{"author_name":"helloserve","cat":"LD #22","comments":[],"epoch":1324292340,"likes":1,"metadata":{"p_key":"60352","p_author":"helloserve","p_authorkey":"8138","p_urlkey":"96105","p_title":"Speed to Freedom Post Mortem","p_cat":"LD #22","p_event":"LD22","p_time":"1324292340","p_likes":"1","p_comments":"0","p_status":"UPD5","us_key":"8138","us_name":"helloserve","us_username":"helloserve","event_start":"1323993600","event_key":"8","event_name":"LD22"},"text":"<p>Well, halfway through Monday and I&#8217;m still awake. That has to be some sort of accomplishment, right?<\/p>\n <p>Anyway, I&#8217;m really proud of my first ever entry to Ludum Dare. It turned out 95% from what I had in mind. I had actually thought about the tunnel racer idea and setting a week prior already, and figured it&#8217;s something that scopes well into a 48h limit. And then the theme &#8211; although pretty bland, I could fit it right into my story&#8230;<\/p>\n <p>Post mortem specifically:<\/p>\n <p>Good Bits<\/p>\n <ul>\n <li>I used my very familiar tools for art and development. So mostly things went very smoothly with only one or two re-dos or revisions on assets.<\/li>\n <li>I used some of the XNA 4.0 features which I&#8217;ve never touched before, like the default XML pipeline. It worked out brilliantly and I didn&#8217;t need to write an editor or content combiners.<\/li>\n <li>Having had the setting (mood, visual style etc) in my head for a week prior meant no time spent on paper or concept prototyping.<\/li>\n <li>In-person meet up and dev sessions with the rest of the Cape Town dev community proved to be a lot of fun.<\/li>\n <\/ul>\n <div>Bad Bits<\/div>\n <div>\n <ul>\n <li>I initially used geometery generation for the tunnel itself (excluding obstacles) and initial implementation wasted a lot of time due to a bug in the VertexBuffer data calls. Debugging that was a whole morning. Eventually I ditched it and went for a static pre modeled solution with UV coordinate updates which took like 5 minutes to implement&#8230; Doh!<\/li>\n <li>Sound. Just&#8230; sound..<\/li>\n <li>Lack of play testing &#8211; I had to make a change to the random generator after initial submission. It generated impossible situations too often.<\/li>\n <li>Speed-painting the title\/background and story screens. I suck at speed painting, but it had to be done.<\/li>\n <\/ul>\n <div>Overall I had a blast and will join the next one without doubt.<\/div>\n <div>Link to download the game is here :\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.ludumdare.com\/compo\/ludum-dare-22\/?action=rate&amp;uid=8138\">http:\/\/www.ludumdare.com\/compo\/ludum-dare-22\/?action=rate&amp;uid=8138<\/a><\/div>\n <div><\/div>\n <div><\/div>\n <div><\/div>\n <div><\/div>\n <\/div>","time":"December 19th, 2011 5:59 am","title":"Speed to Freedom Post Mortem"}