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What went right:<\/strong><\/p>\n <\/div>\n \n
Ongoing scoping<\/strong><\/p>\n <\/div>\n \n
About a third of the way into development, I realised I might not finish the game in\u00a0time. I started logging work done in timelog.txt to help me estimate further work.\u00a0Having a good idea how long it’d take me to tile a new zone or draw a new full screen\u00a0image for some area helped me keep the scope realistic, letting me produce a\u00a0relatively complete game – even if I missed the mark slightly. But more on that\u00a0later!<\/p>\n <\/div>\n
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I got better at tile mapping\/level design as I went<\/strong><\/p>\n <\/div>\n \n
I’ve never done any tile mapping or serious level design work. I rapidly picked up\u00a0experience over the weekend and I’m quite proud of some of the later areas I crafted\u00a0compared to the first few. I also got much quicker at it. If I hadn’t, I’m not sure\u00a0I’d have had time to put the ending together.<\/p>\n <\/div>\n
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Delivering story through text<\/strong><\/p>\n <\/div>\n \n
Just as this was my first attempt at level design, it was my first attempt at\u00a0storytelling through gameplay. I was originally considering an intro cutscene to set\u00a0up the story but decided to jump straight in and leave clues instead, communicating\u00a0the relevant information by text. Text-only content was extremely quick to implement,\u00a0and since I’ve had comments praising this aspect I conclude the text-heavy approach\u00a0helped to establish the mood very efficiently.<\/p>\n <\/div>\n
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Low-fidelity graphics<\/strong><\/p>\n <\/div>\n \n
Beacon’s native resolution is 400×225. The main character is 24×24 and its tiles are\u00a016×16. The high-res structures and objects are very simple and stylised, with\u00a0straight lines, a very limited palette and banded gradients (if any). This low-effort approach to art let me create a great deal of bespoke art for scenes in the game in\u00a0just a few hours, even with my crappy art skills.<\/p>\n <\/div>\n
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Beacon doesn’t have any lighting, shaders, full-screen effects, particle systems or\u00a0other niceties. Skipping this stuff helped me focus on my priorities of content and\u00a0tight, simple gameplay.<\/p>\n <\/div>\n
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What went wrong:<\/strong><\/p>\n <\/div>\n \n
No preparation<\/strong><\/p>\n <\/div>\n \n
I started without any basecode, so my first task was writing windowing code, input,\u00a0basic texture loading, rendering and so on. It took me about 6 hours to reach the\u00a0point where I had a character moving around in a tilemap and could render text.\u00a0If I’d invested the time to prepare (within the limits of the rules) before the\u00a0competition, I’d easily have had 4-6 more hours to work on the game while I was still\u00a0well rested.<\/p>\n <\/div>\n
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Internet failure<\/strong><\/p>\n <\/div>\n \n
Two hours into working on the game, my Internet connection cut out.<\/p>\n <\/div>\n
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It took over an hour on the phone to Virgin to find out that they’d disconnected the\u00a0old house two days early for our requested house move, wouldn’t reconnect it, and\u00a0couldn’t connect the new house across the street until Monday. (Jerks.) Without internet access, I\u00a0couldn’t get tools\/libraries I needed or check reference, and I wouldn’t be able to\u00a0submit at the end.<\/p>\n <\/div>\n
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I almost gave up at this point.<\/p>\n <\/div>\n
\n
I resolved to keep working on the game and, on Sunday evening, packed my desktop into\u00a0the car, drove 60 miles to *my* new house – which already had internet access – then\u00a0finish the game and submit it from there. In the end, talking to Virgin cost me an\u00a0hour; packing up my PC and driving down through the snow\u00a0took two. When I needed a font\/font renderer, I couldn’t search for one, so I wrote\u00a0one; another 30 minutes or so.<\/p>\n <\/div>\n
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No sleep<\/strong><\/p>\n <\/div>\n \n
I worked through the night. By Sunday evening, I’d been up for over 30 hours. Staying on task\u00a0was getting tough!<\/p>\n <\/div>\n
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If I’d napped for an hour or two around halfway, I feel it’d have been worth it.\u00a0Instead, I got through enough coffee that I still couldn’t sleep until five or six\u00a0hours after the contest ended. That kept me awake, but I’m not sure it helped me stay focused ![\":)\"](\"http:\/\/ludumdare.com\/compo\/wp-includes\/images\/smilies\/simple-smile.png\")
<\/p>\n <\/div>\n
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Slightly too ambitious<\/strong><\/p>\n <\/div>\n \n
This ties into the ‘sleep’ thing. All that scoping stuff above was useful, but I\u00a0didn’t factor in how I’d slow down as I got tired. In the end, I was a few hours short.\u00a0I had to cut music and also some minor bits of art polish, but fortunately I’d got all the essential stuff done.<\/p>\n <\/div>\n
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Non-power-of-2 textures<\/strong><\/p>\n <\/div>\n \n
I really should have known better, but I used 24×24 images for a few sprites – like\u00a0the astronaut! This worked perfectly fine on my machine, but apparently the way DevIL\u00a0handles loading these images makes them blurry on some hardware.<\/p>\n <\/div>\n
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What next?<\/strong><\/p>\n <\/div>\n \n
I’m currently working on a revised version of Beacon, with gameplay and art polish,\u00a0music and some minor visual effects, for freeware release some time next week. I’m\u00a0also collaborating with an excellent friend on a much larger non-linear platformer\u00a0building on the Beacon codebase.<\/p>\n <\/div>\n
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I’m taking my first steps as a fulltime indie developer now and LD19 has given me a\u00a0few projects to warm up with. More than that – it’s made me remember why making games\u00a0is fun! I got more out of LD19 than I expected and I’ll definitely see you all in\u00a0four months. <\/p>\n <\/div>\n
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Technology<\/strong><\/p>\n <\/div>\n \n
Beacon was programmed in C++ in Visual C++ 2010 Express using SDL, OpenGL, DevIL and\u00a0FMod. All content was created in Photoshop CS5 trial, notepad, and sfxr.<\/p>\n <\/div>","time":"January 5th, 2011 5:33 pm","title":"Beacon Postmortem"}
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