First LD, not my first jam. Got an idea, so I'm going to roll with that :D

Look, it's a procedurally generated small world!

https://twitter.com/theChief/status/855610029302579200

Destructible terrain, camera shake and bloom :D

https://twitter.com/theChief/status/855634854880399362

https://twitter.com/theChief/status/855862084936118272

https://youtu.be/7XHd-MCNV68 It's starting to feel like an actual game now :D

So this is my first game dev post mortem. It's also my first Ludum Dare, first solo jam and first time I've been properly happy with what I've released. I've done two jams previously - one 4 hour one at a friend's party with no internet access, and another 24 hour one to raise money for www.specialeffect.org.uk (a great charity that aims to help people with disabilities to access games). Both were free mobile games - Emma's Escapades on the Android Store, and Coffin Dodgers on both Android and iOS.

The game is here - please give it a go and leave feedback, criticism is completely welcome as I'm aiming for a proper PS4 release. My twitter is https://twitter.com/theChief - I appreciate follows and retweets, and I'll do the same for you ;)

So why am I pleased with it? I think I've ended up with a fun game. I achieved what I set out to achieve, didn't get bogged down with feature creep and it doesn't look like trash (I have literally no artistic skill). Obviously I want to win, but failing that I've got something I'm more than willing to polish and sell on an actual console - my university has really good links with Sony and they've got a game studio with the licences needed. I've actually started work on the PS4 port now - it runs on the PS4, I just need to make it an actual game :D

What Went Right

I actually planned this one! It seems planning goes a long way. Before I even started the jam, I had this picture of something I thought might be fun. It was certainly achievable, especially with the lack of any artistic skill, and the theme ended up fitting! This meant I could start planning features and timelines as soon as the jam started, which worked really well - especially since it was 2a.m. UK time so the likelihood of producing any usable code was very slim. I don't work well with no sleep! After a suitable plan was produced, I had a couple of hours sleep before beginning development. The plan was split into 2 sections: the MVP and the list of incremental changes that would be nice - something I found very effective during my year of industry placement. For the MVP it was decided that the game should generate a destructible map, have a countdown timer as the lose condition to create an arcade-style pick up and play game, and generate gems that increase score and add time to the timer. Optional features included a leaderboard, levelling bonuses, map regeneration, and enemies/bosses.

Planning also allowed sleep, exercise and proper meals. I slept 6 hours both nights, which vastly decreased the amount of stupid mistakes I made. I'm not saying I didn't make ANY stupid mistakes, though... I'm opposed to the industry's obsession with crunch for that reason - if you've not had any sleep for 48 hours and are being powered by energy drinks, coffee and/or pizza, there is no way your brain is working at its best. Sleep properly, drink lots of water, and eat well. Your body will thank you, and you'll get more done and it will be better quality. The "Game Outcomes Project" in 2014 found that crunch time does not increase the quality of the game or the speed at which it is completed.

Anyway. Keeping the scope of the game down was key, I'm a sucker for feature creep - I've been well known to add extra enemies, attack types and patterns, etc. just because it looks cool. That may be why I rarely finish a project... Not this time, though! When my housemate tried it and said "you should add multiplayer", my immediate answer was "well, my skeleton program does have multiple controller support...", but I resisted! If it wasn't on the plan, it wasn't going in. Well, except that really cool bug that makes everything explode, but that just needed fixing and attaching to a new type of gem!

The generation was also much easier to set up than I expected, and haven't really had many issues with it. It was really nice to get the core component down quickly, with a relatively small amount of tweaking needed later. I'm glad I researched it beforehand - the Youtube series I followed is linked at the bottom. Going through that in the days leading up to the jam really gave me insight into how the generation worked and how to fill the generated caves. It also served to give me a couple of ideas - I wasn't really expecting it to be feasible to add gems and things placed in the caves, I thought I'd be making the score based on destruction alone.

