Now that the weekend is up, it is time for some recap. It's Post Mortem time!
This was my first LD. I saw weeks ago that it was coming up and I had just missed the jam, so I had made up my mind, I was going to do it. It was on the back of my mind all the time leading up to the D-day. But then, just a week before , a disaster happened. In Bjj practice, which I do all the time, I was caught underneath this guy and tried to reverse him. I heard a very loud snap from my hand. The guy on top of me heard it too. We both stopped instantly. I ran into the toilet to put it under cold water. Maybe it was just a strain? It'll be ok, it'll be ok. The adrenaline masked the pain almost completely. No, it's not ok. It snapped. Strains don't snap like that. A fellow grappler, who is also a surgeon, said it's most likely broken. He was right.
So, with a cast in my mouse hand I was to take part in the LD? I thought about it for a while, and once I got my hands on the computer to find out I could type, I decided to just do it. To make it as simple as I can, to have faith in Stencyl and my stubbornness.
Come game day, I had decided to let myself design for some hours and then run with the best idea. As you know the theme was Beneath the Surface, that gave me several ideas. Some bad ones and one that I liked. A dog digging for bones underneath the Surface of the Lawn. It made me smile. The star of the show would be Mino, our Pharaoh dog, who has a love hate relationship with squirrels and rabbits.
Day one was mostly about designing, making the dog run, deciding on point logic, which caused some problems at the end when I added a new character the next day. A whole day of pushing forward without knowing how the exact idea was difficult, but I knew I had to keep going and improvise as the day went. Decisions made then would have to be worked with. When you have more time, you can always second guess and change things. The dare is 48 hours and that is it and if I don't sleep, I don't think.
Day two I woke up and within half an hour I was making the game. New character, The Molemort! A mole that pops up randomly as Mino digs. The thing is, my scoring system was based on percentages. How many times you have to dig in order to find all the bones made your score. How would catching Molemort affect it? I tried several things, but ended up having it just take one dig off the calculation. It doesn't work perfectly and I'm kinda not happy with it.
With 7 hours to go I had one thing to do, besides the hassle of releasing it, sounds. I wanted a theme song and sound effects. No problem right? They don't have to be perfect. With 5-4 hours to go, I read on the forum: no samples allowed, except for drum loops. F* me! Eyes crossed, mind shooting blanks. So.. I thought to myself, I need one sound and to redo the theme song, because they are all samples. I'm not going to give up now. No way. I fire up the Caustic. It gives me another scare, they made a huge update since I last used it. Everything is new. I just go for the synths that are the same as they were and hammer out a something that doesn't make me cringe, export it and run it into Studio One, where I have a drum loop ready. The bark sample I just cut a leftover sample I had made with SFXR and boot it in the game. Now just get it online fast.
It's ready. Can't believe it. Raise my hands. Climb to bed only to roll from side to side until the pixels in my head stop spinning.
http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-29/?action=preview&uid=34057
