{"author_name":"Josh Riley","cat":"LD #25","comments":[],"epoch":1355863080,"likes":2,"metadata":{"p_key":"47487","p_author":"Josh Riley","p_authorkey":"502484","p_urlkey":"83152","p_title":"The Adventures of Jack Lumber: Post Mortem","p_cat":"LD #25","p_event":"LD25","p_time":"1355863080","p_likes":"2","p_comments":"0","p_status":"UPD5","us_key":null,"us_name":null,"us_username":null,"event_start":"1355443200","event_key":"14","event_name":"LD25"},"text":"<p><a title=\"Jack Lumber\" href=\"http:\/\/www.ludumdare.com\/compo\/ludum-dare-25\/?action=preview&amp;uid=14165\" target=\"_blank\">If you haven&#8217;t yet, you can rate the game here.<\/p>\n <p><\/a><\/p>\n <p>This has been one of the best experiences in game development since I started roughly 1 year and a half ago. I made my first completed game at the last Ludum Dare, and while I was excited about it, seeing how much better I&#8217;ve gotten at art, programming, design, and sound in just a few short months is extremely motivating. Anyway, here&#8217;s what went down.<\/p>\n <p><strong>What Went Right:<\/strong><\/p>\n <ul>\n <li>The biggest thing I was able to do for myself this time around was choosing an idea with a scope that was reasonable for me. I had never done a game remotely like this, but choosing to do single screen levels, with very simple, but understable mechanics helped a lot. That&#8217;s not to say I did everything I wanted to (I obviously wanted more than one enemy type), but I was able to get a game that was fun to play by midway through saturday afternoon. From there, I was able to really start added to the core experience, like sounds, UI, End game splashes and stuff. Not only keeping with a reasonable scope, but defining what was core to the experience was crucial.<\/li>\n <li>While my game doesn&#8217;t look great, I&#8217;m very happy with the amount of progress I&#8217;ve made in this area over the last few months. If you played <a title=\"PPR\" href=\"http:\/\/www.ludumdare.com\/compo\/ludum-dare-24\/?action=preview&amp;uid=14165\" target=\"_blank\">my last entry<\/a> in August, I think you&#8217;ll agree. Midway through the contest, I actually redid every sprite using a new pallete, and since I&#8217;m not totally sure how to use the color replacer in Photoshop, I ended up doing each one manually with the fill tool. It took more than an hour of time, but I think the results were well worth it. In the end, my game isn&#8217;t pretty by any means, but I would say that there is at least a consistent style throughout.<\/li>\n <li>My wife can play it! Since I started making games, this has sort of been the litmus test for whether a game is approachable or not. My wife not only picked it up and played it, but kept playing for upwards of thirty minutes (she wasn&#8217;t very good&#8230;). I don&#8217;t know if anyone else has ever experienced it, but this is one of the most satisfying things that happens.<\/li>\n <li>Finally, I think I did a much better job of selecting my tools. I had learned to program exclusively in XNA up until a month and a half ago, and was tired of having to package my games for windows only and with several dependencies. Now I can build games much faster, with a more powerful tool, and I&#8217;m also able to easily package them to platforms that other people can actually access them on. Being able to export to web is huge for me, since I can get people to play them, even outside the LD community. Seeing that hundreds of people have played my game is super cool!<\/li>\n <\/ul>\n <p><strong>What Went Wrong:<\/strong><\/p>\n <ul>\n <li><span style=\"line-height: 13px\">Like everyone else, Time. This time of year is full of Christmas Parties, Graduations, and Graduation Parties. In all, I was probably able to spend about 15-20 hours on it total, but I would have liked to get another five or so in. I had to cut back on the ambitious number of levels I was planning to put it, as well as the new enemy variants and environments. I&#8217;m not sure if this should even count as a &#8220;what went wrong&#8221;, since having no time is kind of the point.<\/span><\/li>\n <li>Music. I was able to get full sound effects and music in this time around, but I spent at least 3 hours (as much as 20%) of my development time making a 30 second loop. I ended up with ok sounds, but I wish I could have found some more flexible tools. inudge.net is great in a pinch, but the variety in instrumentation is definitely lacking. I&#8217;ll definitely try to find another solution before the nest LD comes around. Ultimately, the problem here is that I didn&#8217;t have a firm enough plan going in.<\/li>\n <\/ul>\n <p>I&#8217;m sure there&#8217;s more to share, but that probably plenty for now. I had a ton of fun, and I&#8217;m actually really happy with my final product, all things considered.<\/p>\n <p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n <p>This may not be the place to post this last bit, but it&#8217;s been on my mind the whole time I&#8217;ve made this game:<\/p>\n <p>I think it would be cool to work with someone (or someones) else for the next LD. I&#8217;ve done all of everything for all of my games, LD and otherwise, and I think it would be a \u00a0good experience to learn to work with a team on something. I feel like it would be really beneficial to start exposing myself to other peoples ideas and styles, not to mention possibly make something better than I could on my own. Sadly, I think I may be the only game developer of any kind for a 500 mile radius around my house. I know I&#8217;m not an unbelievable programmer yet, but if any artistic people want to give it a shot next go round let me know.<\/p>","time":"December 18th, 2012 3:38 pm","title":"The Adventures of Jack Lumber: Post Mortem"}