{"author_name":"Geti","cat":"LD #17 - Islands - 2010","comments":[],"epoch":1272431400,"likes":0,"metadata":{"p_key":"70601","p_author":"Geti","p_authorkey":"2001","p_urlkey":"106422","p_title":"Preliminary Post-Mortem of Ilopocalypse","p_cat":"LD #17 - Islands - 2010","p_event":"LD17","p_time":"1272431400","p_likes":"0","p_comments":"0","p_status":"UPD5","us_key":"2001","us_name":"Geti","us_username":"geti","event_start":"1271980800","event_key":"3","event_name":"LD17"},"text":"<p>I say &#8220;preliminary&#8221; because it&#8217;s possible I&#8217;ll do a larger more in depth one later.<\/p>\n <p>In making this game I made two huge oversights:<\/p>\n <ul>\n <li>I used a 2d hardbody physics engine to make a platformer<\/li>\n <li>I had a total of maybe 12 hours of usable time <strong>including<\/strong> a mad bughunt from 12-3AM <strong>and<\/strong> most of my basecode writing.<\/li>\n <\/ul>\n <p>Nevertheless, I&#8217;m not disappointed with what I got out of it. I&#8217;m just about to do some spriting and make the game look less like debug-draw mode.<span id=\"more-20030\"><\/span><\/p>\n <p><em>Things that went right:<\/em><\/p>\n <ul>\n <li>Everything got up and working quickly<br \/>\n I did tiles properly and fairly efficiently, I got entities running their update(dt) lines within the first hour, a camera was quick to implement, it all ran along nicely.<\/li>\n <li>I prevented it from looking too terrible without assets<br \/>\n seriously, the smoke class made the difference.<\/li>\n <li>I planned it for destructible terrain from the start<br \/>\n That way there wasn&#8217;t any issues with me destroying tiles and the like, and it wasn&#8217;t just a thrown-in game mechanic.<\/li>\n <li>It isn&#8217;t too boring to play<br \/>\n Me and my brother sat down for a good 20 mins or so having turns and laughing at ourselves. It&#8217;s pretty hard, made moreso by the whole running-out-of-space-to-play-in-thing and the you&#8217;re-weaker-than-all-the-enemies thing, but I feel that there&#8217;s quite a bit of gameplay there to be had, even if most of it&#8217;s emergent.<\/li>\n <\/ul>\n <p><em>Things that went wrong:<\/em><\/p>\n <ul>\n <li>BOX2D.<br \/>\n the callbacks i was using basically raped my game silly for just about all of its development time. I spent probably 7 of my 12 hours plagued by a recurrent bug that I just couldn&#8217;t squash. Turns out it was fixable by doing the good old mark now,\u00a0 delete once resolved business, but goddamn I managed to set up those callbacks in a way that made that difficult. So, rule 1 for next time: set up a destruction system beforehand, or don&#8217;t use real physics when you don&#8217;t need them.<\/li>\n <li>Poor time management.<br \/>\n The fact that I ended up with 5 hours development time, 7 hours bughunting should tell you something about how improvised the whole thing was.<\/li>\n <li>No art <img src=\"http:\/\/ludumdare.com\/compo\/wp-includes\/images\/smilies\/frownie.png\" alt=\":(\" class=\"wp-smiley\" style=\"height: 1em; max-height: 1em;\" \/><\/li>\n <\/ul>\n <div id=\"attachment_20032\" style=\"width: 310px\" class=\"wp-caption alignleft\"><img class=\"size-medium wp-image-20032\" src=\"http:\/\/www.ludumdare.com\/compo\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/04\/2010-04-27-174008_1024x768_scrot-300x233.png\" alt=\"Now with 99% less bugs.\" width=\"300\" height=\"233\" srcset=\"http:\/\/ludumdare.com\/compo\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/04\/2010-04-27-174008_1024x768_scrot-300x233.png 300w, http:\/\/ludumdare.com\/compo\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/04\/2010-04-27-174008_1024x768_scrot-550x427.png 550w, http:\/\/ludumdare.com\/compo\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/04\/2010-04-27-174008_1024x768_scrot.png 642w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/><p class=\"wp-caption-text\">Now with 99% less bugs.<\/p><\/div>\n <p>All in all, it&#8217;s been an awesome learning experience. Grab\/rate the game  from <a href=\"http:\/\/www.ludumdare.com\/compo\/ludum-dare-17\/?action=rate&amp;uid=2001\" target=\"_self\">Here<\/a>.<\/p>\n <p>I&#8217;ll be working more on this in the coming days, I suspect. It&#8217;d be nice to get a version with graphics up, at least, to give the game some context.<\/p>\n <p>edit: fixed broken link.<\/p>","time":"April 28th, 2010 12:10 am","title":"Preliminary Post-Mortem of Ilopocalypse"}