First of all, if you haven’t already, go play Subatomica

Regrets, I’ve had a few…

First and foremost, I regret sleeping. The 8 hours I had would have been very handy, and I know I can push through if I have to – I’ve done it twice at the Global Game Jam.

So being short on time meant I wasn’t able to add any sound. I thought about throwing in a few as3sfxr sounds, but I ended up deciding that they didn’t fit the mood of the game at all. I would have had to spend at least a few hours making sfx and music that I’d be happy with.

The bright side of life

In the positive column, I managed to squeeze some fun out of the concept! I was worried that it was a hopeless cause, but a suggestion on twitter lead me to remove particle-particle collisions and suddenly it was fun!

I also found a graphical style I like, and could handle in the time. I usually rely on my brother Adam for art, so my skills in that area are a little rusty at best. A few items feel unfinished, like the goal, but otherwise it’s consistent and most importantly readable for gameplay.

What a tool

So a rundown of the tools I used!

• FlashDevelop – A joy to use as always, my IDE of choice
• Flash Pro CS5.5 – I like vectors better than rasters for this kind of game, plus swcs are a great format and integrate well with FlashDevelop

And the libraries!

• nape – Still my favourite AS3 physics engine, well thought out, perfect for games, super performant!
• Flint – A great particle engine, very easy to throw together amazing effects very quickly
• BetweenAS3 – The best tween engine IMO, just really flexible and quick
• Signals – A better way to dispatch events
• tomvianas3 – My own personal core library, I ended up using quite a lot of it as usual!

Parting words

I had great fun making Subatomica! This was my first LD48, but it most definitely won’t be my last. For next time:

• No sleep!
• Get sounds in early, even if only rough!
• Try to avoid the urge to refactor, even though my code will be made public!
• To do lists helped a lot!
• Change venue – I found sitting at the same desk for 2 days really hard, go work in a coffee shop/library for a few hours a day