Why a premortem? Well, its at this stage in the competition that I can acknowledge that I am waaay too far behind to catch-up. Considering that finals week is coming up, its a this point I decide to throw in the hat and focus on that.
I attempted to make a minimalist strategy game. Using node based movement, and rock, paper, scissors style combat mechanics. And for the most part it worked. The game logic works, and I get the feedback that I wanted out my console. So what’s wrong? Well, I’m a derp and I can’t use Flixel and AS3. I have difficulty rendering things when I need them too, and passing around the right data types in AS3. Also, BACK UP YOUR DATA.
So what went right?
– Solid Concept. Okay, so while I don’t want to toot my own horn here, I think the idea was great. I created a small board game version of the game (Via Vassal), and had a couple of my SCII playing friends try it and they LOVED it. As far as strategy games go, it was simple to implement; no overblown and useless mechanics and fairly simplistic data-structures made it for the most part easy to code.
– Flexible language In my CS class we program in C++ and Java, so we get very little flexibility. Since AS3 likes to do most of its checks in compile time, I got away with some pretty neat programming tricks that I would not have been able to do otherwise. I absolutely loved the fact that I could create an array that would contain more than one type of item.
-Familiar Graphics Tools. I love Photoshop, you love Photoshop, and Photoshop loves us. Years of experience with the program, has made it a super easy job to whip up quick stylized graphics for the game.
-Relaxation. On Friday, when the theme was announced instead of sitting around thinking about it. I went off got drunk, and played Cards Against Humanity with some friends. By the time I came back, I had a pretty decent idea of where I wanted to start, and then it was simply a matter of following my train of thought. This is a good contrast against my previous LD, where I would spend the first 12 hours coming up with and scrapping designs.
– I learned a lot. From organizational skills, to workflow, to programming tricks. In the past 48 hours I have picked up a lot of new skills that I’m very happy with. More so, this is the closest I have been to completing an LD game and I’m very excited for the next LD.
So what went wrong?
– I didn’t back up my data, and it happened. Not to all my data, but to %90 of my art assets. I was instantly cautious when I opened the folder, and about half of them weren’t displaying their preview in windows explorer. Its a shame, because I pushed my self for about 5 hours to get them finished last night only to wake up in the morning to find them gone. Oh well, at least it happened during LD and not a commissioned project. Now I know better.
– Rusty language + unfamiliar framework = Spaghetti code. I used to be pretty proficient with AS3, like like 3+ years ago. After not touching it for forever, I have seem to have lost my edge. Combined with the fact that this was my first time really using Flixel rather than just pocking around with it, led to very messy code. I’m currently at about 600 lines of code, and I can think of way to cut that down to about 400. But due to time constraints I decided to push on (polish later), and in the end caused me more harm then good since attempting to fix errors with an unfamiliar framework and horribly messy code led to a lot of wasted time.
– This is mostly a derivation of the previous issue. But, I’m not the best AI programmer. What I underestimated was the fact that in order to make this game any decent, I would have to pretty at least a passable AI. However, combined with spaghetti code, I realized that my programming was nowhere near modular enough to accommodate that. Maybe next time, I will write the AI (Or at least the pseudo code) first, and then build the rest of mechanics in a way that they’re already plugged into the AI.
Best of luck guys,
I’ll see you next LD.
