The Stars Need a Friend, Too… — post-mortem thingy
December 19th, 2011 2:58 pmThis was my first ludum dare entry! It wasn’t actually too much of a wild ride, though– I was taking it pretty easy. More below. 
The Game: http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-22/?action=preview&uid=8771
Neutral things:
- Started working on the game at 1pm on Saturday
- Finished work at 10:30pm on Sunday
- 6 code files (Bullet, Enemy, GameLogic, Player, BGScrolling, Animation) – 7 hours 15 minutes
- 12 art assets (two frames each up / down / middle for player, bullet, three frames of asteroid, two background layers) – 3 hours 40 minutes
- 2 sound effects (shot, explosion) – 5 minutes
- Background music – 25 minutes
- Tools used: (Unity, Photoshop, BFXR, Cubase)
Negative things:
- I didn’t make it into the competition. I was relaxed about the timeline, started late, etc. and missed the turn-in time
- Did not get in the level of visual polish that I would have liked. (missing particles on explosions, more frames in animations)
Positive things:
- Completed in 15 working hours
- Finished and submitted the game!
- Game was able to be completed because of proper scoping and planning activities
- I spent probably 3 hours (a fifth of the dev time!) planning — after this I had a really good idea about when I needed to stop working on something and move on
- I thought about my game holistically and thought of the overall completeness and what features were required to get there.
- Diligence pays off! Everywhere where I acted in a precise manner I was successful
- I FINISHED AND SUBMITTED THE GAME!
Strategy for next time:
- More of the same! Plan, scope, then act–
- Practice the things that take the most time or that are the weakest in quality outside of compotime — Practice makes perfect! (or at least better) ;P
- With a faster process I would explore more level-design driven development — maybe even some story
I love jams! They are great!
Happy game making!