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<\/p>\n My second Ludum Dare is done, and right now, I simply can’t wait until the next <\/p>\n
Even though my game did not turn out as I originally planned, I am more or less happy with what I ended up with.<\/p>\n
During the weekend we had visitors coming and going, to celebrate my daughters 2 years birthday. I was aware of that prior to the Dare, so I had already decided to try and limit my ideas, and as such I managed to cut away some of my ideas, before even trying to put them in the game. And since I submitted only a few hours before the deadline it seems I did the right thing there.<\/p>\n
I’ve never drawn spaceships or anything like that before, but I decided that I wanted to have at least some decent graphics,. I sat down, and spend close to two hours, just to draw 1 spaceship, but I was very happy with the results, which helped keep the motivation high. I’m also happy I decided to do the multi layered star background. In my opinion that added a lot to the game.<\/p>\n
All the games I’ve ever worked on has been tile based, at least to some degree. I actually started out with a grid, where the ships were supposed to move around, like pieces on a chess board. At some point I realized that the tiles were more of an obstruction and decided to get rid of it. In turn this decision changed the game play into what it is now.<\/p>\n
Since I am more or less a self taught coder, I’ve always struggled with maintaining a structured code. This gets even worse when there is very limited time. If I decided to continue this project, the first thing I’d do is clean up the code.<\/p>\n
Initially I decided that if the ships collided, they would damage each other, friend and foe a like. This turned into a big mess, since it was next to impossible not to hit your own ships early on, and again when close to the enemy, it was like one giant traffic accident – in space! The worst part was, that since the collision part felt so natural to be included, I spend a lot of time testing and tweaking it, until I finally realized, that I should try to get rid of the collisions. The first test I did after removing the collisions, the game immediately felt like a game. I could have spent that time adding another nice feature <\/p>\n
A lot of small things would have made this game feel more polished, and somewhat easier. I wanted to add some UI element, that helped you keep track of where you and\/or the enemies ships were. The plan was to have small markers at the edge of the screen, for each off screen ship, showing you the direction they’re in compared to the camera. I’ve played a few games, were I “forgot” about one of my ships, and it just flew off in some direction, never to be heard from again. This could lead to situations where you’d have to restart the game.<\/p>\n
Before I finish this post, I wanted to write a few things about the theme. Initially, I wasn’t happy at all with the Theme, and I found it hard to come up with some solid ideas. Through the voting process I had my eye on the “Space” theme, so I thought – Why not make an idea based on that theme, and after that convert it to the 10 seconds theme- And that was exactly what I did, and personally I think I managed to include the Theme, and not leave it as some secondary thing.<\/p>\n
In Space Blitz, the 10 second delay is too much time, at least for some people. If I decided to continue this project I would probably reduce that time, or even let the player be able to adjust it.<\/p>\n
If you want to try out my game the link to it is here: \u00a0(Best viewed in full screen in 720p or higher.<\/p>\n