December 28, 2011

Postmortem: Sat-E

This is my postmortem for my Ludum Dare 22 entry, Sat-E. You can find the timelapse over here.

The Good

Motivation
I was really motivated for this dare and it showed in the game and outside it. It's super hard to make a game in only 48 hours but this time it went pretty well. My previous attempts went okay, but there were always something lacking. This time the game feels a little bit more finished so I'm going in the right direction.

After the game the programming motivation continued and with it I've been improving my small fast prototyping framework I use when making games. I got a lot of ideas on improvements during the weekend so that's great.

The feedback
I was moderately happy with how the game turned out, it didn't contain everything I had envisioned after all, but I got a ton of positive feedback anyway which is wonderful! It seems like some thinks that my game is good and there's nothing better for your game making confidence than a bunch of flattering words. I'm even considering developing the game more, maybe spending a couple of days here and there on it during a couple of months when I have the time?

I learned a lot!
The best way to learn something is just to do and it's still true. I've found a bunch of ways to improve and shorten my code, I've made an "infinite" space constructed by individual chunks and that game physics != real physics. Awesome.

Game design is a pretty fascinating creature. Sometimes you give it your best but the resulting game isn't funny, other times you think your game is shit but then you get comments on your "amazing" game! This time I was certain the game was crap, a neat idea wrapped behind a boring gameplay but turns out it maybe wasn't that boring after all?

I got this comment:
"Also the fact that when that happened the game didn't simply reset, I lost my money but not my items, literally stopped me from rage quitting. Bravo"

My thougts? Wait that's a bug! Hmm...

My girlfriend
Of course as I live together with someone it's quite hard to devote an entire weekend, plus the extra time before and after, with my computer. Veronica handled it wonderfully well and she was very supportive which means a lot to me and it helped a ton.

The Bad

The music
There's no music but I had grand plans for making music for the first time ever! It failed hard though. Which brings me to the next point...

Not familiar with the tools
I used my own framework for the game, which is fine, but my last game with it was in May 2011! Which is a looong time ago. I was a bit (a lot) out of practice with this whole pixel arts thing. And of course I had never used LMMS to make music and that didn't happen. I was short of time and it was too big of a deal to start it with the last minute.

Not enough time
Even though I had the whole weekend planned for the dare and I skipped practice on Sunday I was still short on time. I'm not really sure why though. I made a pretty simple game, not a lot of art and I generated sound with bfxr which took no time at all... The reasons really must be:

1. Not enough practice.
2. Unfamiliarity with the tools. Correlates closely to #1.
3. I'm bad and LD is hard.

When I see all these amazing games I'm reminded on how much better other game makers are. I need more practice and I need to make more games. I should enter the next dare, enter the experimental gameplay project and just make more games.

And let's face it: Making a game in 48 hours is frickin hard.

The Ugly

The art
Oh god... I suck at making art. Let's just leave it at that.

The code
There's a lot of bad and wrong in there, it works but it's not pretty. In fact, it's ugly.

The gameplay
This is a tricky one. I thought about placing this in the bad section as I didn't find the game very pleasing at all. The beginning was too slow, the ending too long and there wasn't enough incentive to continue flying through endless space I thought. But I got a lot of positive comments and reactions which is wonderful! I don't fully understand why yet so I'm tagging the gameplay as ugly. After all the gameplay wasn't like in my dream...

Ending thoughts

Before entering the competition I'm always nervous but high spirited. That feeling is always crushed during the weekend and when I finally get the game done and uploaded I think it's the worst game ever. Luckily I'm greeted with positive feedback and that was the case this time again. Maybe they are okay, not super of course, but simply okay.

This time the dare came at a time where I felt I haven't done anything meaningful for a long time, it's just school, little programming and no game making. Now after my spirits are high and I can face a new year with many more games to come!

Until next time, cheers!

December 19, 2011

Ludum Dare 22 Timelapse

Here's the timelapse for my entry to Ludum Dare 22, Sat-E.

This time I managed to record one screen every minute, which is very suboptimal to say the least but I slowed it down a bit so you can at least see something being done there.

December 19, 2011

Sat-E

So I entered Ludum Dare 22 this weekend as a preamble for tomorrow's linear algebra exam. The theme this time around was Alone and the game I came up with is about a lonely satellite in space, kinda like Wall-E.

Sat-E

Download
Windows (2.1 MB)
Linux 64bit (4.7 MB)

Instructions
Collect junk and other items for you to buy upgrades, and finally, your friend to finish the game. Be careful not to run out of battery, you need to return home to base for a recharge between runs.

Controls
Arrow Keys - Move around
Space/Return - Choose item in docking mode
F1 - Developer console

Timelapse
It's on youtube and it's embedded here.

Source
https://github.com/treeman/Sat-E

Built using my fast prototyping framework
https://github.com/treeman/7days

December 16, 2011

Starcraft 2 Keycaps

When I ordered this computer I was compelled, utterly compelled to buy a mechanical keyboard. Sure they cost almost 10x as much as a "regular" one and they didn't even have these funky multimedia keys, what gives? Did I loose my insanity? It was supposed to give a great typing experience... And it sure did deliver!

I'm bringing this up again because I decided to spend my money on something possibly even more useless (or awesome?). I ordered some starcraft II modifier keys for the keyboard and now they are fitted onto the keyboard. Yay!

December 14, 2011

Ludum Dare 22 Here I Come

The time has finally come. After more than three hours of exam writing, and almost double spent on studying for it, I am now ready to declare my entry into Ludum Dare 22! I've been away far too long, with my entries for the 17th and the 20th dare being almost a century away, the ancient game making creature will once again move into action. We'll just hope the game won't be ancient as well...

Leaving that behind us I can now focus on what to actually use. I wanted to try some new language and some new environment but that seems lika a really bad idea. So I will stick to what I know:

My fast prototyping library consisting of old C++ on top of the nice SFML engine. sfxr, or maybe the newer bfxr for sound effects. It's seriously great, give it a try! Probably mtpaint for some nice pixelated graphics. I would like to try out inkscape for some vector based graphics but I might skip it this time. LMMS for music making. This I tried to use a long time ago... And failed miserably. It'll be a fun, fun weekend! And finally my little timelapse recording hack for linux. Be careful if you want to try it, it will most likely blow up in your face and take your computer down with it. Handle with care.

And of course here's where I'll be spending most of my waking hours:

I'm planning on getting some new food during all this, but I'm not entirely sure yet.

December 12, 2011

On The Decline of FPS Games

Mr. Eriksson just sent me this link as a fitting video on my post on The Decline of FPS Games.

Oh How true!

December 7, 2011

Finishing Stuff

I haven't done much blogging or game programming in a while but instead I've finished some school stuff. We completed the assembly course labs, which were pretty fun actually, and I managed to finally complete the electronics course I've been holding off on for like forever... But now it's gone, yay!

There's not much left before christmas either, we have some sort of exam on tuesday (very boring course) and one the 20th (very fun course) but other than that I'm free to do whatever I want.

• I'm planning on entering Ludum Dare next weekend, finally getting some game programming done.
• I need to recap this year and plan some for the next. I fear this year wasn't as productive as I had hoped.
• I've been thinking that I know my tools (Vim, the command line) but I need to get a little bit better. Especially with emacs as I feel like a monkey on a typewriter when I'm forced to use it at school. Not cool.

And some more smaller stuff I don't have energy to type out (or maybe you're interested in reorganizing my home folder?).