- \n
- Groovy, groovy is awesome. Quick prototyping, quick feedback from the mechanics. After reading the theme and doing some quick brainstorming, I had tested 2-3 concepts within the hour. Why I took the less action-packed of them all is another bullet point.<\/li>\n
- Coding. I laid out my mechanics Saturday morning. Listed what I wanted and implemented everything. That’s cool.<\/li>\n
- Time management. I think I spent a whole lot less time than my other two entries. I made a loose schedule based on 3 parts (simple mechanics, advanced mechanics, art) and when I started a part I would make a tight schedule.<\/li>\n
- Music. Even though there are some Linux issues with it, I like the music I recorded for my entry. If you have the time to spare and there wasn’t any music in my game on your platform. Open the sound files and listen to them. I tried to give it a nice summer vibe and I did ok, I think.<\/li>\n
- Bugs. Bugs were rapidly found and exterminated.<\/li>\n <\/ul>\n
What went ok<\/strong><\/p>\n
- \n
- Art. My crops look horrible, BUT compared to my level of arts, it’s bloody brilliant.<\/li>\n <\/ul>\n
What went wrong<\/strong><\/p>\n
- \n
- The theme. I didn’t think evolution would get picked, so I didn’t think about some ideas before the compo started. I spent the first half hour staring at my wall trying to come up with a good angle. I didn’t, so I just went with what seemed most feasible and finished that.<\/li>\n
- Linux. God. I thought Java was cross platform? Sound issues forced a -lame- workaround for Linux.<\/li>\n
- I was going to do a mouse oriented game. The only mouse action in the game is closing it…<\/li>\n <\/ul>\n
What went horribly wrong<\/strong><\/p>\n
- \n
- Sunday afternoon I made a jar to give to caranha to test out some stuff. I then realized it would not run. not even on my own machine. And the issue was with Groovy. So fuck that, I thought, I wasn’t going to spend hours trying to find the solution to this: I ported it to Java in record time. Who would’ve thought that the thing that was making me progress so fast would be the thing holding me back?<\/li>\n <\/ul>\n
Conclusions<\/strong><\/p>\n
Groovy is good for prototyping, I’ll probably won’t use it in the next Ludum for the actual game code. Although I missed a lot of features while porting to Java. I just love Groovy.<\/p>\n
Setting out reasonable goals concerning mechanics is really reassuring and made me enjoy the coding a lot more. Last Ludum I was frantically coding my game and leaving bugs everywhere. I haven’t looked at that codebase because it makes grown men cry.<\/p>\n
Clean code is possible in Ludum. It’s not as clean as it could be, but it’s not confusing to read or quickfixes upon quickfixes upon bugs like my previous entry.<\/p>\n
If you want to incorporate some features, I wanted a mouse oriented game, make sure you know how to before the compo starts. I didn’t bother looking it up, because I would lose precious time. In hindsight, I did have the time to look it up, but better safe than sorry. In other words: know your tools.<\/p>\n
My cell phone \u00a0has a decent microphone to record my music.
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<\/p>\n Have fun,
\n Eek.<\/p>","time":"August 27th, 2012 4:57 am","title":"Mortem Mondays"}
- Sunday afternoon I made a jar to give to caranha to test out some stuff. I then realized it would not run. not even on my own machine. And the issue was with Groovy. So fuck that, I thought, I wasn’t going to spend hours trying to find the solution to this: I ported it to Java in record time. Who would’ve thought that the thing that was making me progress so fast would be the thing holding me back?<\/li>\n <\/ul>\n
- Art. My crops look horrible, BUT compared to my level of arts, it’s bloody brilliant.<\/li>\n <\/ul>\n