The final 5D2 post-mortem, so give it up for… Frankensteam post-mortem!

Frankensteam post-mortem

1. Think about the game mechanics and GUI 

We finally made a game with simple yet compelling game mechanics and a nice clear GUI, and the game feels so much better for it. So don’t get caught up in the graphics and programming, and remember that if the user experience sucks, the other two won’t save the game.

2. Don’t fix it if it ain’t broke

I personally broke against this rule. I tried to tidy up the Flash library by putting all the images into folders, but Flash isn’t so smart as to move the path designation along with the file. So suddenly movie clips were missing frames, and copying movie clips would result in copying folders, which just confused everything. If you want to put everything in order, it has to be done that way from the start. 

3. Adjust expectations

A lesson to be learned time and time again when you’re working with limited amount of time. Even though you can see in your mind’s eye how awesome the game would or could be, you have to accept that withing 25 hours you might not reach that. Most likely you’ll be far from it. So trying to take the “vertical slice” approach to making the game instead of trying to rush to the complete game is much better for morale. 

More known bugs and issues:

- if you reset the level or start the game again, the music will double itself.

- slider won’t remove itself after game is finished

- the level background is bit off

We’ll be posting screenshots, gameplay videos and all the source files for all the games today and tomorrow. 

Go play!

This is it, the last 5D2 game. Again, a very busy and anxious Friday afternoon is behind us, we got a slightly a unfinished game. Even one bug is too much when you got 25 hours. And we always find at least two on Friday afternoons. 

(Btw, sorry for no updates yesterday.) 

Anyway, you’re not reading this anyway so go play Frankensteam now!

It’s here!

Known bugs and issues:

- Some of the animations happen bit late (e.g. steam vent riding)

- Tutorial pop-up texts might linger (quite a while)

- Only one level, we know!

- And we have not tested what happens if you put completely random commands in.

But 5D2 is not quite over yet! Next Monday we’ll have our last post-mortem and we’ll start putting the games and the documentation in their entirety here. Maybe we can give you an estimate when we’ll start working on the deluxe versions (our meaning for deluxe is no major bugs, more balanced gameplay and at least some of the assets that were left out from the original)

Here’s our plucky yet easily manipulated hero. No name yet. 

Oops, forgot to post yesterday about our next game. Better late than never. 

So our upcoming game bears the working title of “Frankensteam”. It’s a steampunk-themed puzzle-type game about a corpse brought to life that you must program to do set of tasks in order to progress from one level to next. We’ll think of a silly backstory to all of it as we go along.

Our programmers are busy programming the programming in the game, art is going all pixel steam punk and mysterious violin and industrial cog and gear sounds can be faintly heard from the sound designer’s laptop. Maybe we’ll post some sneak peeks at the end of the day to compensate for yesterday’s fail. 

While we still remember, here are the last game’s lessons.

Elder Strolls: Dungeons of Dementia taught us:

1. Planning, planning, planning

I think this was mentioned in one of the earlier post-mortems, but it’s an important lesson so no harm in repeating it. There was a mix-up with some class names and monsters were facing different ways (and had to be flipped with code). But we also did a bit of game design early on and really thought about the mechanics and possible problems in advance, which really helped to curb nasty surprises later on.

2. Stick to what you know

After the tile-based fail, we decided to return to what we know. Of course we still wanted to do something bit different, but we did that with the genre switch. This is also tied to the next point, which is…

3. Build on firm foundations

Again, a two-fold lesson. First, we built on top of our earlier engines and code in this game, which eased the production quite a lot. We also made the basic game before starting to expand. We kept the scope to minimum and once we’d achieved that we had time to make more monsters, features and still get everything done in time. I thought we were just suffering from feature creep in the latter part of production, but it was just that we had time to make the extra stuff.

4. Test and balance

Okay, once again, we missed the deadline for balancing and testing, but fitting enough testing in 25 hours is quite hard. For an RPG, this sort-of breaks the game.

More known bugs and issues:

- you can block and attack at the same time

- titles don’t actually work (you can only achieve newborn no matter how hard you try)

- balance is messed up (both in monster and treasure probabilities and difficulty progression)

The next cycle begins today, so come back in the afternoon to hear what’s in store for the fifth and final 5D2 game!

Out now in all your favorite imaginary stores. Go play here!

The Elder Strolls: Dungeons of Dementia tells the story of an old man who fights the monsters which explode into items, coins and potions. Why? Because he can!

The amazing features:

20,000 uniquely named items! (thought not mechanically unique)

20 unique titles to achieve! (with unquestionable naming logic and math behind them)

Almost as many enemies! (or not)

Almost as many items in shop! (…)

It’s the first RPG from the 5D2 team and the most content-rich game yet.

Go play it here!

Known bugs:

- once again, you need to click the game screen before starting to play

- picking up an item while holding down one of the arrow keys will cause the character to play through rest of his animation (solution: stop pressing keys when you pick up an item) 

So the fourth 5D2 game will officially be called… *dun-dun-duu*

Elder Strolls: Dungeons of Dementia!

The humorous tone continues. We had a great idea yesterday about having the game switch between the dungeon view and a hospital view, which would cast our protagonist as an old demented man who’s trapped in his mind and in the process killing (or at least knocking out) the hospital staff that try to restrain him. But alas, not going to be in this version at least. Maybe in the deluxe version.

(Btw, I will keep tunnelhack as the game’s tag because it’s already been used for this game ES:DoD doesn’t quite have the same simplicity to it.)

On positive news, we’ve got ton of new features implemented. We got a shop feature, so you can buy stat-enhancing potions (and later even an invulnerability potion). We also discovered that actually one of the most fun parts in the game is the random objects you pick up on the way. You can pick up swords, shields and boots (which boost their respective stats: str, con and dex), but we randomly generate them names like Acidic Saber of The Void. Some of the combinations are quite hilarious.

On negative news… nothing actually. We’re constantly talking about stuff we could implement in the game, but I’m trying to keep the worst of feature creep at bay. But it’s actually great to get to extend the scope of the original game. 

We seem to get so much done every day, yet at the end of each day it’s hard to say what we actually did. I accidentally the whole game. Is this bad? Maybe dementia is getting to us too. 

A much awaited screenshot from the up-coming game, which now has a real and awesome name, but I’ll save that tidbit for tomorrow. Btw, there are other enemies in addition to skeletons; they just didn’t make it to the picture.