{"author_name":"jovoc","cat":"LD #12 - The Tower - 2008","comments":[],"epoch":1218999840,"likes":0,"metadata":{"p_key":"74544","p_author":"jovoc","p_authorkey":"34","p_urlkey":"110376","p_title":"Timelapse and Postmortem","p_cat":"LD #12 - The Tower - 2008","p_event":"LD12","p_time":"1218999840","p_likes":"0","p_comments":"0","p_status":"UPD5","us_key":"34","us_name":"jovoc","us_username":"jovoc","event_start":"1218153600","event_key":"89","event_name":"LD12"},"text":"<p>Well, I&#8217;m back from spending last week in LA at the siggraph conference. Looking forward to playing all the entries.<\/p>\n <p>Here&#8217;s a link to my <a title=\"Jovoc LD12 Timelapse\" href=\"http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=Oidfe_0giPo\" target=\"_blank\">timelapse video<\/a>. Thanks to Daz for the <a title=\"ETL timelapse\" href=\"http:\/\/www.ludumdare.com\/compo\/2008\/08\/08\/etl-windows-app-to-create-timelapse-images\/\" target=\"_blank\">ETL screencap<\/a> program he posted, which I used to make this (plus ImageMagick to add timestamps).<\/p>\n <p>A quick postmortem: I was using this compo as a chance to experiment with Ogre3D, so I didn&#8217;t expect to end up with something too polished, but i did hope it would be at least playable, which didnt quite happen.<\/p>\n <p>What went right:<\/p>\n <ul>\n <li>Ogre particles &#8212; easy and they look great.<\/li>\n <li>Art assets. I tried to focus on the minimum that I would need, and they turned out pretty good.<\/li>\n <li>Learning Ogre. I learned a lot more this way than just reading docs would have taught me.<\/li>\n <li>Great theme. I had a lot of good ideas for this one (maybe too many).<\/li>\n <\/ul>\n <p>What went wrong:<\/p>\n <ul>\n <li>Camera &#8212; I spent a lot of time messing with the camera. Afterwards, i realized I should have just went with a fixed close-to-overhead camera.<\/li>\n <li>Starting with ExampleApp was more trouble than it was worth. In the end, I wasted a bunch of time rearranging it.<\/li>\n <li>Too many ideas: The theme generated so many ideas for me, I kept changing my mind and adding things. I should have gone with a straight up tower defense.<\/li>\n <li>Too ambitious. Didn&#8217;t get first-playable until Sunday.<\/li>\n <\/ul>\n <p>I posted a little list of tips on <a title=\"LD Survival\" href=\"http:\/\/www.ludumdare.com\/compo\/2008\/08\/06\/ld-survival\/\" target=\"_self\">LD Survival<\/a>, and ended up ignoring almost all of them.\u00a0 That&#8217;s okay, I had a great time and got a bunch of experience with Ogre3D.<\/p>\n <p>A technical note: I was using Ogre&#8217;s OpenGL mode during development, and noticed at the last minute that the D3D mode was much faster. So the readme encourages you to use the D3D mode. However, I didn&#8217;t realize until afterwards that it blows up after a few minutes, so if you get everything flying off the screen, switch back to OGL. I probably forgot to initialize something.<\/p>\n \n <p>Tags: <a href=\"http:\/\/ludumdare.com\/compo\/tag\/postmortem\/\" rel=\"tag\">postmortem<\/a>, <a href=\"http:\/\/ludumdare.com\/compo\/tag\/timelapse\/\" rel=\"tag\">timelapse<\/a><\/p>","time":"August 17th, 2008 2:04 pm","title":"Timelapse and Postmortem"}