As promised before here is my post mortem.

The Good:

Entering the compo:
I usually enter the compo but last time (LD#31) I had to enter the jam because my hard drive with my project files died. So therefore I hoped to have no technical problemes at all and my prayers have been answered. I had no technical problems at all and that was fantastic.

Happy with the result:
I’m happy with the kind of game I made. I usually aiming for a nice complex (if possible strategic) gameplay and this time I was able to go this path. At the beginning I had my struggles with the theme (I still don’t like it) but I was able to bend at tweek my idear to fitt into “An Unconventional Weapon”.  And the result is pretty nice for a game mad in 48 hours (- sleeping, eating etc.).

The way it all came together:
For me it was a smooth run. No bumps on the road or mountains to climp and no emotional valleys to overcome. After last LD’s problems I started to analyse and improve the way I plan and create the game and its features. I used to focus on “unimportant” features (even though they were of hugh importance for me) and lost the sense of time. The result was that I had to finish core features in the last hour of the compo and that’s a bad approach of making a good game in 48 hours. This time I focused on the core elements and even implemented the begining and the endings early on so my game was “finished” about 15 hours before deadline. Of cause I had to insert 3d models and add music and sound effects butt the game was playable with programming “artwork” (aka cubes). I was finished with modeling and sound 2 hours early so  decided to add an additional feature (an eventsystem). That was new to me! Adding somthing because you have time left. So I’m glad about the fact that the improvements of my workflow worked.

The balancing:
For a strategy game balancing income and costs is quit important and after playing a couple of times I thing “The Great Shooting” is quite balanced. It’s not easy to lose or win. It’s right in the middle of being challenging enough and to easy or to hard to play. I think this thin line is even harder to hit in a LD where a player doesn’t play a game for hours.

The Bad:

Moving Objects:
The way you move objects around (with the right mouse button) is “a bit” counterintuitive. I should have thought of a better way to aproach this action. But at the end the only thing that counts is whether it’s working or not and my system is maybe abit fiddley but it WORKS!!! So next time I should do better but I have no nightmares about it. And for those who have still some problems with it, I ovicaly declare this a FEATURE. 😀

Text readability:
This is an issue that I never had. Maybe because I knew that I had to focus the camera and/or zoom in on the object/building info window. I never thought that there could be a problem with it, but I understand that some (espacially web players) have some problems with it. (That’s something I should keep in mind for futures projects. NEVER forget platform specific problems.)

Sound quality:
Here is some room for improvement a bit more and a better quality that’s something to keep in mind. It’s way better than before but I’m still not there where I wanna be.

3D models and their textures:
Here is room for improvement, too. They are not ugly at all but somehow I think that not all models are fitting together. Some are better than others but a more constant better quality should be on the agenda for next LD’s.

You can play and vote my entry here.

Tips, tricks and ideas for improvement are welcome please make a comment.

Have fun!