My game was The Banker: An Atrocity in Three Parts
It was made in slightly less than two days from scratch with C++, and entered in the Jam.
Libraries used: SFML and Boost Property Tree
Tools used: VIM (IDE), GIMP, Tiled Map Editor.
What went right:
- I finished! This was the first game I’ve actually managed to do in time.
- The idea. While I didn’t get to work on it for a day, I had the idea the moment the theme was announced and it didn’t really change at all after that. This is the first LD that I can say that for – although it’s the only one where I would have benefitted more the other way around.
- I got most of the dialogue I wanted in
- By compromising on features, managed to make all three parts of the game
- It was almost funny?
- SFML wasn’t as God-awfully obstrucvtive as I usually find it
What went wrong:
- Programming took around twice as long as I expected
- As a result, all graphics had to be made in ~1 hour
- As a result, the graphics were terrible
- Movement was too slow, but this only became apparent once I made the map larger than 10×10 tiles in the last ten minutes of the competition
- Some of the dialogue was done in the last couple of minutes before I uploaded, so it’s a little badly written in places, and feels inconsistent
- While it would never have been a “gameplay” type of game, it lacks even an attempt at gameplay features
What didn’t go at all:
- Didn’t have time to do any music. Not even sFXR
- Had to cut a few interactions, and jokes suffered as a result
- Didn’t have time to add the minigame I had planned
- Didn’t get in any social commentary or obscure economics jokes
Overall, though, I’m just glad I finished – it was a very close thing.
I spent so long on loading the maps that the benefits I reaped in terms of entity loading were rendered useless given the lack of art assets, which was a shame. Just having better art or any music would improve the game so massively that I think I ought to just brush it up a little next weekend.