PostMortem for: Ludum Dare 33 : You are the Monster : GhostMen
These where my goals:
- Use WebSocket if it didn’t clash with theme
- Otherwise: use turn-based
- Use StencylForge Multiplayer Kit to handle login-logic.
The theme would allow to make an idea I had for a multiplayer game where you play as the ghosts in PacMan. Ghosts are Monsters too.
Tools:
- Stencyl with Multiplayer extensions:
- Saving Attribute by George
- Turn Based for deciding who moves the pacman
- Lobby : Login / Room selection
- WebSocket : movement
- GIMP
- Pencil & Paper
Ghost/PacMan Movement:
First I made movement with setting direction and velocity but kept having issues with colliding and squeezing the actors between the barriers.
After struggeling on that logic a few hours I moved to gridbased solution that in the end worked best.
Tile API:
Should have used it sooner. For the scene layout I made the level with the scene editor. Then I would create a text-string that holds all the passable/non-passable objects.
The second day I found out that using the tile api and inspection of the to-be-moved-to tile was the best approach. I didn’t realize that there was a calculate col from coordinate block!!!!!!
Creating Art:
Previously my art was done by drawing, scanning and changing in Gimp.
The last actions in Gimp took the most time to make the outline of the drawing. I am not that handy with a mouse and miss the hand-coordination of working with a digitizer.
Old technique using a Black&white scan and selecting with lasso-tool:
Color Scan:
(Shift-O + Cmd-X to remove the color and convert to Black&White)
The last process with the blue outline gives me more control over the part that needs to be cut out and it is way faster than making selection with lasso tool or using the eraser over curvy areas.
For the animations I used a self-made lightbox with an iPhone and flashlight app and a box with a transparent sheet on top of it.
Multiplayer:
Since I was doing all my testing on my home computer, and I have good internet speed, and the server is in the same country as I am I didn’t see any lag. Even without a delay I could get realtime position of the other player.
But tests from the IRC-community proved differently as they seem to all had terrible lag.
So I made a wait of 500 ms so the updates weren’t done as much.
Todo:
Investigate where the possible lag comes from when using the game with Flash
Investigate if a native build (Windows/Mac) or mobile (ios/android) does work without lag.
