Zilla Game's Post-mortem

What went right

• The graphics probably because i spent way too much time making art. Skatools was a good choice for an exporter.
• levels Using text files for levels and tilesets and stuff. This made it extremely easy to add new tiles or test things. notepad is a great level editor.
• the timelog I kind of went overboard with the log. lots of screenshots and stuff. But I found it really helped me stay focused and keep going. Also, reading over it after the contest I was able to see my mistakes, it's odd but it certianly didn't feel like I was spending too much time on art. I think I am going to start keeping "making of" logs for myself on other projects I work on.
• irc. This was pretty much the first time I've used Irc. It was really great to have everyone online, for motivation and code questions.
• concept art My art started looking good only after I sat down with a pen and paper and draw some sketches.
• contest organization Geoff did a great job running this thing.

What went wrong

• no gameplay I knew this, but i didn't follow my own advice. Make it playable before making it look good, not the other way around.
• 3D. Next time, i'm making a 2d game for sure. There was just so much to do with a 3d game before even getting to the gameplay.
• texture loading This should have been easy, but i spent way too long getting this to work. Next time I'll use an existing library like DevIL (which I found out about from other people during this contest, and looks like a great lib).
• music The whole point of this game was to have an excuse to record myself playing blue oyster cult's "godzilla". And yet it never happened. This should have been priority #1.