{"author_name":"Cake&#38;Code","cat":"LD #24","comments":[{"author_name":"raarlac","time":"September 7, 2012 11:36 am","epoch":1347035760,"text":"The timelapses, specially the art one, were very inspiring. You guys rock <img src=\"http:\/\/ludumdare.com\/compo\/wp-includes\/images\/smilies\/simple-smile.png\" alt=\":)\" class=\"wp-smiley\" style=\"height: 1em; max-height: 1em;\" \/>","spam":"N"}],"epoch":1346975640,"likes":2,"metadata":{"p_key":"51503","p_author":"Cake&#38;Code","p_authorkey":"505198","p_urlkey":"87197","p_title":"AvRvE\u2019s Post-Mortem","p_cat":"LD #24","p_event":"LD24","p_time":"1346975640","p_likes":"2","p_comments":"2","p_status":"UPD5","us_key":"505198","us_name":"Cake&#38;Code","us_username":"Cake&#38;Code","event_start":"1345766400","event_key":"12","event_name":"LD24"},"text":"<p style=\"text-align: center\"><a href=\"http:\/\/www.ludumdare.com\/compo\/ludum-dare-24\/?action=preview&amp;uid=10976\"><img src=\"http:\/\/img.photobucket.com\/albums\/v616\/apple-chan\/avrve-logo-2.png\" alt=\"\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n <p style=\"text-align: center\">Play it <a href=\"http:\/\/www.ludumdare.com\/compo\/ludum-dare-24\/?action=preview&amp;uid=10976\">HERE<\/a>!<\/p>\n <p><span style=\"text-decoration: underline;color: #003366;font-size: 16px\"><strong>ZEIK<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n <p><iframe width=\"500\" height=\"375\" src=\"http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/y_g2_mgzcfw?fs=1&#038;feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n <p>Zeik here, the code half of Cake&amp;Code. This being our second Ludum Dare I had a vague idea of the kind of stuff we&#8217;d run into and knew that time was going to be unforgiving yet again. This time we did not do a warm-up game but I was messing around in flash days in advance to get back into fighting spirit!<\/p>\n <p><strong>What went right:<\/strong><br \/>\n &#8211; I knew I was going to use Flash and had FlashDevelop all ready to go with a vanilla copy of FlashPunk at hand<br \/>\n &#8211; This time around I downloaded Chronolapse and it worked flawlessly to document the days<br \/>\n &#8211; We knew that we wanted some more unique music so we had a library of tools available before starting the jam this time<br \/>\n &#8211; Despite having work on Monday, we managed to finish at around 5:30am that morning<br \/>\n &#8211; Within the first hour or two we had a vision for a game, that vision became AvRvE<br \/>\n &#8211; Creating the isometric engine was not as difficult as it might have been, everything seemed to fall into place as I wrote it and extending it was easy enough<\/p>\n <p><strong>What went wrong:<\/strong><br \/>\n &#8211; Though we learned last time that sounds take a lot of time to find\/make\/integrate we still ran out of time to find well-suited sounds to fill in the gaps in the game<br \/>\n &#8211; No tutorial level meant that the levels themselves had to ease players into the gameplay, this turned out to be a bigger challenge than I expected<br \/>\n &#8211; The preloader turned out to be a huge problem until I realized that by assigning a value to one of my main class&#8217;s static variables from inside the preloader code I was forcing the load of all the assets before the preloader could display, after removing that assignment everything worked flawlessly<br \/>\n &#8211; Feature creep, as always, seemed to come from every direction; I built an overly robust level loading system, an interaction halting animation scheme, and was even planning on adding more items<\/p>\n <p><strong>What I learned:<\/strong><br \/>\n &#8211; Sounds still take us forever to do, there have been no revolutionary advances since LD23<br \/>\n &#8211; Music is fun to edit, but takes forever just like sound editing does<br \/>\n &#8211; A weekend game jam is not the time to implement every feature that comes to mind<br \/>\n &#8211; Layering sprites for proper render order is not something to procrastinate on, get it done right and get it done as early as possible<\/p>\n <p>Finally, I just wanted to extend a congratulations to all the participants! We&#8217;ve been rating your games and even though we&#8217;ve only scratched the surface it&#8217;s already been a wild ride, full of great experiences. Pat yourselves on the back, then give each other high-fives! Hope to see you all next LD.