{"author_name":"Niavlys","cat":"LD #23","comments":[],"epoch":1336415460,"likes":0,"metadata":{"p_key":"55827","p_author":"Niavlys","p_authorkey":"8666","p_urlkey":"91545","p_title":"Sprace: A post-mortem","p_cat":"LD #23","p_event":"LD23","p_time":"1336415460","p_likes":"0","p_comments":"0","p_status":"UPD5","us_key":"8666","us_name":"Niavlys","us_username":"niavlys","event_start":"1334880000","event_key":"10","event_name":"LD23"},"text":"<p>Hi,<\/p>\n <p>First of all please excuse my English, that might not be perfect.<\/p>\n <p>This competition was my first Ludum Dare, and my first entry was also (more or less) my first game (unless you want to count\u00a0<a title=\"D\u00e9mineur \/ Minesweeper\" href=\"http:\/\/innsbay.toile-libre.org\/demineur\/demineur.html\" target=\"_blank\">this\u00a0Minesweeper<\/a> in). I must say I thoroughly enjoyed the experience, and I&#8217;m positive I want to take part in a future Ludum Dare competition.<\/p>\n <p>Even though I don&#8217;t have much to say, I wanted to make a short &#8220;post-mortem,&#8221; in order to share my modest experience and some thoughts that might be useful to some. If you want to understand better what I&#8217;ll be talking about, <a title=\"Play Sprace\" href=\"http:\/\/xi.gd\/ld23\/niavlys\/finalLD23\/ld23.html\" target=\"_blank\">play the game here<\/a>\u00a0(and please <a title=\"Sprace, Ludum Dare entry page\" href=\"http:\/\/ludumdare.com\/compo\/ludum-dare-23\/?action=preview&amp;uid=8666\" target=\"_blank\">rate and comment<\/a>, if you want!).<\/p>\n <p><strong>What went right, or wrong, or not (yes, I&#8217;ve decided to merge the two since I couldn&#8217;t split some ideas into these two categories):<\/strong><\/p>\n <ul>\n <li>The idea came to my mind rather quickly. (Some people around me couldn&#8217;t believe I had this &#8220;dirty&#8221; idea; or they thought it was related with a girl, which is false, believe me.)<\/li>\n <li>I worked efficiently the first day and I had a functional prototype early enough. However I didn&#8217;t work very much the second day, but that was because of French elections and friends visiting me.<\/li>\n <li>I managed to create a rather good-looking sperm animation! Actually I spent a lot of time trying to make a beautiful regular 4-frames animation, the last two frames being symetrical to the first two, and I ended up realizing that the symetry was a bad idea: the animation was anything but &#8220;natural&#8221;, the symetry was visible and didn&#8217;t look well at all. I finally decided to draw the 4 frames by hand, without any kind of &#8220;regularity&#8221;, and it was a success (in my opinion).<\/li>\n <li>I appreciated working with HTML5&#8217;s Canvas and JavaScript. It was a first try for me (even though I knew JavaScript and HTML fairly well before) and turned out to be surprisingly pleasant to use (I think I like prototype-based programming). I will probably reuse this technology in the future, even though manipulating audio at the moment is difficult with HTML (but Web Audio API is coming&#8230;).<\/li>\n <li>I failed at improving vertical controls (acceleration). Your &#8220;character&#8221; goes up or down too fast, and it sort of sticks to the top and bottom edges of the screen. Very annoying at first.<\/li>\n <li>I failed at recording other sounds and music. I tried some ideas and was close to a good result, but didn&#8217;t have enough time to record and include it into the game.<\/li>\n <li>The last two hours of the competition were awfully rushed and that was not necessarily a good point. But at the same time, the emergency of the situation made me sometimes find good and intelligent solutions to my problems. I liked that.<\/li>\n <li>As a conclusion: Even though I sort of failed by not using my time very well, this competition showed me that I can produce a (sort of) game in 48 hours. Ok, that didn&#8217;t sound very original. Actually I want to say that this Ludum Dare may have made me more confident in regards to motivation. I tend to procrastinate a lot, and I came to the conclusion that I should from time to time impose to myself short delays (like, say, 48 hours?) to accomplish some kind of task or project.<\/li>\n <\/ul>\n <p>I hope this wasn&#8217;t too boring. Thanks for reading!<\/p>\n <div style=\"width: 460px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><img src=\"http:\/\/www.ludumdare.com\/compo\/wp-content\/compo2\/thumb\/2757faf75cf92d2a232a7aa4eb626f77.jpg\" alt=\"&quot;Sprace&quot;, Niavlys' LD23 entry\" width=\"450\" height=\"254\" \/><p class=\"wp-caption-text\">Sprace, Niavlys&#039; LD23 entry<\/p><\/div>\n <p>Did I offer you to\u00a0<a title=\"Play Sprace\" href=\"http:\/\/xi.gd\/ld23\/niavlys\/finalLD23\/ld23.html\" target=\"_blank\">play the game<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0<a title=\"Sprace, Ludum Dare entry page\" href=\"http:\/\/ludumdare.com\/compo\/ludum-dare-23\/?action=preview&amp;uid=8666\" target=\"_blank\">rate it<\/a>? Many thanks if you already have!<\/p>\n \n <p>Tags: <a href=\"http:\/\/ludumdare.com\/compo\/tag\/ld23\/\" rel=\"tag\">ld23<\/a>, <a href=\"http:\/\/ludumdare.com\/compo\/tag\/postmortem\/\" rel=\"tag\">postmortem<\/a><\/p>","time":"May 7th, 2012 1:31 pm","title":"Sprace: A post-mortem"}