Find your sh*t: Post Mortem

http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-22/?action=preview&uid=7062

What went right:

• Built almost all of the features intended.
• Created something that is finishable and doesn’t crash.
• The ‘right’ amount of sleep.
• Had a hell of a lot of fun.

What went wrong:

• Asset management.
• Time management.
• Overall workflow.

The first thing anyone of course notices is the lack of world GFX. This mainly falls under the time management category. I spent a good 2/3 of my total time writing the ‘engine’ and main character’s sprite leaving the remaining 1/3 to design the levels, add sound, and actually draw them pixels for the world content. T.T I really wanted to find a good chunk of 3 or 4 more hours to paint the world, tweak the mechanics, and tighten the level design. Asset management was also a big problem. My workflow was to draw art in photoshop, save out images as PNG’s, tab over to the flash IDE, import the images into the library, publish out a SWC and load it up in FDT. _; Can’t stress enough how much time was wasted clicking ‘save as’. It wasn’t until halfway through sunday that I started using photoshop actions etc. Too little too late.

The most fun:

• Writing the world map engine thing.
• Animatin’ dat main character and drawin dem pixels.
• Adding details ( wall slide / wall jump, clothing layers )

(all the assets used ingame, aside from the title screen)

The not so much:

• Collision engine
• Level design + testing.
• Asset management

Overall:

This being my first LD I can’t stress how much fun the whole process was. It was also very eye opening as to how bad I am at estimating how long things take. While I failed in time management, I think I did pretty well in managing atleast my level of productivity and what I think is most imporant in these types of challenges: time cost effectiveness. I got a good 6 hours of sleep Friday night, came back pushed hard all day Saturday, picked up an additional 4 hours of sleep + 1 hour of general fucking around (important), followed by a sprint all the way to the finish. Even though it took up too much time the most fun I had was building the game engine. It’s no revolutionary system but I built it all from scratch XD. I will most certainly take part in the next LD challenge. A totally awesome experience.