Some kind of progress. Seems like the movement is working too, if a bit jerky.
Texture is from my photowalk this morning:
https://plus.google.com/115369982511844801329/posts/ERW1MdC2T6B
not a spy.
Ludum Dare 30 | Ludum Dare 28 | Ludum Dare 26 | Ludum Dare 25 |
Ludum Dare 24 | Ludum Dare 23 | MiniLD 32 | Ludum Dare 22 |
Ludum Dare 22 Warmup | Ludum Dare 21 | Ludum Dare 20 | MiniLD 25 |
Ludum Dare 19 | Ludum Dare 18 | Ludum Dare 17 | Ludum Dare 16 |
![]() Tri-Forced Awarded by Dark Acre Jack on May 4, 2011 |
Some kind of progress. Seems like the movement is working too, if a bit jerky.
Texture is from my photowalk this morning:
https://plus.google.com/115369982511844801329/posts/ERW1MdC2T6B
I made a post-mortem for my game, “Ghost Town”.
You can click this link with your pointing device to see it!!
Covers about 20 hours of actual work, most of which spent with a warm cat on my lap.
Post-mortem coming soon!!
Edit: thanks Galman for helping with the embed!
Hi people! As I approach the end of day one, I thought I’d say hi on the LD blog.
My game is called “Ghost Town” (working title).
I’m tracking progress with Google Plus simply because it’s easy to toss photos and screenshots up there. I’m not really doing major blog posts this time. (Also I shoot random updates on twitter.)
I’m seeing tons of amazing stuff on the LD page, this is incredible.
Good luck to everyone!!
or, A Million Ways to Ruin a Good Idea
This game (“Lost Races’ Abandoned Artifact Recovery“) failed. It is not fun (actually rather boring). It fits the theme, but not in the way I wanted. It does not transmit the information intended. It is not very funny, either.
In short, the game does not live up to any of the goals set. Let’s go over why.
This is the only part of the game I am proud of, even if it is not reflected in the finished product in almost any way. You take the role of an exploring astronaut, scavenging old, abandoned machines and technologies left behind eons ago by advanced races (now extinct). This mechanic alone may have been interesting, but there is another twist: whilst you are busy discovering and cataloging these machines, another technologically-advanced race is monitoring YOUR progress.
I was struck by this model of double-discovery as a good take on the theme, and something that would probably be rather original. The game wouldn’t explicitly tell you that you are being watched, rather it would become clear as you played. (Also, if your actions arouse too much attention, you are destroyed.)
I decided to go with a mechanic that requires the player to upset a random distribution of “glowing stones”. As the player organizes stones around focal points (the artifacts), they are unwittingly making their presence known. I show this by using a minimap in the lower right-hand corner, which actually represents what the aliens see on the planet.
Daniel recommended using negative entropy as a measure of organization (defined here), which worked very well. I built a quick proof-of-concept in MATLAB. It’s like a poor-man’s pattern recognition algorithm, and Flash was able to do it reasonably quickly.
Another thing that spurred me forward: I don’t know of any other game in which the minimap plays a key part of the mechanic.
This is my fourth Ludum Dare competition. This compo marks one year since I made my first game, for LD16. If so, why, oh why, do my tilemaps look like this:
Why? WHY WHY
Ultimately, despite the good concept driving it, the game failed to communicate what was necessary.
The scary voices I added were ambiguous to the players. Along with the “alien” writing (Wingdings), they were meant to correspond to the interest level of the aliens, ie. how organized the playing field is. Similarly, the minimap was not recognized for what it was, and I was asked “why doesn’t the player appear on the map?”.
The graphics were very, very ugly (except maybe for the astronaut’s helmet, which I liked).
Evidently, the algorithm failed as well. Depending on the random starting layout, entropy would drop at different rates as clumpiness was achieved. Also, I couldn’t account for different player styles, so maybe clumping differently had an impact on the measurement. In any case, people could play through the game without losing and without knowing about the Overwatch aliens. To these players, it was a boring, repetitive game with no point and no reward.
To players who lost, I doubt they understood that if they redistributed stones after discovering an artifact, they could avoid the aliens’ attention.
Ironically, I thought of a great way to improve it, after the competition was over. Instead of piling stones on top of artifacts, the player should uncover them from beneath mounds of stones. This is more intuitive, and might be coupled with a physics element to provide a less “grindy” feel. Unfortunately, I don’t have time to test it out.
Hope I do better next time. Thank you for reading and I apologize for making another non-fun game.
By the way: if you have read this far, then YOU WON!!!
New apartment, new office-space constructed. You thought it wasn’t ready yet, huh? You thought I wouldn’t have time to hang up the whiteboard in between lab reports?
This weekend, witness the Ludum-power of this fully armed and operational battle-office!!
Smashing chompers and staying on the tallest mountain in the area? Sounds difficult …
Are you up to the task??
Don’t get carried away.
come on
It is a thrilling battle between the forces of good and evil, as clearly represented by these lovingly-crafted models.
I know you guys are following closely, so I won’t insult you with a recap. I’ll just put this baby up and let her explain everything:
Atop Mt. Brawlalot - "placeholder" splash screen!
We all know what “placeholder” means in Ludum Dare, don’t we now?
Wifes made me a lunch! It is delicious!
Basically, sometimes your Ludum Dare is like lunch. You eat and eat, and then it’s gone. Same deal.
Oh and I am making a game too. I have spent all day debugging HingeJoints in Unity. No idea what I’m doing. Basically.
GOOD LUCK!