{"author_name":"Thermite","cat":"LD #27","comments":[],"epoch":1377805620,"likes":1,"metadata":{"p_key":"38075","p_author":"Thermite","p_authorkey":"27791","p_urlkey":"73691","p_title":"Mechanical Madness LD27 Jam Post-Mortem","p_cat":"LD #27","p_event":"LD27","p_time":"1377805620","p_likes":"1","p_comments":"0","p_status":"UPD5","us_key":"27791","us_name":"Thermite","us_username":"thermite","event_start":"1377216000","event_key":"18","event_name":"LD27"},"text":"<p dir=\"ltr\" style=\"text-align: center\"><a href=\"http:\/\/www.ludumdare.com\/compo\/ludum-dare-27\/?action=preview&amp;uid=27791\"><img class=\"aligncenter size-large wp-image-292938\" alt=\"Title Screen\" src=\"http:\/\/www.ludumdare.com\/compo\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/08\/66-550x262.png\" width=\"550\" height=\"262\" srcset=\"http:\/\/ludumdare.com\/compo\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/08\/66-550x262.png 550w, http:\/\/ludumdare.com\/compo\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/08\/66.png 1236w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 550px) 100vw, 550px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n <p dir=\"ltr\">Well our first LD is over, we&#8217;ve made our first ever game together as a team, and we&#8217;ve got the obligatory platformer out of our systems <img src=\"http:\/\/ludumdare.com\/compo\/wp-includes\/images\/smilies\/simple-smile.png\" alt=\":)\" class=\"wp-smiley\" style=\"height: 1em; max-height: 1em;\" \/><\/p>\n <p dir=\"ltr\">Technical stuff:\u00a0 Made with Haxe 3.0, Flixel, Flashdevelop, GraphicsGale, sfxr, Autotracker, Excel.<\/p>\n <div id=\"attachment_292942\" style=\"width: 560px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><a href=\"http:\/\/www.ludumdare.com\/compo\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/08\/127.png\"><img class=\"size-large wp-image-292942\" alt=\"The level that no one can complete!\" src=\"http:\/\/www.ludumdare.com\/compo\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/08\/127-550x307.png\" width=\"550\" height=\"307\" srcset=\"http:\/\/ludumdare.com\/compo\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/08\/127-300x167.png 300w, http:\/\/ludumdare.com\/compo\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/08\/127-550x307.png 550w, http:\/\/ludumdare.com\/compo\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/08\/127.png 1275w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 550px) 100vw, 550px\" \/><\/a><p class=\"wp-caption-text\">The level that no one can complete!<\/p><\/div>\n <p dir=\"ltr\"><strong>What Went Right<\/strong><\/p>\n <ul>\n <li>We finished a game in 72 hours without killing each other!<\/li>\n <li>The toolchain worked really well, Haxe, Flixel &amp; FlashDevelop felt very familiar despite not using any of them before the warmup.<\/li>\n <li>Use of Microsoft Excel (hardcore mode!) as a level editor.\u00a0 There are obviously some very good tile map editors out there, but learning them would have taken way more time than setting up a spreadsheet with some conditional cell colouring.<\/li>\n <li>Bringing in a third person for brainstorming and powerup graphics on the first day.\u00a0 Thanks Graham!<\/li>\n <li>We anticipated that the main source of bugs would be unexpected interactions between multiple powerups, and set time aside to get this working properly.<\/li>\n <li>Almost all of the powerups we came up with initially made it into the final game.<\/li>\n <li>Staging the powerups and level progression to ease the player into mechanics without explicitly telling them. Combining different powerups gave us a clear sight of what obstacles a level needed to have, and a convenient &#8220;to-do&#8221; list for the 20 levels we built.<\/li>\n <li>Targeting web &#8211; easier for people to play off the bat, rather than having to install or download or compile, it just works on most platforms.\u00a0 Having never built a Flash game before, this was surprisingly painless.<\/li>\n <li>The platformer controls and the level design we thought went well, it felt polished and enjoyable to play, even when getting squished every 5 seconds \ud83d\ude00<\/li>\n <\/ul>\n <p><b><b>\u00a0<\/b><\/b><\/p>\n <div id=\"attachment_292945\" style=\"width: 560px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><a href=\"http:\/\/www.ludumdare.com\/compo\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/08\/219.png\"><img class=\"size-large wp-image-292945\" alt=\"Cryptic instructions hidden in the levels\" src=\"http:\/\/www.ludumdare.com\/compo\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/08\/219-550x330.png\" width=\"550\" height=\"330\" srcset=\"http:\/\/ludumdare.com\/compo\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/08\/219-300x180.png 300w, http:\/\/ludumdare.com\/compo\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/08\/219-550x330.png 550w, http:\/\/ludumdare.com\/compo\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/08\/219.png 1296w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 550px) 100vw, 550px\" \/><\/a><p class=\"wp-caption-text\">Cryptic instructions hidden in the levels<\/p><\/div>\n <p dir=\"ltr\"><strong>What Went Wrong<\/strong><\/p>\n <ul>\n <li>Difficulty with scaling the character &amp; collisions, as well as the timestep changes interacting poorly with the collision logic in Flixel.