Trullskoll: Post Mortem

By request, I am doing a post competition blog.

People seem to be curious, if not skeptical, of how I accomplished all that I did.

But I promise I did do everything within the time-frame of the competition.

To clarify: I created everything from scratch in Game Maker Studio within the 48 hour time-frame.

So what is my secret?

1. I worked for 40 hours. – I only slept for 4 hours, that’s right.
2. Being extremely motivated – I was pretty depressed/unmotivated until I found out it was Ludum Dare, and I sprung up with newfound confidence and excitement. Like I said, when I do Ludum Dare, I go all out.
3. I have 11 years of experience in Game Maker. – I’ve used it since I was 10 or 11 and I’m still learning new things it can do every day.
4. Redundancy – Using parents and making objects that otherwise work similarly saves a lot of time, as well as using standardized palettes. For example, the AI for enemies is based on the AI for animals with a few minor tweaks, and most sprites with wood, bone, metal, or fur have the same palette.
5. Simplicity – The most efficient form of complexity. I switched to a two color palette for every color (except shiny metal), I animated the player with parts to cut down on the amount of animations I’d need, and many many other things.
6. Enough caffeine to give a goat a heart attack.

The whole experience was incredibly unhealthy; the next day I felt physically sick and slept for about 16 hours.

I wouldn’t recommend working this way.

Finally, I’m planning on doing a post-comp version of my game in the near future, but for now here’s a bugfixed verson.

• Sped up/fixed enemy progression.
• Fixed bug with totems.
• Various other things.

Please play the competition version first; do not rate based on this fixed version.

And for those who requested; if you are interested in following my work, I am currently running a Tumblr Devlog of my first commercial game.

I apologize if this blog is too big.