{"author_name":"robashton","cat":"LD #25","comments":[],"epoch":1355763000,"likes":0,"metadata":{"p_key":"47686","p_author":"robashton","p_authorkey":"7112","p_urlkey":"83351","p_title":"Centipede 2013 \u2013 Post Mortem","p_cat":"LD #25","p_event":"LD25","p_time":"1355763000","p_likes":"0","p_comments":"0","p_status":"UPD5","us_key":"7112","us_name":"robashton","us_username":"robashton","event_start":"1355443200","event_key":"14","event_name":"LD25"},"text":"<p>I&#8217;ve held off on writing this because I was waiting for reviews and issues to come in so I&#8217;d have something to post-mortemise about.<\/p>\n <p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.ludumdare.com\/compo\/ludum-dare-25\/?action=preview&amp;uid=7112\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-213597\"><img class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-213597\" alt=\"centipede-compo\" src=\"http:\/\/www.ludumdare.com\/compo\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/12\/centipede-compo.png\" width=\"169\" height=\"209\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n <p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n <p>I have been sat here most of the afternoon playing and rating games, whilst reading the ratings on my own game in case things were broken.<\/p>\n <p>Actually, nothing is broken apart from Audio &#8211; which is the usual story with HTML5 games even in these days (sadface), so I uploaded a fix that on platforms where it wasn&#8217;t going to work, that audio could at least be disabled (it was only generated fuzzy noise anyway).<\/p>\n <p>Lesson learned there,\u00a0<strong>TEST ALL THE BROWSERS<\/strong><\/p>\n <p>What else have I learned? Well, I actually finished my entire game by the end of Saturday, by doing the following things<\/p>\n <ul>\n <li>Using an engine so I didn&#8217;t even once have to worry about collision, pixels, rendering, etc<\/li>\n <li>Focusing on the game, rather than art or sounds<\/li>\n <li>Keeping my features to the bare minimum and making sure there was an end-to-end experience in place<\/li>\n <\/ul>\n <p>Following that, I spent a few hours when I was tired<\/p>\n <ul>\n <li>Making some art<\/li>\n <li>Generating some sounds<\/li>\n <li>Playing and noting the things that annoyed me<\/li>\n <li>Getting other people to play it and noting things that annoyed them<\/li>\n <\/ul>\n <p>The next day was solely spent just\u00a0<em><strong>making the game fun to<\/strong><\/em><strong>\u00a0<em>play<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n <p>Yes indeed, after spending about 8 hours building the game, I then spent about 8 hours in the following loop<\/p>\n <ol>\n <li><span style=\"line-height: 13px\">Play the game<\/span><\/li>\n <li>Note down what wasn&#8217;t fun<\/li>\n <li>Think of a way to fix the problem raised by #2<\/li>\n <li>Implement the fix for the problem raised by #2<\/li>\n <li>Goto 1<\/li>\n <\/ol>\n <p>It seems to have paid off, as the reviews being written are favourable indeed, my favourite being<\/p>\n <p><strong>&#8220;Easily gets into my top 3 of LD25! Keep it up!&#8221;<\/strong><\/p>\n <p>I am strongly encouraged by this as a note of the things I have learned at past Ludum Dares and now\u00a0<em><strong>cannot<\/strong><strong> wait<\/strong><\/em> until the next one where I might try to be a bit more ambitious but still try to &#8220;finish the game by the end of day #1&#8221; as that really seems to be the best way forward.<\/p>\n <p>&nbsp;<\/p>","time":"December 17th, 2012 11:50 am","title":"Centipede 2013 \u2013 Post Mortem"}