{"author_name":"jplur","cat":"LD #16 - Exploration - 2009","comments":[],"epoch":1260800280,"likes":0,"metadata":{"p_key":"71756","p_author":"jplur","p_authorkey":"1066","p_urlkey":"107578","p_title":"Space Explorer post mortem","p_cat":"LD #16 - Exploration - 2009","p_event":"LD16","p_time":"1260800280","p_likes":"0","p_comments":"0","p_status":"UPD5","us_key":"1066","us_name":"jplur","us_username":"jplur","event_start":"1260489600","event_key":"2","event_name":"LD16"},"text":"<p><img class=\"aligncenter size-large wp-image-14114\" src=\"http:\/\/www.ludumdare.com\/compo\/wp-content\/uploads\/2009\/12\/space_battle-550x418.jpg\" alt=\"space_battle\" width=\"550\" height=\"418\" srcset=\"http:\/\/ludumdare.com\/compo\/wp-content\/uploads\/2009\/12\/space_battle-300x228.jpg 300w, http:\/\/ludumdare.com\/compo\/wp-content\/uploads\/2009\/12\/space_battle-550x418.jpg 550w, http:\/\/ludumdare.com\/compo\/wp-content\/uploads\/2009\/12\/space_battle.jpg 600w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 550px) 100vw, 550px\" \/><\/p>\n <p>This was my second <span>LD<\/span>48.\u00a0 I flip flopped with ideas the first night and settled on something rather generic that I hoped would be fun.<\/p>\n <p>The idea was to make a space shooter set in a random <span>starfield<\/span>.\u00a0 You start with a shuttle and explore the universe making money, checking out planets, and battling other ships.\u00a0 Stations allow you to upgrade your ship and weapons.<\/p>\n <p><strong>What went wrong<\/strong>..<\/p>\n <p><span id=\"more-14113\"><\/span>I never came up with a design doc, which would have helped me budget my time, and realize which features to work on first.\u00a0 At the end of the first 24 hours I realized I needed to limit the amount of objects in game by setting up a spacial hash.\u00a0 It took all morning <span>sunday<\/span> to do that, and if I had done that from the beginning I could have saved a lot of time.<\/p>\n <p>Lack of content:\u00a0 I designed the game to make it easy to add new ships, weapons, and planet variations. Despite that, I only made 3 ships and 2 guns.<\/p>\n <p>Cutting of features:\u00a0 Some features would have been easy to add and made <span>gameplay<\/span> more interesting:<\/p>\n <ul>\n <li>Fuel: Having to buy or find fuel would have made money and exploration more pertinent.<\/li>\n <li>Shield and ship statistics upgrade:\u00a0 Would have not taken to much time to add.\u00a0 Especially random ship upgrades from visiting planets.<\/li>\n <li>AI teams:\u00a0 I had planned to have 2 <span>ai<\/span> factions, and pirates who attacked any weaker vessels.<\/li>\n <li>Displayed statistics.\u00a0 It would have been nice to see the health of enemies\/asteroids when you target them.\u00a0 I also thought about giving enemies random names.<\/li>\n <\/ul>\n <p><strong>What went right<\/strong><\/p>\n <p>Not spending too much time on the graphics.\u00a0 I consider myself more of an artist than a coder, limiting my art making time was hard but necessary in the end.<\/p>\n <p>Guerrilla coding.\u00a0 My goal was to pound out features, as quickly and ugly as possible.\u00a0 Making this game was like surfing a massive tsunami of bad code, but since I was working non stop, I could actually remember what I was doing.<\/p>\n <p>Rethinking the player controls:\u00a0 Originally you used the keyboard to rotate your ship.\u00a0 Adding mouse control for the rotation and turret aiming makes for a pleasant user experience, and gives you a needed advantage over the enemies.<\/p>\n <p>Sticking to my guns:\u00a0 I got majorly overwhelmed by the amount of features that needed to be in place to make my idea playable.\u00a0 I refused to give up, and in the end came up with an actual game with more features than I had originally planned.<\/p>\n <p>Music:\u00a0 I only spent a half hour playing music, but I came up with a very appropriate song for the game.\u00a0 It&#8217;s short, spacey, and really sets the mood.<\/p>\n <p><strong>What I Learned<\/strong><\/p>\n <p>Well I think it&#8217;s time I branched out from using Blender as my <span>realtime<\/span> engine.\u00a0 I love having my <span>dev<\/span>. environment be the same as my 3D modeling\/sculpting\/animating\/texture painting tools, but I was discouraged with how my game is published (the .<span>exe<\/span> wasn&#8217;t displaying the font correctly and I ended up distributing the blend with a windows version of Blender)<\/p>\n <p>I think I&#8217;m going to start working with Unity free engine.\u00a0 People here give it good reviews and it seems to import art assets from Blender very quickly.<\/p>","time":"December 14th, 2009 9:18 am","title":"Space Explorer post mortem"}