Alias - Postmortem #2

DangerOnTheRagr on 2012/05/30 17:14

Well, Pyweek 14 is over, and my first PyWeek entry didn't do so bad - I finshed 30th in the individual category. If I could do PyWeek 14 over, here's what I observed and would have done differently (yes, I made a previous post-mortem, but I have the advantage of seeing what people who played my entry said):

One of my nagging suspicions has been confirmed: Panda3D is a pain to install (66% of the people who attempted to play Alias got stuck installing Panda). If I want to do a 3D game again, I'll probably have to write my own (hopefully pure Python) game engine from scratch.
Making the game itself always takes longer than you think :) Next time, I'll probably quit brainstorming and start developing after day 1 is over.
Making the artwork first was a good idea, since I'm better with code. I should try that again next time.
An exception to the above is APIs/libraries I've never used before. For example, this was the first time I used Panda's AI and collision detection library, and I had to iron out a lot of time-consuming bugs (some of which were in the libraries themselves). Next time, I'll try to stick with libraries I already know how to use.
I didn't factor in sound to my 7-day plan. Sound + music really adds feel to your game (not as much as graphics, obviously, but still...). Next time I'll try to allocate some time to at least making sounds - 8-bit music is where my severely limited composing skills begin and end, so I don't see much hope in custom music :)

All that being said, I feel relatively satisfied with what I was able to produce. It didn't have all the features I originally wanted - I aimed way too high for my first PyWeek, but hey, it was a good learning experience. Hopefully I'll be able to make a better 3D game come PyWeek 15. :)

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Comments

richard on 2012/05/31 00:00:

Nice post-mortem, thanks!

I wrote my first solo 3D game from the ground up. It's a bit of work. I recommend you have a crack at the relevant concepts (model loading and rendering, some collision handling stuff and so on) before PyWeek to get a feel for them.