Finally, my post-mortem right before judging ends!

I hesitated to enter due to some obligations over the weekend. I ended up starting 2 hours late, and did indeed have a really short weekend. 25 hours in all, which isn’t much of course. So considering that, it’s not too bad. Judge for yourself: http://ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-32/?action=preview&uid=42145

However…

What Went Wrong

Basically, I wasted a ton of time on the physics and the UI. And the UI still sucks, although I spent a serious amount of time generalizing things to be able to add more power ups, but wasn’t really able to use much of it. I haven’t really done any elaborate UI before with Unity, and so I was looking for good ways of doing things. So on the positive of that, I learned a few things.

For physics, I ran into all sorts of snags. The car’s acceleration tripped me up big time. I really wanted to car to move slower as it wound down. That effect is somewhat there, but not as clear as I had intended. I struggled with the acceleration a lot to find out I was doing it wrong (updating forces in the regular update method is baaaad… somehow I knew that, just never had to deal with it). The other issue, which actually isn’t fixed, is that a head-on collision between car and the walls dead-stops the car. I’m not sure if it’s something specific I did, or some typical physics/speed/update issue. Any sort of slight angle (which most people seem to do) avoids the issue, so I decided not to waste time on that.

I’m not happy with the music. Basically, the tracks aren’t entirely on beat with each other. Due to lack of time, I decided to not spend more time on it. I think most people don’t notice but it really does bother me

So all in all, wasted time on some things, which severely cut into the power ups and upgrades I had planned. The initial idea was also to unlock certain power ups as levels progressed. Oh, well.

What Went Right

Well, I did learn quite a few new things. And I also used quite a lot of lessons learned from the previous LD. Mainly, last time I thought I did a good job in making it easy to create new levels. In my after-jam updates I reworked some of that. This LD, I took those lessons learned and pretty much made an entire level editor with little effort.

I did come up with an interesting concept (again). Last LD I scored pretty good in innovation, but not so well in fun. At least this time I got several comments saying they had fun. That was definitely something I had in mind from the start, and I think it worked. I made sure the music also was lighter and more fun.

I also wanted to do a better job at the graphics. I’m not an arts guy so it’s a challenge. I did some more Gimp stuff and a few Blender things, but not quite as much as I wanted. Still, for my goal to be a bit more polished I can argue it’s better than last time, though not close to what I wanted to do. But I do feel I’m a bit more comfortable at least with the tools like Blender and Gimp than last time. Also, the rotating camera in the menu, although a silly feature, is one of those things I feel is a step in the right direction on going beyond the mechanics into better polish.

Overall

I’m not very happy with the entry for two reason. 1) It’s a good concept and I think I was able to prove the concept and show the potential. But the lack of upgrades and powerups is to the detriment of my idea. But it was a pure time issue. 2) I do like puzzle style games myself, but I’m somewhat annoyed I didn’t go an entirely different direction than last time. I think when I looked at the theme, I was thinking Angry Birds style stuff and ended up getting stuck in the physics puzzle space. So, it’s not intentional but I really need to try a non-physics puzzle game next time!

We’ll see where I end up. But personally, I wish myself better luck next time.