Renaissance Molly

Ludum Dare 29

It's difficult to come into work on a monday morning and try and explain what my husband, myself, and three other friends did all weekend. How do you describe to someone that you spent the whole of your spare time not relaxing at home but pouring over a computer in an office about 10 am Saturday to 1am Monday morning in the pursuit of making a game from scratch? It's an interesting discussion to say the least, but ultimately people recognize it for what it is: awesome.

This is the third time Justin's participated in the short term game making competition known as the Ludum Dare. The first two times he did the single person competition (which limits the perameters to a single participant working on a single project for only 48 hours) however this time he worked with a group to submit a game with the group competition submission (which is 72 hours long).

Our team was a a conglomeration between two small independent gaming companies (Chronobit Studios and Jazzberry Games) which created, for the weekend, Chronoberry):

• Justin Lindsey (Chronobit) - Programming
• Johnny Gaffey - Programming
• Brian Zhang (Jazzberry) - Programming and Art director
• Heather Lindsey (Chronobit) - Art
• Molly Lindsey(Chronobit) - Art

Friday

We all congregated at Justin, Johnny, and Brian's office at around 6:30 P.M., ordered a few pizzas, and waited until they announced the theme at 9PM. This time the theme was "Under the Surface," and so we started to brainstorm and throw out ideas. We already had a basic direction we wanted to go: a platformer with a random level builder. They wanted to do the random level builder for three reasons: it creates replayability, it was a task that would stretch the programmers to work on something they didn't previously have knowledge, and it would mean that noone had to do conscious level design.

Many ideas were thrown up on the white board for the theme under the surface: the surface of the earth, of other planets, of the ocean, of your mind, of your facade. With infinite time, you can do whatever you want. But since this competition was capped at 72 hours, we had to make hard fast decisions and stick to them. Waivering all over the place can take up valuable time: a competition like this means you simply need to choose something and dive in. Here was our initial concept:

The player plays as a SCUBA diver who swims around a randomly generated level and collects chests of gold/jewels. While she's swimming around, the diver can get hurt by brushing against sea animals. Also, the health of the diver goes down slowly over time and can only be replaced when the diver hunts for and eats fish. The player wins the game if they collect all the chests in the level and loses if the player dies.

Friday night we were up against a hard deadline, my husband, Justin, along with half of his office were going to the midnight release of....something Magic The Gathering related....a new set....maybe? Idk. Justin got home at 330 am, that's all I know.

While Justin was at Magic, I spent some time compiling a basic SCUBA diver and animating her. I've messed with the program before but this was my first real experience using Spine. I'm just going to start with: Spine is amazing. I feel as though I can draw decently, but animation is just so difficult. But with Spine, I can really just concentrate on the art and not have to worry about animating it. I simply had to chop up my design, assign the pieces to customized bones, then move the bones around into key frames. The program did the rest. It was so simple and I look so forward to continuing to use it in the future.

Saturday

So Saturday, we woke up slowly. I made Justin and I some bacon to munch on in bed as he groggily woke up after such a late night at Magic. We eventually got to the office around 10am. We all set up our computers in the conference room and set straight to work. The rest was sorta a blur: we were all simply working on our designated tasks: outlined on the whiteboard and would eventually be ticked off when they were completed.

It was about 3 pm when Justin, Heather, and I realized we were really hungry, so we ventured out for food and then returned to work some more. After lunch I remember finishing all the componants for the diver and then sending that off to Justin to incorporate into the game. This was his first time using spine as well so it took him a bit of time to figure out how it compiled with Unity (the engine they were using the build the game (it's a multiplatform engine that uses C#, if you're curious)) but ultimately he was able to figure it out and (I think) she looks quite good! I started on an octopus after that (since we wanted his tentacles to move and as I was the only one who had Spine on my computer and who knew how to use it, even in a limited capacity).

People started hitting walls at about 6 pm. We were all tired, fatigued and sick of sitting in chairs all day so we took a break. We got a snack and just wondered around the office, looking out towards the sunset through a series of windows. It was quite beautiful to see a bit of nature amidst our crazy hack-a-thon and so I found it refreshing. Brian offered to teach us Tai Chi and, as I was the only one who had the energy, I was his sole pupil. He taught me how to do the first 3 or 4 steps of a type of Tai Chi and even from that small amount, I was still soar three days after. We returned to work about a half hour after that.

This is where people started to rage. The programmers were working through a problem together. Meanwhile, Heather and I had basically finished our tasks. There's a lot to be learned about working with programmers for a non-programmer. Don't interrupt them, don't try to understand their lingo when they're trying to do something, don't assume anything is easy to just put in a program because even if it appears easy, it's probably not (or creates weird bugs which become frustrating). The point of these tips: an artist can create a large breadth of work which may never see the game if the programmer is having a hard time implementing the mechanics around that piece of art.

This was about when we figured that it would be nearly impossible to implement the fishing and health concept because they were struggling with.... actually I don't know what they were struggling with, I didn't understand their lingo and just stayed out of it. They worked until about 8:30 P.M. when we decided everyone was hungry.

We all piled into Brian's car and drove to Honey Pig. It was good! I'd never had it before and it was impressive compared to other Korean BBQ I've had experienced. Mostly, it was nice to relax, eat some really great meat, and get sucked into an endless loop of various "K-pop" videos. (Seriously, it's like watching a lava lamp: so colorful, so bright, so weird). After sufficiently stuffing our faces, we went back to work.

