{"author_name":"scriptorum","cat":"LD #34","comments":[],"epoch":1451940900,"likes":1,"metadata":{"p_key":"9245","p_author":"scriptorum","p_authorkey":"17811","p_urlkey":"44461","p_title":"Revolver Post-Mortem","p_cat":"LD #34","p_event":"LD34","p_time":"1451940900","p_likes":"1","p_comments":"0","p_status":"UPD5","us_key":"17811","us_name":"scriptorum","us_username":"\/author\/scriptorum\/","event_start":"1449792000","event_key":"31","event_name":"LD34"},"text":"

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

With the final hours ticking\u00a0down before scores are revealed, I thought I’d fill the time by doing a post-mortem for my LD48 compo entry.\u00a0Revolver<\/em> is an action puzzle game about growing plants by rotating the planet toward favorable weather conditions. \u00a0You can play it here<\/a>!<\/p>\n

What Went Right<\/h3>\n

A:\\>\u00a0Let’s build a time machine!<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

Time management.<\/em> Unlike most other jams, the first time ever I felt in control of my time. I didn’t get in everything I wanted to, but I delivered the key elements I needed to.\u00a0I chose an idea with core mechanic that\u00a0was\u00a0design-complete. The idea hit both theme targets. By the end of Saturday, the sandbox prototype was playable, which is a target I don’t always hit.\u00a0I did a really good job of “layering” my needs, ensuring that every\u00a0element of the game had a\u00a0placeholder first, before several\u00a0iterations of refinement. I don’t just mean art, I also mean text, sound, and code. In this way,\u00a0as time\u00a0became short, I could say “you know, that\u00a0placeholder here is good enough” and polish\u00a0where it is more needed.<\/p>\n

Challenge.\u00a0<\/em>I tweaked the levels\u00a0to be tough on\u00a0the timer, particularly\u00a0the last\u00a03-4 levels. While this got some users cursing at me, most said it was on the good side of challenging.<\/p>\n

B:\\> I’m not looking for judgement, just a yes or no \u2014 can you assimilate a giraffe?<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

Unity.<\/em> I entered previous compos\u00a0using\u00a0Flaxen<\/a>, which is built\u00a0on HaxePunk<\/a> using Haxe<\/a>. It’s great stuff, but I’ve been wanting to get more experience with a game engine that has\u00a03D, a lighting model, and a proper scene graph. \u00a0(Hopefully, HaxePunk 3.0\u00a0will have these things.) I had a really good time using Unity. I’m not so much of a\u00a0Microsoftie so was I \u00a0surprised to enjoy many of C#’s features. I mean I’m never going to love capitalized function names,\u00a0and Unity\/MonoDevelop makes it excruciating to use third party libraries (see how\u00a0haxelib<\/a>\u00a0does it),\u00a0but overall it\u00a0was smooth.<\/p>\n

In-editor<\/em> configuration<\/em>. As much as possible, I exposed all level\u00a0data and configuration to the\u00a0editor. Each level was a prefab that I dragged to the Level Manager array in the order I wanted them. This\u00a0made it easy to tweak and change the levels and messages. Unity does have a really ugly built-in array management with no drag and drop reordering, but it’s passable, and you can customize the inspector view to some extent with a little\u00a0more time. The configuration for the item types were also\u00a0fully exposed.<\/p>\n

C:\\>\u00a0Good job doing basically nothing<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

In-game tutorial.<\/em>\u00a0Not only did I fit several\u00a0levels, I also worked\u00a0in a couple tutorial levels to explain the controls and concepts. I was very pleased to fit this in.<\/p>\n

Unfiltered sarcasm.<\/em>\u00a0Because I layered my time, I used placeholders everywhere first, and this included the level message texts. The requirement for a placeholder is BUILD IT FAST, so I did what comes to me\u00a0naturally. That is, I was a sarcastic and obnoxious\u00a0ass. As time wound down,\u00a0other things took up my time, and I never went back to the level text. As it happened,\u00a0however, my sarcasm turned out to be a popular aspect of the game. So yay me and my immaturity!<\/p>\n

What Went Wrong<\/h3>\n

D:\\> Please, sir?\u00a0Can we have some more, please?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Moar levels.<\/em>\u00a0I put in just enough levels to\u00a0introduce the three types of atmospherics (rain, snow and tornado) and three plants (smirkflower, smeggplant, and flurp\u00a0trees). \u00a0Barely enough time to dip your toes in.<\/p>\n

Less samey.\u00a0<\/em>I envisioned a more\u00a0complex dynamic between the atmospherics and plants. Although I exposed a lot of the configuration to the editor, I didn’t tweak them much. In the end, each plant had an atmosphere it grew 4X\u00a0as fast in, and an atmosphere that stunted it’s growth completely to 0X. These values could have been tweaked to be more interesting, but with as few levels as I had in there, it would be an underused subtlety.<\/p>\n

Moar items<\/em>.\u00a0I also pictured two other atmospherics (flock of birds, swarm of bees) that could move around the planet – this would have looked cool! It would have also fed into\u00a0new asexual and sexual\u00a0plants which spread via seeds and\/or pollen, and were endangered by birds.<\/p>\n

Moar animations.<\/em>\u00a0My biggest regret on the art side was not making time for a better plant-growth effect.\u00a0It just scales out along the length, which kind of looks like growth, and kind of looks like it’s rising from a deep bow. What I really wanted was a dynamic art that could support\u00a0a\u00a0tweakable growth pattern. If I did\u00a0that, maybe I could have fit in more plants.<\/p>\n

Moar UI<\/em>.\u00a0The level transitions were very minimalist. The font was hard to read on some levels\u00a0if there\u00a0was foul weather near the south pole.<\/p>\n

Overall I had a great time this Ludum Dare. My feedback has been largely positive. Regardless of my scores, I’m still very pleased with the result.<\/p>\n \n

Tags: compo<\/a>, ld34<\/a>, post-mortem<\/a>, screenshot<\/a>, unity<\/a><\/p>","time":"January 4th, 2016 3:55 pm","title":"Revolver Post-Mortem"}