SIRTET Postmortem

Game over:

But I can say without doubt this is my best LD entry so far!

I spent about 17h on it (that’s way more than I spent on my previous entries). Twice I thought I wouldn’t make it.. lost a lot of time deciding how to store the pieces and making the damn title screen bitmap work. Thought I’d have to use a random AI. But…

I made it and had a great time doing it! I assembled a “console” from electronic parts and wrote a game for it, from scratch, all by myself in under a weekend. If I had to make a pretentious guess I’d say less people have done this than been to space (I shouldn’t watch The Big Bang Theory as much as I do, LOL).

What went right

-It works!

-It doesn’t need a “real” computer to run.

-The AI doesn’t feel random and I came up with the algorithm.

-The idea was original enough that only chas made something similar (check out his entry, BTW!). With 1300 entries that’s not bad at all.

-It’s very complete: title screen, music, sound effects, score, increasing difficulty, AI.

-Feedback has been great so far. Didn’t expect any feedback at all!

What went wrong

-Lost a lot of time deciding how to store the pieces and making the damn title screen bitmap work. Probably over 4h.

-The AI needs a lot of improvement. I believe it would’ve been significantly better if it hadn’t been for the reason above.

-The music sucks. It was supposed to be an evil take on the Tetris theme but it sucks, seriously.

-People won’t be able to play my game but I knew that from the start.

-I didn’t have enough experience on the platform – again. I really need to break this tradition. Will I?

To wrap up.. here’s a picture of the whole setup:

See it here