LudumDare/29

Welcome to Ludum Dare 29!

The live blog for Makers Local 256 members participating in the Ludum Dare 29 72-hour team competition will be here! All members who are participating, please post about your progress here!

Progress:

02:03 Saturday

Here's some pictures from our brainstorming process. We've decided upon a theme and mechanics for a game; currently we're working on a framework in Unity 3D using C# scripting.

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  After deciding on what kind of game we wanted to do, this was step one of our design process.

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  Step two of the process: nailing down some mechanics so we could get to creating the framework.

17:28 Saturday

As Saturday went on, we brainstormed about how to do the framework, and then got to programming in Unity 2D.

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  Beginning to brainstorm about how to do the maze algorithm.

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  We refined what we wanted out of the maze with some psuedocode, then jumped into the fun of implementing it in Unity.

Leon "Noel Madness" Kennedy Post Mortem

I heard about the competition on Friday afternoon and had very little free time to think how or what was going to happen with the production of the game. But, I was eager to get started - I had worked with most of the other developers before and I had the chance to work with David and Ben for the first time through this event.

The first night there was a lot of brainstorm - a lot of concepts going around and it seemed no one had any egos and creativity was high. I understood that many people had very little experience with the unity system so there was a huge ramp up time. Every seemed to take their positions in stride and we settled into a comfortable rhythm of getting story elements from King and Sunshine.

I was in this weird place of doing some textures but a lot of conceptual art based off the story to help set the atmosphere for the game. Tools I used were almost entirely digital actually - I didn't have paper so I sketched in photoshop, and vectorized some preliminary ideas into Illustrator and take them back to Photoshop for its more extensive raster abilities.

I didn't complete nearly as much as I would have liked - but what it did do was press me into learning perspective drawing instead of character and general form sketching which I have been doing since December. At the end of every day I would spend three or four hours studying up on perspective drawing, looking at examples and then come in and get some work done on the pieces in the pipeline.

It's truly a strange feeling being in an environment where everyday you are learning something fun and challenging and have a tangible reward at the end. Everyone was supportive, encouraging and we shared countless laughs. Development worked in the same room as sound and art and sometimes story. It created a stronger sense of unity in production since we were together.

Things I learned enumerated:

1.)Perspective drawing was the biggest, learning how to draw a landscape in 1 point perspective

2.) Speed and quality is everything - namely speed; if I could turn out 1 mediocre bits versus 3 less than mediocre but worth improving ideas then I made a larger impact on the production because at least there is something being produced.

3.) Tensions will get high, it's just a part of being invested in something.

4.) Help one another in whatever branch they are doing, make an effort to communicate effectively about every problem that you are tackling. Don't compartmentalize, make sure everyone knows what is going on with you.

5.) Enjoy what you do, then go home and learn to do it better.