And finally, I think I'm allowed to say the game was fun ;) I tested it with friends and family for the duration of the compo and all my feedback indicated that it was pretty satisfying to destroy the whole place, only to have it regenerate so they could do it all again. There's loads I want to add and was suggested to me, but at it's core I think it's a pretty fun game.

What Went Wrong

It wasn't all perfect though, obviously. I was originally going to spawn a boss every time the level regenerated - I still stand by that and think it would make the game much better, but due to time constraints it was completely left out. I couldn't even start to implement it, which was really annoying. As I said earlier, I have a tendency to want to add all of the features - but I resisted this time.

I also had a lot of trouble with the lava. The physics just didn't play nicely - to increase performance, colliders were turned off if they weren't in view, and that caused all sorts of strange things to happen. I make the executive decision to not waste any time fiddling with it and just got back to the important stuff. It was a real shame, because it looked really nice and would have added a different type of danger to the game. Dropping a feature is always quite disheartening, and made me feel like I'd never get any of it to work.

Performance was a real issue when I increased the size of the world. Every single destructable block has its own collider, which meant there could be up to 40,000 collision checks per frame. Obviously that is a massive issue, and I attempted to fix it by only rendering the blocks that were visible. That ended up causing way more strain than the actual collision checks, so I opted to just disable the colliders. That ended up being much more efficient, but also meant enemies sometimes flew through walls! To fix that the simulations on their rigidbodies were paused. I really need to make it more efficient before the PS4 release, and I think to achieve that the loops that turn off the colliders that aren't needed will be multithreaded...

Another issue is with player movement. It's not particularly obvious that there's gravity, and jumping by pressing the left thumbstick up didn't seem particularly intuitive - but it did make jumping and shooting at the same time more accessible. Keyboard input was also obviously not the intended input method and really isn't as satisfying as input with a controller. Controller input is also disabled for the WebGL version, which is the most accessible - and needs remapping on Windows, which is the second most common platform... sigh

Conclusion

In conclusion, it was a great experience and I'll be doing every single LD possible, for the rest of my life. I look forward to playing all your games, making more games and reading your reviews of mine! Please play and review it. Pretty please.

Dom

Youtube Series

I've got a bit of time over the weekend to have a look at/play/rate as many games as I can. Promote yourself here ;) If it's especially good I'll tweet about it (not that I've got many followers...)

Mine is here if you'd like to give it a go :)

I just thought I'd share a little progress update for PixelWorld (shameless plug - go play/rate it).

I'm currently picking development back up and adding a load of new features for a shiny PS4 release! My university have great links with Sony, and we've already got it running on a PS4 :D I've had loads of really great feedback, so thank you everyone that played. Somebody suggested multiplayer, and I thought that was a really great idea so here you go - a screenshot of multiplayer in action!

I'm also in the process of major optimisation and a new regeneration system. I'll think I'll keep a few things as a surprise for the launch, though ;)

Stay updated by following me on Twitter!

Hey look, a bandwagon for me to jump on! ;) PixelWorld is here if you want to see why some of the most common words are "good" and "fun"...

• Overall: 122nd
• Fun: 104th
• Innovation: 569th
• Theme: 429th
• Graphics: 71st
• Audio: 290th
• Humor: 379th
• Mood: 158th

I'm really pleased with slime escape's scores! Massive improvement on pixel world's scores, for sure. Next time I'm aiming for sub-100 in 4/8 categories :grin:

I'm particularly impressed with my score in graphics, since I'm a programmer with very little skill in anything artistic...

Thank you so much to everyone who played the game!

