{"author_name":"everchanger","cat":"LD #24","comments":[],"epoch":1346251800,"likes":0,"metadata":{"p_key":"51625","p_author":"everchanger","p_authorkey":"15147","p_urlkey":"87319","p_title":"Silent Game of Death, Post Mortem","p_cat":"LD #24","p_event":"LD24","p_time":"1346251800","p_likes":"0","p_comments":"0","p_status":"UPD5","us_key":"15147","us_name":"everchanger","us_username":"everchanger","event_start":"1345766400","event_key":"12","event_name":"LD24"},"text":"<p>Hi all, this is the post mortem for my Ludum Dare 24 entry called &#8220;Silent Game of Death&#8221;.<\/p>\n <p style=\"text-align: center\"><a title=\"Silent Game of Death\" href=\"http:\/\/www.ludumdare.com\/compo\/ludum-dare-24\/?action=preview&amp;uid=15147\" target=\"_blank\">Silent Game of Death, entry link<\/a><\/p>\n <p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n <p style=\"text-align: center\"><a href=\"http:\/\/www.ludumdare.com\/compo\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/08\/promo2.jpg\"><img class=\" wp-image-179080 aligncenter\" src=\"http:\/\/www.ludumdare.com\/compo\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/08\/promo2-300x225.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"500\" height=\"375\" srcset=\"http:\/\/ludumdare.com\/compo\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/08\/promo2-300x225.jpg 300w, http:\/\/ludumdare.com\/compo\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/08\/promo2-550x412.jpg 550w, http:\/\/ludumdare.com\/compo\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/08\/promo2.jpg 800w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 500px) 100vw, 500px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n <p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n <p>First of I want to thank the community for all the comments I&#8217;ve\u00a0already received\u00a0, this was my first Ludum Dare and I&#8217;m quite happy with the outcome.<\/p>\n <p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n <p>Ok lets start from the\u00a0beginning\u00a0shall we? During the summer I made a small 2D framework, using C++, SFML for window\u00a0management\u00a0and OpenGL for rendering. I stopped working on it when I got back to work though, I still had some &#8220;minor&#8221; things left to add before I could start making games in it. One of the things missing in my framework was audio handling, I had no way of loading or playing sound. Skip forward two months and I see Notch post about this thing called Ludum Dare, I almost\u00a0imminently decide that I want to join in and sign up. I still have a\u00a0half completed\u00a0framework so I&#8217;ll need to work that out before the Dare begins. This was the\u00a0Wednesday\u00a0before the start by the way. So I sat down on\u00a0Friday\u00a0and added the\u00a0audio handling and\u00a0went to bed at about midnight, I live in Sweden so it started at 3 in the morning here. Here&#8217;s a time lapse of my progress all the way from the beginning to the bitter end!<\/p>\n <p><iframe width=\"500\" height=\"281\" src=\"http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/9sA3xHpBOHA?fs=1&#038;feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n <p>I wake up and see the theme. I get really excited and scared at the same time. &#8220;Evolution&#8221; is such a HUGE theme, I start by making an idea cloud and just writing up everything that comes to mind. I start working on a game, a HUGE game, a game about evolving creatures for customers but first you have to grow the food for the creatures to affect their DNA. It was going to be great! Well no, I soon\u00a0realized\u00a0this was simply to big, scrapped the idea but kept the grid I had created for the farm game (this is the reason the enemy block texture is in the folder &#8220;ground&#8221; and is called &#8220;grass.bmp&#8221;). I came up with a new idea of using Conway&#8217;s Game of Life in some way and decided that it should be the main enemy of my game, so that the player was something like a virus or a disease. This evolved into a top-down shoot&#8217;em up with a ship that fires plasma bullets on blocks, really\u00a0original!<\/p>\n <p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n <p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.ludumdare.com\/compo\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/08\/promo1.png\"><img class=\"size-full wp-image-179078 aligncenter\" src=\"http:\/\/www.ludumdare.com\/compo\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/08\/promo1.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"128\" height=\"128\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n <p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n <p>Anyways I was about 4 hours from the end of the Dare when I noticed the silence in my game and realized that I&#8217;ve\u00a0completely\u00a0forgotten\u00a0about all the sound! At this point I had some game breaking bugs and also some major features I still wanted to implement (gamestates and stuff like that) so I took the decision to skip putting in some half-assed\u00a0sound-effects\u00a0and went on to make the game stable and not feeling buggy or broken.<\/p>\n <p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n <p><strong>Things that went well<\/strong><\/p>\n <ul>\n <li>Using my own framework, I really were expecting to do some work on it while in the Dare but I didn&#8217;t have to make any major modifications to it!<\/li>\n <li>Working on the second idea.<\/li>\n <li>Putting work into making the game playable, and to some degree fun. Making sure the game wasn&#8217;t crashing or behaving oddly.<\/li>\n <li>Gamestates, a begining and an end, making sure the player isn&#8217;t overly confused on what&#8217;s going on.<\/li>\n <\/ul>\n <div><\/div>\n <div><\/div>\n <div><strong>Things that went slightly worse<\/strong><\/div>\n <ul>\n <li>Planning, I should have planned my time from the beginning, not just coding away and wished for rainbows and green forests.<\/li>\n <li>Eating\u00a0habits, junk food isn&#8217;t that good for energy purposes.<\/li>\n <li>Sleeping\u00a0habits, I could probably have worked a couple of more\u00a0hours\u00a0on the \u00a0Sunday if I gotten up two or maybe three hours earlier.<\/li>\n <li>The sound issue.<\/li>\n <li>Final polish, the game feels ok but still needs a bit (a lot) more polish. This include both gameplay &#8220;smoothness&#8221; and graphics.<\/li>\n <li>Time spent on graphics, spent way too little time on the graphics.<\/li>\n <\/ul>\n <p>&nbsp;<br \/>\n So I guess that&#8217;s it, I&#8217;ve\u00a0learnt\u00a0a massive amount of what I&#8217;m capable of and not. This have most\u00a0definitely\u00a0lit my game-making &#8220;spark&#8221; again and I will join the next Ludum Dare! Please play my game and add some to the comments, I really love reading what users think of it and I will most\u00a0likely use these comments when I complete this game.<br \/>\n &nbsp;<\/p>\n <p style=\"text-align: center\">\u00a0<a title=\"Silent Game of Death\" href=\"http:\/\/www.ludumdare.com\/compo\/ludum-dare-24\/?action=preview&amp;uid=15147\" target=\"_blank\">Silent Game of Death, entry link<\/a><\/p>","time":"August 29th, 2012 9:50 am","title":"Silent Game of Death, Post Mortem"}