This time was actually the first time I had a chance to send in something that I felt was finished and worth posting.
Naturally this is also my first post mortem, so bear with me :p
Being in the Netherlands ment that the theme would be announced 3 am local time. I tried staying up but I kind of wanted to sleep at 1 so I decided to not stay awake.
The next day first thing I did was look up the theme and take a good shower which helped out pretty well.
I think I only got a few options for myself but this one seemed small enough to actually finish in 48 hours.
Sunday I wouldn’t have much time so I tried to complete as much as I could on Saterday.
I started out in Planbox (a handy tool I’de like to use instead of the old-school TODO txt files), planning all things I needed to do to complete the idea.
Starting with the art for the planets actually came pretty natural and I was very, very pleased with how it turned out.
I was going to use Unity which allows for coloring of sprites so I only used grayscale colors to “draw” the images (actually just placing pixels).
Also, I just love how you can make stuff look like something with a few layers of gray, presenting angles in the image that aren’t really there, if you get what I mean.
After 4 hours or so all art for the game was done (planets, bridge, turret, initial astroids) so it was time to build the gameplay.
Usually I just spend time making “useful” stuff to speed up development, though this time I just went with what I had to do and do more “hacking together”.
The next day I didn’t had much time and I ended up with all features implemented, just non of the interface to support it.
This ment that I just had to move away from the compo and try submitting to the jam the next day.
The next day I spend some more time doing art for the UI and implementing that all.
In the end – it was the last 10 minutes before deadline – I called it done-ish and started to get the stuff ready for the web.
There was no sound and not much polish but it had to go and I was happy with it.
I guess it’s time for the propper post mortem categories now :p
The good
- I made pretty sick art: I actually didn’t though I was able to impress myself with the quality of art I made this game. Sure I made art before but this time I felt like I grew a little in what I could do, and now CAN do.
- I finished it and it has gameplay!!: As I said, usually I spent more time working on utilities that “help” me finish my games easier but this time I just went ahead and actually hook everything up and get it to work as a real game.
- The game is pretty fun and easy to extend: I haven’t played it with someone else yet, but even solo the game was pretty fun (even it was too hard).
The love for programming flamed up as it never did before. Which is a good thing since it inspired me to continue to work on this thing and continue with my other projects a bit easier as well. Completing a game and sharing it is, I think, one of the most important things to do if you work in this industry. I had never done it before…well I did with the companies I worked for, but this time it was really something that is truely me and no-one else and that makes it feel very special.
The bad
- Astroids: The art for the astroids!! Omg I have redone that so many times because I wasn’t pleased with it. The end result is pretty good. The other times I tried to hard to make it match the other style with the black and white stuff only. (Don’t tell anyone but the final astroids are just a random outline filled with a gradient stroke.)
- Balancing: I didn’t took the time to actually play the game as a full thing during development. In the end this led to a pretty hard game since I didn’t had time to balance it out a little. Most of the values in there are just my first intuition of what I though would fit (not horrible but could have been better).
- No explanation: I fixed this pretty early on the next day after submission by adding a simpel line that you can actually press f1 to show the keys again. I had this implemented but didn’t let the player know this.
- Some bugs: Sure there were some bugs that actually broke how the game should be played (clicking disabled buttons with the mouse would trigger and such). This again was due to the fact that I didn’t played my own game.
The day after submission I spent the full day going through everything and fix the bugs that broke the game as well as update the entry post to provide extra information.
What’s After…
At the moment I’m still working on the same project and I’m almost done implementing the Versus mode that was brought up in several comments on my submission entry.
Thanks all for the comments! I really kept me focused on what was next.
I’ve also polished up some things and I still want to fully implement touch and mouse support since that’s what I’m trying to do with my other current project I’m working on (tablet racegame).
I will post the updated version with Versus mode soon so you can all play it against your friends and family!
Tags: post-mortem, tl;dr
