What a weekend! I’m still sad to have failed as I did, and I know I could have done better. Shame aside, though, I’ve learned some things.

First, the reason I don’t have a new demo up is simple, but embarrassing. I never updated the gameplay as I worked. Instead, I just built up crap in the background with nothing to show for it. If I uploaded what I have now, it’d just be a bigger file, I’m afraid.

But, here’s what I’ve learned:

Things I Did Well:

• Got an idea from a random blog post, and thus pulling an idea from an unusual place. More a creative lesson than anything, but worth mentioning.
• I dumped an early idea due to a lack of proper art skills. I think I’m learning where my limits are.

Things I Did Badly:

• I spent too much time on the background code. I wound up with a fox gliding around on the screen, but with lots of cruft in the background. Also, about 5mB of memory that would have been all the media for the game world, but instead just took up space.
• All of my images, once loaded, took up 5mB of memory. I can do better.
• I futzed with my cell-based world generator for too, long, as well. It might well have worked, but at the rate it went it might as well have not. I never actually tested the output, just the time it took.

The heart of my problem was diving into the background and staying there. I never made new things playable, so I didn’t have any game whatsoever.

On a happy note, I did get to do research on pathfinding and random world creation. I’m going to take that into the roguelike I’ve been working on.

I’ll be back in the upcoming Mini-LD! Just you wait!

—Mr.Dude