Scoring Response, or, My Post-Mortem is behind schedule and I feel bad [LDJam]


Greetings, LDers, and congrats on your games! There were a lot of awesome titles I played this time around, and above all I think I was pleasantly surprised with all the different places the theme went. There were lots of submarines and mine shafts too, but that’s alright… there were lots of cool ideas, both in theory and in practice.

My game, Resurface, was a 6DOF style game developed by somebody that had no idea how to make 3D levels, 6DOF environments, or the genre in general. In fact, it’s the first 3D game I’ve ever shipped. Since I actually had a final grade riding on this project, I really gave it my all and pulled out all the stops for it.

So, with all that said, how’d it turn out? Well… here’s how it stacks up to my LD47 game, proceed.


Well… how’d that happen?


This is all subjective, but I feel that my effort this jam made Resurface a massive step up in quality from my LD47 title. While maybe not as original, the scale, asset quality, and environment art are all massively improved. So, why the lower placement?

Simply put: I think LD was a lot more competitive this time around. Ignoring the placement for just a moment, my scores were improved in every single category with roughly the same number of ratings, and I’m quite proud of that accomplishment. Yet, every single one of my placement scores were lower, and it really just comes down to the fact that there were a ton of incredibly high quality submissions that blew my game out of the water. I have no idea how some of these games were crafted in 48 hours, and all with some incredible angles on the theme or gameplay. If the LDJam community is really going to step up its game and make for some real tough competition, all I can really do is rise to the occasion next time.

It’s also worth noting that Resurface had a pretty rough launch, and some of the bugfixes that shipped over the first week of ratings were essential fixes that made a night-and-day difference. So, I also can’t help but wonder how scoring would have gone with a little more time put into bugfixing. While proceed was at least a complete (if flawed) experience from the original ship, Resurface had a list of problems that directly impacted the player’s ability to finish the game or even make decent amounts of progress. I can’t exactly fault some low scores for the absolute nightmare that was the day one version of the Pipeworks room, for instance. And, YES, THE MOVEMENT IS TOO SLOW. Now that the jam is properly ended, I cannot WAIT to finally increase the speed. I’ll take this as a lesson learned.

How bad did the bugs get? Well, they were everywhere. This is my personal favorite response I received, in relation to a bug where air refill stations could be infinitely used without penalty due to a missing line of code:

Sorry, bud. Someone told them.


Highlights Reel


My LD 48 game felt like a massive step in the right direction for future projects. In LD47, I was forced to quit the compo halfway through and start from scratch, acknowledging that I would be unable to complete the game on time. This time around, I not only settled on a design by the end of the first night, but was able to stick with said design for the duration of the compo, submitting on time as a complete package.

Thematically, I put two additional restrictions on my game before the compo even started, and I have mixed feelings about this approach. On one hand, I felt like justifying said decisions in the game made for some really fun design challenges– for example, forcing myself to build on a sci-fi theme led to some of the neon-heavy later environments and the PA system, not to mention the absurd theme that the game took on. Furthermore, a very specific in-joke made it in as the grand story objective, and to some extent I’m proud that I actually went for something so extraordinarily unnecessary. On the other, it hampered the design process and led to a lot of the messy redesigns of Day 2 that led to the spreadsheet of bugs documented in every new build.

Above all, I just had a lot of fun working on this game. It was a much more concerted and focused effort than my first LD attempt, and while not everything went according to plan I’m proud of what I accomplished.


So, what now?


I have spoken about a Resurface post-jam release quite a bit, but I haven’t said anything official. I see two paths forward for this game– one where Resurface gets one last patch to smooth out the roughest edges before certain qualities of its gameplay are lifted into another project I wanted to create, and one where the story of the HMS Good Omens is expanded on with multiple characters, a new Lifeline mechanic for traversing certain common routes across the ship, and air-tight sections that are spent walking on foot, not to mention overhauled movement and Resurface mechanics and improved presentation. I’m leaning towards the former, as I’m quite confident in the project idea being a solid vision for the future, and I see certain aspects of Resurface’s mechanics being the perfect vessel for a dialogue-driven first person point-and-click. Ultimately, both of these projects will need more time in the oven before anything can be said for sure.

If you’re interesting in checking out either entry, check out the links below:

LD 47: proceed

https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/47/proceed/

LD 48: Resurface

https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/48/resurface/

You can also find a first draft of the Cinematic Soundscape for Resurface on my SoundCloud and Bandcamp profiles:

OST (SC)

OST (BandCamp)

I’d link the same for proceed, but it would just be a single bitcrushed VRRRRRRRRRRRM sound on loop so there’s really no point.

In the meantime, I’ll be continuing on my current independent project while building up to a proper announcement and release window. Once again, it’s been amazing joining in on this compo and meeting all sorts of developers worldwide, and LD has once again proven to be an incredible opportunity to learn and share with an incredibly talented, passionate, and sleep-deprived community of like-minded devs. So, with that, I’ll head back to working on my Resurface post-mortem for a video release sometime soon. See you in LD49!

Get Resurface - An LD48 Compo Entry

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