{"author_name":"Mach60KAS","cat":"LD #30","comments":[{"author_name":"","time":"August 27, 2014 5:21 am","epoch":1409134860,"text":"You shouldn&#8217;t be so hard on your artwork an colour choices- I think it&#8217;s the hardest thing to get right but you&#8217;ve done a great job here!","spam":"N"}],"epoch":1409091600,"likes":3,"metadata":{"p_key":"26492","p_author":"Mach60KAS","p_authorkey":"5788","p_urlkey":"61922","p_title":"Warp Ryder Cup Postmortem and Timelapse","p_cat":"LD #30","p_event":"LD30","p_time":"1409091600","p_likes":"3","p_comments":"1","p_status":"UPD5","us_key":"5788","us_name":"Mach60KAS","us_username":"mach60kas","event_start":"1408665600","event_key":"24","event_name":"LD30"},"text":"<p>4 Ludum Dares down, many more to go! I managed to &#8220;finish&#8221; my &#8220;game&#8221; within the 48 hour window this time, and I didn&#8217;t stress out anywhere near as much as I have for previous events. I&#8217;ll take that as a sign of consistency. As always, I&#8217;ve learned so much over the course of this past weekend and I&#8217;ve had a great time to boot! Anyhow, <a title=\"Warp Ryder Cup\" href=\"http:\/\/www.ludumdare.com\/compo\/ludum-dare-30\/?action=preview&amp;uid=5788\" target=\"_blank\">shameless plug for my own game here<\/a> to accompany the obligatory postmortem.<\/p>\n <p><span style=\"text-decoration: underline\"><strong>Timelapse<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n <p><iframe width=\"500\" height=\"375\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/DqmKWVFyb6I?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n <p><span style=\"text-decoration: underline\"><strong>Tools and Software<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n <ul>\n <li><a title=\"Sublime Text\" href=\"http:\/\/www.sublimetext.com\/\" target=\"_blank\">Sublime Text 2<\/a> was used for all JavaScript \/ HTML \/ JSON \/ CSS once again. Thankfully, I had enough common sense to not use it for map editing this time around.<\/li>\n <li>Adobe Photoshop CS6 was used for all graphics, sprites and tilesets.<\/li>\n <li><a title=\"Tiled Map Editor\" href=\"http:\/\/www.mapeditor.org\/\" target=\"_blank\">Tiled<\/a> was used for map editing and design.<\/li>\n <li><a title=\"PxTone Collage\" href=\"http:\/\/www.cavestory.org\/pixels-works\/pxtone-collage.php\" target=\"_blank\">PxTone<\/a> was used to write any audio.<\/li>\n <li><a title=\"Firefox Nightly\" href=\"https:\/\/nightly.mozilla.org\/\" target=\"_blank\">Firefox Nightly<\/a> and <a title=\"Google Chrome\" href=\"http:\/\/www.google.com\/chrome\/\" target=\"_blank\">Google Chrome<\/a> for testing.<\/li>\n <\/ul>\n <p><strong><span style=\"text-decoration: underline\">What Went Right?<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n <ul>\n <li><strong>Experience in programming.<\/strong> Over the course of the past year, I&#8217;ve been programming far more regularly &#8211; so I&#8217;ve noticed myself writing far, far less mistakes and being able to more efficiently debug those I do make. Naturally, this means less time stuck in a rut, moping over the sorry state of my code!<\/li>\n <li><strong>Having past code and engine work to refer to.<\/strong> Having past examples makes for a great starting point to start working while you come up with any ideas, and allows you to iterate on the design of any underlying systems. Besides, I always love coming up with better solutions to problems than I could have thought of before!<\/li>\n <li><strong>Swapping over to a dedicated level editor. <\/strong>I have no idea how I got by manually editing a CSV list of tiles last year and calling it &#8216;level design&#8217;, but Tiled was a breath of fresh air. The JSON export is probably the single greatest feature I&#8217;ve ever used, and the interplay it has with JavaScript is far more intuitive than interpreting XML. Being able to actually draw levels was a godsend as well, I have to say I&#8217;m never going back from using Tiled after this.<\/li>\n <li><strong>Once again, Canvas and JavaScript were great choices. <\/strong>Apart from differing support between browsers, I love the ability to put up a single version of my game that most people should be able to run. Couple that with JavaScript&#8217;s ease of use and you have the perfect game jam toolkit.<\/li>\n <\/ul>\n <p><span style=\"text-decoration: underline\"><strong>What Went Wrong?