a good framerate at the same time. If someone could make one for me I would be forever grateful. Apologies.<\/p>\n

\"\"

The first thing you see of the main character.<\/p><\/div>\n

Post Mortem<\/strong><\/p>\n

<\/strong>First, the theme, ‘Alone’.\u00a0It sucked. There, I said it. When I saw it I thought “Great, there’s something that half of the games out there have.” I didn’t really think much of it at that point. So without much inspiration I decided to make a game that had side-scrolling. Maybe a platformer. But everyone makes platformers, so I can’t do that. alright, how about a fighting-slash-exploration game from a side-on perspective? Yeah, let’s roll with that.<\/p>\n

So I started with a brainstorm. I went from ‘Alone’ to ‘Escape’ to ‘Horror’ to ‘Death’ \u00a0and then realised I didn’t want a Horror. Scrap that. ‘Alone’ to ‘Seperated’ to ‘Lost’ to ‘Unknown Place’ seemed to work better, and I then started to think “Well, where’s this Unknown Place?” A few things ran through my mind but I liked the idea of a mansion. Then I thought of Castlevania and Alone In The Dark. Castlevania seemed like my inspiration for the enemies (or maybe Luigi’s Mansion :P) and Alone In The Dark for the gameplay.<\/p>\n

I liked the idea of a night-time setting. Most Horror things happen at or near night-time. Then I thought of Knights. Then I thought of a name for two characters: Knite and Dae. Then I remembered the film ‘Knight and Day’ and scrapped it.<\/p>\n

Sprites. The first thing I went for was something small – that’s my specialty. Small sprites, no bigger than 16×16 or thereabouts. So I went for something bigger: 48×20-something. I liked the Knight idea, so I went with a Templar (Assassin’s Creed had a part in that choice). I drew a Templar Knight; you can see him at the end of the game.<\/p>\n

Then I realised that I had to animate him. Nope. It had taken me an hour to draw this guy well and wasn’t going to waste more time animating him. Back to the drawing board – rather, my Pictures\/Pixelart\/ folder. I liked the little blue caveman alien guy I had drawn and decided to copy him. I couldn’t use him since that was against the rules.<\/p>\n

So I drew a little blue man. That was my character. How strange. Anyway, now I had something to make a platformer with (didn’t I NOT want to make a platformer? Oh well) Movement\/Jumping engine came easily since I had already written many of them, trying out slightly different methods of execution in code. So now I had a great Platformer engine with collisions and such.<\/p>\n

Next Stop: Enemies. What do you find in a scary mansion? Ghosts. What else? Possessed Suits of Armour. Oh, hey! I can use my Templar design for the armours! So I drew a suit of armour with a red cross on it. I liked it. Then I drew a ghost, which was easy. My ghost was a mix of a Boo and a Pacman Ghost. I liked it.<\/p>\n

Then, still in MSPaint, I decided to draw a chest. I did. It looked good. Then I realised that there are enemies called Mimics that commonly take the shape of a chest and eat unwary dungeon explorers. So I copy-modified the chest to have teeth. I was starting to like my characters at this point. All except the blue man. He needed to be a normal man. A few skintoned-pixels later he was a little boy, not unlike the one from Up (Pixar film).<\/p>\n

Then I got stuck into coding. Hours pass and I’m still trying to think of a good story. I love my stories, see, and didn’t want to have something like an arcade game. It would be harder, sure, but I just made the choice without thinking. I then remembered that I had to go to work, so I scrambled into my clothes and left. Worked. Came home, went straight to be since it was already midnight. End Day 1. Hours used: 5<\/p>\n

Next day I got up with a page of notes I had jotted down during the night. I had fresh ideas and was raring to go. It was about 9am when I started and I had to get a LOT done in ~24 hours. I got straight to work coding all the bits and pieces that needed doing. Fixing up my platforming collisions, making enemies walk\/float properly, keys, doors, levers, pressure plates. were all done before dinner. I had regular breaks too, since I knew what had to be done and didn’t think it would take until tomorrow morning to do them.<\/p>\n

Code was mostly done. Sprites too. Then I realised I had gameplay, mechanics, enemies and loot, but no story or tutorial. Oh bugger. The tutorial code took a while to get right but only had to be written once. No bugs. Excellent.<\/p>\n

