{"author_name":"Orni","cat":"LD #23","comments":[],"epoch":1335251880,"likes":2,"metadata":{"p_key":"56095","p_author":"Orni","p_authorkey":"10771","p_urlkey":"91815","p_title":"Post-Mortem LD#23 \/compo\/","p_cat":"LD #23","p_event":"LD23","p_time":"1335251880","p_likes":"2","p_comments":"1","p_status":"UPD5","us_key":"10771","us_name":"Orni","us_username":"orni","event_start":"1334880000","event_key":"10","event_name":"LD23"},"text":"<p><img class=\"aligncenter\" src=\"http:\/\/dl.dropbox.com\/u\/2667903\/screen.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"427\" height=\"284\" \/><\/p>\n <h2 style=\"text-align: center\"><a title=\"Asylum\" href=\"http:\/\/www.ludumdare.com\/compo\/ludum-dare-23\/?action=preview&amp;uid=10771\" target=\"_blank\">Play Asylum<\/a><\/h2>\n <p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n <p><strong>what went right:<\/strong><\/p>\n <ul>\n <li>I did use the tools I know &#8211; so my workflow was quite good and I could jump into the action right away<\/li>\n <li>reading through the Flashpunk documentation before LD started turned out to be a quite good idea. I learned of some function I didn&#8217;t knew exist &#8211; and although I didn&#8217;t use this specific one&#8217;s &#8211; reading the documentation of your engine is never a bad idea<\/li>\n <li>this old-school 8bit style graphics are very easy for me to produce and many people like my stuff &#8211; so I assume I&#8217;m good at it. it&#8217;s a good idea to stick to what you&#8217;re good with for LD<\/li>\n <li>I took some time to think about the theme and develop a pretty good concept in my head which I played through &#8220;<em>with my mind<\/em>&#8221; several dozen times. prototyping with your mind is something that people should invest more time for<\/li>\n <\/ul>\n <p><strong>what went wrong:<\/strong><\/p>\n <ul>\n <li>time\u00a0management\u00a0&#8230; oh boy did I screw up.<br \/>\n initially I thought I&#8217;d have the whole 48 hours but suddenly stuff happened and I even ended up abandoning my LD entry completely at one point. it was only several hours before the deadline that I got time to continue working and had to code in lightning-fast mode. the complete development only took about <strong>12 hours.<br \/>\n <\/strong>because of this I also had to cancel several features and make my game a lot shorter than I initially planned<\/li>\n <li>I didn&#8217;t do any sound &#8230; mainly because I didn&#8217;t have the time. but also because I&#8217;m quite inexperienced with audio so I figured to finish everything else first.<br \/>\n as the development progressed it turned out sound is very much needed in this game and it could get literally 10 times better with some good audio &#8211; so I recorded some effects but sadly didn&#8217;t have the time to implement them<\/li>\n <li>the beginning of the game is much much too long. everybody who played it in the context of LD told me so. and that&#8217;s exactly the point. I playtested it only on it&#8217;s own and didn&#8217;t realize that most people would play it in a series of LD entries, so my game would start quite lame in\u00a0comparison. this is a lesson learned &#8211; always account for the fact that your game is going to be played in a series of games.<\/li>\n <\/ul>\n <p><strong>what didn&#8217;t make it in the game:<\/strong><\/p>\n <p style=\"padding-left: 30px\">the main level was planed much much bigger. I planed platformer elements (canons, enemies, moving platforms, portals&#8230;) that should make it more of a game. during playing this the background story would have been unfold and the player would have learned how the character ended up in the asylum and a bit more about what the monster represents.\u00a0I also tried to use a bit of psychology for this &#8211; the hanging chains, the long fall and the shrinking room are all symbols for his story.<\/p>\n <p style=\"padding-left: 30px\">the game would be much better and much more disturbing as well as thought-provoking if I had the full 48h instead just a quarter of it &#8211; it also would feature sound<\/p>\n <p><strong>what my conclusion is:<\/strong><\/p>\n <p style=\"padding-left: 30px\">I&#8217;m happy I didn&#8217;t\u00a0abandon\u00a0the project and finished what I could. all in all I&#8217;m quite proud &#8211; I don&#8217;t think it&#8217;s to shabby and it&#8217;s my first LD after all.<br \/>\n however &#8211; for my next LD I&#8217;m\u00a0definitely\u00a0going to make sure to no be kept away from working on my entry.<\/p>\n \n <p>Tags: <a href=\"http:\/\/ludumdare.com\/compo\/tag\/postmortem\/\" rel=\"tag\">postmortem<\/a><\/p>","time":"April 24th, 2012 2:18 am","title":"Post-Mortem LD#23 \/compo\/"}