{"author_name":"jfroco","cat":"LD #17 - Islands - 2010","comments":[],"epoch":1272780540,"likes":0,"metadata":{"p_key":"70565","p_author":"jfroco","p_authorkey":"2085","p_urlkey":"106386","p_title":"Clean the Island!! Postmortem","p_cat":"LD #17 - Islands - 2010","p_event":"LD17","p_time":"1272780540","p_likes":"0","p_comments":"0","p_status":"UPD5","us_key":"2085","us_name":"jfroco","us_username":"jfroco","event_start":"1271980800","event_key":"3","event_name":"LD17"},"text":"<p>Hello,<\/p>\n <p>First of all, thank you all for your nice comments.<\/p>\n <p>This is the postmortem of my entry for LD17: <a href=\"http:\/\/www.ludumdare.com\/compo\/ludum-dare-17\/?action=rate&amp;uid=2085\">Clean the Island!!<\/a><\/p>\n <p><strong>My plan:<\/strong><\/p>\n <ul>\n <li>Submit my first game to LD <img src=\"http:\/\/ludumdare.com\/compo\/wp-includes\/images\/smilies\/simple-smile.png\" alt=\":)\" class=\"wp-smiley\" style=\"height: 1em; max-height: 1em;\" \/><\/li>\n <li>Learn PlayBasic:  I was looking for a language that allows me to code 2D games. I chose PlayBasic because I read it has sliding collision and pixel perfect collision built-in.<\/li>\n <li>Compose and play a great song for the game<\/li>\n <li>Have fun<\/li>\n <\/ul>\n <p><span id=\"more-20292\"><\/span><\/p>\n <p><strong>What went right:<\/strong><\/p>\n <ul>\n <li>I did submit my first &#8220;game&#8221;<\/li>\n <li>After a couple of hours of thinking I decided to create a top-down perspective game with mouse-only control. I&#8217;ve spent a lot time trying to develop games that can be controlled using only the mouse. I would like to develop games for people who can play card games but cannot play Platforms games: playing with the mouse is easier than playing with the cursor keys.<\/li>\n <li>I think the game mechanic has a lot of potential.<\/li>\n <li>I learnt PlayBasic: good and bad things. Good things: it was easy to code with it, and implement sliding collision was simple.<\/li>\n <li>I think that I&#8217;m not good at graphics\/animation\/pixel art, but I think the sprites creation went well. I decided to implement a retro-look: I created all sprites 16&#215;16 px and then resize to 128&#215;128 px and he palette didn&#8217;t have more thatn 16 colors (I believe).<\/li>\n <li>I used Paint.Net a lot. Before this game my only graphic tool was The Gimp, but this time I used Paint.Net only and now I think it is great.<\/li>\n <li>I did have fun <img src=\"http:\/\/ludumdare.com\/compo\/wp-includes\/images\/smilies\/simple-smile.png\" alt=\":)\" class=\"wp-smiley\" style=\"height: 1em; max-height: 1em;\" \/><\/li>\n <\/ul>\n <p><strong>What went wrong:<\/strong><\/p>\n <ul>\n <li>I almost couldn&#8217;t submit the game. I finished it like 5 minutes before deadline.<\/li>\n <li>I was using a new notebook. I had to install a lot of applications during the weekend.<\/li>\n <li>I spent a lot of time trying to implement vsync+time-based movement. I couldn&#8217;t do it, so I just implemented vsync (built-in in PlayBasic). Part of the problem was that I couldn&#8217;t make vsync works in my new notebook. Two days later, I reboot the notebook and vsync started to work <img src=\"http:\/\/ludumdare.com\/compo\/wp-includes\/images\/smilies\/frownie.png\" alt=\":(\" class=\"wp-smiley\" style=\"height: 1em; max-height: 1em;\" \/><\/li>\n <li>I spent a lot of time learning PlayBasic. It is very similar to DarkBasic Pro so it was easy but some parts like camera code and map creation was new to me. I don&#8217;t think it was a good idea for a 48 hrs. competition.<\/li>\n <li>I didn&#8217;t understand the map creation application for PlayBasic so I had to write the complete level as a read\/data commands. Because of this I could only make one level because it took me more like one hour to code just the first level.<\/li>\n <li>I din&#8217;t have time to write and play the song. So I created using pre-recorded loops <img src=\"http:\/\/ludumdare.com\/compo\/wp-includes\/images\/smilies\/frownie.png\" alt=\":(\" class=\"wp-smiley\" style=\"height: 1em; max-height: 1em;\" \/> That was the worst part for me, although I think the song is quite good \ud83d\ude09<\/li>\n <\/ul>\n <p><strong>The future of Clean the Island!!<\/strong><\/p>\n <ul>\n <li>Besides being voting for other entries in LD competition I&#8217;ve being porting the game to Game Maker 8: As a I said before I&#8217;m trying to find a game development environment that allows me to create 2D games easily. I&#8217;ve skipped Game Maker because I don&#8217;t feel confortable with point-and-click tools. But then I was reading about GML (Game Maker Language) and it looks great for 2D games. I ported most of the game mechanics in 4 to 6 hours.<\/li>\n <li>One problem I had was that GM don&#8217;t have sliding collision built-in, but I made a simple one in a very short time period.<\/li>\n <li>Then, I created two new types of enemies (cacti and spiders) and 6 levels. You can check the new levels <a href=\"http:\/\/gamejolt.com\/freeware\/games\/arcade\/clean-the-island\/2259\/\">here <\/a>in Gamejolt.<\/li>\n <li>I&#8217;m planning to add more levels, enemies and some puzzles without changing the core mechanics. Stay tuned \ud83d\ude09<\/li>\n <\/ul>\n <p>Best regards<\/p>\n <p>JF<\/p>","time":"May 2nd, 2010 1:09 am","title":"Clean the Island!! Postmortem"}