LD #22: SOLILOQUY – Post Mortem

(This post mortem can also be found on the official Ludum Dare blog!)

Ludum Dare 22 was somehow pretty exhausting for me, and kind of depressing. I don't exactly know why, but I think that multiple factors brought in.

The weekend before the compo I made a "warm-up game", even though I planned to do it long before PoV announced this kind of thing. I just wanted to make a game in 48 hours in order to help a friend (a 3D artist), who needed a programmer for his university project. The programming part wasn't wasting, but the fact that the game didn't get finished at this weekend (mostly because of my friend :P) left feelings of "incompleteness" inside me, which I hate.

Another thing: I didn't like the theme "Alone", and I still don't think it was the best or even a good theme of the ones in the final voting round. But, as I always have to live up to my own standards I wanted to follow the theme AND make a good game. And this often leads to a status-quo - as long as I don't have the right ideas I won't start, and as long as I don't start I won't have the right ideas. Or something like that. My mind was blocked and I did other things, like playing Skyrim and chatting on IRC (not in #ludumdare, though, that place was CROWDED). Later, I started Unity3D and tried to play out another idea I had days before, about some time manipulation gameplay. It wasn't feasible to do it in Unity3D, but due to the fact I did something concrete (game with 3D environment and FPS controls) I could develop another idea in my brain, which became the concept of the final SOLILOQUY.


I still think the best part of my game is this name! I thought of it before I thought of the gameplay (but it didn't give me any directions), and I liked it so much, I wanted to use it in any case. I'm quite happy nobody else named his/her game the same, too.

Even though I have some experience by participating at Ludum Dare before, I still don't really know how to cut back optimally. The concept of SOLILOQUY demands levels, and levels demand content and art and story and design and choosing colours and making 3D models ... but I knew this would be hard for me, as it was when I made my Ludum Dare 20 game, "TRI". So I decided to do NO textures this time, and it didn't hurt much (on the game's side), but the benefits weren't that great either. I mainly put the levels together in Unity3D instead of 3dsmax (in contrast to TRI), but this didn't help me much, either. Altogether I have six levels now, where I really wanted ten, but at least seven.
The levels don't look that bad (abstract style for the win), even though I chose the colours quite randomly. On the other side, what I don't like much, the levels are all tutorial missions only. You just jump around in the first two, learn using your souls in the levels after that, press some buttons and work together with yourself. After this, the real levels should come, but I didn't have time to do any more content.

I finished the last level three hours before the deadline, and I couldn't do any more creative stuff. I especially failed in doing sounds or anything like music, unfortunately. I thought about using inudge.net again, but it would sound like my other two Ludum Dare games, so I dropped that idea. At least this frustration encourages me to actually learn how to make simple songs with real tools. (Wish me luck.)
The reason why I couldn't do more creative work: This time, Unity3D was my enemy. Sometimes I really had to fight the engine, mostly when it came to the text you see in the game (story & hints) - Unity's GUI system still is awkward to look at, and it has bad effects on the performance. So I used someone's code which displays bitmap fonts via SpriteManager (the original one), but it didn't work out of the box with all my bitmap font generator tools (I decided to use "TWL Theme editor"). After those problems were resolved, at the very end of the process, suddenly my white text became gray in the webplayer version. Argh! I needed nearly an hour to find out why that happened - a plane with alpha (the dark overlay) had the same distance to the camera as the text, and somehow the editor sorted it differently than the webplayer. Whyever that is.

After the mixed (or even bad) feelings I had about my own game, I'm really relieved that people actually liked it! The current feedback is mainly positive, and some things that were criticized are fixed in a post-compo version (on Kongregate, for more attention)! Other things, like the jumping height / range being too crass, are somewhat subjective and unfortunately can't be changed without rearranging some of the levels.
Of course, many people complain about the brain-hurting aspect of the game (gameplay and visuals alike), but that was expected. I could have done the double-soul mechanic with just a picture-in-picture style or something like that, but then the game would lose its uniqueness pretty fast IMHO. Also, as soon as dogbomb does his "I play your game drunk!" video, the whole game visuals will make much more sense, haha.

BTW, if you have a look at the source you will need Unity3D. The indie version should suffice for just reading the C# files and so on, but you need Unity Pro (or its 30 day test version) in order to actually start the game, because I used Render To Texture. Sorry!

Thanks for reading this wall of text, and don't forget to PLAY THE DARN THING!

PS: There also is a video now!

Ludum Dare #22: Soliloquy

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Review: Skyrim

Why I don't like “Skyrim”, but spent 65 hours in there.

Although it seems that everybody has enormous fun with this game, here is my polemic opinion about Skyrim.

Skyrim. Schmyrim.

After all those minigames, facebooktimekillers and iPhone apps I played the last months occasionally because of lack of time, I longed for a real game. We finished TUMBLOX and finally there was enough of spare time to stay all day in a huge and epic adventure world. Right time, right release - Skyrim came out. Plus I loved “Morrowind”! It's still one of my most admired and still inspiring games. So a great time is yet to come...

And indeed! Skyrim is soooo beautiful. Walking through the autumn woods along a river, riding a horse through ice and snow (and up to walls) or walking alone just meeting snow foxes can be so ruminant.

But I have to confess that I distrusted the design of Skyrim from the beginning. Dragons (what a cliché after Drakensang, Dragon Age and Divinity II - Ego Draconis!), the stupid and stinky Nord, winter, snow, cold and the second-boring race in whole Tamriel after the Imperials. But the sandbox style allured me so much! "You can do just everything!"

But after playing 65 hours I'm bored. What I am missing so much is STORY! When I think of Morrowind there where conflicts everywhere, little stories people had, surprises, funny experiments of character interaction, naked barbarians and moreover: irony. Not just two households hating each other. Or the stupid Nord versus the stupid Imperials.
Skyrim lacks wits, creativity and cool characters you will remember. In every town you have the same structure of people: the smith, the merchant, the magician, the jarl, the alchimist, etc. and some people telling you they want to see the world leaving this place or love their home country. And of course the guards with the arrow in their knee. The game is so well structured and sandboxed, they can't think out of the box creating things that are out of their perfect little system. No chaos. No surprises.

Tell me just ONE cool Character! And don't say Sheogorath as he is the add-on joke laughed out a long prequel ago.
Where are the funny little moments Morrowind used to give me so many times?
Like the magician floating miles over the ground testing his mega jump magic scroll.
The end boss Dagoth-Ur and his personal point of view about the main story.
Vivec, the half-god, having his own town, sitting and levitating in his temple.
The drunken, messed-up Blade guy that is briefing you in the main quest.
The imp that is selling stuff in one of the towns.
The last dwarf in Morrowind, fat, with legs like a spider and made immortal by the mysterious blight.
The Telvanni magicians - one age old, the other one hating men and having a male Khajit sex slave.
The silk striders you could travel with.
Even the setting was a character! The Telvanni towns. The floating city of Vivec. The Redorans living in huge shells. And the monsters weren't just wolves, trolls and whatever skeletons that every fantasy game has.
I loved the surprises Morrowind gave me with every step I took in this world.


Looking at Skyrim I see an impressively beautiful maiden presenting her long and shiny hair, but if you talking to her she is just blabbering stiff, boring and stupid shit. Why is the whole world such a boring cliche? Even the hugely advertised DRAGONS become dull runaways that go on my nerves because of their inflationary appearance.

Never again a sandbox game with "story"

It is a problem the whole world has: There is nothing special about it. Those thin stories in every town: "Hey, we have vampires" - You walk into a Dungeon, problem solved. You become Thane. Next town. "Hey, we have bad dreams". Dungeon. Cleared. Problem solved. Thane. Next town.
There is nothing a visit in a dungeon cannot solve. Everything happens in the dungeons. Accept the dragons of cause, they are spawned when it's time for them in the next place you appear. You fight them. "Woah, you killed the dragon". Next town. Next quest.

At this point the sand box system really emerges as something that is charging the stupidity. Okay, Skyrim is a huge open world, but what for, if nothing happens there. Here are some natives just for killing. Here are some dragons. Some towns. Some points of interest. But most points are unconnected. The people (like the story writers?) inhabiting their cities don't think beyond borders (they just know the next dungeon to send you through).

The quest marker system is another "improvement" making things worse and those little landing places seeming more like spots on an otherwise white map. While in Morrowind people had long dialogues explaining themselves and giving you explicit (well mostly) directions like in real life, Skyrim people "greet" you with "My bow is stolen!". After telling you that thieves from the near city did it, the dialogue is finished. No explaining who he is, where the bow is or whatever one could write about a character to make him more interesting, a quest marker is added and you have to go to your map and look up where the marker is placed. Dungeon. Cleared. Nice. Here is your money. See you. Never. Again.
It doesn't matter how much helmets you take back from dungeons, how much daughters you save, how many prisoners you help to escape. The world is full of these generic quests. Nobody will acknowledge your deeds.

Dungeon. Dungeon. Dungeon.

Everything is fighting and killing. No creative solving. Even the third path of character development - the thief - can't be used in all consequences. Most quests can be finished just with the death of your dungeon-boss-draugr-whatever-bad-guy-final-kill.

Most people didn't criticize this game for being unambitious and stupid. They love it. And it inspires many people out there. How many "Fus Roh Dah" and "I got an arrow in my knee" videos, comics and pictures are out there?
But I must admit: I don't understand the fascination for this game. Maybe I had too much adventures in a fantasy world. If this would be my first role playing game and I never would have played “Gothic”, “The Witcher”, “Morrowind” or “Planescape Torment” I would love it. Skyrim has an awesome way to introduce you in this world and its gameplay.
But I played much of these games and it might be hard to surprise me. I think this will be the last epic game that tries to tell a story and advertises with a huge open world. Because you can't have both. Not in these times.

TUMBLOX released on the AppStore!

"Tumblox", the mind-bending head-hurting box-tumbling brainteaser for iPhone and iPod Touch is now available at the AppStore! You get 25 levels for free, so you can test it before you buy it inside the App itself. You can even play the PC demo (Windows/MacOS) on the very own project page of Tumblox.


The Rat King demands that you have fun training your brain with Tumblox' simple and addictive gameplay. Rotate the (big) box and let the (small) boxes fall onto their targets!

Too lazy/busy to try it out for yourself? You can watch a trailer on YouTube or Vimeo:

https://www.youtube.com/?v=uEKyTAej2IQ

Global Game Jam Leipzig

Wer den Rattenkönig ein wenig beobachtet, der wird schnell merken, dass wir - aber vor allem Friedrich - große Game Jam Fans sind. Ludum Dare, Big Jam, Devmania, 7Day-Rogue-like, Zfx-Action. Viele schöne kleine und größere Spiele wurden dabei umgesetzt. Unser erstes iPhone-Spiel PITMAN entstand bei einem Game Jam und auch unser erstes (zukünftiges, komplettes)  PC-Spiel wurde durch einen geboren (Lasst euch überraschen!).

Die von ihren Ausmaßen wohl beeindruckendste ist die Global Game Jam. Wie der Name schon ankündigt wird weltweit gejammed, immer am letzten Wochenende im Januar (27.-29. Januar 2012).
Wie die Meisten, die ich mit dem Global Game Jam konfrontierte, war auch ich am Anfang unwissend und hatte komische Vorstellungen, wie das eigentlich funktioniert. Aber wie es der Zufall so will, war bei der Big Jam in Berlin eine der Organisatoren des GGJ- Zuraida Buter - anwesend und ich bekam Infos aus erster Hand.

Das Prinzip Game Jam ist ganz simpel: Jeder kann mit seiner Workstation teilnehmen, aber weil Jams viel lustiger sind, wenn man die Sache gemeinsam anpackt, sucht man sich Orte (idealerweise Uniräumlichkeiten) und Menschen zusammen, um gemeinsam in 48 Stunden Spiele zu entwickeln. Das Thema wird von den Hauptorganisatoren vorgegeben und am Ende werden alle Spiele der jeweiligen Teams auf den einen globalen Server hochgeladen, auf dem sie jeder spielen kann.

Bisher gab es den Jam nur in Berlin, Köln, Bremen und München, aber was passendes in der Nähe fehlte in unserer Spieleentwicklerdiaspora leider. Kurzentschlossen wollten wir mit Leipzig (ist einfach größer, sorry Halle) auch teilnehmen. Obwohl ich mich dort wenig auskenne, konnten schnell - auch dank einigen Diskussionen beim Leipziger Spielestammtisch mit René Meyer und Michael Körner, verschiedene mögliche Locations ausfindig gemacht werden. Von Anfang an im Gespräch, weil wir das Gebäude von der Langen Nacht der Computerspiele kennen, war die Technische Hochschule HTWK. Dank sehr engagiertem Auftreten von Professor Bastian, konnten wir Räumlichkeiten bekommen, Strom, Internet, Zugang für alle - juchu!

Wer motiviert ist, 48 Stunden ohne Dusche und Schlaf (okay, übernachten kann und sollte man) mit anderen Grafikern, Programmierern und Gamedesignern die Tastaturen heiß laufen zu lassen, zu painten und zu pixeln, der sollte sich unbedingt eintragen!

Unsere offizielle Leipzig Game Jam Seite

Devmania 2011 – Part 2

After Jana wrote a little bit about our trip to the Devmania 2011 in Mainz, I will do so, too! (I'm late to the party, I know, I know.)

OK then. In the middle of October 2011 there was the Devmania, a convention about hobby game development, for the third time, and 90 people from all parts of Germany participated. Compared to the former event "Dusmania", this wasn't that much (AFAIK there over 200 attendees in 2003) - but nonetheless (or perhaps: because of this) it was a very intense and fun event. We came a little bit too late and Christian Rösch's speech about demo coding already started, which was a bummer, because while I acclimated and set my computer up it was hard to follow the presentation. Even better, right after Christian we had to give our talk about iOS Development With Unity3D! This was a good thing, because we would have been nervous until then, and so this was over pretty soon.

Our presentation was well received even though it's a pretty specific topic, and some of the Devmanians came to us afterwards and wanted to try the games we had shown (PITMAN and TUMBLOX) or just discuss about their experiences with the platform and the market, or about Unity3D (which I thought would be used by everybody and his/her little sister now, as every browser game seems to use Unity nowadays). All things considered it was a nice experience to give a talk again after our last one in Leipzig, and we hope to give another one next year.

Some hours later I was on the stage again and showed three games I made in 2011, all for Ludum Dare contests (1930, TRI and BUNNIES, BACK INTO YOUR CAGE). Traditionally, game presentations get prices the next day, and this year the voting for them was at the same evening. I made second place - once again I lost against Dreamworlds (and their fine-looking SPLATTER). ;-) Not bad for small games I made within 48 hours, I think. The year before, Jana, Björn and me talked about our final projects we made for University, and my Diploma project "Hals über Kopf" also made second place (no chance against SPLITTERWELTEN), while Jana got the third trophy!
Be that as it may, TRI got some great positive feedback, but there were also people who liked the BUNNIES more.

Like last year I wanted to enter the Overnight Contest, but also like last year I didn't have the right idea until 10pm. The subject this year was "Pirates". Even though I told myself there is no pressure all the time I tried to become creative and productive. In the end, Björn and I made a pretty standard game where you play a treasure chest collecting coins, while evading palm trees and pirates running around like crazy. After three minutes the game ends and you can pat yourself on the shoulder for surviving it. I found the game to be funny, but it wasn't anything new, so it didn't win a price. Also, singleplayer games automatically have a hard time as the judging panel consist of four persons at one computer - this is why we made a hot-seat multiplayer game last year. ;-)

So we created TREASURE CHEST ISLAND within 12 hours, using Unity3D. Björn made all the graphics (the island, the chest, the animated pirates, the palm tree, the coin and the treasure map), while I scripted the complete game logic. We didn't use any fancy version control system, only my crossover LAN cable and a shared folder on Björn's computer, which was fast and easy enough. We both stayed up all night, something I only could do because I usually don't drink any coffee or cola, so one bottle of cola kept me awake until the very end, haha.

Right now I try to make the game a little bit better and put it on Kongregate, with online highscore and some new gameplay.

Because of the overnight contest I pretty much ignored the rest of the event after 10 o'clock, which probably isn't the best way to participate in a convention. On the other side, ten other teams / solo persons also were busy making their contest entries. Somehow, this year it felt like much more people were awake during the night, coding, pixeling, modeling and recording fart sounds. A very productive environment!

Some photos of the Devmania 2011 are here and there - ours are here. And there also is a French blog post about the event. Please tell me if you find more coverage!

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