{"author_name":"KayZ","cat":"LD #27","comments":[],"epoch":1377608760,"likes":0,"metadata":{"p_key":"38280","p_author":"KayZ","p_authorkey":"17933","p_urlkey":"73898","p_title":"Post Mortem \u2013 Alien Attack","p_cat":"LD #27","p_event":"LD27","p_time":"1377608760","p_likes":"0","p_comments":"0","p_status":"UPD5","us_key":"17933","us_name":"KayZ","us_username":"\/author\/kayz\/","event_start":"1377216000","event_key":"18","event_name":"LD27"},"text":"<p>For this Ludum Dare I was so hoping for another theme than 10 seconds. The reason: for the last LD I made a game called <a href=\"http:\/\/www.ludumdare.com\/compo\/ludum-dare-26\/?action=preview&amp;uid=17933\">20 seconds<\/a> and I didn&#8217;t want to create the same kind of game again. I was pretty disappointed when it became the theme with such a huge lead. Even though I was hoping for some other theme I also thought about what to do for 10 seconds. And this is my game:<\/p>\n <p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.ludumdare.com\/compo\/ludum-dare-27\/?action=preview&amp;uid=17933\">Alien Attack<\/a><br \/>\n <a href=\"http:\/\/www.ludumdare.com\/compo\/ludum-dare-27\/?action=preview&amp;uid=17933\"><img src=\"http:\/\/www.ludumdare.com\/compo\/wp-content\/compo2\/thumb\/2707b94387dade58cc3ec054f8cf867c.jpg\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n <p><b>About the game:<\/b><br \/>\n Because I already did it, I did not want to create a game that was made of many games that last 10 seconds. I decided to create a game, that would get more features over time. So every 10 seconds, this game gets a new feature. In this LD version these features include graphical updates, sounds, enemy types and a simple message system\/achievements. There is a lot more I would have liked to add.<\/p>\n <p><b>What I liked:<\/b><\/p>\n <ul>\n <li>For the first time I made several status updates and regularly deployed the current version. This allowed me to get a little bit of feedback and see whether the idea itself was good or not<\/li>\n <li>I really liked the way the pencil drawn and scanned graphics worked out. Wouldn&#8217;t have expected explosions to look so cool when drawn with a pencil.<\/li>\n <li>The way I do the loading of required resources. Only 10 seconds before a feature becomes active, I start to fetch the required resources. So at the start of the game neither sound nor other graphics are loaded. This keeps initial loading times low<\/li>\n <\/ul>\n <p><b>Things I learned:<\/b><\/p>\n <ul>\n <li>I did not do any collision detection for polygons before. Read about it on Saturday and started to implement the algorithm while reading about it.<\/li>\n <li>How to do (single frame) explosion graphics. They were the last thing I added on Sunday before I submitted my game. I just was too tired to make them right, so they are kind of cut off.<\/li>\n <\/ul>\n <p><b>Things that went wrong:<\/b><\/p>\n <ul>\n <li>The name. I forgot a name for the game. Didn&#8217;t want to call it some variation of ten seconds. Came up with Alien Attack when I filled out the submit-form, because the player ship looks kind of alien. By now, I&#8217;ve come up with a name I like much more: <b>Featurama<\/b>. If I am going to add more features to the game I&#8217;ll definitely rename it.<\/li>\n <li>Implementing collision detection for polygons in the evening is kinda bad. I added some bugs and never got it running in the evening. Only in the next morning I was able to see the bugs and fix them. Should have gone to bed earlier.<\/li>\n <li>Graphics. I don&#8217;t like creating graphics and I don&#8217;t like the graphics I create. But as with the explosions, at least I still seem to be able to learn a few things. So maybe I&#8217;ll get better. Hopefully.<\/a>\n <li>My submitted game contained a bug that made the game freeze up. It didn&#8217;t do so in my development environment but if I had tested with another browser I would have realized. So, another thing I learned: Test your game one last time, even if you are too tired to go on.<\/li>\n <\/ul>\n <p>With that, another link to my <a href=\"http:\/\/www.ludumdare.com\/compo\/ludum-dare-27\/?action=preview&amp;uid=17933\">game<\/a> and I&#8217;m off to play and rate a few more games of you.<\/p>","time":"August 27th, 2013 8:06 am","title":"Post Mortem \u2013 Alien Attack"}