Post-mortem and future

RB[0] on 2007/04/22 02:58 of Team Quicksilver

WARNING: long post :P

Well, first off, this has been a great pyweek, the number and quality of entries was astonding, and I was actually glad to lose to a few of them :)
We are very pleased with where we placed, even if it was lower than last time :P

What went wrong:

1. Started out with way too fast of a pace(literally), and a so-so idea that was really meant for a different theme and. Ran with the idea, created a simple 3d physic engine and particle effects. Found a multitude of bugs in the physics..

2. Spent 2nd and 3rd days trying to fix 3d physics to no effect. Finally scratched the whole thing, only to find that it was just moving too darn fast and losing events from pygame :(.

3. Finally scratched our original idea late Tuesday, and started work on it late Wednesday. But by this time we really didn't have enough time to really finish a game as big as we were planning, but decided to stick it out.

4. Our artist wasn't able to work on the game until Wednesday, so I spent 60% of the remaining time on graphics, instead of focusing on code :(

5. Waited until last day to implement menus, sound, skellington, levels, between game screens.

6. Our game designer wasn't able to do much after helping with the ideas(he was going to do levels/balancing).

7. After switching ideas, I decided to use my pyglibs library, but I haven't worked on it for a while, and it really wasn't competition-ready, so I spent about 1/4 of my programming time re-writing it, and thinking up ways to do things that should have already been done :(.

8. And last, we didn't have a plan for the compo, we mostly did whatever came to mind next, so some things that should have been implemented weren't, and some things that really weren't important were given too much time.

What went right:

1. I was able to do more graphics than I have ever done for any project in the past.

2. Found lots of way to fix up pyglibs into a better package.

3. Coded my first actual AI !!! :)

4. Learned some music-making basic(didn't use this new-found skill though...)

5. Have a better idea of what we'll need to next time to really accomplish whatever we plan.

The future...
Well, this is actually my favorite game that I have made to date, and we definitely will be planning on continuing its development :D

Here is a list of things that are planned for the next release(hopefully soon):

1. Fix up ai a bit(it will stop moving sometimes, and doesnt always work right...)

2. Add some more animation(especially for lightning bolt attacks)

3. Add some hot-keys.

4. Create an interactive tutorial.

5. Create a level editor and a campaign system, so you can create tournaments.

6. A trophy system(which thus requires a player-saving system)

7. A better menu system.

8. Add lots of levels(I'm really glad i was actually able to play through the entire game without it crashing because of levels :))

9. Add a custom ai setting to the levels.

10. Make the tile smaller(that should allow bigger map sizes, without hurting speed)

11. Add some more sfx.

There are a few more things planned, but they will not likely be in the upcoming release.

If anyone has any requests/comments/ideas or anything else, feel free to post them here.

Well, I'm off to bed now, will maybe work on the game some tomorrow. ;)
Hope to see you all again next pyweek :)

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Comments

RB[0] on 2007/04/22 03:06:

Oh, and one more thing in both the went right and went wrong:
I didn't implement the tutorial until the final day(I did a lot of that), and again relied on tut screens :/

I wont be doing that again, unless I run out of time again ;)

saluk on 2007/04/22 06:15:

Tut screens are a killer - I am coming to think that a tut screen is worse than no tut at all. I will be avoiding anything like a tut screen next time around - and probably go for a game that wouldn't need any sort of tutorial whatsoever... Makes judging easier at any rate.

RB[0] on 2007/04/22 13:36:

yeah, I was hoping we wouldn't need a tut screen, but I didn't have time to tweak the game play to be as intuitive as I had hoped ;)

Another thing that hurt us:
I spent way too much time on irc and posting here :P

RB[0] on 2007/04/24 16:15:

Well, it seems that the biggest killer for us were the levels(90% of the comment complaints could have been fixed with just 2-3 hours of level-making/testing).

The ai being to easy/hard is in the levels.
Plants being unbalanced(just using cheaper ones wins, every time).
Game going too fast/slow.
Only having a single cut-scene.
And last, but not least, balancing.

I am a bit frustrated that we received a below-average(2.8) fun score, as we got a 2.9 last time.

I should have spent the last day working on levels, or avoided the last minute level design change :/
Instead of working on sound/tuts/whatever.
Oh, well, we'll definitely focus on fun/innovation over production next time, that was a real killer ;)

dmoisset on 2007/04/25 00:40:

I enjoyed your game a lot, and thought the concept was really cool. I am a bit sorry I didn't make it the last day when I was scoring. But I would have given you a 3 5 4 (with that 3 able to go up with a little testing)

RB[0] on 2007/04/25 01:27:

thanks for the reply dmoisset :)
We are currently working on an "if we only had one more day" release of the game.

It should include two different campaigns, several scenarios in each campaign.
Hotkeys, yay :)
And fixes for the two known bugs.

Cya later :)