{"author_name":"Ricket","cat":"LD  #18 - Enemies as Weapons - 2010","comments":[],"epoch":1282524300,"likes":0,"metadata":{"p_key":"69359","p_author":"Ricket","p_authorkey":"2421","p_urlkey":"105162","p_title":"Finish line!","p_cat":"LD  #18 - Enemies as Weapons - 2010","p_event":"LD18","p_time":"1282524300","p_likes":"0","p_comments":"0","p_status":"UPD5","us_key":"2421","us_name":"Ricket","us_username":"ricket","event_start":"1282262400","event_key":"4","event_name":"LD18"},"text":"<p>My toy is done! (actually it has been done &amp; submitted for a few hours now) It has no goal, thus why it&#8217;s more of a &#8220;toy&#8221; than a game.<\/p>\n <p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.ludumdare.com\/compo\/ludum-dare-18\/?action=preview&amp;uid=2421\">http:\/\/www.ludumdare.com\/compo\/ludum-dare-18\/?action=preview&amp;uid=2421<\/a><\/p>\n <p>It is played in the browser, because it&#8217;s a Java applet. It should work wonderfully in Windows and Linux with Sun Java 1.6.0_10 or newer. There is a link on the page to a Mac version but it&#8217;s iffy at best. Sorry Apple users, upgrade to a superior OS. \ud83d\ude1b In all seriousness though I wish I could&#8217;ve gotten it completely cross-platform. I feel like that would deserve a gold star or something.<\/p>\n <p>Anyway I&#8217;m &#8230; content, I guess. Not entirely pleased, but not displeased either. And I&#8217;m sure this wasn&#8217;t bad at all for my first Ludum Dare. I learned some things:<\/p>\n <ul>\n <li><strong>Games need a <\/strong><span style=\"text-decoration: underline\"><strong>goal<\/strong><\/span><strong>.<\/strong> Next time I will plan to make a game, not a toy. I can&#8217;t believe I didn&#8217;t see this from the get-go.<\/li>\n <li><strong>Do something out of the ordinary.<\/strong> This game ended up frighteningly similar to the game that my group created at the Global Game Jam earlier this year. I became pretty depressed the moment I realized this fact, only a handful of hours before the end of the competition. I am an extremely uncreative person when it comes to ideas, and this discovery only underscored that fact.<\/li>\n <li><strong>Preparation is good.<\/strong> I&#8217;m talking about the time before the competition. School started this past week for me, but it didn&#8217;t start until Wednesday. What did I spend Monday and Tuesday doing? Not preparing for Ludum Dare, that&#8217;s what. Next time I need to actually prepare, because I spent a lot of time writing code that could have been prewritten as a library. I think my game would be much better if I had done that.<\/li>\n <li><strong>Breaks are good, too.<\/strong> I think I paced myself pretty well; I&#8217;m exhausted but not beat. But it definitely helped that I took breaks. I got plenty of sleep both nights, and I even stopped to bake cookies. I made sure to keep very calm and not rush or overexert myself. I think I did a pretty good job with this but I definitely want to keep it in mind in the future.<\/li>\n <\/ul>\n <p>Well that&#8217;s about all I have to say about that. Good luck to everyone! I got a lot out of this weekend. I&#8217;m working on my timelapse video now, and I&#8217;ll either edit this or make a new post when I put it up on the Tube of You.<\/p>\n <div style=\"width: 500px\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\"><a href=\"http:\/\/www.ludumdare.com\/compo\/wp-content\/compo2\/22150\/2421-shot0.png\"><img class=\" \" src=\"http:\/\/www.ludumdare.com\/compo\/wp-content\/compo2\/22150\/2421-shot0.png\" alt=\"Birds of Prey screenshot 1\" width=\"490\" height=\"337\" \/><\/a><p class=\"wp-caption-text\">Birds of Prey screenshot 1<\/p><\/div>","time":"August 22nd, 2010 7:45 pm","title":"Finish line!"}