{"author_name":"adsilcott","cat":"LD #34","comments":[],"epoch":1451918760,"likes":5,"metadata":{"p_key":"9268","p_author":"adsilcott","p_authorkey":"49637","p_urlkey":"44483","p_title":"Sushi Roll: Design Postmortem","p_cat":"LD #34","p_event":"LD34","p_time":"1451918760","p_likes":"5","p_comments":"0","p_status":"UPD5","us_key":"49637","us_name":"adsilcott","us_username":"\/author\/adsilcott\/","event_start":"1449792000","event_key":"31","event_name":"LD34"},"text":"<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">LD34 was a blast for our team. \u00a0We\u2019re <strong>extremely<\/strong> grateful for the ratings, comments, and feedback that people have given our game so far! \u00a0Now that we\u2019re down to the final hours for reviews, we wanted to ask for anyone\u2019s last-minute thoughts, and, to give that some context, we hoped it would be fun to walk through the design process that went into our game\u2019s art and animation efforts.<\/span><\/p>\n <ul>\n <li><a href=\"http:\/\/ludumdare.com\/compo\/ludum-dare-34\/?action=preview&amp;uid=49637\">Play Sushi Roll here<\/a>, if you&#8217;d like to see the game in action. \u00a0(We&#8217;d love your review!)<\/li>\n <\/ul>\n <p><a href=\"http:\/\/ludumdare.com\/compo\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/01\/sushiroll-logo.jpg\"><img class=\"alignnone wp-image-531509 size-large\" src=\"http:\/\/ludumdare.com\/compo\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/01\/sushiroll-logo-550x309.jpg\" alt=\"sushiroll-logo\" width=\"550\" height=\"309\" srcset=\"http:\/\/ludumdare.com\/compo\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/01\/sushiroll-logo-300x169.jpg 300w, http:\/\/ludumdare.com\/compo\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/01\/sushiroll-logo-550x309.jpg 550w, http:\/\/ludumdare.com\/compo\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/01\/sushiroll-logo.jpg 1067w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 550px) 100vw, 550px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n <p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">After a while of grappling with the double-themes of the jam, our team got a huge creative charge out of taking the \u201clet\u2019s just start working\u201d approach, which let us divide up our first technical and creative steps.<\/span><\/p>\n <p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">On the design side, the first thing to tackle\u00a0was naturally our star and hero, Fugu the pufferfish. \u00a0The pufferfish (his name didn\u2019t happen until mid-day Saturday or so) was the first of a few ideas meant to capture the \u201cGrowing\u201d theme (among others such as a pig that grew by eating, a snowball that grew by rolling up more snow, and just a man that happened to fall down a hill\u2026 whose misadventures made him \u201cgrow <em>as a person<\/em>,&#8221; we joked). \u00a0While all of these were fun and funny to us, the pufferfish had a kind of instant magic once he appeared on the screen, and gave us all the laugh that sent him rolling along down our creative pipeline.<\/span><\/p>\n <div id=\"attachment_531510\" style=\"width: 560px\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\"><a href=\"http:\/\/ludumdare.com\/compo\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/01\/pufferfish.jpg\"><img class=\"wp-image-531510 size-large\" src=\"http:\/\/ludumdare.com\/compo\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/01\/pufferfish-550x530.jpg\" alt=\"pufferfish\" width=\"550\" height=\"530\" srcset=\"http:\/\/ludumdare.com\/compo\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/01\/pufferfish-300x289.jpg 300w, http:\/\/ludumdare.com\/compo\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/01\/pufferfish-550x530.jpg 550w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 550px) 100vw, 550px\" \/><\/a><p class=\"wp-caption-text\">Blender (free and open source!) gave our team the full 3D production workflow we needed to produce assets for Unity &#8212; sculpture, polygon modeling, texture painting, rigging, and animating.<\/p><\/div>\n <p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">Our team had decided even before the jam to commit to making a\u00a0fully 3D game, so the first step was to get our fish sculpted in Blender. \u00a0This was the first challenge in matching the art to the theme(s), since this meant that our star required <\/span><b>two<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400\"> different base sculptures &#8212; one to represent both his puffed and unpuffed state. \u00a0(The puffed version actually came first, and was saved and then I sculpted that down to his unpuffy self for the second version.)<\/span><\/p>\n <p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">With\u00a0a normal model, the next step would be to adapt the sculpture into a game-ready, lower-polygon model. \u00a0We actually had to do this pretty differently, essentially making the same model fit\u00a0<\/span><b>both<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400\"> sculptures, in order to reflect both of the puffed\/unpuffed states. \u00a0This was one of our bigger design challenges, and took a good bit of finessing to get just right, but when it came together we had a version of Fugu that was able to morph (using Blender\u2019s Shape Keys feature) between both states, using a numerical value that we would later be able to drive in Unity.