Only the voting remains, and if you haven’t had a chance too, go check out my game Curse in the Depths. It was a lot of fun to make and I’m loving all the feedback i’m getting.

The Good

Time Management – Time is always one of the hardest things to deal with. It’s the main challenge. My time management was much better then my previous LDs I was organized and knew what I was doing the moment I had an idea.

Work Habits – This LD I prepared better for the long work hours by making sure I had plenty of water and soda handy so I didn’t need to take so many breaks and it made focusing easier

Breaks – This one was HUGE because the problem is what kind of breaks I would take, this time I took slightly longer breaks then previous LDs but I also did activities that were very stress free and didn’t require thought. Video game breaks, TV, and Movies, or YouTube were replaced with Walks, Showers, and Naps, overall I felt more refreshed when I came back to working on the code.

The Bad

Library Choice – Slick2D I have used multiple times, and I am very familiar with the inner workings. My Problem was that I made the Decision early to not use JBox2D making my collision and combat much harder to program later in the development cycle. This was mostly due to not fully understanding JBox2D, but hindsight is 20/20 and I realize now that I might have been better off using it.

Sleeping – I overslept on Sunday due to overworking on saturday(Sat@4AM to Sun@3AM with an hour long nap in between) and missed around 4 or 5 hours that I had planned a lot of time for artwork. This lead me to only be able to finish the background, the sprite and the HUD in the 2 hours I had left. This meant less content then I had originally anticipated, another enemy and 2 more attacks were in the works but they were left unfinished as I realized I had more pressing features to figure out.

The Ugly

Rewriting – I have spent the last week or so going over most of the engine and figuring out how to use JBox2D. We are currently deciding exactly where to go(Continue with Java, port to C++ for better cross compatability, what libraries to use, etc.)

Overall my 3rd Experience with LD has gone pretty smooth, and I am so happy with the outcome of the game that I am going to continue work on it, and the way it is going, it will see the light of day as a fully fledged indie game!

Tags: post-mortem, postmortem