Using ActionScript<\/strong><\/p>\n I have only been learning ActionScript for a little while but I’m very happy with it. I quickly got the basics of a cave flyer going, and whenever I got stuck I found plenty of tutorials and discussions online.<\/p>\n I used free tools only (FlashDevelop and Flex 3 SDK) and found them perfectly sufficient.<\/p>\n ‘Next Actions’<\/strong><\/p>\n I think that the best way to write game fast is to act as though your next half-hour might be your last. If you could only add one more feature, what would you add? And how would you get it working as quickly as possible?<\/p>\n When I follow this rule, I get good results. When I don’t follow this rule, I get bad results. So I think it’s a good rule.<\/p>\n Distractions<\/strong><\/p>\n I did not follow the rule. I wasted my first evening working on a feature that I didn’t need and didn’t finish.<\/p>\n I wanted to make an AI-controlled ship that flew around like the player’s ship, resisting gravity and avoiding obstacles. It would have been super-cool. I coding up a kind of crude AI navigation map, and made a big if-statement AI controller for the spaceship.<\/p>\n I realised quickly that it wasn’t going to work. My if-statement AI couldn’t handle the compexities of gravity, obstacles and thrust. But I was having fun and I didn’t want to stop, so I spent hours tweaking it. I only stopped when I had to go to bed.<\/p>\n The final game didn’t use the AI player. I should have spent all that time making life better for my human <\/em>players.<\/p>\n Difficulty<\/strong><\/p>\n The game is much too hard. I knew that it was too hard, and I made it easier, but not enough. I think the best thing I could have done is popped a link to the game in the irc channel – someone would have immediately told me that the difficulty was a problem.<\/p>\n Level Editor<\/strong><\/p>\n I made a very simple level editor. It allowed me to lay out the terrain on each level with mouse clicks instead of hand-coding coordinates. This was my best idea all weekend – it did not take long to make and it let me create level screens in seconds.<\/p>\n Cutting Features<\/strong><\/p>\n I wanted to combine my cave flyer with another simple game genre to make it unique. I had plans of making a trading game where you bought and sold goods at different cities (seperated by dangerous tunnels), or perhaps a Legend of Zelda-like game with a large world to explore and items to find.<\/p>\n None of that made it into the release. Partly because I couldn’t decide exactly what I wanted to do, so I delayed the decision.<\/p>\n Last Minute Save<\/strong><\/p>\n I was running out of time. I had a flying game with multiple screens to explore, but I still had no goal or motivation for the player. I finally started following the ‘next action’ rule and attacking the most important problems first.<\/p>\n Number 5 hung around for a long time. Finally, I hacked up a simple upgrade system. I wanted to add icons for the upgrades, but cut it for time. I wanted to add some clever upgrades, but cut it down to what I could do with the code I already had – most of the upgrades simply change variables that were already in the game, like the player ship’s “mass” (resistance to impact force) or its refire rate.<\/p>\n The upgrade system was crude, but it gave the rest of the game a purpose – now the player had a reason to fight enemies and collect their metal.<\/p>\n Colours<\/strong><\/p>\n I stole an idea from Meritous, where the world gets redder when more enemies are around. I like it.<\/p>\n Conclusion<\/strong><\/p>\n Next time I’ll try not to get distracted on ‘advanced’ features when there are more immediate features that the game needs.<\/p>\n I will make sure to do a user test on my game, to catch obvious problems like “It’s far, far too hard”.<\/p>\n And if I’m making a “Classic Genre + Something Cool”, I’ll try not to wait too long before I add the “Something Cool”.<\/p>\n Ok, I better get back to rating entries now…<\/p>","time":"September 4th, 2009 2:35 am","title":"Cave Flyer afterthoughts"}![\"ai](\"http:\/\/www.ludumdare.com\/compo\/wp-content\/uploads\/2009\/09\/ai-coarse-navigation-grid-550x414.png\")
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