{"author_name":"dsaltares","cat":"LD #24","comments":[],"epoch":1346096700,"likes":0,"metadata":{"p_key":"51827","p_author":"dsaltares","p_authorkey":"507828","p_urlkey":"87525","p_title":"LD#24 \u2013 Evolution Postmortem","p_cat":"LD #24","p_event":"LD24","p_time":"1346096700","p_likes":"0","p_comments":"0","p_status":"UPD5","us_key":"507828","us_name":"dsaltares","us_username":"dsaltares","event_start":"1345766400","event_key":"12","event_name":"LD24"},"text":"<p style=\"text-align: center\"><img class=\"aligncenter  wp-image-2187\" src=\"http:\/\/siondream.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/08\/evolution.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"500\" height=\"122\" \/><\/p>\n <h3 style=\"text-align: center\"><a href=\"http:\/\/www.ludumdare.com\/compo\/ludum-dare-24\/?action=preview&amp;uid=3661\"><strong>Play the game!<\/strong><\/a><\/h3>\n <p style=\"text-align: justify\">Ludum Dare #24 is over after an exhausting crazy weekend but, above all, it\u00b4s been a ton of fun. Joining the Dare has proven to be an excellent idea and I believe it&#8217;d be right to say it&#8217;s has not gone too bad after all, considering it was my first time. Here&#8217;s a little postmortem on the experience.<\/p>\n <h3 style=\"text-align: justify\"><span id=\"more-176585\"><\/span><\/h3>\n <h3 style=\"text-align: justify\"><strong>Evolution \u2013 The survival of the fittest<\/strong><\/h3>\n <p style=\"text-align: justify\">The competition&#8217;s theme was Evolution so I went for a classic 2D platformer starred by a funny caveman who has to get through the level while killing dinosaurs by jumping on them or throwing rocks which he collects himself. Yes, I&#8217;m aware I&#8217;m not going to get many points for sticking to the theme.<\/p>\n <p style=\"text-align: justify\">Evolution is written in Java using the wonderful libgdx framework and my personal code base (which I made available prior to the Dare).<\/p>\n <div id=\"attachment_2184\" style=\"width: 472px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><a href=\"http:\/\/siondream.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/08\/evolution-caveman-01.jpg\"><img class=\" wp-image-2184 \" src=\"http:\/\/siondream.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/08\/evolution-caveman-01-1024x576.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"462\" height=\"260\" \/><\/a><p class=\"wp-caption-text\">Evolution &#8211; Menu<\/p><\/div>\n <h3 style=\"text-align: justify\"><strong>What went right<\/strong><\/h3>\n <ul style=\"text-align: justify\">\n <li><strong>Completion<\/strong>: I guess having delivered something at my first attempt it&#8217;s a win, even though the game lacks in many aspects. Time management was not completely disastrous.<\/li>\n <li><strong>Graphics<\/strong>: Evolution has received very positive feedback art wise and being a programmer it feels a bit bizarre. The process followed to create and animate character was: sketching on paper, vectorizing and colouring with Inkscape, animation with Flash and Texture Packer to produce spritesheets. I&#8217;ll keep working on this line.<\/li>\n <li><strong>Multi platform<\/strong>: libgdx was a good decision, not only is a very nice and powerful framework but also allows to target several platforms with no to very little effort.<\/li>\n <li><strong>Box2D<\/strong>: using this popular physics engine empowered me to implement the basic movement through the level extremely quickly.<\/li>\n <li><strong>Code base<\/strong>: although I discovered a fair amount of bugs in my code base, it behaved quite nicely. I also got a ton of ideas to improve it.<\/li>\n <\/ul>\n <div style=\"text-align: justify\">\n <div id=\"attachment_2185\" style=\"width: 472px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><a href=\"http:\/\/siondream.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/08\/evolution-caveman-02.jpg\"><img class=\" wp-image-2185 \" src=\"http:\/\/siondream.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/08\/evolution-caveman-02-1024x576.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"462\" height=\"260\" \/><\/a><p class=\"wp-caption-text\">Evolution &#8211; Caveman fighting dinosaurs!<\/p><\/div>\n <\/div>\n <h3 style=\"text-align: justify\"><strong>What went wrong<\/strong><\/h3>\n <ul style=\"text-align: justify\">\n <li><strong>Gameplay polish<\/strong>: I didn&#8217;t invest enough time to polish the gameplay, tweak values and play test the game and that reflects on the final build. It&#8217;s a noob mistake and that makes me sad.<\/li>\n <li><strong>Content<\/strong>: I decided to invest the last moments of the competition in the little polishing I did instead of content creation which resulted in having just one level. However, I think it was the right call, I simply didn&#8217;t have time for everything.<\/li>\n <li><strong>Asset pipeline<\/strong>: too much time was wasted in getting the export process right for some of the assets. On the bright side, I&#8217;ve learnt a lot and it won&#8217;t happen next time.<\/li>\n <li><strong>HTML5 port<\/strong>: it would have been awesome to have a browser version of my game with no third party plugins requirements so people could just play. Too bad my HTML5 port had a bad crash.<\/li>\n <\/ul>\n <div style=\"text-align: justify\">\n <div id=\"attachment_2186\" style=\"width: 472px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><a href=\"http:\/\/siondream.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/08\/evolution-caveman-03.jpg\"><img class=\" wp-image-2186 \" src=\"http:\/\/siondream.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/08\/evolution-caveman-03-1024x576.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"462\" height=\"260\" \/><\/a><p class=\"wp-caption-text\">Evolution &#8211; Jumping in the wild!<\/p><\/div>\n <\/div>\n <h3 style=\"text-align: justify\"><strong>Conclusions<\/strong><\/h3>\n <p style=\"text-align: justify\">I can&#8217;t stress enough how awesome of an experience it was. So many emotions mixed in the pot: stress, joy, thrill, exhaustion and so many more. I learned so much and felt great for having been able to deliver something in such a short timespan. I will definitely try to be in next time.<\/p>\n <p style=\"text-align: justify\">Looking forward to get more feedback during the voting phase, best of luck to all my fellow Ludum Darers!<\/p>","time":"August 27th, 2012 2:45 pm","title":"LD#24 \u2013 Evolution Postmortem"}