Again, at this point, I was lacking in a clear direction towards which to work. I think I kept sorta working on the octopus, but after a while I just got exhausted and opted to keep working on the octopus the next day. I ended up working on my blog and playing Assassin's Creed (Black Flag) on my lap top while the programmers reached a stopping point. We finally wondered out of the office around 1am. We were all exhausted, but ultimately I think we were all quite satisfied with what was working at the time:

After a solid thirteen hours of work (10am to 1am) we had a swimming diver who would spawn under a bathtub boat (created by Heather) within a coral covered randomly generated level (tiles by Brian). The Diver had the capability to snatch up glowing rubber ducks (which replaced the treasure chests) and bring them back to the bathtub boat. It doesn't sound like much, but the leg work for just that is pretty immense.

Sunday

We crashed pretty hard that night and woke up a bit slowly the next morning. We arrived at the office around 10:30 or 11 that morning. We assembled in the conference room again, set up our stuff and reassessed the plan for the day. We had all the art we basically needed, but we lacked some finer polishing details (music and sound effects) as well as a lot of programming mechanics. I spent the morning looking for sound effects and putting them into file types that were compatible with Unity. Heather worked on a title screen and Justin and Brian worked on more coding.

We stopped for lunch around 1 or 2 and then returned for more work. By this time I was basically done with my tasks and so I again worked on personal stuff or played my video game, awaiting someone to say they needed my particular skills for anything.

Mostly, in this case, being a wife of a dedicated programmer has a lot to do with patience and occupying yourself with your own activities. Like double dutch, you need to know when to jump in, and when to wait. Justin's thought process gets so focused that even asking him if he wants dinner will interupt his train of thought and cause him to loose at least 5 minutes in simply attempting to get back to that point of focus. I get the same way sometimes: I often really need large chunks of quiet time to work on writing or coding for various things. As such I fear people misinterpret me as a recluse or unapproachable when the fact simply is that I am focused.

That all to be said, the focus continued until about 8:30 when they asked me to hook up my computer and play test it on the big screen. Big, bright, and functional, there was our game which started from nothing just 48 hours before! There were a few tweaks we made: initially you would only get a speed boost after you collected a certain quota of ducks. That was interesting when you think about it, but annoying to play through in practice because you were just SOOOO SLOW with the ducks. Also you were weighed down by the ducks which made you even slower. In the final version, the ticker at the top reflects all the ducks that are available in the level. You actually GAIN speed when you pick up ducks, which is a much more fun game mechanic (and they make a very cute squeak noise when you pick them up).

It was at this point we took a break and watched Game of Thrones afterwhich we were planning on going home but we were stopped by the ever present and ever frightening question each game maker is approached with: "Hey guys: is this fun?"

OH the HOURS, no, DAYS Justin and I have spent struggling through this question. What makes a game fun?? It's fun to different people for different reasons. What makes a game replable? What makes it entertaining? What makes it fun?!?

This is a difficult time in the Dare. Each time we do the Dare, we get to a point where we've worked for hours, lost sleep, forgotten to eat, (then when we did eat, it was probably fast food); a point where we're exhausted, frustrated, sick of looking at the same 3 people all day and just want to go home and we're faced with the biggest hurtle of them all: will people have fun playing that which we've poured two whole days of our life into?

The hard thing to realize is that many people probably will not like our game. It's a hard thing to say outloud but the fact remains that people will find fault with it, find it boring, not want to play it. This is the point in the competition where things get redone, where you play test it for a while and say "this is a very annoying component, I don't like it, change it" and therefore we must in the hopes of making the game better.

Like a writer with a story, games go through many drafts and revisions. It was during this time we removed the coral and replaced it with bubbles (partially because it was giving our friend the heevy jeevies, but also because it didn't quite fit with the game). This was the point at which we took away the health component all together (although a remnant of that concept remains in the form of the health heart in the upper left hand corner). This is the point in which we messed with the mass of the ducks and made them follow you around as you swim. This creative reconstruction continued into the next day (Monday) at which time the programmers changed the way the octopus affected the player (instead of causing health depletion, the Octopus now changes the ducks back into mystery orbs at which time they could change back into fish or ducks). The win condition continued to be the pursuit of getting all the ducks for your goal number (which spawns at the upper left corner) but you have to enter a few different levels to achieve that and once you get all the ducks, a win screen (created by Justin) appears. Once the win screen times out though the player can continue to play on through additional levels to his or her hearts' content, the levels getting larger and more complex at each stage.

In the end, we're proud of our game: It's one of the best attempts we've made thus far and we learned an awful lot about game design. I think we'll continue to struggle with what makes a game fun, but I believe that game design (as with most worth while pursuits) requires a great deal of time, effort, and failed attempts before they produce a masterpiece. We're still learning, but we're enjoying the ride as we go.

Thank you to our wonderful team for such a creative, enlightening, and wonderful weekend! Chronobit Studios couldn't do stuff like this without the wonderful support of our friends!

Each Ludum Dare I keep track of the participants' and supporters' vital signs: Hunger, Rest, and Rage. Take A Look at our vitals from the weekend!