I can get to level 8 because I am a fan of Tontie.\u00a0 I don’t think anyone can survive level 9.<\/p>\n
What went wrong?<\/strong><\/p>\n – Minimalism didn’t suit my over the top tower defense game idea that I wanted to write.\u00a0 fooey.- I spent nearly 20 hours of the competition sleeping or doing other things because I was more anxious about a font system than I should have been.\u00a0 In the remaining time, I spent nearly 20 hours building my framework and only 8 hours on gameplay and media creation and testing the core components to be sure the game performed well.<\/p>\n – This was my first time using SDL and I got stuck in the mindset of using colorkeyed bitmaps to do transparency.\u00a0 In this age of anti-aliasing and alpha blending being prevalent in tools, this didn’t work out well as there were some artifacts left around the edges of my images.\u00a0 As I added all of them late in the last day, there was not much time left to fix them.\u00a0 I know SDL supports alpha channels in bitmaps but didn’t spend the time to simply convert the source gimp files into rgba bitmaps.<\/p>\n – Sound was a last minute endeavour as well, throwing in SDL_Mixer and some non-optimal BFXR sounds in over the last 20 minutes of the competition time.<\/p>\n – As it turns out, many people use laptops!\u00a0 What a bad combination with a game that requires a number pad for optimal play!\u00a0 ouch!\u00a0 Lesson learned!<\/p>\n What went right?<\/strong><\/p>\n – the framework appears to run solid with rendering tied at 60 fps and the logic running at 30 fps.<\/p>\n -I have a framework to build on\/improve that I may use for the next LD!<\/p>\n – I am a fan of games that push a player into overload with a simple mechanic, not many mechanics that overload from the get go.\u00a0 I am a fan of progressive difficulty and my game sits perfectly in this paradigm as it increments the level of difficulty every 30 seconds you survive.\u00a0 I am still quite pleased with it, even if some say it doesn’t have the depth of some of the other games.\u00a0\u00a0 Who said games always have to have a story!?<\/p>\n What would I do differently?<\/strong><\/p>\n – visuals and sound<\/p>\n – code wise: plan ahead more.\u00a0 never really built texture animation into a game, or had to write my own font loader\/text to screen stuff.<\/p>\n – in future, consider having a framework ready or using potentially something like unity that can offer web play.\u00a0 Even as a windows game, the download and play bit is probably much more hassle than some want.<\/p>\n – google drive didn’t make the download button (bottom right) so readily apparent for people.\u00a0 maybe I’ll use drop box next time.<\/p>\n – plan implementational details for my game more than just “this should do that” design.\u00a0 knowing what lower level functions need to be added to the framework or 3rd party engine to support your game ahead of time can really shorten dev time in the compo.<\/p>\n TLDR:\u00a0 first completed LD48, graphics and sound suffered. core performance is high.\u00a0 DON’T agonize over things like “I have to build a font system?”\u00a0 just sit down and start designing\/coding it, it will go easier and faster than you expect!<\/p>\n Again, please try my game! http:\/\/www.ludumdare.com\/compo\/ludum-dare-26\/?action=preview&uid=16392<\/a><\/p>\n
![\"Ingame](\"http:\/\/www.ludumdare.com\/compo\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/04\/Screen22.png\")
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