Artifact Dive Post Mortem

[raw] LD39LDJam 31. Jul 2017 · 20:57 UTC · 3 days after compo start by AdroitConceptions · 2

What was my goal?

An action/adventure game focused on exploration and puzzle solving using procedural generation of maps for replay ability.

Procedural Generation of map is working well.
- Map is a fully connected maze with no loops (I didn't want to deal with loops this time around due some complexities that they would create for some of my planned items).
- Enemy placement increases the farther from the start.
- Goal object (the artifact) is placed in the farthest away room from the start point (or one of the tied distance rooms).
Character control
- I created a custom character controller on top of a rigidbody2d and worked out making the movement responsive and 'tight' so you didn't slide after letting go of movement controls.
Enemy attacks
- enemy attacks feel satisfying even with the lack of animations/placeholder art with how they lurch at the character with sound, bound off the character then pause for a second before doing anything.

Time
- I didn't over scope so bad this time, but didn't account for being in recovery from surgery. I probably lost 4-8 hours worth of time over what I could have put in if I was at 100%. This cost me getting in non-placeholder art for the Player and Enemies (and other things, but that was probably the biggest loss).
- I ended up leaving out a few features that I think would have helped the game :(
  - Locked doors & keys
  - Energy Drops
  - Line of Sight Occlusion - so you can't see through walls
  - Ground Art
  - More Enemy types
  - More Room Tiles
not watching Vlambeer's art of screen shake before the weekend
- I didn't realize it was about so much more then screenshake, some of what was there would have really helped and taken basically moments to add
Scale of character/rooms/screen.
- game felt slower then I would have liked, but given the room/screen size, going faster would have given very little 'vision' time.
Sound levels
- I may be outside the normal and like my music quiet and in the background, clearly below the SFX, however feedback seems to indicate that many people like them more even. Solution would be a level slider for both in a menu, so that each player can get levels they like.

'Under the hood' game mechanics/code doesn't get high ratings... simple games well polished do
- My post Jam version (6-8 extra hours doing mostly polish) looks like a completely different game.
Art takes me a lot of time
- I tried 2d instead of 3d this time to hopefully save on art time. I am not sure if it payed off or not.
- Practicing for my next Game jam probably needs to be more about art/graphics stuff then programming.
Vlambeer's 4:44 rule has some good merit, especially given my art skills.
Some people enjoy Mazes, some don't