I am not sure postmortem is the proper term for this entry, being I can’t be sure the life of the project has come to an end.\u00a0 Perhaps it has.\u00a0 Regardless of the lifetime of the project, this post is about what happened, what went right and what went wrong, as I worked on my Ludum Dare 21 entry: Escape.\u00a0 Sorry, I made the “what happened” a little longer than I expected, skip to the bottom for a true post mortem.<\/p>\n
Ludum Dare 21: Start – 1 month:<\/strong><\/p>\n This weekend started at least a month before with preparation and cleaning my slate for the entire weekend.\u00a0 I made it clear to family and friends that I would be busy during the weekend.\u00a0 Under no exceptions, (perhaps a big<\/strong> pay bonus), was I going to go into work; regardless of the circumstances or consequences.\u00a0 Luckily work didn’t want me to come in, so I didn’t need to worry about consequences.\u00a0 I had my framework picked; homegrown DirectX 9 engine written in C++, my language of choice.\u00a0 I was set.\u00a0 The week leading up to Ludumdare I made a blank project from my template – in doing so I felt I’d automate this process; which took me the full week nights after work.\u00a0 However, I can now type “CreateProject ProjectName” and out comes an already compiled template project that is at blank screen and ready for development.<\/p>\n Ludum Dare 21: Start – 5 hours:<\/strong><\/p>\n No lie, there were several ideas floating around my head and was hoping for Castles<\/strong> to be the theme.\u00a0 I went shopping for some food and supplies for the weekend so I didn’t need to waste time doing so later.\u00a0 The IRC channel; #ludumdare was insane, I started a G+ hangout that filled with so many people, and I didn’t know them all, but we all shared a passion for Game Development.\u00a0 Finally, it was time.<\/p>\n Ludum Dare 21: 48hrs Remaining Theme: Escape.\u00a0 Thoughts crossing my mind, #ludumdare going insane, I left the G+ hangout and went to my white board, and to cook a meal while I thought up ideas.\u00a0 I was pretty surprised that I had three right off the bat, each with their own challenges.\u00a0 One was a turnbased puzzler that would have been easy on the programming side, harder on the content side.\u00a0 Another I threw away based on scope, it was much too big for a weekend.\u00a0 The final was a physics based glider falling through a maze like puzzle to the ‘exit’.\u00a0 Despite being harder with math and level design, I choose the physics based glider on the basis that content would be kept to a minimum.<\/p>\n Ludum Dare 21: 44hrs Remaining<\/strong><\/p>\n I had created a 2D camera, and sprite class – two things I overlooked on my framework, which admittedly is typically used for 3D projects.\u00a0 I managed to get the basics going before heading to bed to sleep on my idea before committing completely.<\/p>\n Ludum Dare 21: 36hrs Remaining<\/strong><\/p>\n Woke up, ate a good meal and planned to work on the physics of the glider until I got it right, so that I could avoid wasting time on level design by setting the physics in stone before a level is started.\u00a0 The physics gave me some problems, it took awhile to figure out that the equation for lift did not apply it in the correct direction.\u00a0 That and other strange things.\u00a0 I spent far longer on the physics that I wanted, and I never got quite what I wanted out of it – but it was somewhat controllable.<\/p>\n Ludum Dare 21: 24hrs Remaining<\/strong><\/p>\n I spent about 2 hours trying to get a randomized tunnel to generate, and quickly gave up on the basis I didn’t like the outcome of any of the work.\u00a0 So at this point the choice changed to making a quick and dirty level editor, which actually came out very well.\u00a0 By the time I went to bed I had wrapped up a level editor that I could play, edit, play, edit in quick succession.\u00a0 Hung out on G+ hangouts as much as possible, had some good discussions while still getting stuff done.<\/p>\n Ludum Dare 21: 13hrs Remaining<\/strong><\/p>\n <\/strong>Motivation has dropped quite a bit even though I was on the final stretch.\u00a0 Time pressure was starting to begin as I realized I didn’t have a level or anything – but I did have my main gameplay mechanic; physics.\u00a0 To accurately test the level I was about to develop, I needed to add the collision for the game – which was much more difficult than it seemed.\u00a0 Despite using code I had from another project for line-to-line collision, it did not work.\u00a0 In the end, debugging proved that I was putting in the wrong lines…\u00a0 Many hours wasted.<\/p>\n Ludum Dare 21: 6hrs Remaining<\/strong><\/p>\n A final burst of energy to finish the level, add a score counter, title page and share it on #ludumdare – got some feedback, made a quick and dirty tutorial page<\/strong> – that added a lot to the look and feel of the game.\u00a0 Removed the level editor and temp map files for the final build.\u00a0 Tried making some music for the game, but failed miserably.<\/p>\n Ludum Dare 21: 0hrs Remaining<\/strong><\/p>\n Submitted the project as a jam on the basis I did not share my code.\u00a0 However, I followed every other rule strictly.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Ludum Dare 21:<\/strong> Postmortem; What went wrong<\/strong><\/p>\n Ludum Dare 21: Postmortem; What went right<\/strong><\/p>\n <\/p>\n
\n <\/strong><\/p>\n \n
\n