{"author_name":"cadin","cat":"LD #22","comments":[],"epoch":1324329000,"likes":2,"metadata":{"p_key":"60269","p_author":"cadin","p_authorkey":"7233","p_urlkey":"96022","p_title":"\u2018Spawn\u2019 Development Timeline","p_cat":"LD #22","p_event":"LD22","p_time":"1324329000","p_likes":"2","p_comments":"0","p_status":"UPD5","us_key":"7233","us_name":"cadin","us_username":"cadin","event_start":"1323993600","event_key":"8","event_name":"LD22"},"text":"<p><strong><a href=\"http:\/\/www.ludumdare.com\/compo\/ludum-dare-22\/?action=rate&amp;uid=7233\">PLAY SPAWN<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n <p>I didn\u2019t keep very good notes while I was developing this weekend, so I\u2019m going to try to just list out approximately what happened when before I forget too much. I\u2019m referring to my <a href=\"http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=nlKTQHE1FHM\">time-lapse video<\/a> to help me with the exact times.<\/p>\n <p><strong>Friday<\/strong><\/p>\n <p><strong>4:00 pm<\/strong> &#8211; Took a short nap and then bought some groceries so I would be well rested and fed for the upcoming competition.<\/p>\n <p><strong>6:00 pm<\/strong> &#8211; Theme is announced! \u2018Alone\u2019.<br \/>\n Initially I am not too crazy about the theme. It seems a too broad. I imagine everyone just making standard platformers and dungeon crawlers and saying \u2018the main character is alone\u2019. I suppose that would happen with any theme.<\/p>\n <p><strong>6:00 \u2013 6:45 pm<\/strong> &#8211; Brainstorming and sketching ideas.<br \/>\n Some idea fragments:<\/p>\n <ul>\n <li>the last leaf clinging to a tree at the start of winter<\/li>\n <li>the last chick left all alone in the nest<\/li>\n <li>a lone amoeba swimming through a vast ocean<\/li>\n <li>piloting a ship through empty space<\/li>\n <li>a dandelion spore<\/li>\n <\/ul>\n <p><strong>6:45 pm<\/strong>\u00a0&#8211; Open Flash and TextMate and start prototyping the basic movement and gameplay<\/p>\n <p><strong>7:45 pm <\/strong>&#8211; Briefly consider using Flixel. Decide not to due to my unfamiliarity with it.<\/p>\n <p><strong>10:00 pm<\/strong> &#8211; With a rough prototype complete,\u00a0I stop coding and write a quick blog post.<br \/>\n I spend about 30\u201345 minutes sketching character designs in my sketchbook.<\/p>\n <p><strong>11:00 pm<\/strong>\u00a0Sleep!<br \/>\n <strong>Saturday<\/strong><\/p>\n <p><strong>5:30 am<\/strong>\u00a0&#8211;\u00a0I woke up on Saturday feeling refreshed and was glad that my game concept and prototype still seemed viable after sleeping on it.<\/p>\n <p><strong>6:30 am<\/strong>\u00a0After breakfast I immediately started working on the designs for my main amoeba character (in Illustrator).<br \/>\n After about an hour I had a basic design that worked so I brought it into Flash and started animating.<\/p>\n <p><strong>8:30 am<\/strong>\u00a0&#8211; Design title screen<\/p>\n <p><strong>9:00 am<\/strong>\u00a0&#8211; Change Nutrients from being Flash Sprites to bitmap objects that get blitted onto the background, hoping to improve performance.<\/p>\n <p><strong>10:00 am <\/strong>&#8211; Added the collected nutrients to the amoeba\u2019s belly.<br \/>\n The game becomes pretty playable at this point. From here on I think I wasted a lot of time just playing my game.<\/p>\n <p><strong>10:30 am <\/strong>&#8211; Sound effects (sfxr &amp; Sound Studio)<\/p>\n <p><strong>11:00 am<\/strong>\u00a0&#8211; Added spawning animation.<\/p>\n <p><strong>1:30 pm<\/strong>\u00a0&#8211; Added \u2018New Species\u2019 label<\/p>\n <p><strong>2:30 pm<\/strong>\u00a0&#8211; Added some placeholder new creature graphics<\/p>\n <p><strong>3:00 pm<\/strong> &#8211; Added the menu for showing all the creatures you\u2019ve spawned.<\/p>\n <p><strong>7:00 pm<\/strong> &#8211; Added background bubble graphics<\/p>\n <p><strong>8:00 pm <\/strong>&#8211; Remade title screen as multiple graphics instead of just one.<\/p>\n <p>I was starting to feel really burned out at this point, so I wrote a quick blog post and thought I would go to bed. Instead, I spent another hour or so working on some background music (GarageBand).<\/p>\n <p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n <p><strong>Sunday<\/strong><\/p>\n <p><strong>6:30 am<\/strong>\u00a0&#8211; On Sunday I woke up feeling terrible. I was tired and my whole body was aching. I was not looking forward to spending another day in front of the computer, but I knew I only had a few more (big) things to finish.<\/p>\n <p><strong>7:00 am<\/strong> &#8211; The major thing remaining was to draw the graphics for all of my spawn creatures, so I got started on that first thing.<br \/>\n It took most of the morning.<\/p>\n <p><strong>10:45 am<\/strong> &#8211; Added different probabilities for which nutrients show up based on where you are in the ocean.<br \/>\n I took a few big missteps before I got this right.<\/p>\n <p><strong>12:00 pm<\/strong>\u00a0&#8211; Fearing poor performance on older computers, I decided to change the game\u2019s framerate from 60 to 30. Most of the movement in the game is framerate independent, but my amoeba animation had to be adjusted.<\/p>\n <p><strong>1:00 pm <\/strong>&#8211; Posted my finished game with 5 hours to spare! Woo hoo!<\/p>","time":"December 19th, 2011 4:10 pm","title":"\u2018Spawn\u2019 Development Timeline"}