Woke up before 6:00 local time (that’s 3 hours after the start of the compo), checked the theme. At first somehwat reluctant, but got enthousiastic of an idea pretty quickly. Worked out a design first. Then the (imaginary) orange warning light going off in my mind –I had been ignoring– became too pressing, and I started to check if there’s a (too) similar game out there. Turns out there is, at least when it concerns the basic idea; Medusa turning opponents into statues: Medusa’s Lament

Wouldn’t have been too much of a problem, but it was also a compo game (in 2007)…

Giving myself one-and-a-half hours to either decide to press on anyway (with a disclaimer added in front of the game) or come up with a new design. What to do, what to do…

After being petrified that my medusa idea (see figure 1) wasn’t gorgon to work out (for being too derivative), I had to come up with another idea.
Figure 1:

Let’s see what I can remember from yesterday after that…

I think I spend all day developing this pasta:

And some way through I think I ate a half(?)-finished physics-based puzzler:

… or y’know, possibly the other way around, maybe.

P.S. I have no idea either why I choose to create an image that says ‘no data’ rather than an actual usable background. It was still early, so I can’t even use the ‘sleep deprivation’ excuse.

Does anyone else’s browser select the 11th page (…&start=240) of entries instead of the 2nd, when trying to view the 2nd (…&start=24) page? When actually selecting the 11th page the same games show up, so it isn’t just the ‘current page in black’ UI element that gets confused.

(This only seems to affect the ‘view only Compo entries’ one, ‘All’ and ‘Jam only’ are fine…)

I’m using Chrome (Versie 42.0.2311.90 m) on Win7 (64bit).

(If no one else has noticed it, I probably should report this somehow…)

Hm, ok then. Aparently I wont let myself begin judging(1) the other games if I don’t write a post-mortem first. Heh… ‘post-mortem’ seems kind of apt when you consider the theme.
Without further ado:

What went wrong:

• Dithering with the theme for slightly too long.
  As I said before, my first thought was to make game about Medusa(5), since an ‘instant-statue-stare’ is definitely unconventional, after all.
  Then I found out someone else had the same basic idea a few years back.
  But other than that, the design was quite different!
  Mine would have been a top-down dealy with push-mechanics for mirrors and any now-permanently-petriefied Ancient Romans.
  Still wonder what would have happened if I didn’t check the idea online or just pushed through.
• Not playing with the theme long enough(4).
  I was just so glad I had thought of another workable idea(6) that I started working on it almost immediately.
  Even if I didn’t want to spend any longer on deciding the idea, I think I should have at least spend more time with the design after the idea.
  Also, the first idea was very simple to make, the second required physics (see another point below).
  Furthermore, seeing the end result, the theme may not be immediately obvious to everyone.
• Futzing around with reading levels from a file.
  I did get it to work, and in a time I’d normally consider very acceptable,
  but thinking about it now, it wasn’t nescesary.
  Also, I didn’t have time enough for the extra ‘load your own level text-file’, so the work isn’t even visible to the player!
  More than that, it cost time I could have spent on polish, or level design, wich are the important things this game (still) needs.
• I’m … not really happy with the end result. Oh, pleased to have finished what is technically a complete game, yes, absolutely.
  But to me it seems like it just barely passes ‘good enough to submit’.
  I don’t think there is much you could cut from the game without losing at least another catagory (I already decided to loose ‘audio’ and ‘mood’).
  (Well, the txt-based level load system maybe. But since that was already done on the first day, it doesn’t feel as if I could have cut it.)
• If you’ve got a library, then physics are very doable.
  It’s just a question of wheter you should try to implement it in a puzzler, since testing becomes a lot harder.
  Although my language of choice (LÖVE) has box2d (well known 2d-physics-lib.) built-in (used ‘underwater’ by LÖVE),
  I still wonder how much time I lost fiddling not only with a new language, but also it’s physics sub-system.
  All-in-all, I’m not sure how much time I lost because of this.
• Not being in a team? I can amuse myself on my own just fine most of the time,
  but not having anyone to play these ideas off on made me feel strangely lonely.
  Oddly this wouldn’t have been the case for a larger project I think?
  Though it had definite upsides; I could focus pretty well

What went right:

• There is a complete end result, as in, ‘actual, playable game’.
  Menu, three levels, sprites, sound, win-screen.
  In theory, it might be possible to have fun figuring out the puzzles
  (Well I wouldn’t have submitted it otherwise!)
• I had originlly planned to spend only the first day programming the basics, and the second day on art.
  It didn’t turn out that way (I had only about 7 hours left for the actual art in the end),
  but the constant pressure of ‘must hurry or can’t art’ kept some things nicely focussed.
• Taking the time to sleep and eat.
  I know from experience that taking away sleep-time does not work for me.
  I need my 8 (or in case of the last three nights, 6) hours of sleep!
• ‘Learning on the job’, then still being able to submit about two minutes before the dealine(3), even though I understand it’s … not exactly recommended to:
  • Jump into the compo instead of the jam for a first timer,
  • Let alone doing it with a language (LÖVE/lua) which you have, say, only used lightly for about one or two days before(8),
  • Or carefully picking out audio and visual tools, have no time during the warm-up weekend (or before that) to practice in them
    and then, dring the compo itself, not touching any of those and just using bog standard Windows Paint(2)
• Being a first time participant, I definitely ‘tried something new’ 😉
  (Well, also the language and some other stuff.)

