This is my postmortem for my Ludum Dare 22 entry, Sat-E. You can find the timelapse over here.

The Good

Motivation

I was really motivated for this dare and it showed in the game and outside it. It’s super hard to make a game in only 48 hours but this time it went pretty well. My previous attempts went okay, but there were always something lacking. This time the game feels a little bit more finished so I’m going in the right direction.

After the game the programming motivation continued and with it I’ve been improving my small fast prototyping framework I use when making games. I got a lot of ideas on improvements during the weekend so that’s great.

The feedback

I was moderately happy with how the game turned out, it didn’t contain everything I had envisioned after all, but I got a ton of positive feedback anyway which is wonderful! It seems like some thinks that my game is good and there’s nothing better for your game making confidence than a bunch of flattering words. I’m even considering developing the game more, maybe spending a couple of days here and there on it during a couple of months when I have the time?

I learned a lot!

The best way to learn something is just to do and it’s still true. I’ve found a bunch of ways to improve and shorten my code, I’ve made an “infinite” space constructed by individual chunks and that game physics != real physics. Awesome.

Game design is a pretty fascinating creature. Sometimes you give it your best but the resulting game isn’t funny, other times you think your game is shit but then you get comments on your “amazing” game! This time I was certain the game was crap, a neat idea wrapped behind a boring gameplay but turns out it maybe wasn’t that boring after all?

I got this comment:

“Also the fact that when that happened the game didn’t simply reset, I lost my money but not my items,
literally stopped me from rage quitting. Bravo”

My thougts? Wait that’s a bug! Hmm…

My girlfriend

Of course as I live together with someone it’s quite hard to devote an entire weekend, plus the extra time before and after, with my computer. Veronica handled it wonderfully well and she was very supportive which means a lot to me and it helped a ton.

The Bad

The music

There’s no music but I had grand plans for making music for the first time ever! It failed hard though. Which brings me to the next point…

Not familiar with the tools

I used my own framework for the game, which is fine, but my last game with it was in May 2011! Which is a looong time ago. I was a bit (a lot) out of practice with this whole pixel arts thing. And of course I had never used LMMS to make music and that didn’t happen. I was short of time and it was too big of a deal to start it with the last minute.

Not enough time

Even though I had the whole weekend planned for the dare and I skipped practice on Sunday I was still short on time. I’m not really sure why though. I made a pretty simple game, not a lot of art and I generated sound with bfxr which took no time at all… The reasons really must be:

1. Not enough practice.
2. Unfamiliarity with the tools. Correlates closely to #1.
3. I’m bad and LD is hard.

When I see all these amazing games I’m reminded on how much better other game makers are. I need more practice and I need to make more games. I should enter the next dare, enter the experimental gameplay project and just make more games.

And let’s face it: Making a game in 48 hours is frickin hard.

The Ugly

The art

Oh god… I suck at making art. Let’s just leave it at that.

The code

There’s a lot of bad and wrong in there, it works but it’s not pretty. In fact, it’s ugly.

The gameplay

This is a tricky one. I thought about placing this in the bad section as I didn’t find the game very pleasing at all. The beginning was too slow, the ending too long and there wasn’t enough incentive to continue flying through endless space I thought. But I got a lot of positive comments and reactions which is wonderful! I don’t fully understand why yet so I’m tagging the gameplay as ugly. After all the gameplay wasn’t like in my dream…

Ending thoughts

Before entering the competition I’m always nervous but high spirited. That feeling is always crushed during the weekend and when I finally get the game done and uploaded I think it’s the worst game ever. Luckily I’m greeted with positive feedback and that was the case this time again. Maybe they are okay, not super of course, but simply okay.

This time the dare came at a time where I felt I haven’t done anything meaningful for a long time, it’s just school, little programming and no game making. Now after my spirits are high and I can face a new year with many more games to come!

Until next time, cheers!

Here’s the timelapse for my game Sat-E. Note to self: record more than 1 frame per min or you won’t see much at all!

Lot’s and lot’s of things left raaawrr.

Many hours into the competition and I’m not really where I’d like to be. I would’ve hoped I could’ve at least gotten some basic functionality into the game but still haven’t happened.

But I did manage to cook during all this time! And not just heat up something in the microwave but some actual cooking.

My girlfriend didn’t do this I swear. Well okay she did help me with the potatoes…

I’m continuing to procrastinate here, you’re warned.

Holy heck the Blizzard Cup finals was so unbelievably epic I can’t find my words! DRG down 0-3, tying it up 3-3 and in almost, almost, loosing the final game in the best series since… Ever?

Now with that finally out there I can focus on the game making again. Hm.

Woke up about 5-6 hours after the competiton started (it started in the middle of the night). I copied my hello world program from the framework and started to wait for GSL to begin. About 2 hours after the kpop girls appeared the actual games started (they are on now!). So far I’ve done practically nothing gameplay wise but that’s okay, I’ve been watching kpop!!

The time has finally come. After more than three hours of exam writing, and almost double spent on studying for it, I am now ready to declare my entry into Ludum Dare 22! I’ve been away far too long, with my entries for the 17th and the 20th dare being almost a century away, the ancient game making creature will once again move into action. We’ll just hope the game won’t be ancient as well…

Leaving that behind us I can now focus on what to actually use. I wanted to try some new language and some new environment but that seems lika a really bad idea. So I will stick to what I know:

My fast prototyping library consisting of old C++ on top of the nice SFML engine.
sfxr, or maybe the newer bfxr for sound effects. It’s seriously great, give it a try!
Probably mtpaint for some nice pixelated graphics. I would like to try out inkscape for some vector based graphics but I might skip it this time.

LMMS for music making. This I tried to use a long time ago… And failed miserably. It’ll be a fun, fun weekend!
And finally my little timelapse recording hack for linux. Be careful if you want to try it, it will most likely blow up in your face and take your computer down with it. Handle with care.

And of course here’s where I’ll be spending most of my waking hours:

I’m planning on getting some new food during all this, but I’m not entirely sure yet.