{"author_name":"Naouak","cat":"LD #23","comments":[],"epoch":1335465000,"likes":1,"metadata":{"p_key":"55934","p_author":"Naouak","p_authorkey":"8476","p_urlkey":"91653","p_title":"Post-mortem : Fire Around","p_cat":"LD #23","p_event":"LD23","p_time":"1335465000","p_likes":"1","p_comments":"0","p_status":"UPD5","us_key":"8476","us_name":"Naouak","us_username":"naouak","event_start":"1334880000","event_key":"10","event_name":"LD23"},"text":"<div id=\"attachment_140823\" style=\"width: 547px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><a href=\"http:\/\/www.ludumdare.com\/compo\/2012\/04\/26\/post-mortem-fire-around\/screenshot02-7\/\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-140823\"><img class=\" wp-image-140823  \" src=\"http:\/\/www.ludumdare.com\/compo\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/04\/screenshot022.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"537\" height=\"304\" \/><\/a><p class=\"wp-caption-text\">Fire Around : My LD23 entry<\/p><\/div>\n <p>That was my second attempt at Ludum Dare and my first success.<\/p>\n <p>For my first participation in ludum dare I tried to do a web based game. I gave up halfway because my game was not really fun and there was huge performance problems.<\/p>\n <p>For my second performance, I decided to use XNA because it seems simple to use and I would avoid these problems and also to not have to support any strange bug that web browser give us everydays.<\/p>\n <p>This time I chose to do a shoot them up game as it appears to me that it was simple to code and to manage.<\/p>\n <p>The theme was really good for shoot them up as they often relies on space and sci-fi thingies that goes well with &#8220;tiny world&#8221;. Ludum Dare is a competition where your aim is to do a good game but also to make it enjoyable and innovating. Hard to find an idea that would make a shoot them up innovating. A lot of good concepts exists in this genre and so I tried to think outside of the box.<\/p>\n <p>I tried to search about tiny in dictionnary in case there was a sense that I didn&#8217;t that I could use for that but didn&#8217;t find much.<\/p>\n <p>Finally I got my ideas by thinking &#8220;what if our world was very tiny, what would change?&#8221;. One of the first answer I got in my mind was : the floor wouldn&#8217;t be flat anymore but a curb.<\/p>\n <p>That here that I got my idea : you play a shooter in a world so tiny that straight path are now curbs and you will go around the same tiny planet a lot.<\/p>\n <h1>What went well this time :<\/h1>\n <ul>\n <li>I was prepared : In Paris gathering we did a warmup before the start of the compo and it was really a great way to train myself to XNA.<\/li>\n <li>I thought small then add things after : The first thing I tried was a simple ship rotating around a planet. From that I tried to add some fun stuff. If your core gameplay is solid, people will tends to like your game. And if you know that a small thing works good, you will end up adding features without having to worry much about introducing bugs in previous parts.<\/li>\n <li>I made very public my commitment to ludum dare this time : \u00a0I told my twitter timeline several times that I was participating, I told my\u00a0colleagues\u00a0and friends too so that I would have to be in shame on\u00a0Tuesday\u00a0if I didn&#8217;t do something good.<\/li>\n <li>I played my game a lot : I spent most of my time playing my game : doing some fun stuff with everything I coded for these game. Whenever I made some improvements I tested it a lot just to get some new motivation and grab some new gameplay mechanics ideas.<\/li>\n <\/ul>\n <h1>What went wrong :<\/h1>\n <ul>\n <li>Almost Nothing ! This time it was almost a bliss to participate and it was enjoyable from start to end. I did lose some motivation by the end when all I could do was tweaking and adding some new enemies and I end up not doing much of these and posting it earlier than planned.<\/li>\n <li>I failed when configuring my chronolapse and I found out after 20 hours in that it wasn&#8217;t working. No timelapse for me this time.<\/li>\n <\/ul>\n <h1>What I will do better next time :<\/h1>\n <ul>\n <li>The last 10%. I will try to do it well. I will add more variety to my next game and I will try to balance it much more.<\/li>\n <li>Graphics. I seriously need to improve my graphics. Grabbing a pen in paint.net and draw almost randomly rarely get you good results.<\/li>\n <li>Music. I didn&#8217;t knew much about generating music before this ludum dare and I end up without any music because I couldn&#8217;t manage to create one that didn&#8217;t sound annoying.<\/li>\n <li>Reporting. I didn&#8217;t post much here about my game and I think it was a mistake. I could have get some more opinion about my core gameplay mechanics earlier and I may have add some nice features to my game.<\/li>\n <\/ul>\n <p>Play My game !<\/p>\n <p>Here is a link to my compo page so you can test it.<\/p>\n <p>It&#8217;s done with XNA4.0 and is playable with keyboard and xbox360 pad.<\/p>\n <p><a title=\"Fire Around\" href=\"http:\/\/www.ludumdare.com\/compo\/ludum-dare-23\/?action=preview&amp;uid=8476\" target=\"_blank\">My entry !<\/a><\/p>","time":"April 26th, 2012 1:30 pm","title":"Post-mortem : Fire Around"}