Lilac.27 Post Mortem (Ludum Dare 23)
April 28, 2012
What a fantastic recollection of 48 hours. This was my first Ludum-Dare and my second Game Jam. I now wish my life was structured in a way that I could benefit from these short-bursts of inpsiration, motivation, and commitment to goals, I would not only get more done, but better time management would also mean better social life, health habits, etc. Oh well! Something to keep in mind.
The good:
- Having worked constantly on Unity3d for more than a year now, I had no problems with the engine or tool itself. It was a smooth ride in every step of the way.
- RagePixel by keely, a free pixel editor plugin for Unity made making sprites a breeze. It was my first time using it, but the tool is easy and intuitive. Its only drawback for Lilac.27 is its stubbornness to work in Orthographic cameras with specific distances. I set up a scene specifically for making the sprites as a work-around.
- Sculptris by Pixologic, a Sculpting tool in which I modelled and paionted the organic-looking planets. Again an amazing free and easy tool that sends pleasure waves down your spine just from comparing it to other possible workflows. Just Press "ImageMap" and "Export OBJ" and Unity will import them with no problems (Apart from choosing 2 as the scale, 1 gave triangles so small Unity didn't render them).
- Propellerhead's Figure for music. While limited on its instrument offering, Figure has enough tweaks and settings to give your song a unique personality. It was specially great for this Ludum Dare as making drum beats is almost automatic.
- The relatively simple concept allowed me to get the movement and shooting feeling good in the first day, that way I could focus on all the content during the second.
- Less than 100 lines for all that has to do with orbits and planet switching. All stemming from this simple algorithm made open in the following Unity Forum topic: http://forum.unity3d.com/threads/8873-Faux-Gravity-making-my-brain-spin...-Help!
- The Art Style was grounded from early in the development (2D sprites in 3D environment), so it was more fun than difficult stitching the colours, textures and camera post-processing effects together.
The bad:
- Making the shooting feel right must have taken a good 30% of the time. I spent a long time trying to align some bullet arrows to both the character's direction and the Planet's gravity, but gave up and ended up with a spherical bullet that of course doesn't show any rotation.
- Configuring all the particle effects felt dragged beyond necessary.
- Forgetting the need of a certain sound effect made me close and re-open programs and change mindsets more often than necessary.
- I added the camera's movement in the end, so it feels quite iffy. I would've liked to have it automatic, aligned the best possible way for jumping and showing the goal in each section.
- Jumping can also use a bit of work.
- Lack of sleep gave me a huge headache by the end of it.
The interesting:
- Figure does not let you save or export at all, so I had to use a input-to-input cable to record and process the music in the pc.
- One of the original ideas had to do with a more interesting tiny chess world, where pieces interacted and somehow grounded their behaviours around Chess. Too ambitious!
The future:
- I will definitely be expanding the game, with mobile platforms as the first goal. This is something I aimed for since deciding the concept and Graphical Style.
- All in all, this was a great experience that taught and gave me a lot. The premise of the Ludum Dare challenge pushes you to explore and understand your strengths, weaknesses and limits.
The plugs:
Thank you for Playing!