{"author_name":"deathray","cat":"LD #30","comments":[],"epoch":1409231280,"likes":0,"metadata":{"p_key":"26413","p_author":"deathray","p_authorkey":"17861","p_urlkey":"61843","p_title":"CosmicCom Post Mortem","p_cat":"LD #30","p_event":"LD30","p_time":"1409231280","p_likes":"0","p_comments":"0","p_status":"UPD5","us_key":"17861","us_name":"deathray","us_username":"deathray","event_start":"1408665600","event_key":"24","event_name":"LD30"},"text":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.ludumdare.com\/compo\/ludum-dare-30\/?action=preview&amp;uid=17861\"><img class=\"alignnone\" src=\"https:\/\/33.media.tumblr.com\/d723c16d6d6c4c2ae928b650736bb004\/tumblr_naw4i2bzl21r25zc5o1_500.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"390\" height=\"331\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n <p>My game can be summed up perfectly by gnx&#8217;s review: &#8220;<span style=\"color: #000000\"><em><strong>Click things and numbers get bigger<\/strong><\/em>&#8220;.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n <p>I have been very pleasantly surprised by the reviews. I thought the game wasn&#8217;t going to be much fun, but people tend to be enjoying it.<\/p>\n <p><strong>Some good quotes:<\/strong><\/p>\n <ul>\n <li><span style=\"color: #000000\">&#8220;Very fun and addictive game&#8221;<\/span><\/li>\n <li><span style=\"color: #000000\">&#8220;a nice fun game&#8221;<\/span><\/li>\n <li><span style=\"color: #000000\">&#8220;Well done balance and execution&#8221;<\/span><\/li>\n <li><span style=\"color: #000000\">&#8220;Having a fun time with this one. :)&#8221;<\/span><\/li>\n <li><span style=\"color: #000000\">&#8220;Played it for a long time, not sure why, but I had fun.&#8221;<\/span><\/li>\n <li><span style=\"color: #000000\">&#8220;the different buttons have nice thought out synergies&#8221;<\/span><\/li>\n <li><span style=\"color: #000000\">&#8220;I enjoyed it even though there is not much of a challenge <img src=\"http:\/\/ludumdare.com\/compo\/wp-includes\/images\/smilies\/simple-smile.png\" alt=\":)\" class=\"wp-smiley\" style=\"height: 1em; max-height: 1em;\" \/> &#8220;<\/span><\/li>\n <li>&#8220;&#8230;<span style=\"color: #000000\">but I like idle games and this one is cool!&#8221;<\/span><\/li>\n <\/ul>\n <p><strong>Some criticism:<\/strong><\/p>\n <ul>\n <li><span style=\"color: #000000\">&#8220;Aaaah, my poor fingahs. I played that for a lot longer than I meant! &#8220;<\/span><\/li>\n <li><span style=\"color: #000000\">&#8220;I felt like a rat on a wheel after a while&#8221;<\/span><\/li>\n <li><span style=\"color: #000000\">&#8220;I would&#8217;ve liked to see some visual representation&#8230;&#8221;<\/span><\/li>\n <li><span style=\"color: #000000\">&#8220;I was missing was some sense of reward&#8221;<\/span><\/li>\n <li><span style=\"color: #000000\">&#8220;Fingers hurt&#8221;<\/span><\/li>\n <li><span style=\"color: #000000\">&#8221; idle games aren&#8217;t really fun and full of creativity&#8230;&#8221;<\/span><\/li>\n <\/ul>\n <p><strong>What Went Wrong<\/strong><\/p>\n <ul>\n <li><em>No Time<\/em> &#8212; I had very little time over the weekend, so I only had ~6 hours on Sunday and a few hours on Monday after work. Although I usually submit to the 48-hour competition, I had to submit as a Jam. More time would&#8217;ve meant there would have been a lot more features and maybe some nice-looking icons.<\/li>\n <li><em>How it all fits together<\/em> &#8212; I also didn&#8217;t have a clear vision of how the UI would look or how the synergies would work between the different currencies (money, customers, satellites, etc.). A lot of it was developed on the fly.<\/li>\n <li><em>Full Testing<\/em> &#8212; I didn&#8217;t test the game all the way through until the very end. It made me realize that the game got a bit boring after a while; even I never played all the way through to unlocking all the planets.<\/li>\n <\/ul>\n <p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n <p><strong><span style=\"color: #444444\">What Went Right<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n <ul>\n <li><em>Work with a known Gameplay style<\/em> &#8212; I knew I wouldn&#8217;t have that much time, so I decided ahead of time to create an idle <a href=\"http:\/\/orteil.dashnet.org\/cookieclicker\/\">Cookie-Clicker<\/a>-esque game. I had done this kind of game before for a mini-LD (<a href=\"http:\/\/www.ludumdare.com\/compo\/minild-48\/?action=preview&amp;uid=17861\">Conspiracy Clicker<\/a>), so I knew I could borrow the general concepts and maybe a few lines of code (it&#8217;s open source on GitHub). Picking a small scope and a gameplay I was familiar with was the only way I would&#8217;ve had a chance at completing anything playable in such a short amount of time.<\/li>\n <li><em>New Last-minute Feature<\/em> &#8212; After the bulk of the development was done on Sunday, I knew it wasn&#8217;t much fun. My girlfriend played the game and commented that it was missing &#8220;things to buy&#8221; like I had in Conspiracy Clicker. At the last minute I added in the Engineers and the Marketing, which help to add another element to the gameplay. Without them, the game would be even more tedious.<\/li>\n <li><em>Exponents<\/em>\u00a0&#8212; If you&#8217;re going to make an idle game like this, make sure you don&#8217;t have a linear progression, but instead have some kind of exponential difficulty and growth. I added Math.pow() in pretty late, but it definitely helped.<\/li>\n <\/ul>\n <p>Enjoy!\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.ludumdare.com\/compo\/ludum-dare-30\/?action=preview&amp;uid=17861\">http:\/\/www.ludumdare.com\/compo\/ludum-dare-30\/?action=preview&amp;uid=17861<\/a><\/p>\n <p>&nbsp;<\/p>","time":"August 28th, 2014 8:08 am","title":"CosmicCom Post Mortem"}