{"author_name": "joppiesaus", "cat": "LD #31", "comments": [], "epoch": 1418818200, "likes": 1, "metadata": {"p_key": "21915", "p_author": "joppiesaus", "p_authorkey": "29014", "p_urlkey": "57277", "p_title": "LD 31 & October Challenge post-mortem", "p_cat": "LD #31", "p_event": "LD31", "p_time": "1418818200", "p_likes": "1", "p_comments": "0", "p_status": "UPD5", "us_key": "29014", "us_name": "joppiesaus", "us_username": "job_", "event_start": "1417737600", "event_key": "26", "event_name": "LD31"}, "text": "

Today I’ll review my experiences of last LD and the October Challenge!

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So lets start with LD 31:

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Fireguy: A bomberman spin-off with ugly-evil-unicode-snowmans. It was intended to have “the same screen” the whole game – no spawning, nothing that drops, etc. – but that didn’t work out very well. I ended up in a hurry and made an hostile AI that’s just smart enough to place bombs and evade them.
\n Graphics were cheap, AI code was horrible, gameplay was boring. I still felt like I had to finish it, because game > no game. People in the comments agreed on that too, I’m glad they voted.

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I was pretty tired that weekend. The inspiration didn’t really come up, so I just practically worked and had fun. I kept forcing myself to finish it, and it was quite fun. I hope I do better next time.

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Then there’s the October Challenge:

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Offensive Defense: A RTS defense game, where you need to defend yourself against the things.

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First, I came up with an top-down boxing game, but after a week or so I wasn’t really motivated for it anymore, and I realized it wasn’t really fun, so I quit.
\n Then I decided that I would work on a RTS game, what I always wanted to make. It’s very simple: Creatures in massive amounts are trying to invade you, but you have to keep ’em outside.
\n In the beginning I had really much motivation, I spent much time on it. Later, school began to take it’s toll, I had an test week, so I didn’t really have much time that week.
\n I wanted to push out a public test version October 15th, but I had too little time. That was just after the test week.
\n I went on vacation, and it felt weird to abandon the game a few days. After the vacation, I had to “refresh” my mind again. School was a problem, again.
\n At 29 October I realized I had too little time. I didn’t push my game out in time to “win” the challenge, but I kept working on it.
\n At 31 October my first phase was done. This meant the game was playable, but not finished. Before the October Challenge I thought this would be the date I would have an awesome game and start making Minecraft-money. That obviously didn’t work out.
\n After a while I ran out of ideas and I really wanted to finish it because it felt like it was never finished. I just picked a day where it needed to be finished, and that worked.
\n Then there’s a gap until 20 October: the release date. I don’t remember much of it. I remember I worked like crazy, I polished as much as I could, and that I felt every day different, but always a little weird.

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It felt weird to make the game. Sometimes it was really fun, sometimes it felt really depressing. Again, I focused on getting stuff done. However, there was a big problem called school. It kept me away from working on my game, but after a few weeks I tried to ignore school a little more and work more on Offensive Defense, that was because of the benefits of the game weighted more than the benefits of school. I’ll probably explain that later.

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Now the things of the game itself(IMO, it’s widely different from someone else’s opinion for example a friend of mine):

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So this is my first commercial game. I’m 15, and I don’t feel like an MLG AAA Pro Game Designer/Programmer Indie Freak, and I did this as an experiment. I’m still wondering about the opinions of this game. Because I don’t know if my game is good, the user chooses to buy the game. That’s to make sure the people who buy the game, are actually happy with the game. I am happy with money, so I can buy other games ‘n stuff.

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What’s really disappointing, is that it has 5 downloads. Yes. 5. It’s almost a month ago, and just 5 people downloaded it! D:
\n I am really wondering what I did wrong in that part. I mean I did some promoting, but why so little? So if you’re reading this, and you want to play a game, please play mine, because it’s fun and I really wish some feedback.

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I really wish I got some feedback, I don’t really need sales, but without it I still didn’t win the October Challenge.

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So it was a weird experience. It was very fun, but I should’ve picked another moment and I should’ve thought more realistic. But it’s not really about the game, it was because of the experience, and that was definitely worth it, because I learned so much from it.

", "time": "December 17th, 2014 7:10 am", "title": "LD 31 & October Challenge post-mortem"}