{"author_name":"deadarius","cat":"LD #29","comments":[{"author_name":"SevenKingdomsSurvivors","time":"April 30, 2014 9:49 am","epoch":1398869340,"text":"Great post. I feel the same way about a lot of the things you said. The way I see it is that I’m having fun and also improving the skills I use at my job (programming). For me the only downside was not sleeping enough. I’m still feeling kind of crappy.","spam":"N"},{"author_name":"deadarius","time":"April 30, 2014 1:01 pm","epoch":1398880860,"text":"Yeah man, I still recovering from it too. But that’s part of the fun, right?","spam":"N"}],"epoch":1398857880,"likes":2,"metadata":{"p_key":"30139","p_author":"deadarius","p_authorkey":"34214","p_urlkey":"65609","p_title":"Suck My Dig! Postmortem","p_cat":"LD #29","p_event":"LD29","p_time":"1398857880","p_likes":"2","p_comments":"2","p_status":"UPD5","us_key":"34214","us_name":"deadarius","us_username":"deadarius","event_start":"1398384000","event_key":"22","event_name":"LD29"},"text":"

I knew about Ludum Dare since 2006. But I believed that I don’t have enough relevant skills and never was even thinking about participating<\/p>\n

But now I’m finally dare to do Ludum Dare.<\/p>\n

So how was it? It was just amazing! I don’t even remember when did I have so much fun for the last time. I was looking at #ld48 twitter feed from time to time – it was just bloated with activity, everybody is doing something, posting screenshots, complaining about the lack of idea etc. It was very inspirational to say the least. Suddenly I was feeling connection with hundreds of people focused on the same things at the same time as me.<\/p>\n

\"My<\/a>

My Setup<\/p><\/div>\n

So, enough of emotions, here are my conclusions:<\/p>\n

Theme:<\/strong><\/p>\n

During the theme voting process I was skimming through the themes and trying to generate an idea for each of them. So basically when theme was revealed I already had my idea ready. Pretty simple concept – stealth gameplay involving digging tunnels to avoid enemies and reach target destination. Sounds simple enough for 48 hours. But it wasn’t.<\/em> I failed, I really did.<\/p>\n

What did go wrong:<\/strong><\/p>\n

I wasn’t able to calculate time properly and didn’t do even a half of what I really wanted. The most important – I didn’t do any audio, no sounds, no music, nothing. I consider it as the biggest flaw of my entry, I believe that the good audio in any game makes at least the half of it’s charm.<\/p>\n

Another major flaw was the shortness of the game and lack of actual level design. I have made only one level and there is no design, just level.
\n Obviously without enough time I didn’t have a lot of content either, no additional objects on the map, no decorative stuff, nothing.<\/p>\n

I also did write a lot of shitty code but I believe in this case it’s kind of a forgivable. Next time I will do better, I promise<\/em>.<\/p>\n

What did go right:<\/strong><\/p>\n

But not everything was so bad! According to the feedback so far my concept wasn’t too bad, it is pretty funny to play even though induces rage sometimes. People still find digging cool, who could think of that!<\/p>\n

Maybe I don’t have a lot of content, but I believe the content I have is of pretty decent quality, I am in no way pixel art master so I am personally very happy with the result.<\/p>\n

I have implemented a lot of interesting things I never did before in my whole life, made a little cutscene, animations, even simple AI. Damn I am good.<\/p>\n

From programming side even if my code was’n in all cases beautiful I did a lot of interesting things and some of them I probably will post as open source to use as a little gists in the next LD. I have pretty much 3d game emulating 2d, nothing new, I know, but still… coool!
\n So that’s it. Game is done and I actually going to continue development if feedback will be positive enough. I am very happy with the results, it was great experience which I would like to repeat. See you next time!<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Tools used:<\/strong> Monogame, Visual Studio 2013, Sublime Text, Paint.NET, Tiled, Chronolapse, SmartGIT.<\/p>\n

Entry:<\/strong>\u00a0Suck My Dig!<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Time-lapse:<\/strong><\/p>\n