The Grumpy Pinball Ball – Postmortem

Well, if you spent the last few years being slapped around a table all day, you’d be grumpy too! This ball just wants to be alone on his blocky islands.

Entry is here.

*(And yes, the .eel files are plain text source files, so that’s the full, hackable game source right there. The language is a bit like Lua with a C-like syntax.)
*

Well, the other balls don’t really do anything, as I didn’t get around to implement any AI. And I didn’t get around to do any music either. And, it might have been a good idea to “tilt” the terrain of the higher level maps towards the viewer, or just select a few good areas from the Perlin terrain, as it gets a bit tricky when you can’t see what you’re doing. :-)

What went wrong

Decided to go for isometric 3D, so I had to code the engine for that, along with some physics. Not strictly a bad idea, but it was actually my first attempt at that particular kind of engine, so getting it to work correctly while not melting the CPU might have cost a few hours extra. And, I still got the depth sorting wrong in some cases…

Also got this crazy idea of coding a tiny MIDI sequencer, instead of just typing music in as ChipSound script, but the net result of that was just a wasted hour or so, as I didn’t have enough time to do any music anyway.

The biggest problem, however, was that I just caught a cold with fever, and couldn’t cope with the kind of tempo and short naps I planned for. All in all, I put in 27 hours of effective work time. Could have used 5-10 more hours – and they would have been there, even in the 48 h compo, had I been in proper shape.

What went right

Initially, all I had was this vague idea that the game would be about someone or something that wanted to be left alone. I decided right away that I’d go for isometric 3D and focus on low level game mechanics, so I drew a block in GIMP and coded away.

I realized I wouldn’t have time to do a proper character with walk cycles and stuff with the tools and (lack of) skill at hand, so I considered giving the rubber pig starring in my Fixed Rate Pig SDL example a call – but then remembered I need to work alone, and drew a shiny steel ball in GIMP instead.

Going with a steel ball actually turned out to be a brilliant move, as it became instantly obvious that the game mechanics would focus on bouncy physics, which can be a fair bit of fun in it’s own right, without any “artificial” game rules. In fact, there’s only one rule: A ball that touches the lava dies.

And of course, I did finish in time to submit for the Jam, so failing the main event wasn’t a complete disaster. (Actually did try to submit in time, but it just wouldn’t work – and probably for the better, as that version was pretty useless anyway.)

Lessons learned

No real surprises here, but well worth pointing out:

1. Coding a custom engine for a time limited event like this is a gamble, unless you really know what you’re doing. Each kind of engine has it’s own set of problems, and unless you’ve written one of that particular kind before, a few hours will likely be lost understanding and solving problems that are brand new to you. That can be fun and challenging, but the gamble is real: If you fail, you’ll still be struggling with the engine by the time of the submission deadline.
2. Make sure you have a functional, complete and efficient toolchain that you’re up to speed with, for anything you want to use in the game! I could have leveraged ZeeSpace and ChipSound better, but I don’t yet have a functional authoring tool for the former, and I don’t have a proper music setup. I’ve been having the same problem with Kobo II, and the LD #22 just made it more obvious that I need to fix this ASAP.

Conclusion

One would think that after a full weekend of being ill while working frantically, especially after previously having worked for weeks in a similar manner to get the Kobo II tech preview out, one would just want a long vacation – but I’m more excited than ever to get back to work! I’ll probably start by adding some more gameplay elements to Kobo II for a Christmas Special Tech Preview 2, and then I actually will take a break – by hacking a sequencer/editor for ChipSound…! 😀

UPDATE: Timelapse video uploaded!

David