<\/p>\n <p><span style=\"text-decoration: underline;color: #d93067;font-size: 16px\"><strong>CAKE<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n <p><iframe width=\"500\" height=\"281\" src=\"http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/9b8-i52dgys?fs=1&#038;feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n <p>Wow, FINALLY Zeik and I have the time to sit down and write our post-mortems. To be honest, it&#8217;s been a crazy whirlwind of activity for me since LD#24 wrapped up, so neither of us have had the time to really sit down and work out our thoughts on AvRvE. Well now that I had a little more time to mull about it, I think it&#8217;s about time I crunched out these thoughts!<\/p>\n <p><strong>What Went Right?<\/strong><br \/>\n &#8211; I struggled to find the right art direction for this game. The initial mockups for the game looked a lot like Pow! Pow! Pow! until I decided to just go all out dark. It was colorful and had great visual impact, just as I intended it to. \ud83d\ude00<br \/>\n &#8211; I&#8217;m a designer by nature, not a digital artist. This time around I actually had to sit down and draw all of our species out, as well as our character from different perspectives. For someone who typically doesnt do digital illustrations, I think I did alright.<br \/>\n &#8211; Having the multiple endings was fun! And I&#8217;m glad we went with a puzzle route this time around.<br \/>\n &#8211; I ate a lot better this weekend than I did the first LD we did. Granted, it still wasn&#8217;t GOOD, but I went out of my way to actually prepare food more often than not. I snacked a bit much though. \ud83d\ude1b<\/p>\n <p><strong>What Went Wrong?<\/strong><br \/>\n &#8211; I had company over for a chunk of the weekend. It really decreased my producitivity and I found myself having to multitask working, communicating with Zeik, and keeping my friend occupied.<br \/>\n &#8211; Despite the fact I&#8217;m really happy with out the game&#8217;s aesthetic and look came out, I feel like it lacked the kind of detailing that Pow! Pow! Pow! had.<br \/>\n &#8211; Level designing was something I was already not great at. But designing puzzle levels? Yeesh. :\\ Zeik took a hold of it for the most part.<br \/>\n &#8211; SCHOOL!!! Ludum Dare happened on the weekend right after school started. Seems like it&#8217;d be an easy workload right? NOPE. Grad school is kicking me in the butt and threw a lot of work my way. So I was even more busy that weekend than I wanted to be. <img src=\"http:\/\/ludumdare.com\/compo\/wp-includes\/images\/smilies\/frownie.png\" alt=\":(\" class=\"wp-smiley\" style=\"height: 1em; max-height: 1em;\" \/><\/p>\n <p><strong>Things I Learned for the next LD:<\/strong><br \/>\n &#8211; FREE UP MY WEEKEND. Make sure I don&#8217;t have any work in the way and that I don&#8217;t have any unexpected guests. \ud83d\ude1b<br \/>\n &#8211; Get BETTER food. I ate well this time, but there was a lot more room for healthier and energy-packed snacks. Also&#8230;less coffee plz.<br \/>\n &#8211; Do more art research and experiment with styles. I don&#8217;t want to look like a one-tricky pony, so I&#8217;m going to experiment with more in-depth illustration styles.<\/p>\n <p>And of course, congrats to those that finished! \ud83d\ude00<\/p>\n \n <p>Tags: <a href=\"http:\/\/ludumdare.com\/compo\/tag\/successstory\/\" rel=\"tag\">SuccessStory<\/a><\/p>","time":"September 6th, 2012 6:54 pm","title":"AvRvE\u2019s Post-Mortem"}