{"author_name":"Volute","cat":"LD #25","comments":[],"epoch":1357490640,"likes":5,"metadata":{"p_key":"47317","p_author":"Volute","p_authorkey":"11243","p_urlkey":"82980","p_title":"Two jams, two cardgames","p_cat":"LD #25","p_event":"LD25","p_time":"1357490640","p_likes":"5","p_comments":"0","p_status":"UPD5","us_key":"11243","us_name":"Volute","us_username":"volute","event_start":"1355443200","event_key":"14","event_name":"LD25"},"text":"

For this LD25 I came up with the game “Crime in the City<\/a>“. This is a cardgame where you compose a deck of baddies and send them on raids throughout the city to raise the crime level in the city and, ultimately, take control of it.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

<\/a>
\n <\/p>\n

What went wrong<\/strong><\/p>\n

The theme<\/strong><\/em>
\n I wasn’t very fond of this theme, “You are the villain”. Partly because with my partner we had just finished a game that let you play as the villain (Demons vs Fairyland<\/a>). It made the theme feel somewhat old to me, and made me feel uninspired. All I could think of was the villains in super hero stories. <\/p>\n

During these last two weeks, I played and rated about 80 games. I was really impressed by the ones that put the player in the opposite of the role he usually has. I wish I could think of something like that.<\/p>\n

Bugs<\/strong><\/em>
\n I used AS3. As soon I do my second compilation, everything is all broken ! My little base code doesn’t work anymore and it’s an error message I never had before. The compiler enumerates all my classes and says they’re undefined or something like that… It wasn’t a good start !
\n Turns out I had given a class the same name as a package, which was a very bad thing to do. I was lucky it only took me a few minutes to figure it out.<\/p>\n

I also made my usual mistakes a few times :
\n – write “lenght” instead of “length”. Where is auto-completion when you need it !
\n – write “i < array" instead of "i < array.length" in a for loop…
\n – instructions happening in a bad order, but at this point the code is too tricky for it to be obvious so you have to go through the long debug session to spot the problem.<\/p>\n

What about you, do you have "usual mistakes" ? \":)\"<\/p>\n

The plan<\/strong><\/em>
\n I thought I would have a full day to work on the graphics and the sounds. I had big plans. I wanted to do an interface inspired by Inspector Gadget, with the hand of the villain moving when you push the buttons (It was actually done in a LD game ! Villain OS 8<\/a>). And instead of a cat, I would have drawn a goat.
\n But it was highly unrealistic given the amount of options in the game. The number of game design pages should have given me a hint.<\/p>\n

What was disturbing was that the features felt almost finished at the end of the first day, only one was missing. But I had worked too much and without breaks on the first day, I was very tired at the beginning of the second. And when I saw it was late and I wouldn’t be able to work on the graphics, I stressed out and it made things worse.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

What went right<\/strong><\/p>\n

Game complete<\/strong><\/em>
\n I finished the game in the 48 hours, which is better than last LD when the game I started as a compo became a jam game (Lucas’s Quest Backwards<\/a>).<\/p>\n

Game complete (bis) !<\/strong><\/em>
\n When I look at the game… it actually has a lot of options ! I’m very happy I could do it in only two days. It’s amazing how jams make you surpass yourself.<\/p>\n

Bugs<\/strong><\/em>
\n They weren’t that many. Considering how the code was rushed and how tired I was, it could have been a lot worse.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

***<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

A second jam<\/strong><\/p>\n

With my partner we decided to participate to Folis’ New Year Game Jam. The result was another cardgame : a team for the job<\/a>.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"ateam\"<\/a>
\n
\n On paper, it looked a lot simpler. A few different cards, a few interactions, very little procedural content. The game design documents were nothing more than a few notes.
\n Once again, things didn’t go as expected, and we couldn’t complete the game for the jam, we only released it 2 days later. <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

What went wrong<\/strong><\/p>\n

Bugs<\/strong><\/em>
\n The code was done the first day, but there was two or three very nasty bugs which took a lot of time to fix during the second day. As the IA needs to temporize for the player to understand what’s happening, there are a lot of callbacks in the code, which made debug sessions a lot more painful.<\/p>\n

Time<\/strong><\/em>
\n We didn’t have a lot of time to work on the game (the jam was december 31 and january 1st). And anyway, as far as I’m concerned, I didn’t have the motivation to work 16 hours a day like I did for LD25.
\n In the end, it’s not very surprising that a project that seemed simpler than “Crime in the City” took more days to finish.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Next ?<\/strong><\/p>\n

So far, our projects have always taken more time as we thought they would. Jams are a good training to help us get better at evaluating the time needed by a project. That’s why we decided to participate to One Game a Month<\/a>. You can find us there as StormAlligator<\/a>. Aside from our regular projects, we’ll try to do a game in jam conditions each month. We publish regular updates on our facebook<\/a>.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Reading back this article, bugs seems to be part of the problem. Bugs are a big time consumer and cannot be planned. A good thing before choosing a game idea for a jam would be to evaluate if it’s likely to attract bugs and if the code will make this bugs easy or hard to remove.<\/p>\n

Thanks for reading !<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Play Crime in the City<\/a>
\n Play a team for the job<\/a><\/p>","time":"January 6th, 2013 11:44 am","title":"Two jams, two cardgames"}