next »

[pgil]

2. Sound design was a big boring slog. And still I'm not happy with a lot of the sounds. Semi-realism kind of sucks that way. Next game I won't do something that can't use sfxr for all sound.

I thought the sound was perfect. Very cartoony... I can't imagine the game without the snorts and grunts of the badger. And SFXR is overused anyway (not that there's anything wrong with sfxr.. it is pretty handy)

[Pixelfish]

Post-mortem for Salvage...

The Good...
1. The raycasting engine turned out remarkably well. It runs nice and smooth and can use static walls, animated walls, doors, and destructible walls without any special code really.
2. I learned a lot about how to control a 'camera' even though it wasn't a true 3D environment.
3. I learned even more about vector math. I learned about it back in school, but never really applied it. It all came rushing back once I started coding the game.
4. The campaign editor was a last minute creation, but made the completion of this game possible. I also like the fact that I can release it and let other people play with it.
5. The Farseer Physics Engine is amazing. I can't praise it enough.

The Bad...
1. Content ... or lack thereof. Only 3 enemies. My original plan was to have 6 enemies, several powerups, static actors (desks, chairs, terminals, etc), and several campaigns.
2. The HUD itself isn't as active or as detailed as I would like it to be. I was planning on including more detail, but just ran out of time and artistic talent.

The Ugly...
1. The red demon enemy is unfinished. While it may be difficult to kill him (nearly impossible) he has no death animation.
2. No Sound. Ugly. Period.

Great thread idea. I hope one is made for every competition from now on. 

[nihilocrat]

2. Sound design was a big boring slog. And still I'm not happy with a lot of the sounds. Semi-realism kind of sucks that way. Next game I won't do something that can't use sfxr for all sound.

I agree that the sound effects were actually pretty fitting. The ridiculousness of the game is well complemented by the ridiculous sound effects.

5. Minimal Tigs updates. Some more sharing, and thus feedback might have saved me one or two mid-project existential crises.

I think a lot of people had those "existential crises". I know I'm not really happy with my game because of its core gamplay, as I mention in my post-mortem, but I feel a little better when I realize it was successful as an experiment. It's good to get feedback to alleviate your concerns, and in reality, what you have been debugging for hours is probably a lot more fun for a newcomer than you'd think.

I think the posting frequency really depends on your personality, I've noticed several projects that showed up out of nowhere, or started a thread but didn't make another post until the game was finished. You might notice I'm the sort of person that likes to release often, not just because of technical issues, to get feedback and such.

[Mikademus]

Excellent thread idea.

Great thread idea. I hope one is made for every competition from now on. 

Thanks! If no-one beats me to it I will certainly make one for the next compo to, especially since I love reading these things!

Anyway, about Pixelfish's game, I for one at least liked it, or more brutally, I liked the concept and execution, though I would have wanted more game in the game. I really enjoyed the Wolfenstein-ish raycasting engine and look (nostalgia but combined with more modern gameplay == winnage) but I agree that missing audio was actually a big drawback. Do complete the game or use the engine for another one, please!

I think the posting frequency really depends on your personality, I've noticed several projects that showed up out of nowhere, or started a thread but didn't make another post until the game was finished. You might notice I'm the sort of person that likes to release often, not just because of technical issues, to get feedback and such.

I think I was a relatively frequent poster in your thread, and that's because of a few things: firstly I really liked your game idea (realistic space flight ), secondly because you used OGRE, but thirdly because I found you easy, responsive and generally sympathetic to speak with, so yeah, personality is important.

[Akon]

yo muthafuckin postmortem for i'm so paid the game

tha good
-got a muthafuckin cool lowpoly look goin on there
-got some muthafuckin shit cool music
-got paid

tha bad
-muthafuckas here don't like autotune
-it's muthafuckin hard to get paid
-no anti-aliasing
-sound effects weren't muthafuckin there

[Ivan]

I don't think that you count as indie then, Akon, if you got paid. Especially, so paid.

