{"assets":[],"author_link":"author\/vic\/","author_name":"Vic","cat":"LD #23","categories":["LD #23"],"comments":[],"epoch":1335236220,"event":"LD23","likes":6,"metadata":{"p_key":"78114","p_author":"Vic","p_authorkey":"0","p_urlkey":"287124","p_title":"Buggy, Tank and MISSILE LAUNCHER Post-Mortem","p_cat":"LD #23","p_event":"LD23","p_time":"1335236220","p_likes":"6","p_comments":"0","p_status":"WAYBACK","us_key":null,"us_name":null,"us_username":null,"event_start":"1334880000","event_key":"10","event_name":"LD23"},"source_url":"2012\/04\/24\/buggy-tank-and-missile-launcher-post-mortem\/","text":"

Buggy, Tank and missile launcher \u2013 How it started<\/strong><\/p>\n

Forgot a link:\u00a0http:\/\/www.ludumdare.com\/compo\/ludum-dare-23\/?action=preview&uid=7283<\/a><\/p>\n

This was my second LD entry, and it was Cavit\u2019s first entry. I really enjoyed last LD Compo (and have since been active on IRC), and asked Cavit if he would like to join. We had a blast this weekend creating this game :).<\/p>\n

The concept was created pretty easily. I woke up at about 7 am on Saturday, looked at the concept, went back to bed with a notepad. At about 8 am I had a number of concepts, and started concepting them on paper. Cavit joined in about an hour later. We discussed what idea\u2019s we had, and this was the one we felt sounded the most fun and easiest to execute.<\/p>\n

On saturday we first started by putting down the basic. A world, rotating cubes around it and clickable stuff. Cavit started on the building with the separate floors, and a simple Unity UI. I started with the planet, lanes and rotating units around the planet. After this basis was done Cavit continued with pure coding, while I started on models. I think it took about 3-4 hours to do all the models and animations. By about 7pm we had a working prototype with units rotating around the planet attacking each other and a building.\u00a0Once we had the prototype the controls were not as intuitive yet. We stopped at about 2 or 3 am I think, we had a working version and were feeling good about it.<\/p>\n

On sunday polishing started. I wrote a complete custom UI and created new buttons. Cavit started working out as many kinks as possible, set up basic AI, set up some basic menus. At the end of sunday we had a polished version.<\/p>\n

On monday Cavit needed to go back to work. I spent the day integrating the upgrade system, tweaking the balance, and improving the AI a bit. In the evening Cavit worked on sound, and I built a second level and did some more menu tweaks. We sent in the game at about 2:30 am. Of course, we had a gameplay breaking bug within half an hour ( money labels did not show up). We are not sure why it happened, because it did not happen in the editor, but we needed to recode the ui system a bit, and went to bed at 4 am on monday.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

What went wrong?<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u2013 What you see in the unity editor might not be what you get on other PCs. We had a really nasty bug after launching, needed to test on more computers<\/p>\n

\u2013 Games like this are hard to balance, one player will beat it easily, others will not be able to make it. Needed more levels<\/p>\n

\u2013 There could be some more depth in the game, we had more conceptual stuff on paper that did not make it in.<\/p>\n

\u2013 Would have been awesome if the game had been multiplayer<\/p>\n

\u2013 Health stuff: We worked until too late, now our sleep schedules are messed up, ate too much wasabi chips and other crap, need to spend a lot of time in the gym now.<\/p>\n

What went right?<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u2013 Prototype done on the first day<\/p>\n

\u2013 The game was easily extendable, we could add layers like upgrades later on.<\/p>\n

\u2013 We enjoyed working on the game, it is a happy looking game, and that made us happy to work on it.<\/p>\n

\u2013 We kept the graphic assets requirements low. This way we could focus on the gameplay (this was a fix to my biggest mistake last LD)<\/p>\n

\u2013 We cleared our schedules as much as possibly, this made it easy to focus. We worked with skype on almost constantly, and in general we are very good at working together.<\/p>\n

What did not make the game?<\/strong><\/p>\n

If we would make a full game out of this. We would add a number of features.<\/p>\n

\u2013 Base defense, like turrets.<\/p>\n

\u2013 Camera zoom, so you can see more of the battlefield<\/p>\n

\u2013 Minimap with circle and dots of friendly and enemy troops<\/p>\n

\u2013 Flying units so you can bypass lanes\/death from above.<\/p>\n

\u2013 Multiplayer<\/p>\n

Conclusion<\/strong><\/p>\n

Cavit and I had a \u00a0lot of fun, and are definitely joining next LD.\u00a0We are thinking about making a more full-featured game out of this for PC\/Mac\/iPad\/PSN? after we finish the project we are currently working on.<\/p>","time":"April 24th, 2012 2:57 am","title":"Buggy, Tank and MISSILE LAUNCHER Post-Mortem","title_was_empty":false}