I won't have an internet connection and I'll have MAYBE 3 hours free over the whole weekend, but damn if the theme is "Making Connections" I have to do something! Seriously who submitted that? That has to be one of the best themes to make it to the final round I've ever seen :joy:

My last (and first) LD was LD38, and I managed to get to 138th in the "Fun" category for Pixel World, which I was incredibly pleased with! I'm hoping to get in the top 100 for something this time, and I've got a couple of ideas for dumb mechanics so hopefully I can pull it off :wink:

I use Unity, Pyxel Edit and probably something like bfxr for the music - and I'll potentially be hooking it up to Firebase for their shiny new machine learning stuff if the theme fits :grin:

I'm going to stream it this time, I was happy with the timelapse I did for the last one but I think streaming is the way forward. I'll put the link on my Twitter, so make sure you give me a follow!

I managed to find over 100 that were actually decent, that's a little bit of a step up than previous times I think! That might seem "harsh" or "picky" to some people, but the whole point of this round is to get rid of the vast majority of them. And the amount of repeated themes, Hitchiker's references (though a few of them were actually not bad) and "throwbacks" to previous themes did irritate me slightly :sweat_smile:

Fancy a warmup but don't have enough time to spare? Try a 30 minute jam! I've done it twice now and boy is it stressful. Livestreams linked below for proof :wink: sorry, there's no audio - I couldn't get my mic working. I've got a new one on the way, though, so I'll be able to stream LD42!

You can play my latest one here - the aim is to get the green ball to the gold star, without hitting the red ball. Click and hold with your mouse to affect gravity.

If you do one, feel free to tweet me or reply here and show off what you've done! Looking forward to seeing what people come up with :grin:

https://youtu.be/9icn5uanICU

https://youtu.be/tTAq1fcayDY

Much better this time. I'm not going to post exactly what I put, mostly because I'm still changing them, but overall much happier with them. "Decay" in particular is one of my favourites! I'm slightly more optimistic than I was from the previous round :wink:

My new webcam is on the way, which means I can actually stream this one! I've streamed a few smaller jams in the past, but without sound they really aren't as interesting. All of the streams on the sidebar are on Twitch, I assume you have to do it on Twitch to get a spot on here?

Oh look, the last lot of themes. It's a shame they are all bad. I can't think of anything positive to say about any of them, and I usually try to find a silver lining in everything :sweat_smile: I genuinely hope none of these themes win.

it's not a bug it's a feature: -1. Having to explain that something is not broken is bad for any game, let alone a whole game built around it.

you can't save them all: -1. Too limiting.

you are the final boss: -1. What if you don't want to make a game that involves combat? Too limiting.

Death is useful: -1. Too limiting.

Find it, protect it: -1. No.

Shadows: 0. Not terrible, but at the same time it's a bit boring.

Light is dangerous: -1. Similar to the one above, but more limiting.

The game rules change after each failure: -1. I'd score this far lower if possible, that's just a bad idea.

Floating islands: -1. Boring.

The more you use an action, the worse it will perform: 0. Again, not terrible but pretty boring

You control the environment, not the player: -1. Repeat of "you can't control the player" but somehow even worse

Craft your own magic: -1. too limiting, again

I have been here before: 0. I can't think of any positives or negatives for this one. It just is.

You are not the main character: -1.

Shelter: 0

Night is coming: 0

Which themes do you love and hate? Personally, my top one is "decay", I love that theme so much. There's so much you can do with it. I don't even have a good idea for what I'd do with it, I just think as a theme it invites so much variety.

I personally can't stand "You are the final boss", "Two points of view" and "You control the environment, not player" - some of them are too restricting, some of them I can't think of a single game that would be fun for me to make with that as the theme. If any of those were the final theme, I just wouldn't follow the theme at all and not care about the points I get :sweat_smile: I'd use it more to prototype one of the (many) ideas I have for future games for my studio to make, the fact that some people would play them and give feedback is a bonus at least xD

Hooray, I'll be attempting to raise some money for Extra Life For Kids while streaming, follow me for updates, and you can find the details here https://www.extra-life.org/participant/thechief-ld

Looking forward to seeing what you all make!

I'm streaming over on https://www.twitch.tv/thechief10 and raising a bit of money for Extra Life :D donate here :grin: looking forward to seeing what everyone comes up with! I've made a solid start.