Having written this section last, I realize it may look like I don't like my finished product. Not true! Sure, I had some hiccups here and there, but overall I think it was a success!
Considering this was a jam project and I'm thouasands of miles away from my home and work station, I'm pleased with how this turned out. Everyone has to start somewhere and thankfully this wansn't a flop!
With that said, let's get into this post-mortem:
Good - Time Management
I made a schedule and (mostly) stuck to it. Almost all of my estimates for time were accurate and I was pretty comfortable time-wise with the jam. (Aside from sound and build time.) I ended up calling people back home for a combined time of about 2 hours. I would say I could have called less, but they provided the breaks I needed here and there and were something that kept me hyped throughout the whole event.
Good - Theme
It's impossible to play through without sacrificing something. Even if you don't cause any Conflicts or if you resolved them all, you still didn't save all the people on the other track. The theme is pretty deeply routed in this entry.
Good - Writing
I spent my work commute writing most of the Conflicts and DialogEngine entries. I was happy I got to throw in some easter eggs in the game and give the game the mood I wanted through dialogue.
Could be better - Art
I'm by no means an artist, so I'm not super critical about this one. The overall look of the game is inspired by the British Tube system and their graphic design. Without spending a huge amount of time, I tried to create something that mimicked the minimalist design of the the London underground. I don't think I failed completely, but there are some noticable problems. (Bow Wow is a human. But he's a dog. ????)
Could be better - Sound
I apologize to anyone that has already played and had their computer's volume in double-digits. Your ears may still be ringing.
* No volume controls.
I didn't have time to implement a volume controller into the game and I was testing with my system volume at maybe 7. This cause the end result to be a very loud game. If you decide to try it, please turn down the volume for safety's sake!
- It's not my music!
Since I wasn't doing this with access to my regular soft/hardware, the time I left for making music ended up being too short to do anything meaningful. I did a quick search for music that I thought would match the tense mood of the game and used the extra time to add the News Reel feature.
Nitpicking - Programming
Public vs. Private
Namely, for the sake of time, I made a lot of things public that sound have been private. Which, from a runtime perspective makes no difference. Looking over the finished product however, it's all just... very public.
Changing my naming convention half-way through.
I did that! *facepalm* I don't know what I was thinking when I first started writing stuff. Halfway through the jam, I spent over an hour refactoring because parts of the code was difficult to read. But I didn't refactor all of it so it's a weird mix of 'mPrivateCounter' and 'mPrivateCount'. Lesson for next time: Refactor _after the jam, not during it. (Duh!)
Could be better - Design
Rapid-fire rounds!
After sooooooo many tests for different game components, I decided 15 seconds was long enough for each round. Since there are potentially up to 6 people to review and you need to make a decision based on what you've seen, this is just not enough time.
How do I play?
My very first bit of feedback was a comment that basically said "Dude, how do I play your game?" This was super useful to hear and I quickly added a note to the 'Controls' section of the submission. He/She wasn't the only person to mention this and it taught me a valuable lesson in UI-Design. So thank you NAME and others who made similar comments on Twitch for the help!
Colliders, man. Whatcha gonna do?
For the life of me, I couldn't size the colliders on the track victims. Ultimately I just told people to hover near the top-left of the sprite because I knew it would be present somewhere near there.
Engine Crashes
I had 2 big crashes from the infamous kMaxCallBackStack error that cost me an hour each time they ocurred. I couldn't do anything about it aside from using a different version of Unity, but I figured I'd stick with the devils I know in 2018.2.4f rather than brave the unknown in
Conclusion
Overall, I'm pleased with how it turned out. I learned plenty of stuff for the next time around. I played it safe this time by choosing 2D instead of experimenting with 3D. (Look out LD 44!)
If you find time, give the game a shot. As you saw above, rounds are quite short and there's only 5 per game.
