SUNDAY

The last day, and we basically had the gameplay locked in. All that was left was to polish and refine what we already had. There was talk of adding features and more gameplay mechanics, but at this point we didn't feel it was necessary.

Curious Comets

Many playtesters commented on our "smart" little comets, mentioning their inquisitive and fun personalities.

But.

There was very little "smart" going on. These comets were still using the same code as before, simply randomising their velocity at random intervals. This sudden change from players was because the comets now had some art, and now always faced the player (real comets' tails always point away from the sun) and this gave the illusion of intent - the once randomly bouncing red circles now seemed to watch the player, moving in for a closer look, then retreating. Some kept their distance, then suddenly and bravely charged in. All of this behaviour and personality was in the player's mind.
Real comets don't randomly bounce around, and Dan did at some point want them to behave more like real comets, but players really liked these ones and so it stayed (also meaning Rianna didn't have to code new behaviour at the last minute). Stars also don't fly around nebulae, so it's not like we were going for realism.

Noise (the visual one)

The first attempt at making the clouds in p5.js - copying colours over from the photoshop gradient map used in the mockup and using a series of samples along the perlin noise to get its value. This effect worked pretty much exactly how we imagined it would. 

Eventually we settled on a handful of handmade palettes which randomise every time you play. Rianna found a way to smooth the noise values so it looked, well, smoother. The player's star clears the nebulae by drawing a black circle under the star every frame. To stop it feeling too much like you were just drawing with a black pen, we added twinkling stars that got brighter once the nebula cloud was cleared. 

Layered on top of the vignette is a progress bar that grows around the outside along the edge of the screen - an idea Dan had from a project he is currently working on for the Playdate.

Noise (the audio one)

Space is, for the most part, silent. However this game, the lack of sound was really making it feel like a bit of a vacuum.

We were listening to a music-to-code-to playlist and lots of the tracks ended up fitting the game quite well while playing. Dan's brother Michael composed a track based on what we were listening to, and he got it right pretty much straight away.

"With the reference tracks I was given it was actually very easy for me to get a feel for what kind of track to write. I started with the outline of the A and B sections using a soft DX7 style e.piano and then filled out the rest of the track almost exclusively with a Mini Moog style plugin synth. this worked well as the plugin can be used as a bass, pad, and arp synth with a retro flavour.  Although the track is written to loop perfectly for some reason when ever I would render out the track there would always be a small amount of silence at the end or beginning of the track, even after removing and reverb trails. We managed to get it mostly smooth but it is not perfect. This is something I will need to find a fix for for any future tracks I work on." -Michael

This music gave us a nice backing track, but it was still missing some feedback when interacting with the game.

Luckily, Dan Pugsley offered to help out with audio design, and made some lovely piano-notes when the player knocks a comet with a planetoid, as well as all the other atmospheric sound effects. My favourite is the harrowing sound when the star dies.

"I made 'em real spacey". -Dan P

With the music and sound effects in the game, vacuum felt like a complete experience. Never understimate audio as a way to embed objects in your game world, it is often overlooked, and game jams are a good opportunity to bring on audio people who might want to try their hand in games.

Wrapping Up

By about 9pm on Sunday we were done! Both in that the game was in a good state to be submitted, and that we were both exhausted and wanted to enjoy the last bit of our weekend.

Submitting the game to LDJam's website was straightforward enough, although we did almost forget to make the itch build public. OOPS.