{"author_name":"Milo","cat":"LD #25","comments":[],"epoch":1355945460,"likes":2,"metadata":{"p_key":"47444","p_author":"Milo","p_authorkey":"2934","p_urlkey":"83108","p_title":"Power Grab: Post-mortem","p_cat":"LD #25","p_event":"LD25","p_time":"1355945460","p_likes":"2","p_comments":"0","p_status":"UPD5","us_key":"2934","us_name":"Milo","us_username":"milo","event_start":"1355443200","event_key":"14","event_name":"LD25"},"text":"<p>In this, my 6th Ludum Dare, I had yet another fairly unique experience, encountering both new and old challenges and successes:<\/p>\n <p><strong>(Repeatable) Stuff That Went Well<\/strong><\/p>\n <ul>\n <li>My code was organized. In the past, I&#8217;ve written all the code for the game into the main function. This made it difficult to have more than one level and made it painful to add, for instance, a starting screen. In general, it let me make more content than usual.<\/li>\n <li>I got feedback from people (well, one person), then implemented it. I did this early, leaving me time to do a good job implementing it and still leaving me a whole day for assets. The comment really helped me though, giving me an idea of what would make my game fun.<\/li>\n <li>I left a lot of time to make assets after finishing the game. I spent the second day solely on assets.<\/li>\n <li>Based on my own playing of the game, I refined the balancing of the game to draw more attention to the special mechanic I&#8217;d added to the game.<\/li>\n <li>I chose an easily attainable goal and then built on it. I had somewhat of an engine done within the first hour or two. From there, I was able to add more stuff and polish.<\/li>\n <li>Certain bits of polish were really helpful to the game. For instance, the sword in my game was pretty sweet.<\/li>\n <li>I stayed motivated. In the middle of this competition, I kind of hated my game, or at least, I didn&#8217;t put much faith into it and didn&#8217;t really know what to do to fix it. However, I pushed on, doing what I did know how to do (assets) and then revisiting the gameplay later and finding that it was not really as bad as I&#8217;d thought and that I did have solutions for it.<\/li>\n <\/ul>\n <p><span style=\"line-height: 13px\"><strong>(Avoidable) Stuff That Went Poorly<\/strong><br \/>\n <\/span><\/p>\n <ul>\n <li>My code was spread out. There was no single place I could do all the balancing from, so it was a huge pain to do so. Also, I made too many tabs on Processing, so I could only see the names of 3 or 4 at a time, which made it hard to find any specific class&#8217; definition.<\/li>\n <li>I didn&#8217;t put much thought into what sort of mood I wanted. Resultantly, I didn&#8217;t exactly create any cohesive mood.<\/li>\n <li>My art still wasn&#8217;t terribly good. I think I could have used more animation to make the top-down thing more convincing, but I don&#8217;t know. I wish I were better with this sort of thing.<\/li>\n <li>The controls may not have been the best choice.<\/li>\n <li>I don&#8217;t often play games based on action or on being quick and not so much on decisions. I therefore found it difficult to capture that sort of gameplay well.<\/li>\n <li>The game concept isn&#8217;t wholly original. It feel more like a variation on some sort of shooter game &#8211; the majority of the game (the shooter part) has been done before. Only a small aspect (the part about summoning enemies by taking stuff) is really new. Then again, people keep saying they like the idea, so&#8230; maybe it&#8217;s a good concept.<\/li>\n <li>I did not proofread the title page. It has a lot of typos. Like the good player of a game that I am, I never read anything in my game and just clicked on stuff.<\/li>\n <\/ul>\n <p>Also, if you are one of the &gt;1000 people who haven&#8217;t tried my game, you can click <a href=\"http:\/\/www.ludumdare.com\/compo\/ludum-dare-25\/?action=preview&amp;uid=2934\">here<\/a>. (P.S. I love comments on my game &#8211; it&#8217;s one of the best parts of the dare for me)<\/p>\n \n <p>Tags: <a href=\"http:\/\/ludumdare.com\/compo\/tag\/postmortem\/\" rel=\"tag\">postmortem<\/a>, <a href=\"http:\/\/ludumdare.com\/compo\/tag\/tips\/\" rel=\"tag\">tips<\/a><\/p>","time":"December 19th, 2012 2:31 pm","title":"Power Grab: Post-mortem"}