Ludum Dare 21

LD 21 – ESCAPE

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TIME-LAPSE

POST-MORTEM

What Went Right

1. Picked Up a Good Concept, Early

I figured out what I wanted to accomplish within the first hour and set about making it. I had (and still have) a fully-formed concept about what “Escapology” would be. It seems that many people struggle with this phase of the competition, and guess I’ve been blessed in that I’ve yet to suffer from “game developer’s block” (knock on wood).

2. The Concept Was Scope-able

I ended up with a tiered design that would easily allow the slicing out of features if time started running out. It’s important to be ambitious, take chances, and experiment, but I think that it’s equally important to place constraints on everything to reflect the environment that I’m developing in. The 48 hours given for the Ludum Dare competition don’t really allow for much wriggle room.

3. I Know My Role

I’m coming up on a year’s worth of independent game development, and two years as a practicing game designer. I know (roughly) how much I can accomplish in a given timeframe. This, combined with the scope-able design, allowed me to simply motor through the building of the game without stressing over whether I’d finish or not. Finishing the Ludum Dare is no longer a challenge for me; finishing with an exciting, artistic, and fun game has become my main goal.

What Went Wrong

1. A Wild Notch Appeared!

… and was super effective!

For Ludum Dare 48 #20 I exercised a complete social networking blackout, only going online for Unity help or to post updates. This time, because I knew that Notch was also motoring alongside me, I spent a little too much time concerning myself with what he was doing and what his effect on the competition was, and this defocused me.

Don’t get me wrong, having a celebrity participate in the LD can only be good for the entire event. It draws in more people that normally wouldn’t be interested or didn’t know about the event, thus inspiring a wider range of people to join in and maybe try and make a game. But I almost feel like there should be a separate category for established developers with a fan base. I worry that the results may be skewed somewhat in favor of the more popular devs. This is already true, with many participants eager to see what past winners and other top-level indies produce.

I know, I know: “it’s not about winning”. But for me, having entered twice before and produced a decent result in the previous competition, it sort of has become about winning. I’ve already cleared the hurdle of simply joining, and the one after that of publishing and enduring the shame (and pride) of being judged by my peers. Now I want to end up with a compo-winning entry and I don’t think that’s an unreasonable goal.

Of course, the way to do this is to produce the best possible, most widely-appealing game in the 48 hours. Making a great game is always the key priority, but it does get harder as the environment changes. But I’m not blaming Notch for my self-perceived below average performance, I accept the blame for caring more about what he was doing than what I was doing.

2. Not Enough of Everything

About half-way through the competition I realized that I wasn’t going to be able to execute on the entire vision. I cut the third Illusion, the progression system involving gaining Currency for successful Illusions, and the Illusion Shop. I have no doubt that time spent developing those aspects of the game would make this a far better experience, and the feedback has certainly indicated as much. I hope that the Ludum Dare result demonstrates where I was going with the system, and that at least a few minutes entertainment could be had.

LIVE UPDATES

00:45 Brainstormed out the concept, got fixated on “Escapology”, working with that. Have the core game-loop code in place.

02:00 “Level 1” game code loop is in place and function to satisfactory levels. Time for a hot bath and sleep, to wake early and live some Houdini dreams.

11:56 Up for 2 hours working on some clean placeholder art. Working in 3D is extremely risky for judged competitions, as pushing vertices around can result in all kinds of time-consuming errors. It’s critical to measure twice, cut once and hope that each asset produced will hold up in the final, because it’s unlikely there’ll be an opportunity to go back and clean them up.

15:36 The entire stage 1 is working fine. I would like to get 2, maybe 3 more stages in to demonstrate the core ideas of the game. It’s coming together nicely, and an avatar has been developed.

19:44 Hassling with models and GUI, got the stage all set now. Can I get two more “events” in? Plenty of time left…

1:00:34 Second “event” is coming along nicely. I fear I may have to cheap out on the last event, and have a terrible plan for ‘trolling’ the player on it. Hopefully it won’t come to that, but time and effort will tell. Still feeling strong.

1:17:04 Haven’t really been updating much. This project jumped into the “hard labor” phase of game development very early on, and it’s been beating the hell out of me ever since. I’ve managed to get the second event in and done, but unfortunately the third won’t make an appearance, at least not in the competition entry version. The remaining 7 hours are going to be spent testing and tuning.

1:21:11 It’s as done as it’s going to get. Could I have completed the third event in three hours, added the currency and purchasing system in? Maybe. And maybe I could have totally broken it so that it didn’t run. As it is, it loads and fires off without any mind-damaging hitches. Think I’ll call this one and get some rest. I’m expecting the compo to have jumped the shark, anyways, with Notch’s participation. I guess we’ll find out if he leads by 1001 votes.

1:22:09 Published here, to Kongregate, and hopefully built an entry on the Ludum Dare site. Either way it’s out in public now and it’s time to rest.

1:22:24 Oh, and if you’re interested this is the concept document that I worked up in the first hour and used as a guide. (There was a public Google Doc once. Not anymore. –Ed.)

2011.08.26 – 2011.08.29

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