{"author_name":"Notch","cat":"LD #18 - Enemies as Weapons - 2010","comments":[],"epoch":1282518240,"likes":2,"metadata":{"p_key":"69387","p_author":"Notch","p_authorkey":"398","p_urlkey":"105190","p_title":"Metagun timelapse and post mortem","p_cat":"LD #18 - Enemies as Weapons - 2010","p_event":"LD18","p_time":"1282518240","p_likes":"2","p_comments":"0","p_status":"UPD5","us_key":"398","us_name":"Notch","us_username":"notch","event_start":"1282262400","event_key":"4","event_name":"LD18"},"text":"

First of all, here’s the timelapse: Making Metagun timelapse<\/a><\/p>\n

This LD was timed extremely well for me, hitting one of the few free weekends I have these days.
\n During the voting rounds, I hoped for Skyscrapers, so I could do a life-in-the-city simulation that I’ve been wanting to do for quite some time. Of course, it didn’t win, but instead the somewhat hard to work with “Enemies as Weapons” won. Because the theme gets announced at like 4 am my time, I was asleep when it got announced, but I managed to wake myself up at about 5 am to see what it was. I stayed up for a couple of hours, thinking about what kind of game I could make, but couldn’t think of anything interesting.<\/p>\n

So I got some more sleep. When I got up, I almost felt like giving up. There just wasn’t anything interesting I could do with the theme. But since I had promised people I’d livestream it, I eventually got online and started brainstorming. Not long thereafter, I got the idea of having a gun that shot other people who shot back at the player. I figured it’d make for an interesting platformer mechanic if you yourself were responsible for the dangers in the level.<\/p>\n

And strangely, after that, I never ran into any real problems. I implemented some basic physics and rendering framework, then added some graphics, and got started on level design pretty early. I added new features to the game as the levels demanded it, which both meant that new features would get introduced gradually, but also that I didn’t waste any time implementing stuff that never got used.
\n I felt relatively finished with the game when there was about six hours left, so I spent a few hours just polishing it and adding some fluff features like an ingame credits list and such.<\/p>\n

I think I got a bit lucky this time around by finding an idea that fit my style pretty well, but I also felt some experience from old Ludum Dares help me guess how long certain features would take to implement.<\/p>\n

What went right:
\n Almost everything went surprisingly well! I had a great flow this time.<\/p>\n

What could’ve been improved:
\n As usual there is no music. But worse, the jumping still feels a bit off. I should’ve spent more time early on to really nail it.<\/p>","time":"August 22nd, 2010 6:04 pm","title":"Metagun timelapse and post mortem"}