{"assets":[],"author_link":"author\/delahee\/","author_name":"blackmagic","cat":"LD #25","categories":["LD #25"],"comments":[],"epoch":1355883120,"event":"LD25","likes":7,"metadata":{"p_key":"78711","p_author":"blackmagic","p_authorkey":"0","p_urlkey":"287721","p_title":"Little Death Adventure : Post Mortem","p_cat":"LD #25","p_event":"LD25","p_time":"1355883120","p_likes":"7","p_comments":"0","p_status":"WAYBACK","us_key":null,"us_name":null,"us_username":null,"event_start":"1355443200","event_key":"14","event_name":"LD25"},"source_url":"2012\/12\/19\/little-death-adventure-post-mortem\/","text":"

\u00a0\"postmortem_lda\"<\/strong><\/p>\n

The course of action\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

It is our first Ludum Dare\u2026 Our creative process is simple, one emits an idea, the other takes what is pleasing and reformulates something else or reverse the idea and so on.<\/p>\n

So we try to find the best in every ideas. With an old friendly bottle and some chocolatine\u2019s, we took\u00a01 hour to find the idea, not the most original one, but one which the both of us agreed and liked.<\/p>\n

We had some issue with the theme being you are the vilain and the slaughter of newtown. What to do, jump on it, take from it, shall we change our game to make something different. All in all the theme was a pain, processing violence in that climate of \u201cgame too violent\u201d is sh*t. So we took the humour way.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

Take random guy, choke him to death<\/em>, make bim bring justice to innocent souls\u2026 Why ? are we just values on death pathes ? Why someone with no way had to die more than\u2026 some other ?<\/p>\n

\/end of brainfuck. go make something fun and highlight the ridiculousness of the situation.<\/em><\/p>\n

\u2026<\/p>\n

I unilateraly agreed to start an engine from scratch drawing from my personnal lib and borrowing deepnight and benjamin\u2019s lib. Take from the best. Always.<\/p>\n

A quick start with the design of the character and the main bg \u00a0quickly made. At the end of the first day, we had all the main character animation and a full bg for the game, the platformer engine was roughly functionnal with some xml level design and sprite sheets.<\/p>\n

The gamedesign was very clear from start, make a harsh timed platformer. Time + points is a good constraint easy to tweek.<\/p>\n

Matthal quickly agreed to participate for the sound and his music adds lot of depth, we knew very hearly the game was going 111 second why ? because 666 is way too long so he tuned the song and it was perfect !<\/p>\n

Went to sleep at 3am, and came back to work at 9am.<\/p>\n

The second day we focused on content creation and bugs. BM produced 150 punch line in the morning.<\/p>\n

Gyhyom operates in stances, he just did the introduction in 2 hours, props creation and collision tiles took a lot of time. \u00a0Then at \u00a02 pm he crashed. His mind were absent, did no longer understood anything. BM in despair. We had no level design and no good tiles. BM goes desperately chasing his bugs.<\/p>\n

Hopefully, starting 7pm, and with the help of a good meal, Gyhyom\u2019s head restarted, and he went all crazy : the level design was made in 1 hour, and he had plenty of time to do the title screen and the html page for the hosting page of the game. We were saved \":)\"<\/p>\n

BM added some feedbacks like character slicing, glows, tried to iterate over playability and intuitiveness.<\/p>\n

BM struggled a lot around game timing (flash sent me update every 15ms 1ms 15ms 1ms dunno why\u2026) but i had started too late. so i just unlocked the game in 60 fps and submitted \":)\"<\/p>\n

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

\u2013 content creation was quick if we except blackout phases<\/p>\n

\u2013 the game is pleasing, hardcore with some glitches but a fun ride.<\/p>\n

-writing a platformer engine from scratch \u00a0is coooool\u2026<\/p>\n

\u2013 Haxe our old friend, thanks so much ncannasse to bring such a powerful tool for game creation. The MT libs and tools like hxods (bless ya) , bmp embedding (soo gooooood) and xml fast (bless ya twice) allowed us to speed up content creation sooooo much.<\/p>\n

\u2013 sound integration and music what nice<\/p>\n

\u2013 we are already professionnal the exercice is soooo stimulating.<\/p>\n

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

\u2013 \u2026but writing an engine from scratch costs much \":)\"<\/p>\n

\u2013 we underestimated the 48h timing constraints.<\/p>\n

\u2013 game scope is limited\u2026 we could not push all the ideas in the game we would have added some levels, combo system and \u201cslowing\u201d patterns. Dying would habe been of the party too. and I miss scythe interactions (grip) \":)\"<\/p>\n

maybe for an extended version \":)\"<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

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

A very good experience this ludum, but very tiring. It \u2018s a bit like going to do live concert after years of studio. Refreshing, exhausting, stimulating.<\/div>\n
We \u00a0hope that all the ludum\u2019s members will enjoy our game !<\/div>\n
<\/div>\n
<\/div>\n
\"txall\"<\/div>","time":"December 19th, 2012 2:12 am","title":"Little Death Adventure : Post Mortem","title_was_empty":false}