I anyone still wants to have a go at it after reading all this, here it is.

0] Lua has… changed me. Since when did I start numbering things from ‘1’? My programers-licence will surely be revoked if I keep this up! 😉
1] I know there are 21 days, but I also know if I start thinking like that I’ll end up with no judged games one day before the deadline.
2] With a little help from The Gimp to create a translucent background for the sprites.
3] Ok, there was something called packaging hour, but it still felt good
4] That’s the opposite of the first point, but bear with me here!
5] It was going to be named either ‘Gaze of the Gorgon’ or ‘Petrified’. Now that I think about it, ‘Hold Still’ would have been funnier 😉
6] For the record, that is ‘create your own weapon out of parts, then hit ‘simulate’ to see it it actually hits the target(7)’.
7] Gah! I just figured out now I should have made one of those red-white-red circular targets instead of a box that says: ‘goal block’,
dang that would have made things clearer for the player.
8] … but I encountered no mayor hurdles or made bugs that had me held up for more than, say, 30 minutes. Maybe I got lucky?

Been laying half-awake last week at night. Maybe something to-do with work? Anyway… Now I’ve taken a day off to rest up before the main event, but if this hits again tonight or tomorrow, I’m toast. I need my sleep, dang-it!

Any of you have some tips or methods for dealing with this? The (awesome) keynote also mentions some, but I’ve never been a great napper. A lot of the time I need more time to ‘get up’ after a nap than the entire nap has taken 😉

Also: In. Come heck or wet floors*.

*) Not as much as an understatement as it seems, since I live on the fourth floor :-p

Ready for bed, but I’ve moslty just loose pieces to be assembled tomorrow.
I don’t mind

Did programming first last year (for LD#32), and then art … that became a frantic mess towards the end to get some, any art ready.
Not this year. (But I still didn’t have my pipeline or basecode ready dangit…)

The results of todays work are … satisfactory.
Here is the art I’m most proud of, it may not look like much to the trained (or, errr, untrained really) eye, but it’s a step up from last time for sure!

Coding in ‘dry’ C++ and SDL again … but this time taking some base code with me (scrapping everything that had to do with the actual game from the last time).
So technically I kept my promise to myself and didn’t start again with a new and difficult engine?

A sneak peak:

The artifacts don’t show up in the ‘actual’ game … thank goodness

Mega Mecha Control Room! 😀

So many features left undone … ah well, it has a nice feel and you can see what I was going for

zzzzz

Hey … uh … everyone, I guess

So, a commenter suggested I change the thumbnail of my game to attract more potential commenters, and I have to admit the current one is a little … uninspired shall we say 😉

That got me thinking. How do people browse the set of thumbnails anyway?

Personally+, sure, I seek out some games that seem interesting to me, but most I rate come from either the ‘default’++ setting from this site or ‘Feedback Friends’+++.
So, if a lot of other people do this as well, surely cool thumbnails don’t matter that much right? They’re very nice of course, and I shouldn’t ignore that, but still…

To make a long story somewhat sorter, my question to the community at large++++ would be:
Currently, the thumbnail of my game is shows up like this:

If I where to change it into something like this (by swapping the first & second screenies):

Would you sooner click the second one?

Also; do things like these feel cynical to you? Both this post and making the proposed change.
[ Or how about linking to my game page, like this 😉 ]

— footnotes—

(+) Not judging other styles … of judging.
(++) That prioritizes the coolness rating.
(+++) … and also Resque ____ towards the end, of course
(++++) That means you, dear reader! 😉

We may’ve been told that this old site is held together by duct-tape, COBOL, raw willpower and magical elves way past their retirement age. It’s only right that things get replaced so now and then. The new site is looking good too! Markdown is a nice way to write posts, etc., etc.

… but it still feels a bit wrong to let it pass without comment.
So here I am, commenting.

Well, that’s a bit heavy. All I wanted to was leave a link between my old and new user accounts, since the migration may take a while, and I’ve opted for a new user name on the new site (still the same email, so it’ll get linked eventually…)

So, I’m @remco on the new site. My current game (for LD#38) is ‘liftoff’. And, just like the first game I posted on this site, it has an unintentionally confusing help screen 😉