{"author_name":"graytest","cat":"LD #27","comments":[],"epoch":1377845280,"likes":0,"metadata":{"p_key":"38053","p_author":"graytest","p_authorkey":"11705","p_urlkey":"73669","p_title":"Red Alert \u2013 Postmortem","p_cat":"LD #27","p_event":"LD27","p_time":"1377845280","p_likes":"0","p_comments":"0","p_status":"UPD5","us_key":"11705","us_name":"graytest","us_username":"graytest","event_start":"1377216000","event_key":"18","event_name":"LD27"},"text":"<p>This will be my first postmortem ever, but hopefully it won&#8217;t be too bad..<\/p>\n <p>I&#8217;m happy (and a bit surprised) that I finished my entry this time. I was close to giving up at a few different times, but in the end I&#8217;m quite happy with the result and glad that I stuck with it. My biggest obstacle this LD was the lack of time. I usually spend a lot less than 48 hours because I like to sleep and other things around the house needs attention. This was even more true this time since I have a newborn son (3 weeks old). Apart from getting my sleep during the night, I also had to babysit when my wife wasn&#8217;t available and we did a few trips for a couple of hours each day. I knew this would be the case before hand so when trying to come up with a game idea my biggest problem was that I always felt that I wouldn&#8217;t have enough time to complete a somewhat finished game based on the concept. A few of my favorite ideas had to be scrapped for this reason. In the end my game is a very simple game that is very different from my original idea, but still quite fun.<\/p>\n <p>The original concept was a turn-based strategy game where the player had to survive in a maze where the walls were moving every 10 seconds. The final game is more of a fast-paced action game where the walls move every couple of seconds and new enemies and gold is spawned every 10 seoconds.<\/p>\n <p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.ludumdare.com\/compo\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/08\/redalert.jpg\"><img class=\"aligncenter size-medium wp-image-285858\" alt=\"redalert\" src=\"http:\/\/www.ludumdare.com\/compo\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/08\/redalert-300x168.jpg\" width=\"300\" height=\"168\" srcset=\"http:\/\/ludumdare.com\/compo\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/08\/redalert-300x168.jpg 300w, http:\/\/ludumdare.com\/compo\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/08\/redalert-550x309.jpg 550w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n <p><strong>What went bad<\/strong><\/p>\n <ul>\n <li>Theme &#8211; the 10 second theme was definitely not my favorite and I had a hard time coming up with an idea that I felt was good enough and that I could finish in time (see above).<\/li>\n <li>\u00a0Motiviation &#8211; After the first day was over I was seriously considering not finish my entry. I was still thinking of using my original game idea and I just couldn&#8217;t figure out how to make a fun game out of it. And I felt that instead of spending the whole sunday on something that would never be finished\/fun I could spend it with my wife and son instead.<\/li>\n <li>graphics &#8211; The game doesn&#8217;t look toooooo bad, but I still wish I would have had enough time to replacing my placeholder graphics with something a bit higher quality. I&#8217;m no artist though, so chances are it would have look quite bad anyway! <img src=\"http:\/\/ludumdare.com\/compo\/wp-includes\/images\/smilies\/simple-smile.png\" alt=\":)\" class=\"wp-smiley\" style=\"height: 1em; max-height: 1em;\" \/><\/li>\n <li>Target platform &#8211; I tried exporting my game to HTML5 from GM, but it didn&#8217;t run at all in Chrome, ran awfully in firefox and ran okay in IE10 (no sounds though). Because of this I have only uploaded a no-install windows version. Unfortunately it doesn&#8217;t seem to run for all people.<\/li>\n <\/ul>\n <p><strong>What went well<\/strong><\/p>\n <ul>\n <li>Game maker:Studio &#8211; I&#8217;ve been using GM for the last two LDs and I definitely have a love\/hate-relationship with the application. It allows me to create games very quickly which is important (see above again). But as a programmer, I find the GM scripting language quite awful and I miss doing some &#8220;real&#8221; programming.<\/li>\n <li>Sunday<\/li>\n <li>Music &#8211; For the first time I created my own background music. It is of course a very simple piece of music, but it was fun to make and I&#8217;m happy with the result. PixiTracker was a lot of fun to work with as well!<\/li>\n <li>Result &#8211; My LD entries are never the best looking or sounding, or the best polished games. But I usually think that I succeed in creating something that is quite fun to play. I think that I succeeded with that this time around as well.<\/li>\n <li>Mood &#8211; I think the blinking red lights, the background music, and the moving walls, all work well together to create a specific mood for the game.<\/li>\n <\/ul>\n <p><strong>What I will do different next time<\/strong><\/p>\n <ul>\n <li>Game concept &#8211; My concepts are usually similar to each other (last three involve shooting, 2\/3 involve zombies, etc) and often use a common game style (platformer, top down shooter, etc) where the theme doesn&#8217;t play too big a part. This is partly because I want to do something simple that I&#8217;m sure to finish. It is also partly because I don&#8217;t do many games outside of LDs, so last LD was my first platform game, and this LD was my first top-down-shooter. In the future however I want to come up with a game idea that is more directly tied to the theme.<\/li>\n <li>Coding &#8211; I probably won&#8217;t use GM next time. I want to write a base library and write some real code!<\/li>\n <li>Web platofrm &#8211; I feel like I lose out on a lot of people trying my game by not offering a web based version. Next LD I will for sure offer a web based version (probably Flash since I&#8217;m thinking of using Haxe and OpenFL).<\/li>\n <li>Juice &#8211; I want my next entry to be very juicy!<\/li>\n <li>Community &#8211; Finally, next LD I&#8217;m gonna try to be more involved with the community (reading and writing blog posts for example).<\/li>\n <\/ul>\n <p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n <p>If you haven&#8217;t tried my game, feel free to do so and I&#8217;d appreciate an honest comment!<\/p>\n <p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.ludumdare.com\/compo\/ludum-dare-27\/?action=preview&amp;uid=11705\">http:\/\/www.ludumdare.com\/compo\/ludum-dare-27\/?action=preview&amp;uid=11705<\/a><\/p>\n <p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n \n <p>Tags: <a href=\"http:\/\/ludumdare.com\/compo\/tag\/post-mortem\/\" rel=\"tag\">post-mortem<\/a>, <a href=\"http:\/\/ludumdare.com\/compo\/tag\/red-alert\/\" rel=\"tag\">red-alert<\/a><\/p>","time":"August 30th, 2013 1:48 am","title":"Red Alert \u2013 Postmortem"}