well, let’s do this thing then, shall we 😀

i’m using the ld22 postmortem survey for tips on what to actually say here, since it’s my first ever postmortem, so let’s go

right off the bat, we’re faced with physics… there are some significant bugs related to that, i THINK that’s mostly caused by a too high framerate though, over 100-ish you can move so fast you can run through walls, and when you respawn at a checkpoint you might lag out(because it reloads the map as it was when you saved to the point you fall through the ground, i think that’s caused by my using millisecond timing(which can end up being 0) and adding 1 to it because i screwed up the way i used this at first(i was doing position += velocity/dTime instead of velocity * dTime, so i got exceptions when dTime was 0), also you can run up an N-tile high wall if you’re fast enough, because the “escape” direction is always up, instead of “wherever there’s free space”, because i didn’t know how to figure out where that would be

there are also a number of known bugs in the game, mostly related to the fact that the cellular automaton i use does not run off-screen, so it might get into a 3-cycle loop somewhere if you, for example have this section where, H is an electron head, and T is an electron tail, and W is a wire
HT
H
after which the top 2 cells run for another generation, but the bottom cell doesn’t, resulting in this state:
TW
H
which is a 3-cycle loop with these other states:
WH
T
and
HT
W

coming up with the idea wasn’t too hard, i already had the platformer + CA idea in my head, before the compo even started

because a 3-cycle loop basically kills any circuit, because 3-cycle pulses are faster even than the fastest transformer possible in the game can handle, in retrospect i should’ve provided a timeout for cells(a very slow update cycle that runs one line at a time when outside the regular simulation that basically tells all tiles to reset to their defaults

i didn’t REALLY use prototype artwork, however if you watch my timelapse, you’ll see that at the start i wanted to use a more human-like character, which i soon after basic testing discarded because it would take me too much work to animate

i always try to pay attention to details, and in this case, i am glad that seemed to work out okay for me, even if level design may have suffered from it

i did get a chance to create some sound effects and BGM which i think are pretty awesome and fitting for this game *even if the art style doesn’t reflect the mood i was trying to set as well as i might have hoped*

and for me, this weekend was a blast,  i had a lot of fun making the game, and it’s really awesome to watch your own timelapse, and see the game coming together at high speed

i have not watched TV/movies, but i have had youtube on with some of my series, but i kept working on my main screen while the video’s were on my sub screen, so that worked out pretty much okay in my opinion

regarding the theme, it surprises me people had so much trouble with the theme, i quite like it, but only really show how it’s incorporated in the game at the end, and of course, at the very beginning if you know what the name is derived from, i only came up with the name during the beginning of the level design, and i might as well explain what my pre-LD far-fetched idea for the storyline was, might be cool to share

you would start off in an area with an infinite amount of wire blocks of all kinds to use, and  a computerized voice recording would give you an introduction, and tell you that you were on starship YANA, and that you should follow it’s instructions, a little while later, you would exit through a door, and it would basically signify the end of the tutorial area, and lock off in some way, from that point onward you would be severely limited in how many wire blocks you could use, yet you would have to get through a number of puzzles, i had even imagined a kind of layered effect, where you’d have different layers to play in, travelling between layers by doors, and being able to see deeper layers through some kind of parallax effect, and even having wire travel through layers to make even more complex puzzles, in the end you would reach some kind of end room, and perhaps face off against an enemy, the only enemy in the game, and after beating him, in the credits, you would hear the true meaning of the starship’s name
Y ou
A re
N ot
A lone
sadly most of that got scrapped because of level design fails, and it ended up being a rather sandbox-style platformer

my game WOULD run in a browser, and i almost made a version that does run in a browser, kind of, but because i use several external files, this doesn’t really work all too well it would seem, i might try to see if i can have the editor work with files that are in the package itself, and allow the game to work properly in a browser, but as of right now, it doesn’t

like i mentioned earlier i am not satisfied with level design at all… i would’ve wanted this to be way more complex, and way more difficult than it is now, a fair part of this was caused by my screwing up with regards to actually saving my work…

i was pretty satisfied with my working area, dual monitors are always a win, and i tried to keep it kind of clutter-free so i could work properly and comfortably

again as mentioned, some features were left out, either because i had found an alternative, or just because i didn’t think it would be very useful, or that because they might cause a lot of unnecessary extra work, or just because i didn’t like them, another feature i might have wanted to add, but didn’t, was an ikaruga-style shmup-esque defense system, this might have increased the difficulty significantly, but i would’ve had to add pickups as well, but i might in a final release version of this game 😉

i don’t know ANY time management techniques, so i just went and did what i had to do

i spent some time on IRC / msn / tweetdeck, but i’m not sure that’s “real world socialisation”, apart from that, i don’t think i benefited from it

i did drink a lot of coffee / energy drink, and ate mostly kind of junk food, but that didn’t seem to result in decreased desire to just keep working or fatigue
i also drank *a* beer, which had no notable effect AFAIK, i also went outside pretty regularly to smoke and get some fresh air *about 10-15 minutes every 2-3 hours*
i didn’t sleep much either, i started saturday at 6:30 ish, 3:30 hours after the compo started, and in between slept for only 3:30 hours, between 05:15 and 08:30-08:45 on sunday, and then kept working until i uploaded my entry at around 02:30, 30 minutes before the working deadline

i HOPE the time i’ve spent on the help screen/tutorials are enough to make the game playable, without forcing you to go through things that slow down gameplay

because of what happened with level design going badly, i feel the game can be completed too easily, however the glitch with the escape direction can get annoying and make the game more difficult to complete

i spent a good segment of time on code, but i feel most of the code/graphics/audio work were finished, so i’m okay with that

the GUI could have been better, of course, but apart from the block selector’s background being a bit plain, i think it’s pretty much okay

controls should be slightly tuned to be slower, but i am actually happy with it, and i think the fact that you slide very far pretty much matches the player’s graphics

i’m happy with how the sound/audio turned out, and even with the artwork, so i think, apart from level design being slightly lacking, i “finished” my game pretty much,

and i wouldn’t hesitate to join the next LD48 if i get the chance