[Akon]

I don't think that you count as indie then, Akon, if you got paid. Especially, so paid.

your opinion doesn't muthafuckin matter cause you're not so muthafuckin paid
i can be whateva tha fuck i want
i'm muthafuckin indie, yo
jon blow got muthafuckin paid, you still think he's indie

[Bood_War]

I don't think that you count as indie then, Akon, if you got paid. Especially, so paid.

your opinion doesn't muthafuckin matter cause you're not so muthafuckin paid
i can be whateva tha fuck i want
i'm muthafuckin indie, yo
jon blow got muthafuckin paid, you still think he's indie

Your really muthafuckin' comparing yourself too Jon Blow?

[Akon]

I don't think that you count as indie then, Akon, if you got paid. Especially, so paid.

your opinion doesn't muthafuckin matter cause you're not so muthafuckin paid
i can be whateva tha fuck i want
i'm muthafuckin indie, yo
jon blow got muthafuckin paid, you still think he's indie

Your really muthafuckin' comparing yourself too Jon Blow?

fuck yeah, yo
i'm better than dat muthafucka

[Bood_War]

I don't think that you count as indie then, Akon, if you got paid. Especially, so paid.

your opinion doesn't muthafuckin matter cause you're not so muthafuckin paid
i can be whateva tha fuck i want
i'm muthafuckin indie, yo
jon blow got muthafuckin paid, you still think he's indie

Your really muthafuckin' comparing yourself too Jon Blow?

fuck yeah, yo
i'm better than dat muthafucka

Right

[Akon]

I don't think that you count as indie then, Akon, if you got paid. Especially, so paid.

your opinion doesn't muthafuckin matter cause you're not so muthafuckin paid
i can be whateva tha fuck i want
i'm muthafuckin indie, yo
jon blow got muthafuckin paid, you still think he's indie

Your really muthafuckin' comparing yourself too Jon Blow?

fuck yeah, yo
i'm better than dat muthafucka

Right

fuck you
i don't like them haters

[Impossible]

jon blow got muthafuckin paid, you still think he's indie

Jon Blow is not indie because he got paid.

[moi]

fuckers so don't get paid yo

[trabitboy]

post mortem pork feeder 3000:

good :
- was hard pressed to have an idea related to a cockpit, but it forced me to think in new interesting ways

- avoided any "shooting" gameplay mechanic

- game idea was strictly from scratch, meaning it's a try of something new, jumping in the unknown

- once I got the first working play mechanic, I was just satisfied: this game really works ( once you get to the core, very hard from the short demo )

- managed a lot of work on a month despite heavy RL business going on

- like the lots of graphical assets produced during the compo month even if I hadn't the time to polish any of them again

- technology was great : open gl and c++ > apart from maths and a little fiddling with sdl in the beginning, I encountered no problem and result is smooth.

bad :
- the quite short nature of the demo is quite unfulfilling given the amount of work given :p

- false 3D actually is much harder than it seems ! I didn't think I lost so much of my math skills

- the idea of the cockpit I wanted to develop was that you have a very visually rich cockpit where everything
  has a meaning to the game: problem is you need to introduce things one by one.
  having a gameplay based on giving way too much info to handle to the player is quite risky

- actually I so burnt myself out to get to a playable state for compo end than polishing afterwards to make it accessible
   just made me sick ( even making a video )

- a simple readme would have been way better than my flawed in game tutorial .

- game is very dry in difficulty curve:  it's not a direct copy of existing game, doesn't have intuitive controls, and tutorial is flawed;
   if you try to make something completely odd/new, you need to make sure the player can somehow get in.

- really a game without sound sucks

- spending too many time doing assets and integrating them meant that gameplay tuning came at the last minute
( prototyping gameplay really was the essential, and I didn't focus on that enough ).
  saw that coming because I began with a visual idea, not a gameplay idea.

- player lacks visual feedback/reward when he does something positive/negative: actually makes the game not intuitive enough

- didn't post enough on my progress, first demo was very late, so I couldn't build enough feedback/comments,
which would have been great to improve my result ; I missed on this aspect of the compo.

will do:

- continue to work on it after a break as I think it could become an enjoyable AND accessible game

- music

- levels introducing new elements one by one

- more funky hud effects with strange blendings

- more animated stuff in the cockpit, and animations for the player as reward

- new gameplay elements cut from the demo due to time constraint

[William Broom]

Good:

- I thought it was funny

Bad:

- It wasn't funny