{"author_name":"bvanschooten","cat":"LD #26","comments":[],"epoch":1367562540,"likes":3,"metadata":{"p_key":"42789","p_author":"bvanschooten","p_authorkey":"14520","p_urlkey":"78424","p_title":"Postmortem: creating 8 games in 48 hours","p_cat":"LD #26","p_event":"LD26","p_time":"1367562540","p_likes":"3","p_comments":"0","p_status":"UPD5","us_key":"14520","us_name":"bvanschooten","us_username":"bvanschooten","event_start":"1366934400","event_key":"16","event_name":"LD26"},"text":"

What’s the minimum time in which you can make a game that looks reasonably finished and attractive and is fun to play?\u00a0 In an attempt to answer this question, I decided to spend this LD48 creating as many games as I could.\u00a0 I wanted them to be classic arcade-style in a varied mix of genres, so that each game really provides a different experience.\u00a0 To shorten time, I decided each game would have only one (hard) level, one enemy type, and one goal criterion, based on which you get a bronze, silver, or gold rating.\u00a0 Art is always a problem.\u00a0 However, with my new sprite generator<\/a> I can create lots of sprites, and combined with Evolvotron<\/a>, I have a “psychedelic shoestring” art style of my own \":-)\"\u00a0 I managed to churn out 8 games, taking a little over 2,5 hours for each game in total.<\/p>\n

I consider the project altogether succesful, and I am quite happy with some of the games, which I think could be made into stand-alone games with only a little extra work.\u00a0 However, I did get carried away with the technical achievement of creating games with very different mechanics.\u00a0 Next time I should maximise even more on fun, even if the games would be more similar to each other.<\/p>\n

I also made a timelapse, which I will post later along with a graphical analysis of time taken, hopefully shedding more light on the biggest time wasters this time round.\u00a0 I tried to create all graphics and sound in a single batch to save time.\u00a0 However, my impression was that I’ve been fiddling with the backdrops a little too long for comfort, in order to get reasonable colour schemes.\u00a0 Also, just typing in the code seemed to take a lot of time.\u00a0 I produced on average about one line of code every 40 seconds.\u00a0 What was definitely better than last time is that I didn’t need to playtest and tweak the game and controls for ages.<\/p>\n

>>> Play the games here <<<<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

NOTE: there is a postcompo version with a restart game option.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n \n

Tags: minigames<\/a>, postmortem<\/a><\/p>","time":"May 3rd, 2013 1:29 am","title":"Postmortem: creating 8 games in 48 hours"}