{"author_name":"JoeCool17","cat":"LD #22","comments":[],"epoch":1324414500,"likes":1,"metadata":{"p_key":"60149","p_author":"JoeCool17","p_authorkey":"5160","p_urlkey":"95902","p_title":"Rocket Man Stan postmortem","p_cat":"LD #22","p_event":"LD22","p_time":"1324414500","p_likes":"1","p_comments":"0","p_status":"UPD5","us_key":"5160","us_name":"JoeCool17","us_username":"joecool17","event_start":"1323993600","event_key":"8","event_name":"LD22"},"text":"<p>So, I was very exited to be able to do this year&#8217;s LD, this has been my second one. Last time I did it with a freind, our entry was Dwarflings. This year, I decided to try LD48, but unfortunatley due to something that popped up last-minute (literally) I had to move it to the Jam. I had a few frustrations jumping right into Flixel 2.5, which I had no idea would be so different, but they were resolved fairly easily.<\/p>\n <p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n <p>(<a href=\"http:\/\/www.ludumdare.com\/compo\/ludum-dare-22\/?action=rate&amp;uid=5160\">Here<\/a> is my entry if you&#8217;d like to see it and <em><strong>rate it<\/strong><\/em>. (hinthint))<\/p>\n <p>What went right:<\/p>\n <ul>\n <li><strong>Sprites <\/strong>&#8211; I&#8217;m quite impressed with what I was able to do this time compared to what I did in LD21. My walkcycles still need work, but they&#8217;re better. Also, I&#8217;m no longer getting artist&#8217;s block when drawing characters. I drew Stan pretty quickly, much to my\u00a0surprise.<\/li>\n <li><strong>Programming<\/strong>\u00a0&#8211; I think I did pretty well here, just needed a refresher here and there, kept the Flixel reference handy for getting used to 2.5, I&#8217;m thinking of writing a tutorial on my code, as it&#8217;s good, and Siefer Tim&#8217;s\u00a0excellent\u00a0platformer\u00a0tutorial is long outdated.<\/li>\n <li><strong>Time &#8211; <\/strong>Considering I took way too many breaks and started the compo at 2:00 PM ET on\u00a0Saturday, I still finished, and <em>almost <\/em>had it done in time for the compo.<\/li>\n <li><strong>&#8220;Feel,&#8221; moving &#8211; <\/strong>I think I <em>nailed<\/em>\u00a0this. Since the game takes place on the moon, I needed to make you <em>feel<\/em>\u00a0like walking on the moon, which resulted in great, realistic, high jumps, slow walking, sliding, etc&#8230; I&#8217;m really happy with how this turned out<\/li>\n <\/ul>\n <p>What didn&#8217;t go so peachy:<\/p>\n <ul>\n <li><strong>Bugs<\/strong>\u00a0&#8211; As I learned Flixel 2.43, I was caught off-guard by <em>how many<\/em>\u00a0changes there were in 2.5, and this resulted in many aggravating bugs that resulted from using old\/depricated methods, and fixing these took a good 4 hours out of my time.<\/li>\n <li><strong>Distractions &#8211; <\/strong>Minecraft, TF2, Patriots games, I didn&#8217;t really do well dividing my time between game-making and game-playing\/watching. &#8216;Course, I was never good at that.<\/li>\n <li><strong>Putting things off that I shouldn&#8217;t have<\/strong>\u00a0&#8211; I put off the menu and SFX until the last minute, and I didn&#8217;t have time to get the SFX in, and the menu just <em>barely<\/em>\u00a0scraped on. I had to cull an attract mode I wanted it to have due to time. Had I done this, I think it would have made my entry <em>that <\/em>much better.<\/li>\n <li><strong>Guns and Bullets <\/strong>&#8211; As you can see, Stan has a gun. But of course, he can&#8217;t use it. This was the plan, to add it in and add enemies that shoot, but I didn&#8217;t have the time to add a shooting enemy, and therefore didn&#8217;t bother with the bullets<\/li>\n <\/ul>\n <div>What <em>could <\/em>have been better, but I&#8217;m not worried about:<\/div>\n <div>\n <ul>\n <li><strong>Level design <\/strong>&#8211; The level feels too short, and there&#8217;s a lot of wasted space and useless jumping.<\/li>\n <li><strong>Tilemap <\/strong>&#8211; I think I overdid the craters on this, it feels like there are too many.<\/li>\n <\/ul>\n <div>So, the good and bad negate each other, and there are a few things I wished I could have done but didn&#8217;t. But I still think I came out ahead, I had fun and made a decent entry. What&#8217;s more important than that?<\/div>\n <\/div>","time":"December 20th, 2011 3:55 pm","title":"Rocket Man Stan postmortem"}