Ancient Tech To Return – Postmortem

Nearly two days have passed since I submitted my entry and I’ve had some time to reflect over the experience.

This was my first Ludum Dare and the first jam I’ve participated in. I have created a few games in the past (http://games.imphenzia.com) but making games have always came after most of the other priorities I have. In addition to working as an IT consultant by day, I have a wife and 3 kids and I have a small company called “Imphenzia” where I mainly create games assets for sale (music, sound effects, and space related graphics.)

Since mid-2016 I’ve wanted to participate in LD but for every event up until now I’ve either been abroad or occupied in other ways (my worst excuse is my mother-in-law coming over from England for a visit – that would have been a perfect time to participate if you ask me, but my wife had other plans =)

So then, finally I was able to participate in LD36, but I didn’t decide until the night before the event. I was somewhat reluctant to enter because normally I try to stay away from the computer room on weekends, at least while the kids are awake, but I figured one weekend would be OK in the end.

Expectations

I expected that I would finish a game in time for the deadline as long as I set a realistic bar for myself. I still had plans for the weekend that I was going ahead with – my nephew’s birthday party, riding motocross, and visiting a friend for a dinner.

Preparations

• I did a brief check of my environment (Unity, Blender, Photoshop, Cubase, Sound Forge) – all was working as expected.
• I set up OBS for screen and webcam recording to create a timelapse of the entire event
• I ensured that the sound card mixer settings and OBS recording captured Desktop Audio, Mic Audio, and ASIO Audio separate should I decide to break out parts of the timelapse
• I tidied up my computer desktop and folder structure.
• I started up Blender and realized I have no memory of even the most basic of commands, workflows, or UI (I have more of a 3DSMax background and want to switch over for licensing reasons)
• I told my wife and kids that I would be focused and probably had to do a lot of “fun work” during the weekend (the kids are 2, 5, 6, so they don’t really grasp what it means =)
• Refreshed myself on the rules of LD compo
• I live in Sweden so LD starts at 3AM. I went to bed at 20:00 with the kids and set my alarm for 02:00.
• I woke up at 01:00 in excitement and couldn’t sleep again so I went to doublecheck my computer etc… Turns out it was running at 100% CPU (Windows Problem Reporting) – I rebooted and the computer came back WITHOUT a mouse cursor. Panicked. Unplugged my Wacom Tablet and Mouse. Restarted. Sorted. Phew.

Breakdown of acts

I sat in 5 sessions

• Session 1: 6 hours
• Planning (20 minutes)
• Outlining project in Unity
• Creating player character in Blender (Model, Unwrap, Armature/Rig, Skinning, Animations)
• Relearning Blender + watching tutorials on bones, rigging, animation, etc =)
• Session 2: 3 hours
• Importing character and controlling/animating it in Unity
• Session 3: 7 hours
• Creating guard character in Blender (Model, Unwrap, Armature/Rig, Skinning, Animations)
• Importing guard character and controlling/animating it in Unity
• Modeling technology artifacts, chests in Blender and importing to Unity
• Implementing game mechanics of the game in Unity
• Implementing random spawning of level
• Session 4: 7 hours
• Created GUI, and menu screens
• Created GUI graphics in Photoshop
• Created game state machine to control Menu, Play, Win, Lose, Pause, Resume, states etc.
• Play testing
• Created the first sound effects (recorded with mic at desk and modified in Sound Forge
• Started on the first music track of the game in Cubase
• Session 5: 9 hours
• Completed composing the first music track and implemented it in the game.
• Created the bulk of sound effects (recorded at the desk) – bird tweets, guard responses, chest open/close, UI clicks, etc.
• Implementing Music/SFX volume controls and storing user configuration
• More play testing
• Time left – bonus activities:
• Updated main title graphics
• Composed an alternative music track and implemented music toggle in menu
• Added tree variations and tweaked lighting and colors
• Build (with multiple tests) packaging the game and Unity project for download – uploading it to my site
• Submitted everything to LD36
• Panicked – did I miss anything? Did I submit correctly?
• Everything was submitted and finalized at 02:30 Swedish time, 30 minutes before the deadline.

