{"author_name":"netmute","cat":"LD #23","comments":[{"author_name":"netmute","time":"May 2, 2012 11:39 pm","epoch":1336019940,"text":"The ‘after compo’ version has online leaderboards now, so you can compare your scores \":)\"","spam":"N"}],"epoch":1335882600,"likes":2,"metadata":{"p_key":"55864","p_author":"netmute","p_authorkey":"11213","p_urlkey":"91582","p_title":"Dev diary \/ post mortem for Tiny Maze Speedrun.","p_cat":"LD #23","p_event":"LD23","p_time":"1335882600","p_likes":"2","p_comments":"1","p_status":"UPD5","us_key":"11213","us_name":"netmute","us_username":"netmute","event_start":"1334880000","event_key":"10","event_name":"LD23"},"text":"

Now that a week has passed, it think it’s a good time to summarize the experience that has been my first Ludum Dare.<\/p>\n

My very first attempt at making a game a year or so ago kind of failed. The text-only action RPG was basically just a fighting engine. It was playable, if you were able to install and run the thing. Ruby was the language I knew well, and so I made the game in it. But distributing Ruby games is a pain. Installing it was almost impossible without deeper knowledge of the Ruby ecosystem.<\/p>\n

Fast forward to one week before Ludum Dare 23.<\/p>\n

I somehow decided to give up my resistance against having anything to do with JavaScript, that I kept for so long. One of my colleagues at work is some kind of JavaScript genius, and he recommended a few learning resources to me.
\n After having read one of the books for a couple days, I felt I wasn’t really learning anything. I needed a project.<\/p>\n

Luckily the 10 year anniversary Ludum Dare was that very weekend. I always wanted to participate in Ludum Dare, but never had the guts. I finally came up with the crazy idea to jump head first into a 48 hour game making competition, using a programming language I’d been barely exposed to. Even if it would be a complete failure, I would still learn a ton.<\/p>\n

I live in Germany, so the theme announcement was on Saturday at 3am. I spend Friday evening googling for a usable JavaScript game framework. I found Crafty.js<\/a>, set it up, and made myself familiar with the absolute basics of how to use it. Crafty.js is great, much better than anything I found in the Ruby world.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

My girlfriend was visiting friends on that weekend, so I had plenty of time. My plan was getting a good nights sleep, get up around 9am on Saturday, read the theme announcement, and then think about it, while having a shower and breakfast.
\n Then I would start coding around lunchtime, be finished with the core mechanics when I go to sleep, and have the whole Sunday for sound, graphics and polishing.<\/p>\n

Overall that plan kind of worked. I started panicking when, after a couple hours, I still had no idea what to build. The time constraints put immense pressure on me and I felt way too stressed. I had to remind myself that I was doing this for fun and it wouldn’t matter if I failed.<\/p>\n

After calming down, I decided to just start coding without having a concept. Looking for level generation algorithms, I stumbled upon recursive backtracking, and started implementing that. Turns out implementing algorithms in a language you’re not familiar with is quite a challenge.<\/p>\n

By saturday evening I had a pretty good maze generator, a way to draw the maze on the screen, a blue rectangle that I could move with cursor keys, and collision detection. But still no idea what the player actually had to do.
\n The best I could come up with was an exit you had to reach in the shortest amount of time possible. Maybe a few powerups and obstacles along the way.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

When I stopped coding at around 11pm, there was a timer and an exit, which would stop the timer when reached. I looked on what I had and was quite happy with the output of one day. Before going to bed I spend an hour playing my game. And realized it was fun. I couldn’t have been more happy at that moment \":)\"<\/p>\n

Unfortunately I overslept on Sunday. After breakfast and showering it was 12am.<\/p>\n

I opened Pixen<\/a> and started drawing animation sprites for the player and exit. I figured the reason the player needs to run around in a maze was that he desperately needed at toilet. I gave the walking animation some urgency, which I think turned out quite well. Especially since I had never drawn sprites before in my life.\u00a0I made the sprites 8x8px to pay at least some credit to the ‘Tiny World’ theme.\u00a0Then I made the start and exit screen in Pixelmator<\/a> and built a very basic main menu.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

It was hard to focus after my girlfriend came home at 5pm. So I decided to ditch powerups and sound, and instead fix the remaining bugs, wrap the whole thing up, and submit it.<\/p>\n

Play and rate my game here:<\/strong><\/p>\n

http:\/\/www.ludumdare.com\/compo\/ludum-dare-23\/?action=preview&uid=11213<\/a><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

What went well:<\/p>\n