Welcome to WC: Postmortem
Tee on 2007/04/22 01:24
of Welcome to World Corporation
What Went Wrong
- Time: I spent way too much time in this game. I sacrificed a few other (real life) things just to finish the game. Probably this came from having to redo a lot of things (code and art).
- Lack of code planning: This wasted a lot of time. I had to redo several sections of the code because it was very messy. And yet, it's still messy. :P
- Pixel art: I spent a day or two trying to draw some pixel art. My original intention was to create pixel art offices, but that turned out to be too hard and too time consuming. Fortunately, I figured out an alternative.
- Unbalancing and lack of testing: I think this was the biggest mistake. I should have spared more time for testing and tweaking.
- Strategy game: This is the first strategy game I've ever made, so I'm not used to it. Making something different teached me a few lessons, though.
- Finished: Woohoo, I finished it! :)
- To-do list: Saturday morning I decided to make a to-do list. It's only a to-do list, but it significantly increased my productivity, because I always knew what I'm going to do next, and there's that feeling of accomplishment (and consequently motivation) when you cross out one of the items. :)
- Graphics: I'm actually pretty surprised what I was able to do with the graphics. I had a totally different idea at first, but I ended up with graphics that, while far from being cool-looking as pixel art, they also look good, and, most importantly, it didn't take so much of my time to draw them.
- Items: There would be items that would give you bonuses and such. For example, you'd be able to buy a rendering screensaver, which would improve your chances of faking work ("Sorry, boss, I can't work while it's rendering.").
- Levels and descriptions of secrets: Secrets would have various levels, and each would have a description of sorts. Of course, the worse the secret, the more money or reputation you'd be able to get.
- Savegames: In a strategy game, savegames are pretty important. Unfortunately, I didn't have time to implement that.
- People working against you: And you'd also have secrets and stuff, including secrets acquired while doing sneaky stuff. And people would also blackmail you or expose your secrets in an attempt to gain money or destroy your reputation.
- Stocks: You would be able to buy stocks, which depend on how the company goes. If you have a higher position, you'd be able to influence more how the stocks go, maybe even release rumors as to raise or lower the price of stocks.
- Different endings: Instead of destroying the reputation of the CEO, you'd be able to buy more than 50% of stocks to own the company.
- Name and gender choosing, interview: You would be able to choose your name and gender. Also, an interview would allow you to change how much money you'd start with, your initial stats and initial reputation.
- Random events: Where you find out new secrets accidentally, or gain new secrets for other people to use against you, or work bonus, or stuff like that.
- Music and sounds: It's just a strategy game so music and sounds aren't that important, but it would add something to the game.
Wow, writing a list like this makes me see there were a lot of features I threw away. I hadn't noticed that.
Although the idea isn't bad, I wish I had thought of something more creative and fun.
I don't think I went too bad, but I could've done much better. I think if I had spared just a few hours to tweak it, the game would be more playable. So, I'm not sure whether this is a victory or a defeat (in terms of whether I'm satisfied with the game or not), so I'll call it a tie and move on to the next pyweek. :)
Anyway, see you all again on Pyweek 5. It was fun, thanks everyone, especially to Richard for hosting it again. :) Congratulations to Hectigo and TOBA. :)
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Comments
simono on
2007/04/22 09:38:
This all sound like you really had a plan for how things fit together. Like Items, how to make Secrets more complex and how people could work against you.
I like it so much, I might steal some of your ideas and try an make an office-strategy game myself ;-)
saluk on
2007/04/22 06:20:
Nice job doing well in unfamiliar territory. I thought yours was one of the more creative entries actually, although a lot of them were pretty inventive. Still, most of them could have really used 3-4 more hours of pure playtesting. That's the nature of the thing though :)