http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-22/?action=preview&uid=7984

My first time trying LD and it was a great learning experience as well as being fun and creative! It was kinda cool to just sporadically start programming random things with no base code (although the source code is a minefield of awfulness) and getting to draw whatever I really felt like – setting it as a dream gave me some artistic license with things, for example you don’t usually get whales in space (or oceans in space for that matter).

What went well

• The theme. It made me think about games slightly differently, I usually like platformer-type action or puzzle games, but I had the opertunity to think of something a little different.
• I got the art done as I went along, started off with the character and some stars, then as I got ideas I just scribbled out some more (with a basic idea of where I was headed)
• The code was not very nice but got the job done, was very fast to come up with on the spot. The paper concept for the player was a half-way snake type thing, instead of cells in a ‘rope’ rotating they stayed axis aligned, giving the paper vibe (along with the art).
• I like the way it feels, weird and dreamlike. I always think of dreams as a lonely place – people will be often be in dreams, but they aren’t really there.
• It looks a little sad from the outside, which matches the ‘alone’ theme, but my view of the end is more cheerful – but I’ll leave the whole thing open to interpretation.
• I didn’t give any instruction as to what the player is supposed to do, because they can do whatever they want. There is a purpose and end to the game, but I think games are about an individuals’ experience, and I thought it was cool to just let people float around in my little dream world and just check it out, move things around, do whatever they want.
• Working over a 48 hour period wasn’t as bad as I thought, next time however, I will be more prepared and bring something a little more solid to the party.

• SOUNDS! Total lack of them. My main regret. I didn’t really know how to load and use sounds, didn’t know of any libraries or how to use OpenAL and didn’t really have the time to learn so much as I went along. Probably gonna look at SDL for the future.
• Images, as I had zero base code to start with I forgot (after not programming for PC in a while) I didn’t have any image loading libraries, so I found a nice lightweight lib called SOIL, which was really simple and worked perfectly.
• It wasn’t exactly polished to a high standard. The code was inefficient (and sloppy), there was no reset and no title (although a title probably wasn’t necessary).
• The code should compile on Linux and Mac, but I don’t have a Linux install and didn’t have the time to get it running on my Mac.

Tags: postmortem