{"author_name":"Katamori","cat":"LD #29","comments":[{"author_name":"","time":"April 29, 2014 11:00 am","epoch":1398787200,"text":"Energy Drink! My best friend!!! <3","spam":"N"}],"epoch":1398785640,"likes":3,"metadata":{"p_key":"30209","p_author":"Katamori","p_authorkey":"25228","p_urlkey":"65680","p_title":"\u201cThe Last Beacon\u201d \u2013 Postmortem, a.k.a the success of planning","p_cat":"LD #29","p_event":"LD29","p_time":"1398785640","p_likes":"3","p_comments":"1","p_status":"UPD5","us_key":"25228","us_name":"Katamori","us_username":"katamori","event_start":"1398384000","event_key":"22","event_name":"LD29"},"text":"

I’ve never written any proper postmortem posts during my LD carreer, but my LD#29 game, The Last Beacon was so successfull in my aspect that I have to do that now.<\/p>\n

To understand, why I think so, I should start explaining, how the event have happened for me.<\/p>\n

\"TITLEPIC\"<\/a><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

The titlepic, which is currently my best artwork ever. I suck at drawing, ‘uknow.<\/em><\/p>\n

BEFORE<\/strong><\/p>\n

You must know that the days preceding LD#29 were completely empty for me. I just sat at home, played games, and sometimes visited social media, but that’s all – and I did it literally all day! If you wouldn’t know, this way of life drains creativity. Okay, of course I went to shop to buy food and fuel for the great event<\/em>, but pretty much that’s all.<\/p>\n

The fuel for my creativity was the fact that I decided sleeping some hours in the afternoon before the theme announcement. I woke up at 10 P.M. (CEST), did some Redditing, then I went back relaxing for an another, so I was kind of relaxed when I was waiting for the theme.<\/p>\n

DURING<\/strong><\/p>\n

So, theme is “Beneath the Surface”. I didn’t know what to expect so my first (kind of reflex-like) reaction was a fist into the air with an “OH YES!!”<\/strong> shoutout. Then I started thinking of ideas, “just for some time before I go to sleep”. heh, well, I didn’t go sleep…<\/p>\n

My first thought was “beneath the surface of an alien planet”, and I started thinking on that way. Only about half an hour was necessary to find out every features, excluding a proper title, a story and a protagonist. All of these were decided was later.<\/p>\n

And the key to my success just have come…<\/p>\n

THE STRUCTURE PLAN!!<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

\"Alpha<\/a><\/p>\n

This is it: the annoyingly precise draft of ALL tasks to do!<\/em><\/p>\n

Around 4:00 A.M., I had an idea to build up a literally FULL to-do list to surely cover every aspects, and avoiding mistakes I did last time, when I screwed up 20 hours a completely useless map loading system – not even talking a lot of other, terribly implemented features.<\/p>\n

It looked like this:<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. I did some basic definition (where does it take place of, what’s the genre, will there be a controllable character, etc.)<\/li>\n
  2. then I explained it (what’s the aim, how the player can reach it, will there be premade levels or procedural generation, what may happen on levels, etc.)<\/li>\n
  3. then I decided about main features (behaviour of environment, basically) and I thought over, what kind of sprites should I draw (including technical sprites such as particles – yet they weren’t implemented at last)<\/li>\n
  4. these technical features were great start for a to-do list<\/li>\n
  5. and the final step, which is the most important: I made a detailed explanation for every points of the to-do list!<\/strong> I could follow these statement while I did the stuff that must be done and it not only speeded things up, but also made them “bug-proof”! It was especially useful when I created the map loading and saving system.<\/li>\n <\/ol>\n

    So yeah, this was the true power of my LD. And the energy drink.<\/strong><\/p>\n

    \"K\u00e9p2009\"<\/a><\/p>\n

    “I hid behind this bottle perfectly…I hope no one takes notice!”<\/em><\/p>\n

    The structure plan was done around 5:00 A.M., so the actual work was started around that time. Then I worked on the game without stopping for 24 hours, and I literally didn’t stop!<\/p>\n

    At the end of this period, I had a fully working engine, and a partially working editor. The rest of the second day was spent for smooth features, such as the ridiculously simple intro sequence, the HUD, the rest of the textures, an autodetailer – and of course the creation of maps and story.<\/p>\n

    End was a little bit in hurry, and had to rebuild both the .exe and the .love file twice after Comp ended (first time for a bug that makes lvl2 unbeatable, and second time for the buggy appearance of the ending text), but fortunately, I could finish the game.<\/p>\n

    It was at 32+\u00a0hours of pure working, if not more. I can not estimate it precisely, due to time spent on YT, Facebook, Reddit, Twitter, and so on, but I’m pretty sure it was at least 30 hours of pure work. This is my personal record, and I’m not sure I’m gonna be able to\u00a0exceed it.<\/p>\n

    SUCCESSES<\/strong><\/p>\n