{"author_name": "Fififox", "cat": "LD #21", "comments": [], "epoch": 1314193440, "likes": 1, "metadata": {"p_key": "63644", "p_author": "Fififox", "p_authorkey": "3098", "p_urlkey": "99429", "p_title": "Postmortem: Poor Ball (part 2)", "p_cat": "LD #21", "p_event": "LD21", "p_time": "1314193440", "p_likes": "1", "p_comments": "0", "p_status": "UPD5", "us_key": "3098", "us_name": "Fififox", "us_username": "fififox", "event_start": "1313712000", "event_key": "7", "event_name": "LD21"}, "text": "<p><em>This is a second part of the postmortem for <a href=\"http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-21/?action=preview&amp;uid=3098\" title=\"Poor Ball - Fififox - Competition Entry\">Poor Ball</a>, read the first <a href=\"http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/2011/08/23/postmortem-poor-ball/\" title=\"Postmortem: Poor Ball\">here</a>.</em></p>\n <p><strong>Global impressions on this LD:</strong></p>\n <p>This LD was my second and it went much better, I&#8217;ve had more time to think about my game and to implement it (even if I haven&#8217;t had the idea directly) thanks to less chat on IRC, but I still talked quite a bit, because not being alone is what&#8217;s awesome in LD. I haven&#8217;t been affected by the site issue as much as I thought I would be, simply because it was slow but not unreachable when I needed it&#8230;</p>\n <p><strong>Impressions on my game and its creation in C++:</strong></p>\n <p>The development went very smoothly as I didn&#8217;t loose time on features I could obviously not create in time (I lost some time struggling with a library bug, though). I could easily add the things I wanted to because I didn&#8217;t force my to do an object-oriented design (I prefer using well-designed OO APIs like SFML but I cannot design good interfaces in a short time) and simply had one function per thread: display + input, gameplay, physics and music (which was handled by FMOD without my intervention); and one function to asynchronously play sound effects. Simple as that! I had to refactor some physics code in a new function and that&#8217;s all. The game was finished in time because I used placeholder graphics until the game was actually playable.</p>\n <p><strong>Impressions on the graphics and sounds:</strong></p>\n <p>The graphics in this game are really simple:</p>\n <ul>\n <li>A dark background image putting an emphasis on the limits of the terrain and on the danger near them with a blurring effect;</li>\n <li>Simple ball and wall sprites with brighter colors;</li>\n <li>A title menu with some nice text giving a small background story (you can cry or laugh at it, as it is kind of simplistic and unrealistic 😛 ).</li>\n </ul>\n <p>The sound effects are nearly perfect in my opinion: I used some bell sounds and small melodies instead of visual feedback for this such as level up, loss of life, etc, as the game requires a high focus on the ball&#8217;s position. Using sounds let the player know what happened without having to look at the HUD, which nevertheless exists.</p>\n <p><strong>Conclusion:</strong></p>\n <p>I enjoyed that LD as much as (or even more than) the first and I&#8217;m really happy to have a complete game, which I am proud of as I am not a professional (game) developer (yet) !</p>\n <p>Congratulations to everyone and see you soon at LD22 or before on IRC !</p>\n \n <p>Tags: <a href=\"http://ludumdare.com/compo/tag/postmortem/\" rel=\"tag\">postmortem</a></p>", "time": "August 24th, 2011 8:44 am", "title": "Postmortem: Poor Ball (part 2)"}