{"author_name":"marudziik","cat":"LD #24","comments":[],"epoch":1346156760,"likes":4,"metadata":{"p_key":"51715","p_author":"marudziik","p_authorkey":"5431","p_urlkey":"87410","p_title":"Post-mortem of Meow for MUTATION!","p_cat":"LD #24","p_event":"LD24","p_time":"1346156760","p_likes":"4","p_comments":"0","p_status":"UPD5","us_key":"5431","us_name":"marudziik","us_username":"marudziik","event_start":"1345766400","event_key":"12","event_name":"LD24"},"text":"<p>Okay, before I start with my post-mortem, some advertisements.<\/p>\n <p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.ludumdare.com\/compo\/2012\/08\/28\/post-mortem-of-meow-for-mutation\/kitten_mutated-2\/\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-177972\"><img class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-177972\" src=\"http:\/\/www.ludumdare.com\/compo\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/08\/kitten_mutated1.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"300\" height=\"80\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n <p>If you&#8217;re interested in playing the original <span style=\"color: #ff0000\">Meow for MUTATION!<\/span> and rating the game, visit <a href=\"http:\/\/www.ludumdare.com\/compo\/ludum-dare-24\/?action=preview&amp;uid=5431\">the entry page<\/a>. There&#8217;s also the updated, post-compo version there, but I recommend trying it after rating the original. If you&#8217;re interested in timelapse, check it out <a href=\"http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=0AnlDuk8_sI\">here<\/a>. Thanks!<\/p>\n <p>This game contains kittens. In fact, mutated ones!<\/p>\n <p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.ludumdare.com\/compo\/2012\/08\/28\/post-mortem-of-meow-for-mutation\/kittendare1-2\/\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-177977\"><img class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-177977\" src=\"http:\/\/www.ludumdare.com\/compo\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/08\/kittendare11.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"116\" height=\"52\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n <p><strong>The Good<\/strong><\/p>\n <ul>\n <li>Game design document. It&#8217;s very good to write what you want to do &#8211; even if just for future reference.<\/li>\n <li>Using a genetic algorithm. Generally it&#8217;s good to use stuff that you know best &#8211; and I did use such algorithms a lot some time ago. It&#8217;s a very simple implementation, but it took me very little time to code. It works neat, too.<\/li>\n <li>Graphics. Wow, 5 mins of searching in google &#8220;how to draw a cat&#8221; and I had a general idea of how I want my mutating cats to look like. Modular graphics were a great idea (although a little complicated in implementation), and honestly, I&#8217;m still impressed by my mad skillz. \ud83d\ude1b First drawings were made with real pencil on a real paper and that was also quite a good idea (later I used a tablet).<\/li>\n <li>Forums, community, overall help one can find on the web. FlashPunk forums especially.<\/li>\n <li>Employing event tracking in google analytics. This was quite easy, actually. Now I&#8217;m able to track how many people play my game, what&#8217;s their average score, and many other things. I will try to post some statistics later.<\/li>\n <\/ul>\n <p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.ludumdare.com\/compo\/2012\/08\/28\/post-mortem-of-meow-for-mutation\/kittendare1mod-cry\/\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-177985\"><img class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-177985\" src=\"http:\/\/www.ludumdare.com\/compo\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/08\/kittendare1mod-cry.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"116\" height=\"52\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n <p><strong>The Bad<\/strong><\/p>\n <ul>\n <li>Reading &#8220;Game Coding Complete&#8221; and thinking (too much) about structuring my code just right (just stick to your framework!). I blame the authors.<\/li>\n <li>Not testing. This seems more important with every LD I take part in. My game is completely untested &#8211; and again, unbalanced and too hard (too few means of controlling the population; the easiest way to fix it is allowing the player to select specimens for reproduction, not deletion &#8211; this is done in the <a href=\"http:\/\/dl.dropbox.com\/u\/38899557\/LD24\/index1.html\">post-compo version<\/a>). I keep forgetting that games need to be fun and playable, not concept-accurate.<\/li>\n <li>Trying to make something in FL studio for the first time without creating anything before (I managed to record myself saying &#8220;meow&#8221;, modify this sound into beats and stuff, create some simple, annoying loop, but it was just too much work) &#8211; I generated something with <a href=\"http:\/\/www.ludumdare.com\/compo\/2011\/12\/13\/if-you-find-it-hard-to-make-music-read-this\/\">GreaseMonkey&#8217;s autotracker<\/a>. It&#8217;s an awesome piece of code.<\/li>\n <li>Thinking too big for the compo. Wow, I was bold enough to think that I could also do a tower-defense part to the game. Like, on top of the general GA idea. I decided to cut the tower-defense idea after the first day.<\/li>\n <li>My mood, when I figured my idea might bee too much for me. Just in the middle of the compo, I was pretty sure I won&#8217;t make it. I even wanted to resign already, but kept coding anyway, just for the sake of it. After some substantial cuts to the idea, I was able to complete something playable.<\/li>\n <\/ul>\n <p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.ludumdare.com\/compo\/2012\/08\/28\/post-mortem-of-meow-for-mutation\/kittendare1mod-ugly\/\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-177986\"><img class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-177986\" src=\"http:\/\/www.ludumdare.com\/compo\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/08\/kittendare1mod-ugly.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"116\" height=\"52\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n <p><strong>The Ugly (truth)<\/strong><\/p>\n <ul>\n <li>It&#8217;s a 48 hour competition: don&#8217;t waste time on semantics. Know what to do with your code structure and how you&#8217;re supposed to do it.<\/li>\n <li>In fact, try to not waste time at all: the simpler the idea or the more you&#8217;ve had experience with something similar before, the better the result. It&#8217;s great to learn new things during the compo, but this can reflect badly on overall quality of your game.<\/li>\n <li>Get some utils ready before the compo. Some basic stuff, some helper structures, etc. For example, I wasted too much time on coding Entities able to contain child Entities in FP, just to create some screens with messages. I wasted a great amount of time on reading the code of punk.ui and had to hack&amp;slash it to make it work in my environment.<\/li>\n <li>If you don&#8217;t code games everyday, or you plan to use a language you don&#8217;t use very often, warm up before the compo!<\/li>\n <\/ul>\n <p>Overall, this was a great weekend and I look forward to the next Ludum Dare!<\/p>\n \n <p>Tags: <a href=\"http:\/\/ludumdare.com\/compo\/tag\/post-mortem\/\" rel=\"tag\">post-mortem<\/a><\/p>","time":"August 28th, 2012 7:26 am","title":"Post-mortem of Meow for MUTATION!"}