I finally took the time to write a postmortem so here it is!

Well, this was our first Ludum Dare jam and it was quite a challenge but the result is most rewarding:

Save Octavius (click the picture to play)

We worked for two days and a half only because jam starts at 3 AM in France and we couldn’t gather the team before Saturday afternoon. The brainstorming session was much fun with everyone in the room throwing ideas as they went through. Our whiteboard was rapidly covered with sketches as we discussed the type of game we would like to do:

Eventually one member of the team came up with the idea of protecting ‘the one you can’t loose’ and there we were: the game would be a vertical shooter à la Xenon 2 and your goal would be to protect and escort a cute octopus that is being chased by an evil tycoon who intends to turn it into sushi for its next lunch!

I took screenshots of the work-in-progress regularly so you can see how it evolved during the jam. A checkerboard pattern was used for tests at first because we originally intended to compose background graphics using tiles.

Our graphic artist, Bertrand, did a marvelous job creating many sprites for the various creatures that appear in the game, giving it a very distinctive and coherent atmosphere:

And a few hours before deadline, we even managed to get a musical theme for the game, thanks to Agnès that composed a small tune using GarageBand. Cherry on the cake!

So now is the time to sum it up…

What went great:

• Teamwork! Ideas, wonderful art, support: thanks a lot everyone! Managing nearly ten people can be a little challenging at times, especially when said people have absolutely no experience designing video games, but I would do it again without hesitation!
• Haxe: this language is just fantastic for programming Flash games. I started learning it a few months ago (C++ is usually my tool of choice for creating games) and I am impressed by its possibilities and clever design. Special greetings to Deepnight and Valandre whose entries for previous LD events (here and here) where very helpful in understanding how to get the most out of Haxe when creating games.
• FlashDevelop: this simple and reliable IDE simply rocks.

What could have been done better:

• Software design: instead of coming up with a clean architecture from the very start, I tend to refine my software design gradually, thus losing time.
• AI: current AI is way too dumb. This needs to be reworked a lot. I need to read more books, test more algorithms!
• Physics: collision handling is too simplistic. I plan to use the great Nape physics library in the future.
• Sound effects: we didn’t take enough time to record or find sounds for the various events that happen during play.
• Story: again, we created a detailed story with different characters but did not have enough time to put it in the game.

See ya folks and stay tuned for a post-jam version coming soon with more graphics, sounds and a complete story!

Tags: jam, postmortem