{"author_name":"ArmchairArmada","cat":"LD #27","comments":[],"epoch":1377614460,"likes":1,"metadata":{"p_key":"38273","p_author":"ArmchairArmada","p_authorkey":"317","p_urlkey":"73891","p_title":"Timelapse Development Video and Postmortem","p_cat":"LD #27","p_event":"LD27","p_time":"1377614460","p_likes":"1","p_comments":"0","p_status":"UPD5","us_key":"317","us_name":"ArmchairArmada","us_username":"armchairarmada","event_start":"1377216000","event_key":"18","event_name":"LD27"},"text":"<p><iframe width=\"500\" height=\"375\" src=\"http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/mx2KTBz0Pmg?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n <p>This was my entry for Ludum Dare 27. It was made in around 15 hours with most of the work done on Saturday. It is a simple arcade style game inspired by Pac-Man, but it automatically moves onto the next random &#8220;maze&#8221; every 10 seconds with more enemies added in over time.<\/p>\n <p>My primary goal was to simply finish something, even if it&#8217;s not too original or amazing of a game. I&#8217;ve been participating with Ludum Dares off and on for five years, but I kept biting off more than I could chew and running out of time before nearing a completion. This time I tried to keep everything as simple as possible &#8212; a character that lacks complex geometry, has only two bones, simple animation, and minimal texture mapping. Even though I did not have the full 48 hours available to work on it, I succeeded in creating something and I consider that is a pretty big accomplishment considering how little time there was.<\/p>\n <p><strong>What Went Wrong<\/strong><\/p>\n <p>Because most of Saturday was spent with family before I head off to college, I was pretty much short a day. \u00a0This extra time certainly could have been used to add more to the game and polish things up a bit.<\/p>\n <p>I Jumped straight into development without spending much time brainstorming game ideas. \u00a0Halfway through making this I came up with a few game concepts that I think could have been more fun, unique, and funny, but I didn&#8217;t have the time to scrap what I had and start over.<\/p>\n <p>I kept having a weird problem on Kongregate where my game gets moved down a little and cuts off the bottom of it. \u00a0No matter how I tried to change the size settings nothing seemed to fix it completely, so I just tried to have it cut off as little as I could.<\/p>\n <p>Near the end, the project started to get a little hacky and messy. \u00a0I was experimenting with using a heavily component based style of game design, but I wasn&#8217;t entirely certain how to handle some special case problems, since I was trying to keep everything generic with pretty much no specialized gameobject code. \u00a0I think I now have an idea of how to better handle entity state switching.<\/p>\n <p><strong>What Went Right<\/strong><\/p>\n <p>I with into it with the plan to keep things as simple as possible. \u00a0There were very few assets and what it had were extremely simple. \u00a0Probably the number one reason I failed to complete any of my previous Ludum Dare projects had been because of spending too much time making too detailed of graphics, so I managed to avoid making this mistake again.<\/p>\n <p>Although though there were times when I had to really push myself to keep going, development went pretty smoothly without any major problems.<\/p>\n <p>I finally completed something! \u00a0I first discovered Ludum Dare five years ago, and this is the first official competition game I actually finished! \u00a0I also finally have something put up onto a web game site, which is kind of neat even though I don&#8217;t expect too much from it.<\/p>\n <p><strong>Conclusions<\/strong><\/p>\n <p>All-in-all it went pretty well and has left me wanting to make more games!<\/p>\n <p>The Ludum Dare entry page can be found here:<br \/>\n <a href=\"http:\/\/www.ludumdare.com\/compo\/ludum-dare-27\/?action=preview&amp;uid=317\">10 Second Mazes Entry Page<\/a><\/p>\n <p>The game is available through Kongregate:<br \/>\n <a href=\"http:\/\/www.kongregate.com\/games\/ArmchairArmada\/10-second-mazes\">Play 10 Second Mazes On Kongregate<\/a><\/p>\n \n <p>Tags: <a href=\"http:\/\/ludumdare.com\/compo\/tag\/ld27\/\" rel=\"tag\">LD27<\/a>, <a href=\"http:\/\/ludumdare.com\/compo\/tag\/postmortem\/\" rel=\"tag\">postmortem<\/a>, <a href=\"http:\/\/ludumdare.com\/compo\/tag\/success\/\" rel=\"tag\">success<\/a>, <a href=\"http:\/\/ludumdare.com\/compo\/tag\/timelapse\/\" rel=\"tag\">timelapse<\/a>, <a href=\"http:\/\/ludumdare.com\/compo\/tag\/video\/\" rel=\"tag\">video<\/a>, <a href=\"http:\/\/ludumdare.com\/compo\/tag\/youtube\/\" rel=\"tag\">youtube<\/a><\/p>","time":"August 27th, 2013 9:41 am","title":"Timelapse Development Video and Postmortem"}