The story, however, was half-assed. I didn’t have an ending or any levels except for my two or three debugging\/test rooms. And I needed environments as well.<\/p>\n

This was when I realised that I would be up most of the night and into the morning.<\/p>\n

I made a post on here and then got to work drawing. I drew a table, chairs, banners, pictures, a bookcase, windows, everything I could think of that belonged in a mansion. Then I switched to level design. It got boring real quick, and I managed to make a single wallpaper tile I had drawn earlier fit into each room as I didn’t have time to make anything else.<\/p>\n

Then I discovered I had forgotten the ending, again. I needed something quickly and it had to be half-assed but not look it. Items. I could make the whole thing into a quest for items. But what item? Next to me on my desk was a candy cane. Perfect! A knight that likes candy canes. Corny, strange, different and it would work. So that went in quickly with a slight change to the chest code.<\/p>\n

So my sprites and tiles were done, my enemies and gameplay was done, my story worked (barely) and I had everything ready for a test run. I did one, found some bugs, squished them and THEN made a post about audio. A google search later revealed a beat-mixer by Aviary and I went with that. Ooh, a randomise function! Low piano notes, slow beat, randomise times a million. Hey! This one sounds good, and it loops well. Download.<\/p>\n

Now to SFXR. Lot’s of randomising in there too. Now I have everything. Time for a test run – about 1 or 2am at this point. I’m going to get it in time!<\/p>\n

Heh, nope. Computer decided to take FOR EVER to compile the code with this new-fangled audio thing. I left it and went and got a drink and cleared my work area.<\/p>\n

3 am. Computer doesn’t like the audio and the game together but they work separately. OK, that’s all right. I can work this. I added one-liners to each thing that needed a sound effect then commented them all out. Fixed a few little things, removed the audio from my assets list and saved. Test game!<\/p>\n

Nope. I’mma crash on you!<\/p>\n

Computer restarts. Oh god. Well at least I saved, right? …<\/p>\n

Back up and running, I load the game and all is well. Phew. Test game, reveal bugs, fix bugs. Add audio, compile, wait an hour. I had a kinda daze-like nap here, because the game seemed to be suddenly making music. Oh good.<\/p>\n

It’s 4am by this point. The sun is rising. Good god, I haven’t stayed up this late in a while. Okay, testing. All is well in the first half of the game, must be OK in the rest. Take some pictures, zip up the game and the source and upload it.<\/p>\n

Submission time. I felt proud that I had finished with about 5 hours to spare. Time for bed. I turned off the PC and did so.<\/p>\n

Three hours later, my Dad comes and wakes me up:
\n “What time did you go to bed?”
\n “Uh, around 5 um, thirty?”
\n “So you’ve had three hours sleep.”
\n I look at the clock. 9:30.
\n “Yeah…”<\/p>\n

I got up, checked the site and was able to catch the end of the 48 hours. Woooooo!!! I made it!
\n “We’ve extended the submission time to 2 hours. :D”
\n Well, ok I suppose.<\/p>\n

[THIS POST IS GETTING QUITE LONG, SO I’LL CUT TO THE CHASE]<\/p>\n

Found out too late that my game was broken: one of the levels that had a candy cane in it (a quest item) didn’t link back to a room properly. A one-way street basically. So I set to work documenting how to get the candy cane and get back, since I had an extra key in the game. But no, it didn’t work. Now it’s well after the submission time, and the game is still broken. I check LudumDare’s twitter, send a message about after-submission bugfixes and then end up submitting the fixed game for the Jam instead. It still fits under the Compo’s rules, except for the time limit.<\/p>\n

So all in all, I’m happy about my game, ecstatic that this is my first go and I did it, but sad that it couldn’t be submitted for the Compo. \":(\"<\/p>\n

Thanks for reading this massive wall of text. Have a good one.<\/p>\n

… and here’s those links again:
\n http:\/\/www.ludumdare.com\/compo\/ludum-dare-22\/?action=rate&uid=7360<\/a><\/p>\n

http:\/\/sandbox.yoyogames.com\/games\/191280-a-manor-of-speaking<\/a><\/p>","time":"December 20th, 2011 10:58 pm","title":"A Manor of Speaking \u2013 Post Mortem"}