Levels...

I am designing the twelve levels of the game. It is a hard work to get them done. I try to make them really atmospheric and even depressive, while respecting the evolution of the game. Unity is the key!

I first use Tiled to make a tiled level and then I make a picture from it when the raw shape looks good. (I am actually here) From that picture I add non-tiled details and many other things. And then I should quickly assemble them in Construct 2 to try them. And certainly go back to the previous steps because everything wasn't perfect!

Cool inspiring cloud animations in Braid

Th game Braid has some cool animated cloud. They have an obvious painted look and feel but here comes the interesting point: the animation. Considering a change of color tones, they might work for TGDOR. I'll try to get my clouds such animations. I also invite you to play to this game to see those clouds but also because it's a great game.

Continuing, after a deserved small pause!

We are taking a short break (until tomorrow). We really need it - in the good way: we worked a lot so we are a bit tired now! Creation is energy consuming, and don't have enough energy to support this work cadence. Just a few hours before returning to the process!

Just a message about what we said a few days ago about Stencyl: It is certainly a great tool but we had no real experience of it so we lost our temper with the number of problems and the pressure of time. All Stencyl users: we apologize.

Team name!

We are proud to announce you that we have a "work" name:

Jambon Frites means Ham & Chips in French

JambonFrites Games blog - JambonFrites Games Facebook page

Early Postmortem

This is the postmortem for the October Challenge, not for the game itself. After two days of full work, we can now take a look back at what we've done, what was good or bad.


What went right

 - Appealing idea
The earl ideas and concept art were appreciated by the other people. It helps a lot to start a project to be encouraged by others!
 
- Workflow
In two days we created a lot of things. Far more that I imagined. It is certain that Stencyl bugs slowed us but nevertheless we went really fast (we worked 12h+ a day!)

- Powerful tools
We used tools that are really efficient and that we knowed before. This makes a huge difference in the overall developpement. It does not only speeds up the creation process but it kind of motivates more due to the rarity of problems.


What went wrong

- No prototype
Seriously, we had no prototype! This should be easy with the engine(s) that we used, but we never got one. I know how important it is to always have a "working" thing during the developement but we never had something that looked playable.

- Lack of time
On the whole October month we started on the 26th. Looks a bit suicidal, given that we never participated to a Ludum Dare! We started the Design earlier but it's only about 10% of the work!

- No knowledge of the tool (the reason that we left the Challenge)
We, or I sould I say decided to use StencylWorks, because it works on Macs (I never used it before but more than that, I am not the programmer!). So when you use a new tool that gives you a lot of problems, there might be some kind of mistake somewhere!


The last words...
Even if we did not submit our game to the Challenge, I think that we learnt a lot from it, and that is the real purpose of Ludum Dare! :)

Day 3

Let's make a statement of the actual situation:
- We left the challenge
- We changed Engine
- We have more time to work on the game
- Some of the assets needs to be remade
- There is still a huge work to do!

Since we left the challenge we slowed down our progression. We must learn the new engine and create, think and design the new elements of the game that were set apart due to Stencyl limits.
This engine offers new possibilities and matches more our objectives. It is simple enough and though it seems more adequate to power our game. TGDOR will look more like the TGDOR that we had in mind with Construct 2. For the moment we encountered no problems, bugs or annoying things with it. The only bad mark is that it has nearly no documentation, wiki or tutorials.

Today we will certainly make a short pause, for two reasons: we haven't got the full day free (we will be absent tonight) and we will prepare the 0h Game Jam.
This Jam will start when the clocks will shift from 02:59:59 a.m. to 02:00:00 a.m., on the 30th October!

We officially leave the October challenge.

All the Engine problems delayed us too much, and now we realize that we won't be able to clear the Ludum Dare October Challenge. The project will continue, but unfortunately out of the contest.
The official withdraw post from the contest on Ludum Dare.