Excavatorrr/Cavefrog post-mortem
I think that the stuff that happened behind the scenes this time were rather interesting, so I decided to write a post-mortem.
The compo began at 6:00 AM our Finnish time, and when I woke up at 11:00 AM, I instantly began to work on my (first) entry. I had had 2 ideas from which to choose from, but the theme wasnt’ really fit for either of them. Anyway, I decided to force the theme a bit and insert my frog-with-a-sticky-tongue-idea to the game. I also realized that I want to do a time lapse, so I downloaded Chronolapse and set it running.
The first few hours I spent by playing around with the physics and testing different tongue methods. A silly bug that was “hard” to notice took a bit of time, but not too much. It was harder than expected to get the frog look right, and I tried several foot and ‘arm’ sizes, ending up with quite big legs and no arms. The silly eyes were a part of the design right from the beginning. I went for a long walk with our dog Turre, took about 2 hours. And ate pizza. Smoked Salmon Pizza. yum.
After that I started pondering about the method for creating the background and walls. It was clear that I’d need several different sorts of angled walls, to make the physics interesting. After some (lots of) pondering, I ended up with using a list with the wall-creation commands, so that I could easily change the layout. After even more pondering I decided to load the background ‘art’ externally, which was the easiest but also a bit stupid way to do it. I had to code a separate editor for the levels (may sound normal, but is actually quite rare in MMF2). I wasn’t exceptionally happy with the simple look of the game, but the engine seemed to work fine.
At this point I started doing other things for a while, such as posting the food picture and reading some MSPaint Adventures. Not much has to be said about that. After getting back to work I decided to start adding other features, such as ‘enemies’ (spikes), and insects that you could eat. I really liked the effect I got to the insect-eating. but overall the score system made out of that was a bit random, considering the actual game was turning more into a puzzle (how to swing that tongue next?.exe).
When I had the basic engine ready, score system running and the game overall working, I started adding new levels. I had spent about 8 hours with the game, and started wondering why it has taken such a short time. 
I didn’t feel overall that happy with the game, it was a bit too simple and random for my taste. Also, after seeing screenshots from games like Dock’s entry, I started worrying that the game wasn’t good enough. Anyway, I decided to finish the game I had started. Somewhere around 00:00 I had all the levels ready, and made a very silly ending screen. Fixing the last bugs and such took an hour more, but after that and after submitting the game, I wasn’t really happy with the game; all the others seemed much more interesting. Also, I realized that there was something wrong with MEncoder and my timelapse didn’t work! ;_; Anyway, went to sleep.
(You can find the Cavefrog download link from the bottom of this post!)
The Next Morning – The next game
I woke up at 11:00 AM, and started quite much instantly to ponder about the compo. I had had this over-ambitious idea of a settler having a mining site and exploring the underground caverns, actually even before Spelunky. Anyway, at 13 o’clock I went for a walk, during that I thought of the possibilities I have, and also my own capabilities. Seems like I was in a good mood for thinking, because after some dozens of minutes I had the main idea and item base of my ‘other’ entry ready. A rather sudden rainstorm interrupted my walk a bit, and I got really wet. It was kinda fun, actually.
I calculated that I had around 9 hours to work on the game that day, so I decided to be quick and controlled with the creation (oh yeah, that’s easy to be said). The 5 hours I worked before leaving for piano lessons were quite hectic, and I also forgot to timelapse the creation (;_;), so there isn’t much to say about that. The game progressed surprisingly well, and what’s even more unexpected, no game-breaking bugs showed up! There were some annoying phases though, getting the underground world to be created and then adding the enemies there – I had at first set the enemies appear before the actual caverns, which led to some hilarious scenes. I had chosen the graphical theme mostly because it was the fastest one to do, but also a bit because I like Atari 2600 and C64.
After returning from the lessons at half past 7 PM, I had still lots to do: adding 2 new enemy types, having treasures appear underground and creating the glitchy loose blocks, along with actually making the game over/winning screens. Somewhere during this phase I suddenly realized that I could make the game require more tactical thinking by adding the rising lava (yes, there’s rising lava!) to the end. That’d make the player hurry a bit, and possibly have to think a bit about the route back onto the surface. I was continuously unhappy with the enemies gathering into huge piles in some small gaps, and trying to punch you from too far away. I didn’t manage to get all of this away, but probably most of it. I’m still kinda unhappy with how the projectiles work though.
I went over the time I had planned by 1½ hours, but that time was really needed for adding sound effects and squashing bugs. When I finally sighed after working for 11 hours on the game, I was really happy with the result. Though I had a schoolday tomorrow, so I had to send the entry without checking if it’s actually beatable. I feared a bit that the lava’d rise too quickly for the players. Luckily my fears weren’t needed; though I’ve yet to see someone apart from myself who can beat the game.
I will probably make a Deluxe version out of this sometime later, and I must say that I enjoyed this ludumdare very much! Especially when I finally found the IRC channel. I’ll sure e participating next time, whenever that is. I can imagine items like stun gun, umbrella and electronic drill. Perhaps even a jetpack!
Pros & cons on the creation and game overall:
+ I think the graphics fit the style rather well. I like the look of the player itself, and also the grin on the face of the health meter.
+The game isn’t too easy. Granted, some of this is caused by bugs, but I like how you have to think a bit how to move while descending deeper.
+The game is surprisingly bug-free. There are some bigger and some smaller nitpicks, but overall I wonder how there weren’t any worse bugs around.
- The bugs that are around are quite annoying. The most notable glitch is the one that happens when you jump on the corner of a loose block: You slide horizontally and technically fall through the block. This bug is even more annoying because I can’t understand what causes it.
- The game became a tad too confusing. I think my choices of buttons are somewhat logical, but I can see that especially the ladder will take some time to get working correctly.
-The dynamite is unuseful. No-one wants to explode huge areas, not in this game, because they block easily your path further/back.
-The game became a little too much like Spelunky. I don’t know if I should be happy or sad when people say that the game is a Spelunky ‘demake’ or something like that, because the base idea is a lot older. However, I think I unconsciously took some design choices that make the game resemble Spelunky, starting from the outlook of the player! 
Overall, I really enjoyed this compo! Thanks guys and gals! Sorry for the lengthy post-mortem.
Download Cavefrog through this link!
Tags: post-mortem, postmortem