Collision – post mortem

Alright, having played some other games a little, I think I can write that thing somewhat menacingly called “post mortem”. For the reference, the game I made was Collision. The tools I used were GameMaker: Studio for general engine (along with earlier declared PARADIGMOSIS framework in progress thing), OpenMPT for soundtrack and Audacity for OGG conversion, SFXR for sound effects (I admit, it really is an awesome tool, especially in such short jams). It was for the 48 hours competition, but in the end I feel it ended up better than my earlier games for other 72-hours competitions.

What went right:

• first of all, I guess the preparations; I ended up using pretty much all features I made beforehand, one of them very much so, and I feel it really sped things up or allowed details that I probably couldn’t bother with otherwise; it seems the system I came up with works and is worth further development
• I decided not to bother with the interface too much, knowing that this beast takes too long to make compared to results (especially when time is much needed); instead, I focused on creating the core mechanics and ended up having them done by the end of the first day. The fact that these mechanics didn’t require elements like pop-up windows or anything similar helped a lot, too
• I managed to throw in some music (that people apparently like) and sounds, as well as their respective mute buttons; also, I even succeeded in making the twist with soundtrack changing, even though it kept desyncing for me (interestingly, no one else reported it so far; perhaps it’s something local? O.o”)
• I actually made a game that can be completed; sure, it’s very lacking and most areas are pretty empty, but still; I hope I made the ending screen rewarding enough ^^”

What went wrong:

• my sleeping patterns… u_u”
• game’s source code (as expected for quick application coding)
• wasted some time trying to get audio right
• didn’t add other characters to talk to, or maybe obstacles to avoid
• ran out of time to add proper abilities rather than barrier keys; though I didn’t really had high hopes about that
• possibly the game doesn’t explain things properly, though reports about that aren’t very often so far? O.o”

What I’ve learned:

• all ideas are equal, but some are more equal; and they might be faster to execution
• game development can be insanely quick indeed, especially with proper tools ^^”
• I really am a coder… I can’t do graphics nor music… I really am a coder… I can’t do graphics nor music…

Overall, it was quite fun participating in that compo, though I guess the next time I’ll prefer to participate in the Jam instead; I’m not overly fond of sharing my entire general codebase with everyone else, and 72 hours is still longer than 48. Plus, I don’t like coding the same functionality over and over again. ^^”

I’m curious about what the results will be… I guess I’ll need to wait quite a bit. Still, I probably will do some additional voting every now and then…
(on a side note, whoever came up with the coolness rating and it affecting the order of suggested games to play was a genius; it really seems to work!)

I guess that’s it. Need to work in fixing my sleeping patterns… probably won’t touch the development itself for a little while… ^^”