I got my game submitted about 10 minutes before the submission deadline – that was the longest 80 minutes of my life – phew!!!

Things that went wrong:

• Initial concept failed, because the art requirements were too difficult for my poor skills…
• Only managed to come up with another concept 13 hours in…
• Performance issues about 6 hours before deadline, requiring implementation of more efficient hit detection!
• Struggled with Java Webstart in-spite of having done a warm-up game as a test before the competition started.

Almost failed to finish due to having to do this...

Things that went well:

• My most complex and complete game in an LD so far (ignoring graphics / sound) – in spite of the 13 hour penalty due to my theme problems!
• My base code library performed pretty well (the hit detection issues aside) – also made many improvements in the course of the competition.

All told I feel like a winner! For about a week of work spent on Ludum Dare warm-up and competition I have:

• 2 good prototype games that can easily be fleshed out into nice games.
• Massive improvements to my base code library that will help my all my other projects.
• I had a lot of fun!

Thanks for a great competition and well done to everybody that finished a game – to those that didn’t: keep trying and better luck next time!

Tags: post-mortem, postmortem