Post Mortem

This was my first Ludum Dare and my first video game, so I’m pretty proud that it all came together in time.

What went right:

• preparation – I spent the week leading up to the competition working out common game mechanics from different kinds of games. I made boxes that shoot at other boxes, boxes that walk through side scrollers, and boxes that follow paths. It gave me some great algorithms I can reuse, and helped me learn the limitations and advantages of the game engine.
• whiteboarding – video game math can be really hard. Not only did it help to clearly define my problem and see it pictorally, but my kids drew smiley faces all over them which made it all seem less intimidating.
• Living across the street from a convenience store – seriously, if soda and candy weren’t less than a block away I don’t think I would have made it through this.

What went wrong:

• don’t guess the theme — It seemed like a lot of people thought it was going to be “end of the world” so I came up with this GREAT idea. And then, for the next few days I kept thinking about how to make this great idea even better. Then, when it wasn’t “end of the world” I felt like I couldn’t come up with an idea as good as the first one in such a short time, and I was really disappointed. In the end the game I made turned out to be just as much fun to make – but I wasted a few demoralized hours comparing it to the game I *thought* I was going to make and feeling like I fell short. 
• math – I was NOT prepared for how hard the math was going to be. If I do this again, there will be algebra, trig, and calculus textbook references on my desk. And possibly a math professor on standby. Actually, my first idea was to create a game where you ruin a fresca of Jesus by lobbing facial features at it and getting points if they remotely hit the right area, but they needed to travel in an arc that changed depending on your force and location. I spent all of Friday night trying to work out the math before I scrapped the idea and started over with a tower defense.
•  browsers and servers – So I’ve got less than 10 minutes to go, I get the final touches on the game, upload it to the website and viol-la! My boyfriends computer can’t play the sound, my kids’s clowns don’t shoot anything, and no one can load it in IE at all. As it turns out, IE will fail javascript that has extra commas on arrays when other browsers read it fine,  and firefox and IE will only play ogg sound files, and the hosting service I used CACHED the javascript for 4 hours!! So the changes I made didn’t reflect on any of our computers, and I had no idea at the time I submitted it what any of you would actually be seeing if you loaded it. If you’re making a browser-based game – leave 1 to 2 hours to work out server/browser cross compatibility issues.

All in all, I’m REALLY glad I did this. This really challenged me, and now I know what I’m made of