{"author_name":"gulaghad","cat":"LD #23","comments":[],"epoch":1335160200,"likes":0,"metadata":{"p_key":"56330","p_author":"gulaghad","p_authorkey":"8939","p_urlkey":"92060","p_title":"I gave up","p_cat":"LD #23","p_event":"LD23","p_time":"1335160200","p_likes":"0","p_comments":"0","p_status":"UPD5","us_key":"8939","us_name":"gulaghad","us_username":"gulaghad","event_start":"1334880000","event_key":"10","event_name":"LD23"},"text":"<p>I failed my earth themed game on Earth Day. I gave up yesterday (20.30 localtime) 7,5 hours to end. I was so exhausted, I could not even write a &#8220;give up&#8221; post. Here is what went wrong.<\/p>\n <p>I started with &#8220;Storm God&#8221; idea, where player manipulates pressure or add zones which push air to create nice weather, rain for believers and storms and drought for infidels.<\/p>\n <ul>\n <li>I had no idea, about realistic cloud movement (I spent time learning)<\/li>\n <li>My coordinate system sucked (I constructed earth as 2d, with rows of varying length tilemaps. Rotation was easy, directional movement not)<\/li>\n <li>I wrote spaghetti code, since I thought &#8220;no time for structured code&#8221;<\/li>\n <li>Trying to do everything myself (I used flashpunk, since I like it in warmup. But due to my unnatural coordinate system I had to manually manage positions and collisions of everything, within a single entity)<\/li>\n <li>I spent more time to debugging than programming+graphics and it\u00a0 depleted me. (It is both because I choose a language I didn&#8217;t use for years [as3] and fdb [debugger] did not trace anything when most needed, e.g. when something went wrong in constructor)<\/li>\n <li>I was late to choose a simpler idea and couldn&#8217;t let go existing code (I tried to write new idea on the same earth,\u00a0 thus debugging nightmare continued)<\/li>\n <li>Also lost motivation hindered progress<\/li>\n <\/ul>\n <p><a title=\"Storm God\" href=\"http:\/\/dl.dropbox.com\/u\/3006205\/storm_god.swf\">Here<\/a> is last good state (Sunday morning). Mouse to rotate earth, no cloud movement, because it is so ugly.<\/p>\n <p>Most important lesson was quick development with\u00a0 scripting languages just an illusion. I learned more from this unfinished game than my warmup entry which is done in less than a day. So I will definitely (if time is right) join next one. In next compo, I will possibly use C++ with my own prototyping library. Because I am so used to compile time checks.<\/p>\n <p>I am going to play games as I do every previous ludum dare. Hail to all who dare to make a game!<\/p>\n \n <p>Tags: <a href=\"http:\/\/ludumdare.com\/compo\/tag\/give-up\/\" rel=\"tag\">give up<\/a><\/p>","time":"April 23rd, 2012 12:50 am","title":"I gave up"}