{"author_name":"timtipgames","cat":"LD #24","comments":[],"epoch":1346319480,"likes":3,"metadata":{"p_key":"51596","p_author":"timtipgames","p_authorkey":"15341","p_urlkey":"87290","p_title":"Firefly \u2013 In depth post mortem","p_cat":"LD #24","p_event":"LD24","p_time":"1346319480","p_likes":"3","p_comments":"0","p_status":"UPD5","us_key":"15341","us_name":"timtipgames","us_username":"timtipgames","event_start":"1345766400","event_key":"12","event_name":"LD24"},"text":"

Link to my LD-Entry Firefly<\/a><\/p>\n

I don’t want to present a list of good and bad things, so I’ll take a bit more of a narrative approach to my post mortem (although english is not my native language)<\/p>\n

The Idea – and how bad at drawing I am<\/strong><\/h2>\n

This is my first Ludum Dare entry. I didn’t really know what to expect from myself, and the first few hours after theme anouncement, I was constantly switching between a “lets try just to have fun” and a “Lets see what is the best I can do in 48h” mood. I ended up somewhere in between and I felt very good doing things as I did them.<\/p>\n

I had a very precise idea for an evolution based theme in my head but I took some time to make up some others to see if I could find a better one. The only one that I really came up with was \u00a0“The Darwin Award Game – Kill yourself as dumb and fast as you can”<\/em> which I gave up on once I told my girlfriend about it and she only shook her head, saying nothing. So I decided to go for the “plants and bee’s”-theme.<\/p>\n

I wasn’t really sure what the final mechanic should be like. I only knew that one fundamental process should be part of the game-play: Bee’s pollinating plants and mixing genes following rules similar to mendels-rules<\/a>.<\/p>\n

So the first thing I did was drawing a sketch of what a game-screen could look like. Here you see a comparisan graphics of what the sketch, and what the game that I finally submitted look like: (I am not good in drawing obviously, but for the amusement I’ll add the sketch anyways – and hey! It was 5 AM!).<\/p>\n

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The Programming<\/strong><\/h2>\n

I had decided the day before theme announcement, that I would start with very sketchy placeholder graphics and spend the first 24hours coding. I would then start to create nicer graphics and add sounds to finally do some polishing. I stuck to that plan and dived right into an empty eclipse project that I had prepared with the libraries that I chose (Libgdx<\/a> and Artemis Entity-System-Framework<\/a>). \u00a0I planned to submit an Android and a java version of my game. That was important to plan upfront because I had to map all interactions to touch-input (at least in my head) when designing controls. Artemis proofed once again to be a perfect match for rapid development like it was required for LD. But I really feel very comfortable with libgdx and artemis anyway. (I ended up messing with the Entity-System pattern a bit when I had no time left and produced some not so good looking code :))<\/p>\n

I think it helps a lot not to spend all the time with a new api or tool you haven’t tried before. Why do so many entries choose tools or libraries they never used before for a LD entry? It doesn’t sound like something fun for me (unless you need to give yourself a handicap because any bunch of numbers turn into an incredibly looking, sounding and playing game if you only look at them).<\/p>\n

Sunday morning, I finished the last systems I felt mandatory to be present to… yes … to what? I realized in that moment that somehow I was still not really clear on what the gameplay should be like exactly. What I had was:<\/p>\n