{"author_name":"Languard","cat":"LD #29","comments":[],"epoch":1398626580,"likes":0,"metadata":{"p_key":"30932","p_author":"Languard","p_authorkey":"5657","p_urlkey":"66417","p_title":"Loss post-mortem","p_cat":"LD #29","p_event":"LD29","p_time":"1398626580","p_likes":"0","p_comments":"0","p_status":"UPD5","us_key":"5657","us_name":"Languard","us_username":"languard","event_start":"1398384000","event_key":"22","event_name":"LD29"},"text":"

And with 3-ish hours left, I need to call this a failure<\/del> loss. \u00a0I was originally going to call it a failure, but upon reflection I did learn things from this, so it isn’t a true failure. \u00a0I’m going to skip the What Went Right portion of a post-mortem because so very little did go right and what there was might not have been good after all. \u00a0The game didn’t even get to a point where it was interactive, so it’s hard to say. \u00a0So what did go wrong?<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Time:
\n I had a grand total of 10 hours to dedicate to LD. \u00a0That’s just not enough time, not when you’re going up against people who are putting in 30 hours or more. \u00a0And out of those 10 hours, I’d say 5 of them were distraction filled. \u00a0Attempting to do the LD with a family doesn’t work very well.<\/p>\n

Scope:
\n My initial design was far to broad. \u00a0Now I’ve done enough 48-hour jams to realize this quickly, but it still cost extremely precious time planning things out, then looking at the time and realizing that I’d never get anything done if I continued at that pace.<\/p>\n

The Rules:
\n This time around the compo rules really hammered me hard. \u00a0A good portion of my design hinged on using code snippets that were already written…and then realizing after I read over the rules summary post that I couldn’t use any of it. \u00a0That really hurt, both time-wise and moral-wise.
\n So how to deal with these issues next time? \u00a0Well the scope issue I think will always be there. \u00a0It can be very hard to correctly guess how much can be done within a given time frame, but with continue practice I’ll get better at it. \u00a0Time is trickier item. \u00a0It’s going to be years before that eases up, at least until my sons are teens and I don’t need to be deeply involved in their learning every day. \u00a0Until then I think my best bet is to approach the LD as a micro jam, and focus on completing something within a 4-5 hour time frame. \u00a0As for the rules…bah. \u00a0Annoying, very annoying. \u00a0I suppose my best there is to collect my code fragments and publish them so they’re publicly available, and therefor eligible for use.<\/p>\n

So here’s to having better luck on the next one.<\/p>","time":"April 27th, 2014 2:23 pm","title":"Loss post-mortem"}