{"author_name":"Krobill","cat":"LD #24","comments":[],"epoch":1346232720,"likes":0,"metadata":{"p_key":"51646","p_author":"Krobill","p_authorkey":"14854","p_urlkey":"87341","p_title":"[0-EVO] a brief post mortem","p_cat":"LD #24","p_event":"LD24","p_time":"1346232720","p_likes":"0","p_comments":"0","p_status":"UPD5","us_key":"14854","us_name":"Krobill","us_username":"krobill","event_start":"1345766400","event_key":"12","event_name":"LD24"},"text":"<p>Last week end was my first participation to the ludum dare. I&#8217;ve been considering to participate for a few years now but I had never had the &#8216;nerve&#8217; to take the last step. So here am I, and honestly I had a very good time! Let&#8217;s immediately skip to&#8230;<\/p>\n <p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.ludumdare.com\/compo\/ludum-dare-24\/?action=preview&amp;uid=14854\"><img class=\"aligncenter size-medium wp-image-178889\" src=\"http:\/\/www.ludumdare.com\/compo\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/08\/0_EVO_intro1-300x187.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"300\" height=\"187\" srcset=\"http:\/\/ludumdare.com\/compo\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/08\/0_EVO_intro1-300x187.jpg 300w, http:\/\/ludumdare.com\/compo\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/08\/0_EVO_intro1.jpg 400w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n <p><strong>What went right :<\/strong><\/p>\n <p>&#8211; fortunately, I had already participated in game jams so I avoided the common mistake of seeing too big (though barely I must admit)<br \/>\n &#8211; I&#8217;ve made my mind on what the game would be 9 hours after the start of the competition (including 7 hours of sleep ^^) and honestly it could have been worse. Though some mechanics evolved during my implementation, I managed to stick to the original idea.<br \/>\n &#8211; I&#8217;ve used VERY FAMILIAR tools. I&#8217;ve been working with Flash for years now and I mainly used a small open source blitting library I&#8217;ve create with my partner at Alkemi several years ago. I know the thing inside out unlike larger frameworks like Flixel or Flash Punk. I&#8217;ve almost tried to make the game with Unity with which I&#8217;m very familiar too, but I&#8217;m REALLY glad I didn&#8217;t in the end. I love this tool but it&#8217;s definitely not as fast to use as Flash and it wasn&#8217;t required for my idea&#8230;<br \/>\n &#8211; I&#8217;ve managed to keep my tablet out of the way! I knew if I started to draw things with a tablet I would spend too much time on graphics and not enough on development so I kind of forced myself to do it 100% with simple vector graphics (and a WHOLE LOT of filters). I&#8217;m kind of proud that the whole game weighs less than 30Ko without sounds and less than 80 with them ^^<br \/>\n &#8211; The actual level design occured only 10 hours before the end of the competition but it went relatively well. Even if it did not turned out always as I expected, it gave something with some potential if not enormous interest.<br \/>\n &#8211; I&#8217;ve managed to keep the pressure off and work I&#8217;d say&#8230; 20-24hours during the week-end with wide variations in concentration and involvement and a few starcraft2 games in between \ud83d\ude09<\/p>\n <p><strong>What went wrong :<\/strong><\/p>\n <p>&#8211; I just didn&#8217;t like the theme&#8230; I prefer less open themes, less generic. Personnal taste that&#8217;s all, but it kind of bothered me for the whole first day.<br \/>\n &#8211; I ended up doing a &#8216;microbiological&#8217; game like the project I&#8217;ve been working on at alkemi for the last year and a half. That&#8217;s my entire fault but I had no other idea than that (well no feasible idea at least). I kind of turned it into something interesting for me by tring to explore an art direction I had discarded for our game&#8230;<br \/>\n &#8211; I ended up doing if not a shooter, a shooting game which is what I have the most experience with. I would have liked to try something a bit more different than my usual, tread on new paths even if it meant to risk failure. I&#8217;ll try harder next time!<br \/>\n &#8211; Game mechanics didn&#8217;t turned out exactly as I planned. Well that&#8217;s almost always the case, whether you have written them down or not (personnaly I don&#8217;t believe in game design documents, I believe in experimentation and prototyping). Still, I like when things turned out as I imagined them and I still clearly need experience to run an accurate simulation in my head ^^<br \/>\n &#8211; I&#8217;ve done a few sound fxs with SFXR (an excellent tool I&#8217;ve discovered this week end&#8230;) but I could have, should have added a lot more ambiant sounds. I just didn&#8217;t have the juice left to do so&#8230;<br \/>\n &#8211; I&#8217;ve missed most of the SC2 MLG live streaming<\/p>\n <p>I&#8217;ll definitely try this again!<\/p>\n \n <p>Tags: <a href=\"http:\/\/ludumdare.com\/compo\/tag\/as3\/\" rel=\"tag\">as3<\/a>, <a href=\"http:\/\/ludumdare.com\/compo\/tag\/compo\/\" rel=\"tag\">compo<\/a>, <a href=\"http:\/\/ludumdare.com\/compo\/tag\/flash\/\" rel=\"tag\">flash<\/a>, <a href=\"http:\/\/ludumdare.com\/compo\/tag\/ld24\/\" rel=\"tag\">ld24<\/a>, <a href=\"http:\/\/ludumdare.com\/compo\/tag\/postmortem\/\" rel=\"tag\">postmortem<\/a><\/p>","time":"August 29th, 2012 4:32 am","title":"[0-EVO] a brief post mortem"}