\u00a0 Getting it running at 60 resolved most of this, but there are still spots where a random bit of wall will just make you explode.<\/li>\n <li>Lack of experience with the IDE &amp; HaxeFlixel meant the initial setup wasted about an hour.<\/li>\n <li>Music was a bit of an afterthought, we tried a few different packages to create the music eventually settling with Autotracker.py.<\/li>\n <li>Collisions. The collision logic wasn\u2019t quite doing what we expected it to, and we wasted time re-implementing certain collision features that were already present in Flixel.<\/li>\n <li>We had smooth interpolation for the scaling of the character, but had to take it out as the player kept getting stuck in walls during the scale change. In the end we had to bodge in level-specific fixes.<\/li>\n <li>Not understanding transparency in GraphicsGale &#8211; a lot of time was spent sucking the backgrounds out of sprites using Photoshop.<\/li>\n <li>While we&#8217;re pleased with making a platformer that feels nice to play, the genre is obviously well-worn as a Ludum Dare standard.\u00a0 We defaulted to this because we knew we could get the game finished in the 72 hours, but it\u2019s kind of old hat to people who\u2019ve been doing LD for a while.<\/li>\n <\/ul>\n <div id=\"attachment_292946\" style=\"width: 560px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><a href=\"http:\/\/www.ludumdare.com\/compo\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/08\/57.png\"><img class=\"size-large wp-image-292946\" alt=\"Wheeeeeee!\" src=\"http:\/\/www.ludumdare.com\/compo\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/08\/57-550x308.png\" width=\"550\" height=\"308\" srcset=\"http:\/\/ludumdare.com\/compo\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/08\/57-300x168.png 300w, http:\/\/ludumdare.com\/compo\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/08\/57-550x308.png 550w, http:\/\/ludumdare.com\/compo\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/08\/57.png 1278w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 550px) 100vw, 550px\" \/><\/a><p class=\"wp-caption-text\">Wheeeeeee!<\/p><\/div>\n <p dir=\"ltr\"><b><b><br \/>\n <\/b><\/b><strong>What We\u2019ll Do Better Next Time<\/strong><\/p>\n <ul>\n <li>Familiarise ourselves more with the tools, as well as deciding in advance what software packages we are going to use rather than flailing around!<\/li>\n <li>Artwork &#8211; practice creating artwork for next time, it had been a while since Bob had done any serious artwork and the simple 5 minute sprites that we knocked out were OK, but could have been better. Paul plans to learn some pixel art techniques too!<\/li>\n <li>We need to have alternatives for different game types, HaxeFlixel was good for rapidly building a 2D game, but it would have been nice to have the option of 3D.<\/li>\n <li>Work out how to use Flixel properly, rather than having to hack bits of code together to bend it to our will.<\/li>\n <li>Get together some flexible game ideas that we can adapt to the theme, instead of just defaulting to a platformer.<\/li>\n <\/ul>\n <p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n <p><strong>LINKS<\/strong>:<\/p>\n <p dir=\"ltr\">Please <a href=\"http:\/\/www.ludumdare.com\/compo\/ludum-dare-27\/?action=preview&amp;uid=27791\" target=\"_blank\">play our game<\/a>, and let us know what you think!<\/p>\n <p dir=\"ltr\">Watch our <a href=\"http:\/\/youtu.be\/_nZdiZu3in8\" target=\"_blank\">timelapse video<\/a>!<\/p>\n <p dir=\"ltr\"><strong>Play these awesome games that we&#8217;ve tried over the last few days!<\/strong><\/p>\n <ul>\n <li>\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.ludumdare.com\/compo\/ludum-dare-27\/?action=preview&amp;uid=27311\" target=\"_blank\">Tracewire<\/a><\/li>\n <li>\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.ludumdare.com\/compo\/ludum-dare-27\/?action=preview&amp;uid=20857\" target=\"_blank\">Explosion Time<\/a><\/li>\n <li>\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.ludumdare.com\/compo\/ludum-dare-27\/?action=preview&amp;uid=3764\" target=\"_blank\">Vampire the Buffet Slayer<\/a><\/li>\n <\/ul>\n \n <p>Tags: <a href=\"http:\/\/ludumdare.com\/compo\/tag\/flash\/\" rel=\"tag\">flash<\/a>, <a href=\"http:\/\/ludumdare.com\/compo\/tag\/flixel\/\" rel=\"tag\">Flixel<\/a>, <a href=\"http:\/\/ludumdare.com\/compo\/tag\/haxe\/\" rel=\"tag\">haXe<\/a>, <a href=\"http:\/\/ludumdare.com\/compo\/tag\/jam\/\" rel=\"tag\">jam<\/a>, <a href=\"http:\/\/ludumdare.com\/compo\/tag\/postmortem\/\" rel=\"tag\">postmortem<\/a>, <a href=\"http:\/\/ludumdare.com\/compo\/tag\/timelapse\/\" rel=\"tag\">timelapse<\/a><\/p>","time":"August 29th, 2013 2:47 pm","title":"Mechanical Madness LD27 Jam Post-Mortem"}