Follow the Sun – Competition Version Postmortem

Over the past weekend I made a little game called Follow the Sun, for Ludum Dare 28. I want to take some time to go through the process of making the game, talking about what I learned and how I approached making a game in 48 hours.

For those of you who do not know what Ludum Dare is, it is a “competition” where you make a game from scratch in 48 hours, based on a theme that is determined by voting (the theme is released when the competition starts). This also means that you have to make all the assets yourself in that time frame, and code it from the ground up. I say “competition” because it’s more about actually making the game, than it is about winning. It’s a difficult thing to make a complete game in 48 hours!

In this postmortem, there are a bunch of things that I want to hit upon. First I’ll give a description of the game. Then I’m going to talk about the theme of the game vs. the theme of the competition. Then I’m going to go into what I couldn’t do due to time running out, and what I couldn’t do due to lack of skill. Finally, I’ll talk about my general experience making Follow the Sun. Suffice it to say this postmortem will ruin part of the game for you if you haven’t played it. If you don’t want to get story-spoiled, play it first before reading on!

The Epic of Sadko the Street Performer (Introduction)

Today I am going to begin in earnest my summer project. I am going to try to work on it a little every day, but focus on it on Saturdays, during which I have the most free time. I’m not really setting a timeline on this game, because I feel like it should take as long as it needs to take. If it lasts past the end of the summer, then so be it, but it might get interrupted by school if it does.

Today, I intend to describe what my summer project is about, how it came about and why I am doing this instead of a number of other projects I already have going.

Developer DIary: The Doors Are Frozen Shut

So last week I promised you visuals.  So here are some visuals.

Amazing aren’t they? Just stunning!  Ok, I know I’m not much of an artist.  I’m going for super minimalism here, because that means it has to be clean and orderly, as well as being really abstract.  Which means that there’s no need for fancy graphics and all that.  This makes it easier on me, since I’ve carved out a wonderfully complex path for myself in the code.  Fortunately, I am better at coding than I am at art, so I’m willing to take on this challenge I have given myself.

30 Cycles to Jubilee: Hiatus

I think I am going to put 30 Cycles to Jubilee on hiatus until the summer. There are too many things I want to do with the project, and I just don’t think I have enough time to implement them all and make it work for the class this is supposedly for. These last few weeks, I have spent a lot of time doing silly modeling things to get this to work in 3D and in Unity. While I feel that the game needs to be first-person, I’m just not talented enough as a modeler yet to be able to make these structures. I don’t want to put my performance on this project, which is for credit for a class, when I feel like I’m not going to get enough through it.

That said, I will probably be doing something that is similar in structure, but does not have all the silly requirements I have put forth for myself (namely, making a space ship, aliens, complex boning, etc.).  I will probably still be making something that resembles an adventure game, but one that will (hopefully) not need so many complicated models to make it worthwhile.

I will try to get something up next week to explain the new, smaller project.