Competition Forum > Post Mortem

MLGJ #1 Post Mortem

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Caracitrine:
Dear Princess Discord, I'm writing to you a few days after the Game Jam, but it is still fresh in my mind.

To open with I hadn't ever made anything more complicated than a simple 2D collision tester before this. And that was a third of the code that my game ended up being. But lets start at the beginning. It was clear that chaos had struck even before the theme's announcement. No doubt some of your handiwork. But as soon as it had been announced the first thing I did was take a nap. How weird, right? Perhaps I should have napped before the announcement, but felt that I needed to give my brain some time to process the theme.

Upon waking I still wasn't sure what I wanted to do, but I already knew I was going to make this using C++ with one library. Taking that I began to create a basic framework without even bothering to outline. I figured that I would be best served if I just started coding since a lot of my time would be spent in art anyway- just make a simple collision based game (since I already had an idea of how that might work).

I had been told many times to get the program working and doing whatever behavior as soon as possible so that one could build off of reality rather than whatever idea one has. So I displayed some graphics and got them moving around the screen. Great. Afterwards this left me with a bit of a bind: what did I actually want this game to be about? Well, the simplest games were those 2D side scrolling shooters. Lets try for those.

I drew a terrible mockup of a Rainbow Dash and one for you too. Now with vague ideas for a conflict I began to add monsters that would tell me when they intersect with Rainbow's icon. Slowly building from there I eventually had enough of a game to side down and draw. Clearly Rainbow was flying, so I made a significantly better Rainbow, a good Shadow-Bolt, as well as a cloud background. This served enough of a purpose to really get development rolling.

I created a generic format for wave creation- making a vector of shapes for each wave, and a vector of vectors for all of the
waves together. I knew there were many more elegant ways of doing this, but I was under the impression that I was going
to make an animation for the sprites soon enough that I wouldn't have time for much else. Unfortunately this is where the problems really started to roll in. The waves took far too long to construct even with a fairly automated way of making them, and eventually I discovered that to add the narration as I intended was neigh impossible. So I settled for a compromise: after finalizing the game as much as possible I simply hard coded when the sounds would play, I scrapped the idea of animations, I never wrote any music, and just focused on the waves. However! I didn't have to scrap the boss battle. Unfortunately due to
the lack of animation it turned out fairly boring.

Still, in the end I managed to get six hours sleep total over two nights- the jam started at 5PM here so I was faced with nightfall a second time. Oddly enough I only got two hours sleep the second night due to waking up. But because I was up this made me immediately want to start coding. I think not getting enough sleep reduced my ability to produce work, so in the future I think I will sleep a normal amount as to use the rest of the day effectively. This had been one of my most productive weekends ever, and am very glad to have been a part of it.

~ A Shine in the Shadows
Cara Citrine

jigpu:
Dear Prince Blueblood,

With the Princesses out on royal duties, I suppose my report on the first My Little Game Jam will have to be submitted to you. Please forward it upon their return.

As you may be aware, writing UI and graphics code is not something I particularly enjoy. I find the job tedious, requiring a significant investment in time for what feels like a small payoff. I would much rather be designing and writing code which solves a problem, not telling the system how it should react to keypresses. Despite (or perhaps because) of this, I've felt the field of game design harbors a certian mystique.

It was with some amount of trepidation that I entered the competion. Not for fear of being unable to write something, but for fear that what I created would be terrible. My muse often heads out to lunch when starting creative endeavours, leaving me high-and-dry with nary an idea to build upon. Combined with my predisposition to write problem-solving code instead of user-interface code, I was reasonbly certian my game would have neither spark of life nor flash of style.

Quite to my surprise, things went much better than I could have hoped. Within minutes of learning the theme was "chaos", several ideas had already popped into my head; one or two even seemed feasible given the 48 hour deadline. Shortly thereafter I began considering the language to use and somehow settled upon a language with which I had only passing familiarity: Javascript. Idea and language in hand, I set myself to the task of banging out an implementation.

When the deadline arrived two days later, I submitted my work for the world to see. In the span of a weekend, I had created not some sterile piece of code, but an honest-to-goodness game. While not particularly noteworthy compared to the entries, it had far surpassed my own expectations. It was a delight to have coded, and is---despite its rough edges---one of my prouder achievements.

When you return from your royal duties, I highly recommend playing some of the entries yourselves. Your subjects have crafted some astounding pieces of work that I'm certian you would enjoy.

Your Glad Subject,
JigPu

VioletLinked:

Twilight_Sparkle[NLR]:
Dear Queen Nightmare Moon

You are awesome....that is all.






Long live the NLR! :P

To Coool:
Dear Princess Ermahgawd,

I somehow managed to get 4th place in the Game Jam! Woohoo!

Your faithful student,
To Coool

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