{"author_name":"chaotikZA","cat":"LD  #18 - Enemies as Weapons - 2010","comments":[],"epoch":1282593000,"likes":0,"metadata":{"p_key":"69291","p_author":"chaotikZA","p_authorkey":"505014","p_urlkey":"105094","p_title":"LD18 Post-Morten","p_cat":"LD  #18 - Enemies as Weapons - 2010","p_event":"LD18","p_time":"1282593000","p_likes":"0","p_comments":"0","p_status":"UPD5","us_key":"505014","us_name":"chaotikZA","us_username":"chaotikZA","event_start":"1282262400","event_key":"4","event_name":"LD18"},"text":"<p>I&#8217;ve been too busy at work and at home (and sleeping this afternoon ;-)) to write a post-mortem yet, but now I&#8217;ve finally got some time &#8211; so I&#8217;ll just jot down some quick lessons learned&#8230;<\/p>\n <p>The previous time I participated in Ludum Dare I spent a lot of time designing a very complex puzzle game, it was so complex that I failed to complete development of the features needed to build interesting levels and gameplay&#8230; so this time round I went in the opposite direction and hardly did any design at all, fearing that I won&#8217;t be able to finish an entry. So this time round my game is pretty much feature complete &#8211; it&#8217;s just not much fun :-(!<\/p>\n <p>Once I&#8217;d finished coding all the features, I found that it was quite time consuming and difficult to build interesting puzzler levels, I think this stemmed from a number of problems:<\/p>\n <ul>\n <li>Enemy features were not interesting enough<\/li>\n <li>There wasn&#8217;t enough interesting interactions between enemies<\/li>\n <li>I was quite tired \/ sleep deprived by the time I started on level design<\/li>\n <li>Designing good puzzles takes time, I think the time constraints on this competition maybe make puzzle games a poor genre choice (too dependent on good content)<\/li>\n <\/ul>\n <p>I also had boatloads of problems with publishing my entry, I wanted to do Java Applet or JNLP, but I still haven&#8217;t gotten around to either &#8211; both are a bit difficult to get working, so this is something I should figure out how to do before competition as part of setting up my tool chain.<\/p>\n <p>So my list of things to do differently next time:<\/p>\n <ul>\n <li>48 hours is a long time (6 work days) &#8211; even if you lose 12 hours to sleep, etc. you still have 4.5 days.<\/li>\n <li>Following from the above: \u00a0spend at least 4-8 hours on design at the start (including level design on paper) you&#8217;re too tired in the last 8-16 hours to design fun levels then.<\/li>\n <li>Tool-chain setup should include testing web publishing of the game.<\/li>\n <li>Puzzle games are a poor choice of genre, rather do something more arcadish with running or jumping or shooting.<\/li>\n <\/ul>\n <p>All that said, I&#8217;m still quite satisfied that I managed to complete an entry &#8211; flawed though it may be&#8230; I can&#8217;t wait for LD19 as I definitely have lots of room for improvement!<\/p>","time":"August 23rd, 2010 2:50 pm","title":"LD18 Post-Morten"}