![\"\"](\"http:\/\/www.ludumdare.com\/compo\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/08\/title4.png\")
<\/a><\/p>\n Awesome<\/strong><\/p>\n So I pretty much managed to stick to my original plan this time. I chose the absolute simplest gameplay concept I could come up with, and avoided the temptation to try to make something fancy. <\/p>\n Avoiding falling stuff has to be the simplest action game imaginable; and in fact for a program I used to use called DIV Games Studio, it was the tutorial. A bit of a speed-up mechanic and some lava to escape from and I had my gameplay down. The code was messy, but never got to an unmanagable state. <\/p>\n I was then able to spend the second day working on the graphics, which I was pretty happy with in the end. I managed to submit a couple of hours before the deadline with Windows build complete, which is a first for me. It was nice to not have that sinking feeling about 5 hours before the deadline when you realise that you’re nowhere near to completing what you wanted to have done. And ever nicer to not be scurrying around trying to throw a build together with 10 minutes to go.<\/p>\n Pants<\/strong><\/p>\n I still didn’t leave enough time to record some proper sounds and write some music like I’d hoped to. I ended up throwing together some sfxr noise, which is better than nothing, but does all start to sound the same after a while.<\/p>\n While the code went well, I found myself writing unnecessary bits of boilerplate code that I always seem to end up writing. Code that could and should really be abstracted into a library and reused.<\/p>\n In Closing<\/strong><\/p>\n I think I took the right approach this time. No grandiose plans, no over-optimistic attempts at procedural generation, no attempts to invent new genres, and generally no biting off more than I could chew. I kept it simple and relaxed and while my entry isn’t going to win any prizes (there aren’t any anyway), the sense of accomplishment and closure was pretty satisfying.<\/p>\n Next time though, I’m going to be better prepared in terms of the libraries I use, and cut down some of the boilerplate to leave more time for gameplay code. Every extra minute I can save here and there gives me more chance to add polish, namely audio which always gets left until last and therefore neglected.<\/p>\n TL;DR: Happy but music next time<\/strong><\/p>\n \n Tags: happy<\/a>, post-mortem<\/a><\/p>","time":"August 26th, 2011 12:43 pm","title":"Post Mortem"}<\/a><\/p>\n