Post Mortem of Red Meanies

daftspaniel on 2012/05/27 19:17

Well done to the two winners - amazing work. Amazing the sort of innovative games that can be made in just seven days. I took part this time around - only my second attempt. Time for a post mortem!

My goal was to create a game in a large generated play area. Also I wanted the graphics to be programmatic, scalable and flexible to play at any resolution. Overall, I reckon I hit these goals though the gameplay was not quite as fun as the last one due to less variety

I have received some great feedback this time around. Thanks! There are many tweaks (an area I sadly did not have time for during the competition). Better mapping, goal feedback and more interesting terrain. Quite how I move it forward, I am not sure. Tempting to move to HTML5. Would love to give the player lots of controls over the size of the play area, number of monsters, length of day etc.

Lessons Learned in no particular order:

Not having sound is something people WILL notice.
The motto 'Keep it simple and complete' is an excellent strategy.
Even small animation and movement pay off. The feel of the game is improved so much.
Keeping classes small helps - never a problem that a bit of code was too small.
Don't leave all on screen controls until the end!
Write the User instructions and revisit them at the end.
Getting the IDE, libraries, tools etc chosen and installed in advance allows for a quicker start.
Some bits and pieces of Python (3) I did not know yet.
Small custom tools can save lots of time.

Would I do another one? Yes. Always fun and educational. Looking forward to the next one! Thank you organisers :-)