{"author_name":"Lacaranian","cat":"LD #30","comments":[],"epoch":1409097180,"likes":3,"metadata":{"p_key":"26491","p_author":"Lacaranian","p_authorkey":"34171","p_urlkey":"61921","p_title":"I Wasn\u2019t Going to do a Postmortem, but my Game has a Ghost in It","p_cat":"LD #30","p_event":"LD30","p_time":"1409097180","p_likes":"3","p_comments":"0","p_status":"UPD5","us_key":"34171","us_name":"Lacaranian","us_username":"lacaranian","event_start":"1408665600","event_key":"24","event_name":"LD30"},"text":"<p><strong>What I Used<\/strong><\/p>\n <ul>\n <li><em>Construct 2<\/em> &#8211; Still a wonderful piece of software, great for quickly getting an idea into action. But it does have&#8230;problems. It pigeonholes you into working it its style (enforces a frame rate based event loop, which I like, but then forces you to define functions inside the same loop, ech), and exports to things besides the web still don&#8217;t always work as intended. Not to mention its image editor and audio system have quirks and limitations of their own. I&#8217;d say, for something based in HTML5\/Javascript with only the few developers working on it that have been, it&#8217;s pretty good. I have consistently been able to find new ways to use it.<\/li>\n <li><em>sfxr<\/em>&#8211; Wunnerful as always. I don&#8217;t know enough about audio engineering to make full use of the manual settings, but I know enough to be dangerous.<\/li>\n <li><em>GIMP<\/em>&#8211; My favoritest thing. Wish I knew how to use all of it, but I make do with what I&#8217;ve got.<\/li>\n <li><em>msPaint<\/em>&#8211; I used this with a drawing tablet I picked up cheap a few months back to make the title screen (because GIMP and the tablet don&#8217;t trust each other for some reason). It&#8217;s, well, Paint. Ya know.<\/li>\n <li><em>Audacity<\/em>&#8211; A solid sequencing recording tool. Along with a $5 mic (one of those people put on their collars to speak on stage), I got some rather good sound quality for the music side of things. After running it through a noise reduction filter (it was terrible before that), anyways.<\/li>\n <li><em>AWS<\/em>&#8211; Amazon Web Services for hosting the game. This was something I was setting up anyway, so\u00a0I&#8217;m pleased with it (being a homebrew, DIY type, I don&#8217;t mind all the work it takes to get it functioning). It&#8217;s in the cloooud.<\/li>\n <li><em>The Interwebs<\/em>&#8211; They provided me with answers where there were none. Invaluable.<\/li>\n <li><em>Violin, Piano, Guitar<\/em>&#8211; The triumvirate of incredibly vanilla instruments. Used em all! Plus a little ghostly moaning.<\/li>\n <li><em>notepad++<\/em> &#8211; In my opinion one of the best plaintext editors out there. Code syntax highlighting, good indents, plugins galore. I only used to make JSON files for the dialogue, but still.<\/li>\n <li><em>Guacamole<\/em>&#8211; Gotta replenish calories.<\/li>\n <li><em>chronolapse and ffmpeg<\/em>&#8211; Marvelous tools for timelapse video production. Speaking of which, here&#8217;s a timelapse video:<\/li>\n <\/ul>\n <p><iframe width=\"500\" height=\"281\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/RnuX1HNeaqk?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n <p><strong>What Was Good This Time<\/strong><\/p>\n <ul>\n <li>I knew what I was doing this time! It was my second Ludum Dare, and while I paced my first one really well, enough went wrong that it was a close shave. This time went more smoothly, and I had time to spare (maybe finished 4 hours early).<\/li>\n <li>I implemented a full dialogue system from scratch, which I&#8217;ve never really done before! It was great too, because I could make any object use any dialogue, and cycle through several dialogue options, since that<\/li>\n <li>I actually put an ending in this time. Though it does take a while to reach?<\/li>\n <li>I actually put MUSIC in this time. Which is so so important I can&#8217;t even describe it.<\/li>\n <li>I got sleep every night, no problem.<\/li>\n <li>I made a postmortem this time!<\/li>\n <\/ul>\n <p><strong>What Was Decidedly Not So Good<\/strong><\/p>\n <ul>\n <li>I opted not to use the time I had to spare to spruce up the game a little more. Really should&#8217;ve.<\/li>\n <li>The timelapse video wasn&#8217;t as long this time (I set the screenshot interval for chronolapse shorter because dual monitors).<\/li>\n <li>The game still wasn&#8217;t explained very well.<\/li>\n <li>I wasted half an hour deciding I didn&#8217;t want to scrap my compo aspirations by using an open source dial-up tone. I did consider recording my own, before realizing I haven&#8217;t had dial-up in years. Eh.<\/li>\n <li>I just went with the first decent recordings of songs I did (it was all pretty improvish), so there&#8217;s definite fumbles in there.<\/li>\n <li>The gameplay is only really arcade level, wasn&#8217;t much more than that.<\/li>\n <li>GIMP and my tablet don&#8217;t trust each other (The Huion driver I&#8217;ve got doesn&#8217;t entirely work).<\/li>\n <\/ul>\n <p><strong>For Next Time<\/strong><\/p>\n <ul>\n <li>Maybe try another library\/IDE\/codebase &#8211; Construct 2 is good, but only goes so far. Plus, it only does 2d.<\/li>\n <li>Really dedicate myself to the LD and nothing but the LD during the LD.<\/li>\n <li>Maybe do it with a friend, try the jam? Could be real fun.<\/li>\n <li>Get that drawing tablet working, learn how to use it to make more than scribbles<\/li>\n <li>Get better at improv musical self-recording (i.e just go with it, make fewer errors)- that haspotential to be a real strength<\/li>\n <li>Look up fewer things (just know them from the outset)<\/li>\n <\/ul>\n <p>Well, that&#8217;s it. If you haven&#8217;t played\u00a0<a title=\"Ghostnet\" href=\"http:\/\/www.ludumdare.com\/compo\/ludum-dare-30\/?action=preview&amp;uid=34171\" target=\"_blank\">Ghostnet<\/a>\u00a0yet, and you actually read this whole thing, you probably should! It&#8217;s not half bad. Stay spooky, friends.<\/p>","time":"August 26th, 2014 6:53 pm","title":"I Wasn\u2019t Going to do a Postmortem, but my Game has a Ghost in It"}