https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/40/intenseaty
^Quick link for those who want to skip the post thought and just want to game.
Hello fellas. It has been a week (and 2 days) since Ludum Dare 40 started its course. For someone who attempted Ludum Dare the first time after many procrastination and after getting a good team of enthusiasts, it is only proper to close this project with a reflection of what went well and what can be done better.
We started our team with 3 artists and 4 programmers. If one thing that I felt lucky with, it is how each and every developer in the team has a unique forte well suited in their own modules. In my opinion, to make the best use of 2D game art would be to have artists who do well in character sprites, intractable UI's, and breath-taking backgrounds; and it just happens these 3 artists already have each of their own specialty to handle the specific task.
As for the programmers, I would categorize the tasks in two halves : The visible (UI,backgrounds,animation,particle systems,audio) and the invisible (character movements,mob spawning,bullet collision,highscores,anything that requires behind calculations). It would be the best if a team can split themselves to settle the two stuffs in balance, for unable to achieve one side of the system may cause the other side to lose the potential to shine better (in the case of intenSEAty, should the character movements doesn't have a responding particle system to emit, it may feel unresponsive; should the enemies keep spawning at the same rate without an improved mob spawning system, it may feel repetitive), and thus we split ourselves to 2-2 to work on these modules within 24 hours.
^That's the programmer's task. In simple caption, 2 on the left will work on the visible stuffs(Robert worked on the audio, Neo worked on the UI), 2 on the right will work on the invisible stuffs(TanKY worked on the spawning mobs, Casper worked on the player movement).
^If you have learned Mind Mapping before, it helps a lot when you are dealing with pseudocodes and flowcharts before creating them.
While all the good stuff have been said about the process of developing, there are of course some lessons well learned for my own throughout the process:
Appreciate the 48 hours before all time is spent
If Ludum Dare is like a board game and us developers are move pieces/tokens where we have our own hand of buffs and debuffs, I would say my greatest debuff this session would be that I would dwell myself too much of the past all over a small mistake.
Compared to other experience I had during game jams such as Global Game Jam and local ones, emotional setback was never one of the affecting factors throughout the game jam. As of recent turn of events however, this Ludum Dare challenged me to balanced my grip of work along with my grip of sanity.
For the first 24 hours, I did the most minimal contribution to help out the team, for I felt like spending time going to shopping malls before I start finding audio for the game. Some can argue I may be finding materials/extra ideas before actually working on it, however if what I have experienced can form a theory with, it would be the 48 hours would be better off experimenting on builds rather than keep making ideas that would have not enough time to be materialized for feedback purposes, and thus every second spent on finding more extra ideas after the team have locked down on the main mechanic would be another second wasted on making it work and acceptable to your own expectations.
Slowly and slowly I was consumed by my past thoughts and I felt like not even bother helping out at all, since all and all I have nothing much to lose should I chose to do so. It's fine if you choose to think that way, for at the end of the day, should you felt you aren't ready for Ludum Dare, there is no must to complete a game. That's me for the past 5 Ludum Dares as I have decided to let it go because I had no team and I had no commitments to answer for. It's fine.
However, perhaps somewhere deep in your heart, you would question yourself, why would you choose to join Ludum Dare from the beginning? Is it because you are excited to create one feature you find no one else have thought of? Is it because you had thought of a scalable system that your team can make a procedural generation based game within first 12 hours of the game jam? Or is it because you want to draw out to your hearts content on your love for the sea creatures?
Whatever that first brought you in Ludum Dare, it probably will be one of those BECAUSE that will answer most of your WHY questions along the way. Down the 48 hours we sometimes would face a point of "WHY do I want to extend myself to work over a game jam when I have day job to deal with?" "WHY am I working with a bunch of hard people that can't follow simple instructions?" "WHY am I doing item pooling when I could have hard coded it for the sake of this game jam?". By remembering the reason that brought you in the first place, it would help you to steel yourself against the doubts you will face for the game jams especially for the first timers, as the journey to a thousand miles road always start with a first step.
By remembering why I opted in to work with 6 others together, I attempted to work back what I have missed at the last 24 hours. For every breakthrough I made in coding, the feeling of accomplishments be it big or small slowly overwrite my insecurities. All these breakthroughs eventually lead to one main path : The Final Product.
Perhaps I was happy that the game turned out to be very beautiful and nicely done by the end of the crunch, and looking back, I am happy that I chose to change my thought and decided to give it a full run as much as I can.
That said, I can't say the stories of 6 other individuals who may have their own post jam comments to share, but I can be sure to say for myself that with the right mindset, you will achieve breakthroughs that no man can do it for you.
^Do find how to get this fish around. For what we know only one third of the players actually found out this fish throughout this whole week. After all, it is the interaction that plays the main role in this game (as well as the main villain, you will know why).
Edit : That said, I have forgotten to add the game link for those who are curious. So here's an edit with the link attached.
https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/40/intenseaty
