{"author_name":"Sestren","cat":"LD #23","comments":[],"epoch":1335486480,"likes":1,"metadata":{"p_key":"55927","p_author":"Sestren","p_authorkey":"10343","p_urlkey":"91645","p_title":"My First Post-Mortem","p_cat":"LD #23","p_event":"LD23","p_time":"1335486480","p_likes":"1","p_comments":"0","p_status":"UPD5","us_key":"10343","us_name":"Sestren","us_username":"sestren","event_start":"1334880000","event_key":"10","event_name":"LD23"},"text":"<p><strong>Introduction<\/strong><\/p>\n <p><strong><\/strong><a title=\"Spitoon\" href=\"http:\/\/www.ludumdare.com\/compo\/ludum-dare-23\/?action=preview&amp;uid=10343\" target=\"_blank\">Spitoon<\/a> was my first ever Ludum Dare submission. As I mentioned in my previous post, I had watched Notch&#8217;s live feed of his\u00a0<a title=\"Minicraft\" href=\"http:\/\/www.ludumdare.com\/compo\/ludum-dare-22\/?action=preview&amp;uid=398\" target=\"_blank\">entry<\/a> for LD 22 and was inspired to participate in the next one. Here is how I think it went.<\/p>\n <p><strong>What went right<\/strong><\/p>\n <p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.ludumdare.com\/compo\/2012\/04\/26\/post-mortem-sestren\/spitoon\/\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-140946\"><img class=\"size-medium wp-image-140946 alignright\" src=\"http:\/\/www.ludumdare.com\/compo\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/04\/spitoon-300x300.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"300\" height=\"300\" srcset=\"http:\/\/ludumdare.com\/compo\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/04\/spitoon-150x150.jpg 150w, http:\/\/ludumdare.com\/compo\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/04\/spitoon-300x300.jpg 300w, http:\/\/ludumdare.com\/compo\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/04\/spitoon-550x549.jpg 550w, http:\/\/ludumdare.com\/compo\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/04\/spitoon.jpg 641w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n <ul>\n <li>I managed to make a mostly-playable game with (AFAIK) a somewhat unique mechanic.<\/li>\n <li>My graphics, though simple, got the job done. I was pleased with how they turned out, mostly.<\/li>\n <li>I learned that I can perform under a very tight deadline and for very long periods of time.<\/li>\n <li>I made my first <a title=\"LD48 Timelapse: Spitoon\" href=\"http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=9K8YUf4O8a0\" target=\"_blank\">Timelapse<\/a> as well as my first ever upload to YouTube!<\/li>\n <li>I had a lot of fun!<\/li>\n <\/ul>\n <p><strong>What went wrong<\/strong><\/p>\n <p>This is always the more interesting part, I imagine:<\/p>\n <ul>\n <li>Many bugs made it into the posted version. Among them are the spitballs appearing at full size for a split-second before being resized (this one bothers me a lot, as it messes with the visual style and happens repeatedly), and spitballs sometimes stopping dead in their tracks when they aren&#8217;t supposed to.<\/li>\n <li>The game uses up way more memory than it should, particularly by the later levels. This was a problem I had spent a good portion of time trying to fix, but, alas, I just don&#8217;t know enough yet about proper and efficient garbage collection. This is where my relative lack of experience with ActionScript, Flixel, and programming in general really shows through. It is something I&#8217;m slowly working on, however.<\/li>\n <li>No sound! I had even practiced a bit with generating sounds with SFXR before the competition, but in the end, I spent too much time fixing bugs and designing levels (both of which took up more time than I had originally planned on) to get to this stage of development at all. A game like this really deserves some nice spitting sound effects to round it out, but I had to prioritize, and sound I deemed was less important than the other stuff.<\/li>\n <li>Too short! I realize that the bar isn&#8217;t necessarily very high as far as length of gameplay with this sort of competition, but I really wanted to shoot for a minimum of 10 well-thought-out levels at minimum (20 if I could help it). That said, I had to settle for 7 levels, with 2 of them being pretty bare in terms of &#8220;puzzleyness.&#8221; I also wanted to have an actual menu and a way to restart the current level, but I just didn&#8217;t get to implementing it.<\/li>\n <li>I misspelled the name of my game! :O I don&#8217;t know whether to chalk this up to being tired or what, but yes, it&#8217;s spelled &#8216;Spittoon,&#8217; not &#8216;Spitoon.&#8217; I didn&#8217;t name my game til right toward the end, and although I&#8217;m usually a pretty decent speller most of the time, this time I got it wrong. A 5-second Google check could have shown me I had it wrong, but it just didn&#8217;t occur to me until the next day to do so. At this point, I can either fix the spelling for the post-compo version, or leave it as is and just call it my own. Does anyone have any preference on this? Should I leave it &#8220;Spitoon&#8221; or should I fix it and call it &#8220;Spittoon&#8221; from now on?<\/li>\n <\/ul>\n <p><strong>For the Future<\/strong><\/p>\n <p>Shortfalls aside, I really did have a blast participating, and I absolutely plan on being in future competitions for Ludum Dare. Feedback has been wonderful and it&#8217;s so encouraging to hear people&#8217;s thoughts about the game. I&#8217;m also planning on releasing a &#8220;post-competition&#8221; version of the game with all the bug fixes, sound effects, and additional levels I wanted to include in the original version. Hopefully, work schedule and family life permitting, I&#8217;ll be able to put that out sometime in the next 2 or 3 weeks. Thank you for reading and thanks to everyone for making this a great experience! I&#8217;ve already played quite a few of the other entries, and I&#8217;m terribly impressed; I can&#8217;t wait to play even more!<\/p>\n <p><strong>EDIT:<\/strong> The post-compo version was released about a week ago, and here&#8217;s the download link:<\/p>\n <p><a title=\"The Post-Compo version of Spitoon\" href=\"http:\/\/dl.dropbox.com\/u\/24565598\/Ludum%20Dare\/LD23-Spitoon-PostCompo\/LD23_Spitoon.html\" target=\"_blank\">http:\/\/dl.dropbox.com\/u\/24565598\/Ludum%20Dare\/LD23-Spitoon-PostCompo\/LD23_Spitoon.html<\/a><\/p>\n \n <p>Tags: <a href=\"http:\/\/ludumdare.com\/compo\/tag\/post-compo\/\" rel=\"tag\">post-compo<\/a>, <a href=\"http:\/\/ludumdare.com\/compo\/tag\/postcompo\/\" rel=\"tag\">postcompo<\/a>, <a href=\"http:\/\/ludumdare.com\/compo\/tag\/postmortem\/\" rel=\"tag\">postmortem<\/a>, <a href=\"http:\/\/ludumdare.com\/compo\/tag\/timelapse\/\" rel=\"tag\">timelapse<\/a><\/p>","time":"April 26th, 2012 7:28 pm","title":"My First Post-Mortem"}