![\"39055-shot0-1450060290.png-eq-900-500\"](\"http://ludumdare.com/compo/wp-content/uploads/2015/12/39055-shot0-1450060290.png-eq-900-500-550x412.png\")
Congratulations on another great Ludum Dare, everybody. I’ve been having an absolute blast playing through the mountain of games.
\nI’ve never actually written a post-mortem for a Ludum Dare entry before, but figured that for my fourth go-around I probably should. As such, here is the post-mortem for my entry, Xtreme Crop Duster Simulator ’82.
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As mentioned above, this is my fourth Ludum Dare entry (having previously participated in LD30-32, taking LD33 off due to a family commitment.)Â However, this was my first time making it in for the compo deadline. I used my usual tools – Unity/C#, etc – with the exception that I used Photoshop instead of GIMP this time around (as I finally shelled out for a subscription) and gave Chiptone a spin for sound effects, which worked very nicely.
\nIf you’re interested in a more detailed play-by-play of the weekend, it follows below the break. Otherwise, why not give the game a try and let me know what you think?
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With the themes revealed, the first thing to do was some brainstorming – I typically use XMind for that, as it’s a good way to get ideas down in a quick and dirty fashion with some structure to it. The mind-map ended up looking like this:
\n ![\"mindmap\"](\"http://ludumdare.com/compo/wp-content/uploads/2015/12/mindmap.png\")
With none of those ideas greatly appealing to me, by 11pm I had started in on the crop duster idea. I wasn’t thrilled about anything I had, but that was the best one on the list, so off I went. First thing was a single airplane sprite, and a controller to let it fly around – at this point, it just moved at a constant speed in the direction it was facing.
\n![\"\"](\"http://ludumdare.com/compo/wp-content/uploads/2015/12/friday-300x208.png\")
How things looked at the end of Friday night
I knew from the first that I was going to use a retro graphics style, as I had done in my previous LD entries Smugglers! and Red Threat, so started with a 4-colour CGA palette. One thing that left me dissatisfied about those two games is that they didn’t compensate for the non-square pixels of older systems, so I wanted to find a way to do that in Unity. I hacked together a dirty two-camera setup which came close, and left it for the night. After that, feeling limited by the 4-colour palette, I made the choice to go to a Commodore 64-style 16 colour palette, drew the 8 sprites for the different airplane angles, and called it a night. My last commit clocked in at 2:41 AM.
\nWhen I went to bed, I wasn’t thrilled about the idea for the game – I was fully prepared to wake up in the morning with a better idea, and scrap everything. That didn’t happen, as it turned out.
\nSaturday morning, I woke up around 10am feeling somewhat sleep-deprived, and got right down to work. The day was a real flurry of activity, so I’ll just summarize it in point-form:
\n![\"End](\"http://ludumdare.com/compo/wp-content/uploads/2015/12/saturday-300x246.png\")
End of Saturday night – looks a lot like the finished product.
Even at this point, I was having doubts about my idea, but feeling very good about the scope of what I’d taken on and my ability to complete it for the compo. In my past three tries at Ludum Dare, I’d aimed at the compo each time but taken on too much, so my games were only finished in time for the jam. This time, I put the project to bed for the night with a clear vision of what was required to finish, and a positive feeling that I would be able to finish in time for the 9pm deadline.
\nMy final commit went in at 3:29AM, as I went to sleep with visions of the finished game in my head.
\nIf Friday was a sprint, Saturday was a marathon, and Sunday was a mad dash. My band typically rehearses on Sundays for a few hours, and Ludum Dare weekend is no exception, so for most of the day I had that looming over my head – being away from the project for two hours in the final stretch of the compo was not something I looked forward to. On top of that, sleep deprivation started to catch up to me – while I aimed to be awake at 9 and get right down to work, I actually slept in to almost 11.
\nThankfully, none of this was actually a problem, and while I didn’t feel good about my prospects when I left the house for the practice, taking the time off really let me focus on what was actually left and I came back with less than three hours to finish, but with confidence that I’d be able to do so.
\nThe list of things I did on Sunday is a bit smaller, because I only had 10 hours to work less the two hours I was away. Before the rehearsal:
\nAnd after the rehearsal:
\nIf you want to see what the game looked like at the end of Sunday, you’re in luck – it’s right here on the Ludum Dare website!
\n \nTags: compo, ld34, post-mortem, postmortem, unity
", "time": "December 19th, 2015 6:41 pm", "title": "Xtreme Crop Duster Simulator ’82 – A Post-Mortem"}