{"author_name":"CplMustard","cat":"LD #22","comments":[],"epoch":1324278360,"likes":1,"metadata":{"p_key":"60378","p_author":"CplMustard","p_authorkey":"7106","p_urlkey":"96131","p_title":"I Want To Be Alone Post-Mortem","p_cat":"LD #22","p_event":"LD22","p_time":"1324278360","p_likes":"1","p_comments":"0","p_status":"UPD5","us_key":"7106","us_name":"CplMustard","us_username":"cplmustard","event_start":"1323993600","event_key":"8","event_name":"LD22"},"text":"

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48 hours and one wild ride later, my first ludum dare is finished.\u00a0 I’m pretty happy with the end result and generally things went pretty smoothly.<\/p>\n

Now onto what went wrong:<\/p>\n

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– My code is a mess: Like the horrifying lovecraftian all consuming elder god kind of mess, it’s covered in global variables, basically everything wrong to do with segmentation, and a lot of ungodly long methods, all sorts of bad practice stuff.<\/p>\n

– I am not a musician: I didn’t spend too much time on the sound, but I’m not very happy with the way it turned out, I should have spend much more time learning my sound editing tools before the compo.<\/p>\n

– Needed more time for puzzle elements: I’m not happy that basically the only mechanic for puzzle solving is just carrying boxes around, I would have liked it if there were some more interesting changes to the gameplay than ladders (which were quite rushed, and it shows).\u00a0 Maybe if I had some kind of simple scripting system or something I could have implemented a basic adventure game sort of system, but oh well.<\/p>\n

Well that was kind of a downer, now for what went right!<\/p>\n

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– No problem coming up with an idea for the theme: I came up my idea not 5 seconds after the theme was announced, having an idea in mind from the start definitley saved me time in the long run.<\/p>\n

– Pixel art is fun: I really enjoy pixel art, and it makes for a good break from programming, over the past couple years I’ve been working on a pixel art game in my spare time, so I had plenty of practice, and the art went quickly.<\/p>\n

– Super crude faked lighting makes the game look so much better: I’m really happy for a suggestion I got to add some basic lighting, it makes the game look a lot better with minimal effort, and plus it adds to the general moodyness to have some harsh shadows.<\/p>\n

So what things should I keep in mind for next time?\u00a0 I should definitely come up with some gameplay elements before diving into programming mechanics.\u00a0 I need more practice making music and sound effects, because they really help in making a game feel “finished.\u00a0 Last but not least, I should definitely look into making a personal code library to help keep my code clean by giving me more of a framework to work with.<\/p>\n

I’m really looking forward to LD23, and I intend to play and rate every game if at all possible, it’ll be interesting to see what others have come up with.\u00a0 Good luck to my fellow participants, I look forward to playing everyone’s games.<\/p>\n \n

Tags: postmortem<\/a><\/p>","time":"December 19th, 2011 2:06 am","title":"I Want To Be Alone Post-Mortem"}