Ludum Dare 44 post mortem
April 30, 2019
Last weekend was LD jam weekend. Here is my report.
TLDR;
Play: https://supernapie.itch.io/nutty-twins
Vote: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/44/nutty-twins
What is Ludum Dare again?
Ludum Dare is an online event, where people all over the internet make a (video) game based on a theme in one weekend. It takes place 2 or 3 times in a year. More info here.
What was the theme?
Your life is currency
What did i make?
The game is called Nutty Twins. It is about two brothers, who rob a bank without guns. As a player you control both characters, but the pink one can only walk and not jump and the blue one can only jump and not walk. Somehow you need to let them work together and use their limited but complementing abilities to collect all coins in the bank. The game focuses on puzzles, rather then violence. It is not a shooter at all, but a puzzle platformer about being unique and taking stock of your own value.
What went bad?
Every Ludum Dare starts with the announcement of a theme, that sets the game makers on the right path. The unraveling time of the theme was at 3am in my time zone. Since it was in the middle of the nigth i deceided to set my alarm to 4am, so i could look up the theme quickly and doze off again and hope the inspiration would come to me in dream. Waking up was no problem, but catching sleep again was a little bit harder, because my brain started to grind. So the next morning i was a bit groggy. Maybe it was a bad idea after all.
Even though i started from my trusted platformer-base as a template, i had to take a lot of things out in the first few hours, because it wasn't fitting my idea for the theme. Other things were missing, that i could have researched before hand. I also struggled a bit getting the physics correct so the twins could jump and ride on each other.
Also i can do sound effects, but music is another ball game. I think i must be tone deaf or something. Last time i joined LD, my brother helped me out the with the sound and music and did an excellent job. Too bad he didn't have time this jam.
What went well?
The graphics creation went very fast, because i did some research the week before. The color palette, sprites and tilesets took no effort. Check out the next section for some tips.
On monday i had time off from work so i could finish the game and put in some extra features. On that last day i created the laser doors in level 3 and 4. The programming of that feature was easier than i thought it would be. Also to my surprise i structured the code base in such a way that i can add new levels in a simple way (by just editing a config file and pointing to a tilemap and adding very few properties).
What did i (re)use to make the game?
Credit where credit is due. These are links to the tools and assets i used to make the game. All of it was used with permission.
Game engine: http://phaser.io/
Base code: https://github.com/Quinten/platformer-base
Colortheme: https://coolors.co/bb7e8c-584b53-88b7b5-2e5266-6e8898
Sprites: https://0x72.itch.io/pixeldudesmaker
Tiles: https://github.com/Quinten/random-tileset-generator
Level editor: https://www.mapeditor.org/
Animated tiles: https://github.com/nkholski/phaser-animated-tiles
Tile extruder: https://github.com/sporadic-labs/tile-extruder
Sound fx: https://jfxr.frozenfractal.com
Coins: https://opengameart.org/content/kenney-animated-pixel-coins-pack-v2/
Dust: https://github.com/Quinten/dust-phaser-plugin
What's next?
I really look forward to play a lot of other jam games and i really want to spend enough time doing so. After the voting i hope to build more levels for this one as they are just really fun to make.
If you leave a comment on the LD page for Nutty Twins i will play your game. See you there ;)
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