{"author_name":"Fififox","cat":"LD #21","comments":[],"epoch":1314120120,"likes":1,"metadata":{"p_key":"63682","p_author":"Fififox","p_authorkey":"3098","p_urlkey":"99467","p_title":"Postmortem: Poor Ball","p_cat":"LD #21","p_event":"LD21","p_time":"1314120120","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":"<div style=\"width: 560px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><a href=\"http:\/\/www.ludumdare.com\/compo\/ludum-dare-21\/?action=rate&amp;uid=3098\"><img alt=\"\" src=\"http:\/\/www.ludumdare.com\/compo\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/08\/2011-08-22-002403_1440x900_scrot-550x343.png\" width=\"550\" height=\"343\" \/><\/a><p class=\"wp-caption-text\">Poor Ball - Click the image to rate the game !<\/p><\/div>\n <p><strong><a href=\"http:\/\/www.ludumdare.com\/compo\/ludum-dare-21\/?action=preview&amp;uid=3098\" title=\"Poor Ball\">Poor Ball &#8211; Fififox &#8211; Competition Entry<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n <p>Now that the stress of coding\/packaging\/testing\/submitting is gone, the time is right to sum up what I&#8217;ve done, the good choices and the bad choices.<\/p>\n <p><strong>What I&#8217;ve done right (based on my previous and first LD experience, LD19):<\/strong><\/p>\n <ul>\n <li>I finished my game (I haven&#8217;t been overly ambitious);<\/li>\n <li>I only made graphics and sounds after the game was working;<\/li>\n <li>I made something (relatively) nice and with good sound effects;<\/li>\n <li>I made a title screen and wrote a short story to introduce the game mechanics;<\/li>\n <li>I spent time on IRC, but only time which I didn&#8217;t miss as the deadline approached;<\/li>\n <li>I didn&#8217;t feel stressed until the very end !<\/li>\n <\/ul>\n <p><strong>What I&#8217;ve done wrong:<\/strong><\/p>\n <ul>\n <li>I thought that good ideas would come by browsing dictionnaries and wikipedia and probably lost time by not really concentrating;<\/li>\n <li>I got used to my game&#8217;s difficulty and didn&#8217;t see that removing the two easiest levels was a bad idea.<\/li>\n <li>I spent a long time trying to repair a library instead of just replacing it by another one directly;<\/li>\n <li>I tried to cross-compile my game and the libraries I was using instead of booting that old slow Windows box.<\/li>\n <li>I should have written more progress reports instead of being on IRC for time.<\/li>\n <\/ul>\n <p><span id=\"more-70523\"><\/span><\/p>\n <p><strong>What I&#8217;ve done during those days:<\/strong><\/p>\n <p><em>First day:<\/em><\/p>\n <ul>\n <li>9 am (theme announcement at 4am for me): Woke up and looked for some ideas using theme list \/ dictionnary \/ wikipedia;<\/li>\n <li>10:00 &#8212; Created a base system in C++ with SFML2;<\/li>\n <li>10:20 &#8212; Thought, not looking at the computer;<\/li>\n <li>11:00 &#8212; Tried to write down an idea;<\/li>\n <li>11:40 &#8212; Threw that idea away and thought again (also played prototypes seen on IRC);<\/li>\n <li>13:00 &#8212; Back to code, looked in detail at the SFML API;<\/li>\n <li>14:00 &#8212; Suddenly had an idea: posted <a href=\"http:\/\/www.ludumdare.com\/compo\/2011\/08\/20\/finally-an-idea-2\/\" title=\"Finally an idea!\">the idea<\/a> on LD blog and started coding like mad;<\/li>\n <li>14:45 &#8212; Had the basic physics working, so <a href=\"http:\/\/www.ludumdare.com\/compo\/2011\/08\/20\/lunch-collision-detection-done\/\" title=\"Lunch, collision detection done.\">screenshot and lunch<\/a> on LD blog;<\/li>\n <li>15:00 &#8212; Kept working on physics;<\/li>\n <li>16:00 &#8212; Took a break;<\/li>\n <li>17:00 &#8212; Back to code, added controls;<\/li>\n <li>17:30 &#8212; Created a minimal user interface, worked on graphics;<\/li>\n <li>20:00 &#8212; Had the physics working, posted <a href=\"http:\/\/www.ludumdare.com\/compo\/2011\/08\/20\/physics-done-lets-create-a-level\/\" title=\"Physics done! Let\u2019s create a level!