{"author_name":"lkr","cat":"LD #30","comments":[],"epoch":1410446940,"likes":3,"metadata":{"p_key":"26237","p_author":"lkr","p_authorkey":"42013","p_urlkey":"61662","p_title":"Clashing Galaxies post-mortem","p_cat":"LD #30","p_event":"LD30","p_time":"1410446940","p_likes":"3","p_comments":"0","p_status":"UPD5","us_key":"42013","us_name":"lkr","us_username":"lkr","event_start":"1408665600","event_key":"24","event_name":"LD30"},"text":"<p>This was my first LD entry, so I thought I&#8217;d write a short post-mortem.<\/p>\n <h2 id=\"background\">Background<\/h2>\n <p>I had been wanting to create a 4X game for quite a while, and when the theme for LD 30 was announced to be &#8220;Connected Worlds&#8221;, I thought it&#8217;d be a great opportunity to do something about the idea, as well as trying to actually finish a game for once <img src=\"http:\/\/ludumdare.com\/compo\/wp-includes\/images\/smilies\/simple-smile.png\" alt=\":)\" class=\"wp-smiley\" style=\"height: 1em; max-height: 1em;\" \/><\/p>\n <p>With a lot of ideas I wanted to include and limited time, I needed to scope things down heavily. Long story short, I submitted my entry with a few hours to go, and have reflected on what worked and what didn&#8217;t.<\/p>\n <h3 id=\"thegood\">The good<\/h3>\n <ul>\n <li>Choosing to make the game in plain javascript &#8211; a language I code\u00a0in daily at work &#8211; definitely sped things up. Mixing drawing to a simple canvas context, as well as using simple HTML overlays styled with CSS worked great to get something up and running quickly.<\/li>\n <li>I made a quick music loop just to have some music, as I figured something was better than nothing. I was expecting some comments from people playing\/rating the game &#8211; as I know that the style of music I make is kind of a niche &#8211; but most of the comments I ended up getting about the music were positive.<\/li>\n <li>I have a really hard time making my own graphics, and was expecting comments pointing this out. In practice this wasn&#8217;t something people commented on, which leads me to believe I made the right choice not spending more time on them than I did. Spending them on gameplay\/features seemed like better use of the limited time.<\/li>\n <\/ul>\n <h3 id=\"theinconclusive\">The inconclusive<\/h3>\n <ul>\n <li>My original vision was a turn-based game, but during development I&#8217;d let the ticks run automatically to speed up testing. I ended up liking the pausable real-time gameplay, and kept it like that. Friends and co-workers thought this was something that made it pretty original, but many of the commenters\u00a0here\u00a0thought the game was too fast and chaotic. I assume most of these players didn&#8217;t know about the pause key though (which wasn&#8217;t very well documented &#8211; more about this in the next section.)<\/li>\n <li>If I had more time, I would have liked to balance and tweak the gameplay before submitting a lot more. There were some pretty obvious balance issues, but all in all I&#8217;m pretty happy with how it turned out.<\/li>\n <\/ul>\n <h3 id=\"thebad\">The bad<\/h3>\n <ul>\n <li>My game is somewhat complex, and I didn&#8217;t include very detailed instructions. I had some simple tooltips in-game as well as a short toggleable instruction text, but things like what buildings did what weren&#8217;t very well explained. A lot of people commented this, and I could probably have given them a better experience if I had explained more of this at the time of submission. (The post-compo version has tables detailing building bonus numbers and research effects.)<\/li>\n <li>I had a button that was pretty important to gameplay, that unfortunately wasn&#8217;t very obvious if you didn&#8217;t read the instructions (and most didn&#8217;t). Some people found it by accident, but I should definitely have made it more clear that it was clickable and what it did. (The button in question is the one that opens the research screen &#8211; a window that adds a lot of strategy and choices to the game, and kind of makes or breaks the gameplay.)<\/li>\n <\/ul>\n <h2 id=\"endnotes\">End notes<\/h2>\n <p>I had a lot of fun making the game during the compo weekend, and reading peoples&#8217; feedback is very humbling and rewarding. As a conclusion I have to declare my first LD entry a personal success\u00a0&#8211; if nothing else\u00a0&#8211; for finishing my first game in a long time \ud83d\ude09<\/p>\n <p>You can play my original entry <a href=\"http:\/\/www.ludumdare.com\/compo\/ludum-dare-30\/?action=preview&amp;uid=42013\">here<\/a>, or\u00a0the improved <strong>post-compo version <a href=\"http:\/\/byteglow.com\/games\/clashing-galaxies\/\">here<\/a><\/strong>.<\/p>\n <p><img src=\"http:\/\/i.imgur.com\/mpl1jzG.jpg\" alt=\"Game in progress\" width=\"450\" height=\"338\" \/><\/p>\n <p>Thanks for reading!<\/p>\n \n <p>Tags: <a href=\"http:\/\/ludumdare.com\/compo\/tag\/post-mortem\/\" rel=\"tag\">post-mortem<\/a><\/p>","time":"September 11th, 2014 9:49 am","title":"Clashing Galaxies post-mortem"}