LD30 was my 3rd jam only, my 2nd Ludum Dare, and my 1st one in solo. Just for the context, a bit of shameless self-promotion:

1. Choppy Fox for the Flappy Jam
2. From the Under for Ludum Dare #29 with RadStar
3. Delta Spaceline for Ludum Dare #30

• I used external assets, what’s forbidden by the compo rules. I discovered that when about to post at the compo deadline. When ticking the ‘jam’ box in the post form, I cancelled my post…
• …and then actually went for the jam to give myself 72h cause 48h were not enough for me. My game wasn pointless therefore uninteresting at the jam deadline. It lacked 2 of the 3 key features: there was trading goods, but weren’t neither passengers nor 10,000 credit-objective.
• I’m not sure Haxeflixel actually made me save some time. I’d have needed a lib, not a framework.
• A lot of UI, no prior design, so I wasted a lot of time positioning things.
• I almost gave up at the middle of day #2 because of the pointlessness of the game, and because of UI bugs due to Haxeflixel…

     
Sprites by Arachne
Music Space Machine A by Kevin MacLeod

• …but since I’m stubborn, I insisted, at least not to feel ashame. I quickly fixed the bugs thanks to a refactoring I had actually nearly completed.
• Having 1 more day game me time to add the 2 more key features I spoke of above. I then found an interest in playing my game when I noticed I could lose some time when testing! My very critical wife tested it, and after a few minutes of incomprehension, understood the concept and approved it!
• This ‘What went right’ section seems a bit short, but I am globally satisfied by both process and result, and I learnt a lot during this jam. I generally enjoy those intense work-session, who can be very productive rewarding.

• I’ll post Delta Spaceline on various portals to have more feedback. I need to work on the proportion, 960×480 doesn’t fit, at least on Kongregate.
• If feedback’s positive, I could go for some more features:
• more goods
• energy for the ship could be a good (it was at the beginning, but I had to simplify)
• bounty hunting (a planet ask you to go to another planet to capture a criminal to bring him back, it would cost weapons, but offers good rewards)
• ship upgrades (more cargo, engine more efficient)

• More design at the beginning. Design UI could help conceptualize.
• Then get a fully playable prototype asap, and keep UI and graphics for the end.
• Get more feedback sooner.
• No use of Haxeflixel, or only some side-feature, not the framework in itself. I wanted to experiment Phaser, but got to check if it can be used as a lib only.
• No waste of time on graphics. Tiny sprites. Details only at the end.