LdDB

My post of the mortem… and volcanos

thebrickanator21 Dec 2015 · 6 min read

TADA!

After playing and exploring many entries from LD 34 and looking at my feedback, I’m back to finally write up my post-mortem on my compo entry ‘Mt Etubo‘.

As my second attempt at a LD, after placing 14th equal ‘overall’ and 11th in ‘fun’ last time round… I was certainly excited to attempt an improvement over my last game (Trogg village defense).

I invite you to read of my journey… if you wish ~as I understand its longer than intended 😛

Tools:

Ideas…

When I first saw the resultant tied themes for this LD, I was stumped… My strategy (though probably not a great strategy) for deciding on a concept is to twist an existing style of game play into something fun that I have not yet seen, then apply it to the theme… and the theme growing, though versatile did not immediately seem fun by my interpretation. So I decided instead on implementing the theme as a growth of challenge or of an enemy in the game. this is where the idea stemmed from of a growing volcano monster.

I figured that the two button control theme would limit the fun of the game so decided to remove it in the end, even though it was possible with the mouse.

and Creation…

(A very rough outline of my work distribution)

Saturday 3:00 pm ~ I knew that I had time… I had about 37 hours available in the competition for solid development time due to it being the middle of school holidays, so I decided if I were to ever make a complete feeling LD game it would have to be this time. I created all the art at the very start… this time spent on art then doubled as time that I could plan my game in and since I didn’t have a huge time before I would be going to bed anyway, I let myself take that first day slow to properly plan what I was doing and draw the art which I knew that I would never be able to do when the time started running out. (I had planned to complete more houses, trees and scenery later but never gave myself time) I did end up completing the character controll/physics, level creation & generated the computer generated soundtrack with “CG Music”on this day ~ 12:00 am

Sunday 6:30 am ~ After the worst sleep of my life (tossing over game plans leaving probably 4 hours of actual sleep) I spent the entirety of that Sunday building the game out with nicer visuals (rain and liquid lava effects) as these types of graphical details are important to me in setting atmosphere for a game. I also created the main mechanics of liquid physics, player pushing attack, volcano aggression indicator and tidied up the bugs of the whole thing in preparation for monday. Along with many other important but smaller game-play mechanics. ~ 11:00 pm

Monday 6:30 am ~ (a much better sleep) I fixed everything… …the end… …lol, no 😛 I did heaps of balancing to aim for [100% completion of the first stage], [50% completion of the second stage] and [more skill based/rare completion of the final stage] aiming to also keep it short, which I thought I achieved with a game length of exactly 3 mins for the short attention spanned LD audience 😉 . I added the lightning attack, the sheep, improved the villagers AI, polished the intro, added game sounds created by my voice and Leshy SFMaker, completed the menu, etc etc. and prepared for submission ~ 3:20 pm

There was allot I have missed on this recount of the 48 hours, yet despite what I accomplished I still wish I had more time 😛 haha I guess it will always be this way but I am really proud of just how much I accomplished in the time frame. (I now also have heaps of time to possibly expand on the idea anyway ;D )

Things I’m proud of:

  • The graphics (I’m happy that the visual atmosphere of the game became so polished despite the limited amount of art and feel that this is the games strongest point) ~ I love the lava effect
  • The music (The strategy of using CG Music to generate the soundtrack for this game saved me allot of time and did a better job than i could have likely accomplished on my own while allowing me to still customize almost every detail of how the song sounded and helped me to make it dynamically change in-game of a more dynamic experience)
  • The detail (I liked that I was able to add three stages of varied game-play and interesting AI behavior such as having the villagers actually farm)
  • The intro and story (It came out better than I hoped, though I’m not so happy I had to publish my story narration publicly :D)
  • The controls (Sacrificing the two button controls theme in the second day saved my entry and I went from being very concerned for the play-ability of my game to being very happy with it)

Things I am not so proud of:

  • The fact that I had to drop the two controls theme 😛 (the reason for this is obvious)
  • A use of theme that is not clear to the audience (Though I feel the theme is portrayed well as intended, I do not think it is clear to the audience unless they are attentive to the story so is a little disappointing)

… so mostly the theme lol 😀

Things you guys think:

  • Fortunately you all seem to love the graphics which I am happy about 😀
  • You seem to appreciate the time put into creating a story.
  • The chaos and comedy of villagers stupidly jumping into a volcano.
  • A couple of ye seemed to like the music which is a relief 😛
  • Many have commented on how complete the game feels.
  • understandably a few have commented on how difficult the game is so I may look at re-balancing a little.
  • and a couple have said they are bad/find it hard to push people away… (I have a few ideas since that I will likely add to fix this a little also)

So do I feel I have succeeded? …YES! …but do you? … I invite you to continue playing and rating as I’d love more feedback 😀

I have loved playing the many games that I have played so far, so thanks again for all ye feedback and I look forward to LD35 to see what comes of it. I hope you do to!

Thanks for reading 😉

Source: ludumdare.com archive

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