As this was my first Ludum Dare, this is my first Post-Mortem, So I hope I cover everything that people generally cover in this! ^_^ I was debating if I should even do one of these but I figure why not, right? So here goes.

Oh and here’s a timelapse if you’re interested!

What went wrong:

• Computer Crashes
• Software Crashes
• Choosing a genre that I don’t enjoy playing

What went right:

• Completed the game
• Fully functional
• Submitted before the deadline

Details of the Weekend:
So usually I miss ludum dare by a few weeks or sometimes just a few days, but this time I learned the date two weeks ahead of time, and posted notes and reminders to myself all over the place so I wouldn’t forget. At first I was excited, and warming up with my tools, and learning new tools just in case I decided to use them. Then as it got closer the wait got excruciating, I didn’t want to practice anymore I just wanted to get the theme and make something awesome. 😀 Well anyways the waiting was painful, but once the theme was announced I felt great!

I was pleasantly surprised how smoothly the weekend went. I started with a pretty strict time schedule, and I prepared meals ahead of time, because I figured it would be a mad dash and non-stop working once it started. But I was incredibly wrong. Perhaps that was because I had a pretty low bar to reach, my goal wasn’t to make a masterpiece, but to make something fully functional within the time frame. It would ideally have audio and graphics and solid gameplay. I didn’t really care if it was a great game, just that it was complete, and I must say I feel like I accomplished that pretty well.

I only allowed myself an hour and a half for planning and brain storming, because I wanted to have tons of time to work on the first night. The goal being to have some prototype ready before I went to sleep on night 1. That went well, and by the middle of Saturday I had pretty much finished most of the gameplay aspects and mainly had level design, graphics and audio remaining. I felt like I was doing well. Then I lost a lot of my motivation, I spent quite a few hours on Saturday evening watching streamers and I even watched a movie with my roommates.

When I got back to work, I did the basic audio loop for the game, and decided to leave the graphics as simple colors for multiple reasons, I didn’t know what else to make it, and the minimalism seemed to fit for the style of game I was making.  Once that was done I slacked off again, returning to Twitch to check in on the progress some streamers were making.

I’m pretty sure I know why I slacked off so much, and at one point I even considered not finishing at all. It’s simple really, I chose to make a platformer, knowing that I don’t like playing platformers. I like them as games, but I’m terrible at them so once the functionality was implemented, and I was working on the level design I quickly got frustrated having to play test them constantly.

I didn’t get the level design finished until an hour or so before the deadline, and I ended up going with endless generation from premade modules rather than the initial idea of having completable levels. I decided this because I was having trouble coming up with ideas for the levels, and I didn’t think I had time for true procedural generation. Instead I just made 10 segments that the game randomly chooses from as the player progresses. It’s not the best, but each segment it completable and they’re long enough that you’re not likely to survive to see all 10. ^_^

Anyways I feel like I succeeded in my initial goal but I feel like I didn’t have enough faith in myself. I feel like I took the easy way out when I could have challenged myself to make something more complicated. Regardless though I’m glad I participated and I now have an idea for how to approach the next one.

Tags: compo timelapse, final timelapse, ld34, post-mortem, postmortem