<\/span><\/p>\n <div id=\"attachment_531615\" style=\"width: 560px\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\"><a href=\"http:\/\/ludumdare.com\/compo\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/01\/SushiRoll-ShapeKeyMorph.jpg\"><img class=\"wp-image-531615 size-large\" src=\"http:\/\/ludumdare.com\/compo\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/01\/SushiRoll-ShapeKeyMorph-550x350.jpg\" alt=\"SushiRoll-ShapeKeyMorph\" width=\"550\" height=\"350\" srcset=\"http:\/\/ludumdare.com\/compo\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/01\/SushiRoll-ShapeKeyMorph-300x191.jpg 300w, http:\/\/ludumdare.com\/compo\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/01\/SushiRoll-ShapeKeyMorph-550x350.jpg 550w, http:\/\/ludumdare.com\/compo\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/01\/SushiRoll-ShapeKeyMorph.jpg 900w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 550px) 100vw, 550px\" \/><\/a><p class=\"wp-caption-text\">The same low-polygon mesh had to be adapted to fit both original sculptures, letting us make use of Blender&#8217;s &#8220;Shape Keys&#8221; (&#8220;BlendShapes,&#8221; in Unity) to morph between them incrementally.<\/p><\/div>\n <p>The result was something both simple and perfectly suited to the second theme goal: &#8220;two-button controls.&#8221; \u00a0One button grows, one button shrinks. \u00a0The game design decisions (where growing makes you pop off the ground, and boosts your speed) all\u00a0fell in line as a natural progression from that idea, giving us room to test, tune, and try to make it feel fun.<\/p>\n <p>After a team vote on what would ultimately be our game\u2019s main color palette, Fugu was given his texture pass (painted in Blender) and finalized. \u00a0&#8230;But not before we all decided to push the design one step further and give our fish even one more level of \u201chyperinflation\u201d puff. \u00a0(Sadly, we didn\u2019t get to use this extra-puffy state by the end of the jam, but ohh, do we have plans\u2026)<\/p>\n <div id=\"attachment_531511\" style=\"width: 450px\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\"><a href=\"http:\/\/ludumdare.com\/compo\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/01\/SushiRoll-Fugu.gif\"><img class=\"wp-image-531511 size-full\" src=\"http:\/\/ludumdare.com\/compo\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/01\/SushiRoll-Fugu.gif\" alt=\"SushiRoll-Fugu\" width=\"440\" height=\"476\" \/><\/a><p class=\"wp-caption-text\">(Side note: The wincing puffed face only got funnier when we realized that, as he rolls, he rolls <em>over his face<\/em>.)<\/p><\/div>\n <p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">With our fish all ready to go into our world, the logical\u00a0next step was to fill that world with things that would try to kill him.<\/span><\/p>\n <p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">First up was the (slightly less-than-menacing) &#8220;foe&#8221; of the tree, which we tried to keep simple enough to pay off twice over, as the simple low-poly shapes of the leaves were easy to repurpose afterwards into the rocks and pebbles that would block the path. \u00a0Navigating over and under these obstacles is intended to set the pace for\u00a0the bulk of the game\u2019s flow, so it was important to get these into the game early, letting\u00a0us start to fine-tune them into our terrain generation workflow.<\/span><\/p>\n <p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">Next up was the first of the <em>true<\/em> villains, who\u00a0we designed as the\u00a0answer to the question of: \u201cif trees force you to shrink, what forces you to grow?\u201d \u00a0Enter the natural enemy of fish everywhere: <strong>the cat<\/strong>. \u00a0Running into one would force you to\u00a0puff up in order to get by unharmed \u2014 too small, and you\u2019re cat food.<\/span><\/p>\n <div id=\"attachment_531512\" style=\"width: 560px\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\"><img class=\"wp-image-531512 size-large\" src=\"http:\/\/ludumdare.com\/compo\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/01\/SushiRoll-Cat-550x494.gif\" alt=\"SushiRoll-Cat\" width=\"550\" height=\"494\" srcset=\"http:\/\/ludumdare.com\/compo\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/01\/SushiRoll-Cat-300x270.gif 300w, http:\/\/ludumdare.com\/compo\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/01\/SushiRoll-Cat-550x494.gif 550w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 550px) 100vw, 550px\" \/><p class=\"wp-caption-text\">(Pretty much the sushi chefs of the animal kingdom.)<\/p><\/div>\n <p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">The cat was our first rigged\/animated character in\u00a0the game, and took a fair bit of time to get implemented. \u00a0We knew we wanted him to have a menacing pounce to avoid, but seeing him in action (in Blender), gave us all another useful creative kick, and we all laughed at the idea that this cat (when bopped by a large-enough Fugu) could be yet another thing that rolled down the hill with you. \u00a0(Poor kitty.)