{"author_name":"rantt","cat":"LD #31","comments":[{"author_name":"","time":"December 18, 2014 8:19 pm","epoch":1418951940,"text":"Good job on your game, it was a nice entry!","spam":"N"}],"epoch":1418951640,"likes":1,"metadata":{"p_key":"21885","p_author":"rantt","p_authorkey":"41103","p_urlkey":"57247","p_title":"When Snowmen Attack \u2013 Postmortem","p_cat":"LD #31","p_event":"LD31","p_time":"1418951640","p_likes":"1","p_comments":"1","p_status":"UPD5","us_key":"41103","us_name":"rantt","us_username":"rantt","event_start":"1417737600","event_key":"26","event_name":"LD31"},"text":"

<\/h1>\n

This is the postmortem for my LD31 entry “When Snowmen Attack”.<\/p>\n

Play it here<\/a><\/p>\n

\"When<\/p>\n

I’m pretty happy with how my game turned out. This was my second ludum dare and I wanted to make sure I improved in the areas that didn’t go so well the first time around.<\/p>\n

What Went Right<\/strong><\/p>\n

Time management<\/em><\/p>\n

I took the first night to figure out what I was going to do and then started Saturday morning. I spent Saturday getting the majority of the mechanics working and spent Sunday finalizing the mechanics, cleaning up my sprites and writing the music. I was able to finish the game in the 48hrs (although just barely).<\/p>\n

Graphics<\/em><\/p>\n

I spent a lot more time on my graphics (probably more than I should have), and it’s one of the things that people seamed to like. I also used placeholder art (which I hadn’t done before) during development so I could get the mechanics working earlier and give me more time to spend tweaking my sprites later. This helped me decide which actions I was going to use so I didn’t draw out any art I wouldn’t need.<\/p>\n

Player Character from LD30<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Player Character from LD31<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Mechanics<\/em><\/p>\n

Not overly complicated but it played well, and in most of the feedback people said they enjoyed it. I think I did pretty good at introducing new enemies and having the difficulty ramp up at a decent pace.<\/p>\n

Timelapse<\/em><\/p>\n

I liked watching ones that other people had posted last year and really wanted to do one this time around. I think it came out alright, although I made a lot of mistakes. Next time I’d probably cut more of the boring stuff out and put up more messages for what I’m doing so it’s not so confusing. Also, I did almost all of my sprite work on my iPad using SpriteSomething, so there are a lot of periods where my screen just sits there until I import the sprites in. So lots to improve on for next time, but I’m still glad I did it.<\/p>\n