{"author_name":"Markavian","cat":"LD #24","comments":[],"epoch":1346102880,"likes":1,"metadata":{"p_key":"51807","p_author":"Markavian","p_authorkey":"10967","p_urlkey":"87505","p_title":"Battle Arena Evolution \u2013 Postmortem","p_cat":"LD #24","p_event":"LD24","p_time":"1346102880","p_likes":"1","p_comments":"0","p_status":"UPD5","us_key":"10967","us_name":"Markavian","us_username":"markavian","event_start":"1345766400","event_key":"12","event_name":"LD24"},"text":"<p>So, its a full day since I finished my Ludum Dare game entry, and I&#8217;m glad today was a holiday, since I think I&#8217;ve only recently recovered from the whole experience. The last 8 hours before submission were so intense, productive, and mindnumbing that I somehow blocked out everything else that was going on.<\/p>\n <p><strong>The Good<\/strong><\/p>\n <ul>\n <li>Getting ideas down paper &#8211; all the sketches I did at the start of the night when the theme was announced really became a source of inspiration and guidance throughout the project.<\/li>\n <li>Delivering on those ideas! Unlike Last Ludum Dare where I had ambitions bigger then my capabilities, I think I reeled this project in close to my original vision. That&#8217;s not so say I couldn&#8217;t have made a better game, but I&#8217;m really happy I got my estimate right for the weekend, and proved I could churn out what I&#8217;d envisioned.<\/li>\n <li>Haxe \/ NME &#8211; proved an excellent language to program in again. No hold-ups working out what constructs to use, or messing around with the build process. Was a 1 line config change to get it working on Android. Brilliant stuff.<\/li>\n <li>Paint Shop Pro &#8211; saved my ass again when I needed to get the character artwork done.<\/li>\n <li>Audacity &#8211; made recording and editing the sound effects simple when I was tight on time and needed to get them done. I used one project file with frame labels, and exported all the individual files, as mp3s, with the same names in a snap.<\/li>\n <li>Evolving parts! It seemed worth putting in the effort to get the changeable character parts and simple animation frames. I think I put the bare minimum of states in to make the characters look interesting without over complicating the art side.<\/li>\n <li>Solid GUI elements. Having a single screen, and a looping flow to get the player into the game quickly, meant I could concentrate on game play and not with menus. I&#8217;ve not been using any frameworks for these last two projects so things like menus can really eat up coding time.<\/li>\n <li>The food. Delicious cold snacks, sausage rolls, mini snack-eggs, quiche&#8230; pints of tea, and the occasional cider, well worth it. Kept me going all weekend.<\/li>\n <\/ul>\n <p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.ludumdare.com\/compo\/2012\/08\/27\/battle-arena-evolution-postmortem\/mindmap\/\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-176780\"><img class=\"aligncenter size-large wp-image-176780\" src=\"http:\/\/www.ludumdare.com\/compo\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/08\/mindmap-550x394.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"550\" height=\"394\" srcset=\"http:\/\/ludumdare.com\/compo\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/08\/mindmap-300x215.png 300w, http:\/\/ludumdare.com\/compo\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/08\/mindmap-550x394.png 550w, http:\/\/ludumdare.com\/compo\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/08\/mindmap.png 557w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 550px) 100vw, 550px\" \/> <\/a><\/p>\n <p><strong>The Bad<\/strong><\/p>\n <ul>\n <li>Flash CS5 IDE crashed on me, crashed my character file, almost destroyed my project. At this point I grabbed my output images, made a new image template, and GTFO&#8217;d to Paint Shop Pro to finish doing my character art. I basically went and stood in the kitchen and banged my head against the wall for 10 mins after this, but I just cut my losses and got on with making the art assets in a different way. I was going for a smooth vector feel to my art, but I&#8217;m not that good, and I&#8217;m much more comfortable outlining in pixels, so probably I should stick to my strengths next time.<\/li>\n <li>Combat &#8211; it sucks. In my defense, this is the first time I&#8217;ve made a combat game like this, and I really didn&#8217;t think through how this core mechanic would be varied enough to call &#8220;fun&#8221;. Late addition of bouncing the enemy back, and freezing them for a random amount of time, and changing this distance based on Attack Damage helped, but that is just one kind of attack, and doesn&#8217;t make the game very interesting. The decals and sound effects unique to each character type helped mask the problem, but not really. If I was going to remake this game, having different attack moves per character, and maybe two types of attack available would be at the top of my list.<\/li>\n <li>Evolving is not obvious. Its assimilation of parts, based on which characters you kill. I think if I had given a screen which the user could use to decide which parts to evolve and which to keep it would have made the game play much more strategic, and hopefully fun.<\/li>\n <li>The music. Should have used a generator or something, was just embarrasingly bad this time around. Barely made up with it with sound effects.<\/li>\n <li>Writing alot stuff from scratch &#8211; I should have planned ahead and got some framework code together. Just a few helper libraries here and there, or a template project with a few basic files in it. I might go so far as to use a framework on my next one like flixel or some other game library to avoid some repetitive code.<\/li>\n <li>Image pipeline &#8211; for character art &#8211; I spent far too long sorting out UV coordinates and templates for doing my character art, instead of actually drawing, and then I had the problem with Flash CS5 crashing, which had all my art and coordinates in one place. I need to get a better flow for brining in assets, or I should have mapped to a square based tile grid and made it dead simple for myself.<\/li>\n <\/ul>\n <p>Welp. That&#8217;s all I can think of. Really happy that I managed to complete another game. Starting to build up a mini-portfolio now.<\/p>\n <p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.ludumdare.com\/compo\/2012\/08\/27\/battle-arena-evolution-postmortem\/battle_arena_evolution_pow\/\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-176783\"><img class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-176783\" src=\"http:\/\/www.ludumdare.com\/compo\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/08\/battle_arena_evolution_pow.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"550\" height=\"344\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n <p>See you all next time!<\/p>","time":"August 27th, 2012 4:28 pm","title":"Battle Arena Evolution \u2013 Postmortem"}