{"author_name":"pansapiens","cat":"LD #12 - The Tower - 2008","comments":[],"epoch":1218438660,"likes":0,"metadata":{"p_key":"74580","p_author":"pansapiens","p_authorkey":"198","p_urlkey":"110412","p_title":"Timelapse","p_cat":"LD #12 - The Tower - 2008","p_event":"LD12","p_time":"1218438660","p_likes":"0","p_comments":"0","p_status":"UPD5","us_key":"198","us_name":"pansapiens","us_username":"pansapiens","event_start":"1218153600","event_key":"89","event_name":"LD12"},"text":"<p>Here&#8217;s my timelapse &#8230; it wasn&#8217;t all that exciting so I added a little running commentary.<\/p>\n <p><a href='http:\/\/au.youtube.com\/watch?v=406YQeCyN8E'>LD#12: pansapiens timelapse<\/a><\/p>\n <p>Congratulations to everyone who participated. I can wait to see what y&#8217;all have created &#8230;.<\/p>\n <p>\n <strong>Some post mortem thoughts<\/strong><br \/>\n <span id=\"more-3411\"><\/span><\/p>\n <ul>\n <li><strong>Use <em>remotely<\/em> hosted version control.<\/strong> My Subversion\/Trac server runs on my workstation &#8230; which left me without access to my code when we had a several power failures. If the code was remotely hosted, I could have quickly found some electricity and Internet access somewhere else and continued working on my laptop.<\/li>\n <li><strong>Take some time to think through implementations, write some notes.<\/strong>. I fairly quickly got a good idea for a two-player falling block game, where players competed to build the biggest tower, but could lower their opponents tower by shunting across matching blocks, which would annihilate each other. But I failed to think through exactly the best approach for the falling block game engine. I coded and discarded about three related but similar approaches, toyed with using the pymunk physics engine for a while (couldn&#8217;t get static Polys to stay still though &#8230;??), before basically giving up on the falling block engine after the second power failure. If I&#8217;d sat down and <em>really<\/em> thought the engine through before coding, I probably would have finished the game I originally intended to make.<\/li>\n <li><strong>It&#8217;s nice to have a fallback.<\/strong> Normally, I would make my fallback plan something like &#8220;okay, no time left, just polish now &#8230; no new features&#8221;. But that assumes you have a turd to polish. In this case, all I had about 12 hours and a useless pile of crap falling block engine that I didn&#8217;t understand anymore. Writing an Atari 2600 game would be a crazy &#8216;fallback&#8217; if it was done in the traditional way: assembly language. Luckily, batari Basic is pretty much like a normal version BASIC, just more restricted (with a slightly fussy, touchy preprocesser\/compiler). It&#8217;s been years since I coded in GWBASIC &#8230; but you never forget the basics <img src=\"http:\/\/ludumdare.com\/compo\/wp-includes\/images\/smilies\/simple-smile.png\" alt=\":)\" class=\"wp-smiley\" style=\"height: 1em; max-height: 1em;\" \/><\/li>\n <li>It&#8217;s about writing a game from scratch in 48 hours <em>and<\/em> <strong>having fun<\/strong>. (and maybe owls). I did have fun this LD, but I also stressed out a little bit too much for something that was supposed to be mostly fun. The power failures were putting me on edge .. even so, I&#8217;ve gotta relax and ease off on the coffee next time.<\/li>\n <\/ul>\n \n <p>Tags: <a href=\"http:\/\/ludumdare.com\/compo\/tag\/timelapse\/\" rel=\"tag\">timelapse<\/a><\/p>","time":"August 11th, 2008 2:11 am","title":"Timelapse"}