![\"titlescreen\"](\"http:\/\/www.ludumdare.com\/compo\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/08\/titlescreen-300x300.png\")
<\/a><\/p>\n The Good:<\/strong><\/p>\n 1) Getting a platform engine set up. \u00a0I had a solid engine in the first 3 hours of the LD and that was good for a number of reasons. \u00a0First of all I had an idea of the direction of the game. \u00a0It cut down on the number of ideas I had to sift through to get the right one. \u00a0Second, I could start making the game immediately. \u00a0This meant also that I could get a better idea of what my game was going to be.<\/p>\n 2) Deciding on time warps. \u00a0The other major idea I had was having a platformer gauntlet where you had to get to a checkpoint in 10 seconds, then get to the next. \u00a0When I woke up on day 2, I realized my idea for having 10 seconds to do a level, but having the ability to warp back ( essentially a poor man’s Braid ) was far superior both in level design possibilities and in general innovation and creativity.<\/p>\n 3) Utilizing streams to get playtesting. \u00a0I was often on dvcolgan’s stream, which meant I could talk to 50 + people. \u00a0This meant I could upload my game continuously and see what I needed to change. \u00a0I got suggestions that ultimately improved my game a lot, such as a suggestion to rename “respawn” to “warp” which made the main game mechanic far less confusing.<\/p>\n 4) Having a final boss. \u00a0This was probably my best decision, even though it cost me 10 hours that I could’ve spent on more levels. \u00a0I was planning on finishing the game by just having a room with the Golden Scepter on \u00a0platform, but having a final boss changed a lot. \u00a0This meant the game ended with a challenge, that added a level of meaning to getting the Golden Scepter.<\/p>\n 5) Spending monday off the computer. \u00a0By the time I had uploaded my game, I was practically seeing the world in lines of code and numbers. \u00a0By monday, I was almost content with never seeing a computer again. \u00a0So I took monday to walk, read a book, spend some time with my family, and away from this damned machine. \u00a0Very good idea.<\/p>\n The Bad:<\/strong><\/p>\n 1) Hacking in the boss. \u00a0I’m pretty sure the way I did it halved the games performance. \u00a0I was running 200 fps before the boss, but once I implemented him and hacked in a terrible lever system to accommodate for the fight, it ran 100 fps even when you weren’t fighting the boss. \u00a0I’m sure if I just created a separate entity for the lever instead of hacking the block class to do what I wanted, and made a simple boolean to check if I was in the boss room, then the game would have performed fine. \u00a0Instead I ended up losing tons of frames to a hackjob that made the game run like crap.<\/p>\n 2) Being sick. \u00a0I had no control over this but my cold really did cut down on the quality as I ended up spending a lot of time sleeping and medicating myself. 3) Cookie Clicker. \u00a0I wasted so much time on that dumb game. \u00a0In fact, as I type this, I have it open in one of my tabs. \u00a0It is pretty much the death of productivity, so tinkering around with it made me lose so much time. \u00a0I bet I could have had 20 levels instead of 15 if I had never played it.<\/p>\n So that’s the good and the bad. \u00a0If you want to play Time Wizard, just click this link :\u00a0http:\/\/www.ludumdare.com\/compo\/ludum-dare-27\/?action=preview&uid=6412<\/a><\/p>","time":"August 28th, 2013 9:58 am","title":"Time Wizard: Another Post Mortem"}
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