{"author_name":"DecsterB","cat":"LD #21","comments":[],"epoch":1315456860,"likes":1,"metadata":{"p_key":"63553","p_author":"DecsterB","p_authorkey":"4425","p_urlkey":"99338","p_title":"Cave Runner Post-Mortem","p_cat":"LD #21","p_event":"LD21","p_time":"1315456860","p_likes":"1","p_comments":"0","p_status":"UPD5","us_key":"4425","us_name":"DecsterB","us_username":"decsterb","event_start":"1313712000","event_key":"7","event_name":"LD21"},"text":"

The Idea:<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

When ‘Escape’ was announced as the theme I was stuck for ideas. I had my heart set on the theme being ‘Evolution’ and it was hard to shake my ideas relating to that theme. \u00a0To fit ‘Escape’\u00a0I decided I wanted to do a side scrolling game but I felt that it needed a twist to keep it interesting and differentiate it from being an “Advancing Wall of Doom” game.<\/p>\n

I ended up settling on what is essentially a cross between BIT.TRIP RUNNER and HammerFight.\u00a0The general idea being that in order to succeed the player needed to be able to focus on two mechanics at the same time: dodging randomly placed hazards and using a physics-based attack to fight off bad-dudes:<\/p>\n

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Visual representation!<\/p><\/div>\n

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The Art:<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

After coming up with the idea I then set about contriving a situation for the setting of the game and drawing the main screen.\u00a0In retrospect drawing the main screen first thing was not a good idea, it was time consuming and considering the time restraints \u00a0was a bit of a waste.<\/p>\n

As I wanted multiple endings depending on how well the player did this was not the last time I ended up making this mistake. Drawing separate\u00a0screens for winning and losing was far more time consuming than I had anticipated and the actual gameplay sprites suffered as a result.<\/p>\n

The bouts of drawing were a welcome break from coding though and I did enjoy putting references to things in these images:<\/p>\n

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Not very subtle!<\/p><\/div>\n

The Coding + Design:<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

Implementing the basic systems such as the running and jumping was relatively easy, I did get a bit carried away with the boomerang sword though.\u00a0The sword did teach me a lot about how game physics can work though and previously I hadn’t experimented with anything similar in my other projects.<\/p>\n

Code-wise I regret not using abstract classes \u00a0and deriving level objects from them. I spent a considerable amount of time re-writing functions and properties for each object I could have used to polish the game. This also made the source quite hard to understand and make changes to.<\/p>\n

With only about an hour left I was frantically trying to find out why quitting was sometimes throwing an exception. Turns out I\u00a0had a game-breaking bug that involved the game not disposing of game content properly. Luckily I had set aside some time before submission to find these sorts of bugs.<\/p>\n

One of the main things that I wish I’d gotten into the game was a proper sense of speed. The way the background scrolls and the obstacle speed is far too slow as many have pointed out. I considered changing it towards the end but it was a bit of a nightmare just trying to get all the mechanics balanced, trying to change the speed would have meant changing a lot of elements. It seemed like a better idea to have a game that is more fun to play than one that seemed speedier.<\/p>\n

Things I learned:<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n