<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n <ul>\n <li><strong>I kinda lost my drive to work on the game for a while. <\/strong>Unhappy with the state of my game at the time, art and gameplay alike, I lost most of my drive to code for a large portion of Sunday. Had I not done that, I could have implemented a few more features before the deadline (including, you know, scoring). Urgh.<\/li>\n <li><strong>Cut features lead to seemingly meaningless design decisions elsewhere. <\/strong>Considering the game features only golf as far as gameplay mechanics are concerned, having to walk around everywhere seems rather stupid. Unfortunately, I didn&#8217;t have time to implement any enemies or aliens, or even proper entities so little artifact design choices are littered everywhere.<\/li>\n <li><strong>Harsh choice of palette. <\/strong>As much as I enjoy working with limited colour palettes, this time I had an awful lot of trouble coming up with graphics that weren&#8217;t trash. Ideally, I should have created far more colourful structures around the map to help create contrast and allow the generally flat blues of the asteroids and walkways to stand out more.<\/li>\n <li><strong>Sprite design? Still not my cup of tea.<\/strong><\/li>\n <\/ul>\n <p><span style=\"text-decoration: underline\"><strong>Stuff I Enjoyed<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n <ul>\n <li><strong>Working with new tools and file formats.<\/strong> Although it took a little while, working with new programs like Tiled was a very interesting experience, and I&#8217;m certainly glad to have spent some time working it out! It was fun integrating someone else&#8217;s map format into my own engine, I&#8217;ll admit.<\/li>\n <li><strong>Painting nebulae for backgrounds. <\/strong>Photoshop&#8217;s ability to map an image to a given colour table was amazing, and allowed me to go wild with a nice set of brushes on my tablet while still keeping in my 8 colour limit thanks to automatic pattern dithering etc.<\/li>\n <li><strong>Writing music, for once. <\/strong>It was kinda meh, but I totally do not regret writing some music for a change. I have enough oddly silent Ludum Dare projects as is.<\/li>\n <\/ul>\n <p><span style=\"text-decoration: underline\"><strong>Thoughts for Next Time<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n <ul>\n <li><strong>Be more positive. <\/strong>I really need to not get too hung up over the <em>current<\/em> state of my game, knowing full well that additional time and effort will almost always make it better in the end!<\/li>\n <li><strong>Pick a colour scheme, but don&#8217;t be afraid to deviate.<\/strong> Sometimes, 8 colours can be just a little bit <em>too<\/em> stifiling.<\/li>\n <li><strong>Reel in my ambition. <\/strong>I hate having to cut features as the deadline draws near, but at the same time I still like seeing my original idea transform and evolve as compromises have to be made over the event.<\/li>\n <li><strong>Come up with a more &#8216;fluid&#8217; game idea.<\/strong> I love fast movement and freedom in games, so I want to make something far more unbounded next time.<\/li>\n <li><strong>JavaScript forever. <\/strong>Seriously, you can&#8217;t make me use your fancy &#8216;engines&#8217; by this point.<\/li>\n <li><strong>Consider time management.<\/strong> Then again, I never really benefit all that much from excessive planning and so on. So this probably wouldn&#8217;t be all that good for me.<\/li>\n <\/ul>\n <p>Again, if you&#8217;ve spared the time to read through all this then thank you very much! This is more for myself to crystalise any knowledge I&#8217;ve gained for surviving game jams, but it&#8217;d be even better if this ends up helping any of you folks out there. Now, get back to rating all those games!<\/p>\n <p>-Felix<\/p>\n \n <p>Tags: <a href=\"http:\/\/ludumdare.com\/compo\/tag\/golf\/\" rel=\"tag\">golf<\/a>, <a href=\"http:\/\/ludumdare.com\/compo\/tag\/ld30\/\" rel=\"tag\">LD30<\/a>, <a href=\"http:\/\/ludumdare.com\/compo\/tag\/mortem\/\" rel=\"tag\">Mortem<\/a>, <a href=\"http:\/\/ludumdare.com\/compo\/tag\/post\/\" rel=\"tag\">Post<\/a>, <a href=\"http:\/\/ludumdare.com\/compo\/tag\/postmortem\/\" rel=\"tag\">postmortem<\/a><\/p>","time":"August 26th, 2014 5:20 pm","title":"Warp Ryder Cup Postmortem and Timelapse"}