Light Eater – Post Mortem

Hi everyone,

this was my 2nd participation to the Ludum Dare. My first attempt turned out pretty well (77th overall), and it was an amazing experience, so I just had to participate again.

My game is Light Eater, and here is how it looks :

Tools used :

• Language : CoffeeScript (compiles into JavaScript), target : HTML5/Canvas
• IDE : WebStorm
• Map editor : Tiled
• Art : PhotoFiltre 6

The good

• I’m quite happy with the result !
• I learnt a lot of things ! Collision handling, math, OOP tricks…

• The controls are better than my previous entry (but still not ideal)
• I learnt how to deal with angles and basic pathfinding, how to give each monster a different approach to kill the player…
• I made a fancy intro 😀

• I made efficient art : quick to draw, not too ugly 😀

The bad

• Bugs :( Monsters are dumb and get stuck in walls. The boss is either overly easy or impossible.

I hate collision handling è_é

• I find the game idea not as good as my previous game. Nothing fancy with game design.
• No audio. because of time constraints, I had to choose between including audio or making a final boss. I failed to create a proper boss (it’s either too hard or way too easy). I should have added some audio.
• Everything random is broken. I found last time that using Math.random() was making the game slow. This time I decided not to use it, and use weird time-based functions instead – and it’s just an epic fail :/
• I should have used a framework. 50% of my time was wasted by technical stuff.

For my next game, I will use a framework, I think Phaser.JS. This will allow me to focus on the game and less technical problems. I won’t have to worry about collision problems.

I enjoyed a lot playing your games.

If you want to rate my game, you can try it here :)

Hope you had fun too 😀
Thanks for reading and good luck for the results !