LudumData

Time to quit again. POSTMORTEM.

[raw] LD29LD #29 27. Apr 2014 · 03:53 UTC · 2 days after compo start by yetatore · 1

29 hours has past and Im bored without forces, without a game… Officially I quit.

So… Boring? No game? Nothing? WHY!!?
I hope that this postmortem can answer some reasons why I fail AGAIN a Ludum Dare.

POSTMORTEM

_ Not prepared to prototype fast

At the time that LudumDare began, I had nothing to get started, nothing to prototype the idea as fast as posible.
So when I came with an idea, I spend like 17 hours “writing” code before being even close to try the idea.

Thrust me when I say: That approach let you bored and powerless, VERY FAST.
Maybe in the begining was bored ’cause I was unable to test nothing!!! Fu******** horrible!!!

_ Background

That’s my 4th LudumDare, also I participated in 2 GGJ…  GGJ2012: passed, LD24: passed, GGJ2013: passed, LD27: passed, LD28: fail, LD29: fail
WHY I FAIL THE LAST 2 JAMS!???

In the other jams I begin with a well-tested and used game engines! Flash, Flashpunk, SebaGames(friend’s engine), Unity3d, NOTHING, NOTHING!

Wait, wait! I used a toolkit (both SDL based) but they are a “bit low level”.
Both times I couldnt write all the necesary code to start writing the real game!

Conclusion here, again I get bored both times by not making a game…

_ Why the change?

That maybe will sound a bit ::hippie:: => These game engines wasnt Free Software!

Wait, wait, again! With free I dont say “free of cost” => I say “do whatever you want with this thing!”.
> Flash depends on an awful nonfree pluggin.
> SebaGames depends on an awful nonfree framework (.NET).
> I like Unity3d, but I cant develop under GNU/Linux… WHY??

So, I say: ok, lets program in Python/Pygame, and Perl/SDL! They are free, blah, blah, blah, blah… **epic fail**
They arent supposed to be a non-pro solution, at least no for a Jam… And they arent supposed to be a pro solution, even in a long-term development!

But wait!!! Developing really free games, are so hard? Well… You have HTLM5, C++/SFML, why not Scratch or Bennu! But programming games is always hardcore stuff.
But, again, there is something comparable with the Flash/Unity framework that is free? I hope so (?), but I dont think so…

_ The future.

My experience with Perl was amazing, now is my favorite lang to write games hehehe! But I need a good backend!!
The next time I will be with a well-tested backend, and I will enjoy the LudumDare at the way that deserve it!!

_ Advice.

Be prepared, or you will get bored!

Tags: postmortem

Comments

27. Apr 2014 · 04:19 UTC
You’re awesome for trying, even though you gave up.

I admire you even more for writing your experiences after all.
muramasa
27. Apr 2014 · 04:29 UTC
I can’t say anything because I’m not that much of a programmer, but what I’ve seen people doing is preparing their game engines before LD starts. Or templates.

Making your own game engine has the benefits of everything working the way you like it to. And templates… well, not spend time doing reiterative works, like asset management, setting everything up… stuff.
27. Apr 2014 · 04:46 UTC
Let me blow you a K.I.S.S
27. Apr 2014 · 05:08 UTC
As Yell0w said, K.I.S.S is a good moto. It’s great to expand your horizons, but I’d say don’t go into an LD with a new tool unprepared, practice with it before hand. I’ve come from the opposite situation. I wanted to use unity3d this LD, but I’ve always used c++/sfml. I didn’t have enough practice with unity3d and I didn’t feel confident when the theme came up and I thought of an idea. So I went back to my guns with c++. It takes a lot more practice to be able to use c++/c with sdl/sfml because they are so low level compared to unity3d. My suggestion is if you want to try again with those setups, is to prepare by figuring out how to right a simple aabb collision model with velocity. that’ll get you started pretty fast. Then you can just play around with graphics and logic. Another big part of it is really knowing how you are going to architect you game, with unity3d a lot of that is taken care of for you, especially in simple projects like some games done for LD. Either way, it’s good that you tried, keep on treking though!