Timelapse and Post-mortem (Finally)
Timelapse. You may recognize the music 
Preface
Since I’m only a few months into my game dev journey, I set a few concrete goals to ensure that I would finish with a game:
- Have gameplay decided on before bed on the night the theme was revealed
- Have gameplay/art 90% done by bed on Day 2
- Finish gameplay/art, do music, menus, polish, package, etc on the last day
- Also eat a lot of unhealthy food
The Bad
My Idea: My main concern was to make my game about owls. In the end, I accomplished this, but I should have thought it through more. After getting most of the gameplay implemented, I started to realize that the scope of my game was way too small considering the time I had as well as my ambition. I was sure that it was too late in the 48 to start over, and I lost motivation.
Motivation: (That was a pretty direct segway.) I didn’t really feel like finishing my game. I didn’t put much effort into it until night fell on Saturday (awesome). That’s when I made the game’s song, and finished gameplay for the most part.
Packaging: I provided three versions of my game: an exe made with py2exe, an app made with py2app, and a source version. I guess I need more practice with py2exe. It took me a while to get my game packaged, and I even had to change some code in the game to make it work. My py2app experience was great, but the .app ended up being over 20 megabytes large. That sucks, sorry guys.
The Good
Music: I am really happy with the way my simple song came out for my game. I had a whole other song ready, but it just didn’t fit the mood of my game. The completion of this song actually brought me out of my motivation problems in the second-half of the competition.
Code: It should be no suprise that I had no trouble implementing this game. There’s really nothing impressive about the way it works. Some aspects are even quite underwhelming, such as the collision perhaps. Overall, I got to spend some quality time with vim and python…what more could I ask for?
Motivators: This section is pretty self-explanatory.
I Had A Wonderful Time: LD12 was a blast, I learned a bit and had a great time. A success overall.
Looking Ahead
I have a lot of ideas on how I can improve for my next LD. I feel like I can make a bigger and better game. I also think I can improve the efficiency of my music recording and packaging processes.
Thanks Guys
Tags: postmortem, timelapse