So, I've only been in 2 game jams, this one and Brackeys 2023.1, and I feel like I've gotten a bit better. The brackeys game jam had 1 week to finish the game, and mine was unfinished lol. Out of 738 entries, it was 445th overall. Highest rating there was the theme, 231st, said theme being "An end is a new beginning". I did take like 3 days off during that jam for personal reasons, but I still felt really bad that I had a week and I had an unfinished game. Now though, with only 3 days for Ludum Dare 53, I actually have a finished game. Yeah I cut some corners, didn't add any music, couldn't draw the city the game takes place in, but it was actually finished. It has a working gameplay loop that you can play over and over again to get a higher and higher score. It has what I feel is a unique and fun mechanic too. So, I feel like I've really made progress, however little it might be, going from an unfinished game in 7 days, to a finished one in 3.

That being said I feel like I could've done things better. My game is Delivery Cannon and in there you pick up packages and shoot them out of a cannon to houses that need them delivered. It's a top down shooter and is pretty simple, but I made some mistakes in the basic architecture of the game along with poor game design that made some bugs and limitations that didn't need to be there. For one, I made it so that every package knew which House requested it, but that meant if a house had timed out, the package could still be shot at the house that requested it, and it would still give points. And whenever the player picked it up it was put in an inventory, and from there it actually stored a list of the package's scriptable object which is what I used to make them, and a list of the requested houses, and made sure the indices of each list were the same so that when you switch items, they would be the right package and it would assign the right requested house when you shot them out. The only problem with that is that it made it impossible for me to check if the house had timed out, so yeah. Basic programming mistake.

I also made some mistakes when drawing the visuals. I chose pixel art but it was like 256x256 and 128x128, after doing my own research it turns out those are really high resolutions for pixel art, and I chose relatively simple items to draw. So the outlines I put disappeared when you zoomed out, and it was also hard to see. I'm going to be going to a little vacation to see family next month, so during that time I will take the time to become a better artist, to try and draw things, I'll be on a beach so it should be easy to draw scenery, like the palm trees and coconuts. I really need to make the games I want to make look good, especially since I want to make it big in the industry, someday start up my own triple a company, and for that I need a lot of money, so having a hit indie game is necessary. And like, if I want the game to be a hit it has to look decent, doesn't have to have realistic graphics, just needs to look ok. Undertale and Stardew Valley look good, they have pixel art styles, and they're some of the most popular indie games out there, so yeah.

I also could've done better game design. Instead of having each house request a package which would be spawned, I could have spawned random packages, or set up a station to acquire packages of a certain type, and try to match those packages with what a house was requesting. That would've been more fun I think, and maybe easier to implement, since I wouldn't need to track another list of houses and packages that needed to be delivered. It also would've solved some bugs I mentioned earlier.

But yeah, I'm just, thinking about this jam. Funnily enough, right after the submission deadline for the jam, my exams were up, so I had to cram and cut corners for that, just so much going on this past two weeks. From the jam to exams to all the homework I need to catch up on. But I'm glad that under this kind of pressure I was still able to churn out a finished game that was way better than what I made before. I still have so much to learn about game development, programming, sound design, art, and game design, but I feel like I'm making progress. I think at this rate I can really make something off my games in the next 10 or 15 years, maybe release my dream game. With this jam, being one of the more important events to happen in my aspiring career, because it's really the first game jam where I feel like I've accomplished my goal, at least getting 20 rates, and it's my second one too. I also got so much good feedback from the kind people who commented on my game, I made sure to go and rate their games too to return the gesture, give my own feedback for their games. I really learned a lot from this jam, and it has really inspired and motivated me to continue pursuing this dream. Just last month I felt like I wasn't gonna make it, that I wasn't cut out for game dev because my progress has been so slow, having started around December last year, making my own personal game in 1 month, then failing so bad at Brackeys 2023.1. But this one really gives me hope, really makes me feel like I've got what it takes. So yeah, that's about it for this blog, I don't really know what you should put in a blog, especially a postmortem one. If this was like a devlog I'd just list down changes and how I felt while making them, using it as an outlet to share my thought process and feelings behind the game. But this is more of a one-time blog, but that's okay, I don't write blogs much so starting now is good.

Anyway yeah, that's it. If you kept reading to get down here, thanks a lot, watch out for this name because you might be hearing it in the next decade or so. - Stellar