{"author_name":"Kenny G","cat":"LD #17 - Islands - 2010","comments":[],"epoch":1272555240,"likes":0,"metadata":{"p_key":"70582","p_author":"Kenny G","p_authorkey":"1022","p_urlkey":"106403","p_title":"Hungry Hungry Castaways Postmortem","p_cat":"LD #17 - Islands - 2010","p_event":"LD17","p_time":"1272555240","p_likes":"0","p_comments":"0","p_status":"UPD5","us_key":"1022","us_name":"Kenny G","us_username":"kenny-g","event_start":"1271980800","event_key":"3","event_name":"LD17"},"text":"

Hungry Hungry Castaways Postmortem<\/strong><\/p>\n

<\/strong><\/p>\n

Summary of the Weekend:<\/strong><\/p>\n

On Friday night I had no idea of something to make based on islands so I decided to sleep it over. I didn\u2019t have much when I woke up either, so around 1 pm on Saturday (15 hours in) I decided to make a simple match-3 puzzle game about collecting food to survive while deserted on an island. I decided on a selection mechanic of dragging the mouse to select the group of pieces to be cleared and collected. On and off I spent the rest of the day working on getting the game up and running, i.e. setting up the game board, creating random pieces, having pieces drop down after being cleared, etc. Then I started coding hardcore from around 6-12 pm. On Sunday I worked on scoring and the \u201cdelivery\u201d of pieces, where after collecting a certain amount, new pieces would be dropped on the board. I hit a wall when I spent hours trying to get the game to run on other computer (which was the main cause of my failure to submit last December for LD16). I finally got through DLL hell to spend 30 minutes on some polish and visual aspects, submitting the game 3 minutes before the deadline. Over the course of the weekend I probably spent only around 12 hours of coding (plus 2-3 hours for figuring out how to distribute).<\/p>\n

What Went Wrong:<\/strong><\/p>\n

– I did not to any pre-competition planning. I just jumped in there on Saturday without a thought. Getting the game to work on other computers was a pain, and I should\u2019ve learned from last time not to wait until last minute to do that.<\/p>\n

– Also related to a lack of planning, I wanted to add audio to the game, but I have never used the audio library for SDL nor have I recorded any sounds for games before. I once again should\u2019ve handled this during the week prior to the competition.<\/p>\n

– The scoring system was very arbitrary, and I didn\u2019t put much thought into it. I made the minimum score for round completion too high and should\u2019ve done some play-testing with my siblings or my friends. Also,I should have put more time and thought into a reason why when people die on the island or get weaker, you don\u2019t need less points to continue.<\/p>\n

– A few other things like ability to pause the game and a display of the score that is needed to finish the round would have been good additions that I never put in.<\/p>\n

What Went Right:<\/strong><\/p>\n

– I really liked the core gameplay mechanic (drag to select) for selecting pieces, and thanks to the feedback I\u2019ve gotten so far from fellow developers who judged my game here at Ludum Dare, and a few friends who have played the game, I have found out that other people do as well.<\/p>\n

– I finished! This was my first time submitting to Ludum Dare (second time competing), and I\u2019m glad I was able to get it done and enter it in the competition.<\/p>\n

Overall I think the game came out really well. I may do a post-compo version to add a few things and fix the scoring system, and will definitely explore the drag-to-select mechanic more (hopefully sometime soon). I\u2019d also like to thank everyone who judged my game so far (and anyone who does so over the next week and a half).<\/p>\n

(If you haven’t played the game, here is the entry page<\/a>)<\/p>","time":"April 29th, 2010 10:34 am","title":"Hungry Hungry Castaways Postmortem"}