So I just finished Monster’s Maze and uploaded it to the main thread!  This has been a very whirlwind experience, since I didn’t at all expect to participate in this MiniLD, especially not since it only lasted 3 days and I had other work to attend to.  And yet here I am, and I think I can say with confidence (I hope!) that Monster’s Maze turned out even better than my MiniLD #44 entry (Jumpstarter).

The development process was incredibly smooth, with only a few major blockages.  I think it helped a lot that I chose to make such a heavily restricted game world; that helped me focus my efforts on gameplay and balancing.  I’m happy with the end result; it may be a little too hard (I can’t even survive until unlocking all weapons!), but it’s frantic and hopefully fun.

I also learned a few things.  Diffusion-based pathfinding is amazing, really, and I will have to pay close attention to my future projects to see if they would benefit from an implementation; it’s such a useful technique, that alone was worth getting into this MiniLD for.  I also learned about using cellular automata to create mazes (and how to deal with the mazes if they aren’t completely navigable – interestingly, diffusion-based pathfinding really helps fix broken mazes!), some minor SFML details, some debugging techniques, and had my first real clash with the need to balance numbers in my game, both directly and algorithmically.

Great and rewarding fun, all in all, and I hope everyone else enjoyed their time too!

As usual, cross-posting to my personal blog!

Tags: MiniLD #45