What went right:<\/p>\n
- \n
- Pre-planning and concept.<\/li>\n
- Simple screens and menus.<\/li>\n
- I’m a web developer so I did the web. But I wanted to stay away from stereo-typical web gamedev techniques: no 3D or canvas, just the DOM.<\/li>\n
- Sending\u00a0optimization\u00a0considerations to the bit bucket.<\/li>\n
- Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com<\/a>) makes stunningly-awesome and evocative music<\/em>. And shares it. =D \u00a0Originally I’d planned to add to my collection<\/a> but after passing the 48hr mark… \u00a0Hell yeah.<\/li>\n
- Multiple views of the same objects (cards) worked well.<\/li>\n
- The “10 second” theme did not present any real difficulty; when the extended mechanics are in place, it should improve the value of Scene cards.<\/li>\n
- It’s entirely possible to play The Deep Dark without<\/em>\u00a0a computer. \u00a0Of course, you’ll currently need to print your own cards.<\/li>\n <\/ul>\n
What went wrong:<\/p>\n
- \n
- Pre-planning\u00a0focused on the scene animation area of the engine; when it came time to implement, it was the first thing\u00a0to break…\u00a0The nested resumable timers sounded like a good idea but weren’t and forced a costly refactor about halfway through day 1.<\/li>\n
- Hurried code caused a really nasty chain reaction of bugs on day 2… the more it got fixed the further it broke. What a pain<\/em> and the root cause was a\u00a0ridiculous, stupid-stupid error.<\/li>\n
- I included schema for extended mechanics too early; should have waited until the core mechanic was complete.<\/li>\n
- I completely underestimated the time to produce card images: started in Inkscape and ended up with paper and a marker.<\/li>\n <\/ul>\n
And as a result…<\/p>\n
- \n
- scene animations didn’t happen at all; the engine can place other cards within the displayed scene but the code is a steaming pile of awful.<\/li>\n
- extended mechanics never happened. Examples: elemental affinities\u00a0(earth\/air\/water\/fire\/spirit), special items & talismans,\u00a0gold\/rupees,\u00a0inventory, the evil-eye and other mini-games (originally central to the concept).<\/li>\n
- I missed the compo (48 hour) submission deadline. A buggy, minimum playable version was ready but there were only 5 cards (2 scenes, 2 encounters and an ally).<\/li>\n <\/ul>\n
What’s coming:<\/p>\n
- \n
- I’m sold on the concept and will be creating a proper sequel – albeit without the time pressure.
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<\/li>\n - Using my TicTacToe for OUYA<\/a> demo, I intend to release the sequel on OUYA at the same time as the web. \u00a0The wife tells me to make it playable on Facebook so that’s a possibility too. \ud83d\ude09<\/li>\n <\/ul>\n
Thank you all for this pleasantly horrifying experience.<\/p>\n
\/EOF<\/p>\n
Edit: Add link to The Deep Dark<\/a>\u00a0entry.<\/p>","time":"August 27th, 2013 12:11 pm","title":"The Deep Dark: A Postmortem"}
- I’m sold on the concept and will be creating a proper sequel – albeit without the time pressure.