All in all I used 32 out of the 48 hours to make the game.

What Went Wrong

• I should have trained myself in Blender before so I would have been comfortable with what I was doing
• I ran into a bone rigging/armature problem in Blender, especially using pole target for leg IK which I decided to dump and not use after 2 hours.
• I ran into another problem in blender when the bones were affecting unweighted vertices which warped the mesh incorrectly. I decided to redo everything again and I started to regret going down the path of a platformer.
• Quite a few bugs appeared that took time to solve, e.g. coming to an empty chest the player would get an item from a previous chest. Solving bugs took longer than expected.
• Sitting in a room where I have 3 kids (aged 2,5,6) coming in to play, chat, hug, cry, fight, etc. is in many ways great – but it’s not the way to do it for something like LD. As I had to crunch I grew bored of myself telling them that I can’t do this or can’t do that. I prioritized playing with them for a few hours every day, reading bed time stories, and eating together etc. Still, I felt that I was pushing them away or staying focused “in my zone” a lot of the time to stay on track.
• Our youngest daughter fell ill with fever and pains on the sunday.
• I didn’t go ride motocross on the Sunday as I had planned.
• I didn’t go to the friends dinner party (this was due to the daughter being ill since we were committed to this earlier)
• I started to feel pressure about 3 hours before the deadline. Not that the game wasn’t complete – but that I’d mess up something during last bits of tweaking to break the game, or that I would lose internet connection for the submisson etc. =)

What Went Well

• The game was completed as planned
• I was happy with the visual and overall appearance of the game
• I felt the game lives up to some of the undocumented design goals I had in mind:
• The game can be completed in less than 10 minutes
• One can aim to beat their own best time of the game and it remembers the best time (for replayability)
• It should be a pleasant and peaceful environment
• Non-violent (I like violent games too, but I didn’t want this to be one =)
• The game trains your memory – you need to remember where you placed items in which chests when you need them
• The game has sound effects and multiple music tracks in it
• The characters are animated to a reasonable level
• I did get to spend time with my family despite committing to this for such an intense event
• I faithfully stuck to all the rules and completing everything from absolute 0.
• I submitted the game in time (and the submission process was not problematic)

Key Takeaways

• I need to refresh my skills, especially in Blender, well ahead of time
• I will avoid having any other commitments during the LD weekend.
• It was a fun experience while it lasted
• I don’t want to do it again with my wife and kids home, I want them to have a plan for the weekend for multiple reasons:
• I want to be able to focus,
• and more importantly I don’t want to push them away when I’m in my focus zone.
• My son told me once during the LD “Dad, I don’t like it when you are so focused on something” – and that hit home with me. I also watched the timelapse and realize what they see a lot of the time – me starring at the computer and my mind is really dedicated to solving problems or with creative tasks. This is why I say that it was a fun experience “while it lasted” because then I was so focused on it. Afterwards I had time to reflect. At the same time, it taught me a lot so on the Monday I dedicated a lot of play time with the kids and made myself not look at a phone or a computer during their awake time. I did the same on Tuesday and I will do the same today! =)

Would I do it again?

• Yes, but only with the key takeaways strongly in mind – especially the social aspects.

The Game

If you’re still reading… thanks =) I should probably show the game as well.

It’s called “Ancient Tech To Return” (can’t say I was thrilled about the theme) and it’s a top down isometric platform game. You spawn on a patch of land among trees and chests as someone who traveled back in time. Your goal is to get to a time teleport but in your way stands 5 guards on a path from the floating island. The guards each want a ancient technology artifacts that are hidden in the chests. You can only carry one item at a time so when you search a chest it’ll put whatever you had in that chest once you get something else. You have to train your memory to remember where you saw/placed items when the next guard may need it. Try to beat your own time!

I welcome you to play the game:

PLAY ANCIENT TECH TO RETURN (WEB + WINDOWS)

Gameplay Footage:

Screenshots:

Timelaps of the entire making-of with session and act descriptions: