Budget Squad post-mortem

So it's been 3 weeks now I released my LD entry. Here is a quick post-mortem for Minnie & Malism: Budget Squad (hey did you play it already?). Sorry for my bad english, as always.

What went wrong

• theme: I was definitely NOT confident with the Minimalism theme. I like to spend lots of time of particles & art, and most people actually expected minimalist games to have minimalist art, which is a shame, imho. I really regret I didn't take this opportunity to work on another kind of art style.
• gameplay: as I gave up on the minimalist art style, I only had one solution left for the theme. The gameplay. I didn't have any idea until satursday evening, which is incredibly late for a LD... Therefore, I didn't have much time left for polish and to develop the themed gameplay properly. Anyway, I really believe the gameplay fits the theme (a minimal equipment that creates lots of constraints in a shoot em up). It's not as obvious as other entries, but I think it's still ok. Actually, I was planning to give up if I couldn't fit the theme into my game (which I believe is the essence of Ludum Dare).
• the lack of a decent state machine: the way I handled game sequences (intro, gameplay, dialogues, outro) was... horrible. Seriously, the code works but it was a little Vietnam to write maintain. I will HAVE to use a better architecture next time.

What went right

• scoring: I didn't have time to put more focus on the combo based score system. Anyway, it really works well imo and adds replayability. Usually, that's not something I have in my LD entries, so I'm proud of that.
• level design: once again, my level editor was Photoshop. Color coded pixels in a grid that define wall positions & enemies. The result is a really big level with lots of secret places to discover... and a potato :)
• sounds & music: as always, LabChirp was an amazing tool to create nice sfx quickly. I also used AutoTracker with some modifications, which also works great. However, autotracker musics tend to sound like each other, so I'm not sure I will use it again.
• intro: I had some spare time to make a proper intro... which is cool :)

A simple platformer engine (part 2): collisions

In the previous article, I presented a simple, yet functional, 2D engine that you can use in any language (I used the Haxe language). It handles basic physics and level collisions.

But what about collisions between entities?



It may sound tricky, but it's actually not that hard, if your game doesn't require super high quality collisions.

Obsidian theme for Flash Develop

Based on the work from 01101101, here is an Obsidian theme for Flash Develop (great IDE for Haxe with native compiler-fed completion).
Feel free to re-use !



Compatibility : tested with Flash Develop 4.4.0.
Download ZIP format (28kb) : extract in %localAppData%\FlashDevelop\Settings\Languages
Download FDZ format (28kb) : auto-install on double click. Warning with this method: once, I had other unrelated FlashDevelop settings reset without any reason.

Game-pad.fr interview

I participated an interview (french only) for the Game-Pad.fr news site: read it there.

It was nice to actually get interesting questions for once ;)

A simple platformer engine (part 1): basics

Writing a 2D platformer engine can be tricky if you don't really know where you're going. Using a clean and simple base is essential. You know the KiSS principle ? Keep It Short and Simple : that's the way I do it.

Most of my games are based on a similar canvas, be it a 2D platformer or a top-down game. Actually, it's interesting to note that a platformer is nothing more than a top-down engine with gravity applied to the player on every frame.

In this article, I will use the Haxe language: if you don't know it yet, it's an amazing language that can compile to many targets, including Flash, C, or iOS/Android (using NME). However, the principles here are very generic and simple, meaning that you can easily adapt to any other language.

Those 3 games share the exact same engine.