{"author_name":"Evannex","cat":"LD #34","comments":[{"author_name":"oz2mura","time":"December 19, 2015 11:37 pm","epoch":1450586220,"text":"Well said! Having participated and completed at all I believe is the most important part, builds more faith in yourself. Can&#8217;t wait to see what you make next time, hopefully a genre you enjoy. \ud83d\ude00 and I wouldn&#8217;t say it&#8217;s taking the easy way out, just resourceful problem solving, to keep our sanity.","spam":"N"}],"epoch":1450583700,"likes":2,"metadata":{"p_key":"9495","p_author":"Evannex","p_authorkey":"54379","p_urlkey":"44713","p_title":"My First Post-Mortem \u2013 Little Big Dash","p_cat":"LD #34","p_event":"LD34","p_time":"1450583700","p_likes":"2","p_comments":"1","p_status":"UPD5","us_key":"54379","us_name":"Evannex","us_username":"\/author\/evannex\/","event_start":"1449792000","event_key":"31","event_name":"LD34"},"text":"<p>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! ^_^\u00a0I was debating if I should even do one of these but I figure why not, right? So here goes.<\/p>\n <p>Oh and here&#8217;s a timelapse if you&#8217;re interested!<\/p>\n <p><iframe width=\"500\" height=\"281\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/gbpY-yz3vTc?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n <p><strong>What went wrong:<\/strong><\/p>\n <ul>\n <li>Computer Crashes<\/li>\n <li>Software Crashes<\/li>\n <li>Choosing a genre that I don&#8217;t enjoy playing<\/li>\n <\/ul>\n <p><strong><br \/>\n What went right:<br \/>\n <\/strong><\/p>\n <ul>\n <li>Completed the game<\/li>\n <li>Fully functional<\/li>\n <li>Submitted before the deadline<\/li>\n <\/ul>\n <p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n <p><strong>Details of the Weekend:<br \/>\n <\/strong>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&#8217;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&#8217;t want to practice anymore I just wanted to get the theme and make something awesome. \ud83d\ude00 Well anyways the waiting was painful, but once the theme was announced I felt great!<\/p>\n <p>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&#8217;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&#8217;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.<\/p>\n <p>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.<\/p>\n <p>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&#8217;t know what else to make it, and the minimalism seemed to fit for the style of game I was making. \u00a0Once that was done I slacked off again, returning to Twitch to check in on the progress some streamers were making.<\/p>\n <p>I&#8217;m pretty sure I know why I slacked off so much, and at one point I even considered not finishing at all. It&#8217;s simple really, I chose to make a platformer, knowing that I don&#8217;t like playing platformers. I like them as games, but I&#8217;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.<\/p>\n <p>I didn&#8217;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&#8217;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&#8217;s not the best, but each segment it completable and they&#8217;re long enough that you&#8217;re not likely to survive to see all 10. ^_^<\/p>\n <p>Anyways I feel like I succeeded in my initial goal but I feel like I didn&#8217;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&#8217;m glad I participated and I now have an idea for how to approach the next one.<\/p>\n <p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n \n <p>Tags: <a href=\"http:\/\/ludumdare.com\/compo\/tag\/compo-timelapse\/\" rel=\"tag\">compo timelapse<\/a>, <a href=\"http:\/\/ludumdare.com\/compo\/tag\/final-timelapse\/\" rel=\"tag\">final timelapse<\/a>, <a href=\"http:\/\/ludumdare.com\/compo\/tag\/ld34\/\" rel=\"tag\">ld34<\/a>, <a href=\"http:\/\/ludumdare.com\/compo\/tag\/post-mortem\/\" rel=\"tag\">post-mortem<\/a>, <a href=\"http:\/\/ludumdare.com\/compo\/tag\/postmortem\/\" rel=\"tag\">postmortem<\/a><\/p>","time":"December 19th, 2015 10:55 pm","title":"My First Post-Mortem \u2013 Little Big Dash"}