{"assets":[{"original":"http:\/\/www.ludumdare.com\/compo\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/05\/flock-300x236.png","local":"\/data\/posts\/2011\/05\/b734de5dec717cd99b390d9db66acd94.png"}],"author_link":"author\/phaed\/","author_name":"phaed","cat":"LD #20 - It's Dangerous to go Alone! Take This!","categories":["LD #20 - It's Dangerous to go Alone! Take This!"],"comments":[],"epoch":1304351220,"event":"LD20","likes":5,"metadata":{"p_key":"77370","p_author":"phaed","p_authorkey":"0","p_urlkey":"286221","p_title":"Get the flock out! \u2013 post mortem","p_cat":"LD #20 - It's Dangerous to go Alone! Take This!","p_event":"LD20","p_time":"1304351220","p_likes":"5","p_comments":"0","p_status":"WAYBACK","us_key":null,"us_name":null,"us_username":null,"event_start":"1304035200","event_key":"6","event_name":"LD20"},"source_url":"2011\/05\/02\/get-the-flock-out-post-mortem\/","text":"

Get the flock out!<\/a><\/p>\n

So yeah, first LD.\u00a0 and I survived!\u00a0 Woo!\u00a0 48h to create a game is certainly even a bit more intense than I expected.\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

What went right:<\/strong><\/p>\n

I finished a game \u2013 more or less.\u00a0 I certainly wanted lots more stuff to go into the game, but given the time constraint, I felt like I was able to prioritize.<\/p>\n

Monocle<\/a> is a pretty great framework.\u00a0 It simplifies a lot of the grunt work of building a game, but doesn\u2019t get in your way.\u00a0 The abstractions are natural and flexible.\u00a0 The documentation is still very in progress or missing, but the code is easy to read, and the examples do a great job of documenting how to use the framework as well as some basic game algorithms.<\/p>\n

C++ didn\u2019t kill me.\u00a0 This was some of the first coding in C++ (or any statically typed language) that I\u2019ve done in years and years, and it really wasn\u2019t that bad.<\/p>\n

Saturday night, I was figuring out how to go from \u201ctoy\u201d to \u201cgame.\u201d\u00a0 I had some game ideas together, but I just wasn\u2019t feeling good about the game.\u00a0 In a non-crunch environment, it was the kind of feeling that would make drop the project and go watch Doctor Who.\u00a0 I stepped back and thought about what piece of my game idea I liked \u2013 the ridiculous personality of the sheep \u2013 and focused on that.\u00a0 It let me do informed design and better prioritize what do do with the remaining time.<\/p>\n

Recording your friends making sheep noises is fun.<\/p>\n

Playtesting!\u00a0 I actually got to watch a person or 2 play the game.\u00a0 It really helps you realize when things are unpolished and really need to be fixed.<\/p>\n

What went wrong:<\/strong><\/p>\n

Bugs.\u00a0 A few bugs definitely made it into the final version that I maybe could have caught if I\u2019d been able to play the game more than once in its final form.\u00a0 Not bad for a first run though.<\/p>\n

Do it the simple way.\u00a0 It\u2019s way too easy for me to want to tackle a difficult design challenge.\u00a0 Early on, I implemented a boids-style wander algorithm for the sheep.\u00a0 It took a couple hours to get working and integrated, and it looked awful.\u00a0 Sheep don\u2019t move like birds.\u00a0 Late Saturday, I tried to integrate entity spawners into Monocle\u2019s XML-based map system by overloading some map loading code.\u00a0 Although there could be some merit to that approach, this was way too complicated for a weekend competition and required way too much understanding of a complex system for being sleep deprived.<\/p>\n

Environment.\u00a0 LD seemed like a fun excuse to have an \u201cart party.\u201d\u00a0 I was in a space with people designing a puppet theater piece, sewing a cartoon quilt, making monsters out of old sweaters, and building an accordion.\u00a0 While this was fun, it was not very helpful for deep thought for code and game design.<\/p>\n

Lessons for next time:<\/strong><\/p>\n

No really, sleep.\u00a0 I wasted probably 4 hours early Sunday morning trying to work on things and definitely making things worse.\u00a0 I would have been way better off going to sleep and being fresher on Sunday.<\/p>\n

So yeah.\u00a0 Thanks for a great weekend, all.<\/p>","time":"May 2nd, 2011 3:47 pm","title":"Get the flock out! \u2013 post mortem","title_was_empty":false}