Dodge

Dodge is a game that I crafted in 48 hours for Ludum Dare.

I used the tool Game Maker and its associated language, GML, to craft the behaviours exhibited by the various different attributed and objects of the game, as well as to input the details resent in the various structures (including menus and cheats) present in the short game which I have created in the recent past in aforementioned way. To manufacture the simplistic graphics, I used the associated image editor included with Game Maker; a somewhat useful method of creating images which, while not the absolute best available, is suitable and in fact excellent for my minimalist purposes. Indeed, the very theme of this competition was minimalism. Therefore, minimalist graphics, sounds and gameplay was in order.

Upon first mention of the theme, on the weekend's Saturday, my thoughts immediately flew to such simple games as Super Hexagon. Such works are simultaneously simple and exceedingly easy to understand, but also exciting and enthralling in their simplicity. Verily, this was the type of experience I aimed to induce in my small list of players. And lo, I commenced the creation in the afternoon of the Saturday of Ludum Dare 26. I had the grand idea of a simple dodging game in which one must aim to avoid an array of obstacles approaching from a grand multitude of directions, increasing gradually up to the point where more enemies were present than is humanly imaginable. A further idea was for a sound to play each time a villainous square arrived on screen, and for it to sound somewhat like music. I retrieved the indie sound creation software SFXR and used it to manufacture a limited list of sounds, a random one of which would be played at each arrival. From then, I commenced coding with the grand usage of variables and random number generating functions; menus were created; testing was done, and procrastination performed slightly.

I then had the prototype tested by someone who wasn't me and acted upon their complaints, adding an option to deactivate things disliked by them and eventually changing it to be the default. I then essentially completed the game a decent and respectable quantity of time prior to the competition's deadline, so I decided to implement a Cheats menu for joyous cheating aimed at those with copious amounts of spare time on their hands. Then, I uploaded it to the Ludum Dare website and awaited criticism.

Much criticism and commentary was done, but other than a proud assortment of comments present beyond the link at the top, nothing interesting happened except for when gameplay was streamed for a short time by slightly well-known personality Jelly Cakes, which was mildly interesting to me.

I have gained nothing much from this moderately interesting series of events that transpired over a short amount of time, except for the ability to program a couple of things which I had never done before, or even really tried to do; I also have another game to amuse me in times of dire procrastination and I have also gained the vital knowledge that when attempting to create a system which creates procedurally and randomly generated music, it is an idea beyond excellent for the sound files for the individual notes themselves, to be pleasant sounding; for even the greatest musician cannot make a ghastly instrument sound exceptional. No amount of skill will allow one to play glorious and beautiful music upon a bottle of armpit sweat, which has not been tuned appropriately. However, the attempt was appreciated by the Jelly Cake fellow, and he commented positively on the sound, along with a number of other people.