\">progress report and screenshot<\/a> on LD blog which is getting slow, tweeted, talked on IRC;<\/li>\n <li>20:40 &#8212; Created some bad background music (removed from the final game, was very bad \ud83d\ude1b );<\/li>\n <li>22:00 &#8212; Tried to get music working, SFML uses OpenAL, which is apparently badly broken on my computer, tried to find a solution to that (but I didn&#8217;t);<\/li>\n <li>02:00 &#8212; Stopped searching, went to bed.<\/li>\n <\/ul>\n <p><em>Second day:<\/em><\/p>\n <ul>\n <li>08:00 &#8212; Woke up, 20 hours remaining, eating some croissants (yeah, I&#8217;m french \ud83d\ude00 );<\/li>\n <li>08:30 &#8212; Took a crash course to use FMOD for sound in my game, and set up background music;<\/li>\n <li>09:00 &#8212; Heard about LD server failure;<\/li>\n <li>09:15 &#8212; Tweaked physics and changed gameplay idea, implemented some GUI;<\/li>\n <li>11:40 &#8212; Added some graphics;<\/li>\n <li>11:45 &#8212; Fixed a race condition-related segmentation fault, added levels, lives and death to the game;<\/li>\n <li>13:30 &#8212; Got tired of adding game code to the physics thread and edited some graphics;<\/li>\n <li>13:35 &#8212; Talked on IRC and looked at some other sound libraries;<\/li>\n <li>14:00 &#8212; Got back to gameplay, and eventually broke the whole physics\/gameplay thing, causing dead locks every now and then, but somehow I got it working nearly seemlessly;<\/li>\n <li>15:40 &#8212; Talked on IRC, helped testing some games;<\/li>\n <li>16:20 &#8212; Wrote a <a href=\"http:\/\/www.ludumdare.com\/compo\/2011\/08\/21\/yapr-yet-another-progress-report\/\" title=\"YAPR (Yet Another Progress Report)\">progress report<\/a> on the really slow but working LD blog, while still talking on IRC and failing at finding FMOD documentation on compressed sound;<\/li>\n <li>18:00 &#8212; Added code for sound effects and created some, which made me remove the background music;<\/li>\n <li>19:45 &#8212; Refactored a part of the physics code to remove an old feature which looked more like a bug from the outside;<\/li>\n <li>20:10 &#8212; Created other sound effects, reworked the sound load\/play system;<\/li>\n <li>21:00 &#8212; Talked on IRC, posted an <a href=\"http:\/\/www.ludumdare.com\/compo\/2011\/08\/21\/deadline-approaching-the-bouncing-ball-now-with-relaxing-music\/\" title=\"Deadline approaching: The Bouncing Ball, now with relaxing music !\">update<\/a> on the LD blog, and tweeted;<\/li>\n <li>22:00 &#8212; Rewrote the GUI and added a graphical title screen<\/li>\n <li>00:00 &#8212; Sumbitted my <a href=\"http:\/\/www.ludumdare.com\/compo\/ludum-dare-21\/?action=preview&amp;uid=3098\" title=\"Poor Ball - Fififox - Competition Entry\">entry<\/a> with description, screenshots, sources and Linux x86_64 executable.<\/li>\n <li>01:00 &#8212; Wrote a <a href=\"http:\/\/www.ludumdare.com\/compo\/2011\/08\/21\/poor-ball-entry-submitted-with-sources-compiling-for-the-main-platforms\/\" title=\"Poor Ball \u2013 Entry submitted with sources, compiling for the main platforms\u2026\">post<\/a> about my entry on the LD blog;<\/li>\n <li>01:10 &#8212; Talked on IRC and started packaging for Windows and Linux i686;<\/li>\n <li>03:00 &#8212; Read about FMOD&#8217;s API on Windows which doesn&#8217;t support C++ (only C) when using MinGW, converted the source to use FMOD through it&#8217;s C API, compiled, packaged and sent;<\/li>\n <li>03:30 &#8212; Reuploaded different versions with more and more libraries for people to play the game just by unpacking and running: thanks to people on IRC who tested my game until the very end, at 04:00 for me !<\/li>\n <li>05:30 &#8212; Encoded my timelapse and posted it <a href=\"http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=Cib7wRqG3CQ\" title=\"Poor Ball Timelapse\">on Youtube<\/a> and <a href=\"http:\/\/www.ludumdare.com\/compo\/2011\/08\/21\/timelapse-and-sleep\/\" title=\"Timelapse\u2026 and sleep!\">on the LD blog<\/a>.<\/li>\n <\/ul>\n \n <p>Tags: <a href=\"http:\/\/ludumdare.com\/compo\/tag\/postmortem\/\" rel=\"tag\">postmortem<\/a><\/p>","time":"August 23rd, 2011 12:22 pm","title":"Postmortem: Poor Ball"}