<\/span><\/p>\n <p><img class=\"alignnone size-large wp-image-531513\" src=\"http:\/\/ludumdare.com\/compo\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/01\/sushiroll-tree-pagoda-550x378.jpg\" alt=\"sushiroll-tree-pagoda\" width=\"550\" height=\"378\" srcset=\"http:\/\/ludumdare.com\/compo\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/01\/sushiroll-tree-pagoda-300x206.jpg 300w, http:\/\/ludumdare.com\/compo\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/01\/sushiroll-tree-pagoda-550x378.jpg 550w, http:\/\/ludumdare.com\/compo\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/01\/sushiroll-tree-pagoda.jpg 974w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 550px) 100vw, 550px\" \/><\/p>\n <p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">With the cat modeled, rigged, animated, and finally painted, we had (most of) the main art assets we were hoping for (mostly) in place. \u00a0We started on the final assets \u2014 a quick Japanese-styled pagoda to sit on top of our hill as our deadly restaurant escape scene intro &#8212; and started to pull everything together in Unity. \u00a0This was Sunday evening. \u00a0We were getting close to the end of our art assets to-do list, and (somehow) even a bit ahead of schedule&#8230;<\/span><\/p>\n <p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">Which, naturally, meant it was time to go big or go home \u2014 the last idea that had been lurking in the room (initially deemed too much to hope for) was to load in the villain himself: <strong>the Sushi Chef<\/strong>. \u00a0It\u2019s hard for me to imagine the game without him at this point, but even for his huge role, he was actually a fairly last-minute long-shot of an idea to try to build him by the jam deadline. \u00a0(This also meant programming him, after all.) \u00a0But, hey, we decided to go for it.<\/span><\/p>\n <p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">There was really only time for one round of character design, so it was important to get our chef &#8220;right&#8221; on the first try. \u00a0We agreed right away to keep him pretty cartoony, in order to\u00a0let\u00a0me design and sculpt him quickly, keep his rig and animation simple, and of course to match him to the cartoon style of the fish and the cat. \u00a0Thus, between trying to keep his facial features simple and trying to keep him a bit funny (he is a knife-wielding would-be fish-murderer, after all), I tried to simplify his face by pulling his headband down over his eyes, colorfully emphasizing what had become a running theme of cartoonishly-angry eyebrows in the other character designs up to that point. \u00a0He made us laugh on the first try, which we decided meant that he was probably\u00a0good enough to move ahead with.<\/span><\/p>\n <div id=\"attachment_531514\" style=\"width: 314px\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\"><a href=\"http:\/\/ludumdare.com\/compo\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/01\/SushiRoll-Chef.gif\"><img class=\"wp-image-531514 size-full\" src=\"http:\/\/ludumdare.com\/compo\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/01\/SushiRoll-Chef.gif\" alt=\"SushiRoll-Chef\" width=\"304\" height=\"374\" \/><\/a><p class=\"wp-caption-text\">He&#8217;s a man with a dream.<\/p><\/div>\n <p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">By the (late) end of the night, the chef was ready to go\u00a0as a low-poly game model, rigged, animated, and painted, and our fish was free to be chased by a floating placeholder-Unity-capsule no longer &#8212; and, instead, by an angry, knife-waggling chef.<\/span><\/p>\n <p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">Our group parted ways on early Monday morning, leaving the final design work of our game\u2019s logo and game over screen graphics (a last-minute 3D scene modeled and rendered just in time to drop into the final jam build) to be assembled remotely.<\/span><\/p>\n <p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">It was amazing to see it all come together, once everything was rolling, hopping, pouncing, and knife-waggling together in one combined setting. \u00a0That, plus the final versions of the movement\/controls, terrain generation, and chef-chasing functionality\u00a0&#8212;\u00a0and all set to the final music handed off by our team&#8217;s musician &#8212; really pulled it together into something that we were extremely proud of.<\/span><\/p>\n <p><a href=\"http:\/\/ludumdare.com\/compo\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/01\/ld-gameover-fornow.jpg\"><img class=\"alignnone size-large wp-image-531515\" src=\"http:\/\/ludumdare.com\/compo\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/01\/ld-gameover-fornow-550x309.jpg\" alt=\"ld-gameover-fornow\" width=\"550\" height=\"309\" srcset=\"http:\/\/ludumdare.com\/compo\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/01\/ld-gameover-fornow-300x169.jpg 300w, http:\/\/ludumdare.com\/compo\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/01\/ld-gameover-fornow-550x309.jpg 550w, http:\/\/ludumdare.com\/compo\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/01\/ld-gameover-fornow.jpg 900w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 550px) 100vw, 550px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n <p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">We wanted to say a huge <\/span><b>thank you<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400\"> to everyone that played, rated, and commented on our game. \u00a0It\u2019s been extremely gratifying to get all of your kind and helpful feedback, and it\u2019s given our team the\u00a0drive to keep working.\u00a0\u00a0We\u2019re happy to say that we\u2019re already well on our way to implementing some of our next ideas, which\u00a0we hope will help turn Sushi Roll from a prototype into a really fun little game. \u00a0So please stay tuned &#8212; and send us your thoughts!<\/span><\/p>\n <ul>\n <li>Try out\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/ludumdare.com\/compo\/ludum-dare-34\/?action=preview&amp;uid=49637\">Sushi Roll<\/a>\u00a0here, if you haven&#8217;t already. \u00a0We&#8217;d love your review!<\/li>\n <\/ul>\n <p>&nbsp;<\/p>","time":"January 4th, 2016 9:46 am","title":"Sushi Roll: Design Postmortem"}