Lessons From Day 1

ZeroByte on 2008/09/07 23:38 of Cine-Science Logic

So Day 1 ends in about 30 minutes and I'm about to turn go to sleep after marathoning through this day. Here's what I think I've learned from day 1.

Pre-pyweek preparations are very important! Learning the technologies we use in pyweek before hand is great for code velocity. So code wise we did pretty well. Theme preparation wasn't too good for us though. We got caught off guard by Piece of String winning, I think we got too enamoured with our idea for Flatpacked that we didn't consider the other themes as much. Another place we could have done better (well, I could have done better) is in preparing the workflow. Was a bit rusty with 2d animations and I did not familiarize myself with my animation tools leading to much frustration on my side as I clumsily fought against the apps. Asset people should beef up on their pipeline too.

Since this is a weeklong competition there is also a question of having the stamina to see it through the week. I'm lucky being in the middle of school semesters so I can dedicate the whole week to this. However, I do not think I can sustain what I have done on the first day throughout the whole week, which is basically stay up the whole day working on the game. Got to pace myself instead of flaming out.

I think this especially applies towards touching the codebase. Tired programmers will tend to introduce more problems to the code rather than moving it forward, so thats kinda... no.

Asset velocity is another concern. I'm creating the art too slowly, I probably need to drop some frames from animations or just be outright lazy and use filters/effects. I also should have thought of using flash to draw the keyframes instead of struggling with photoshop/painter which are not primarily meant for animation.

Share your thoughts on what you've learned so far in the competition!