Saturday, April 4, 2009

Space Invaders Versus Postmortem (or whatever)

Yep it is time againg for a postmortem. I did the same thing with Battle Pong and now it is time for this game. 

I won't make what did I good and wrong but I will just list stuf and say something about it.

Finished it

Yea probably the most important thing. I finished the project.

Day started: 26.1.2009

Day finnished: 3.4.2009

Hours spend: ~51 hours

Lines of code ~5.000 ,  ~2.800 statements

I am happy that I finished the project that took me 2,5 months to finish. It could have been done in like 2 weeks but I was just totaly slacking. Most of the game was done in the last week.

There is one bug in the game that can make the game crash but I didn't take my time to find it. The game crashed few times in the development process.

Learned a lot

One of the most important thing about this project is, that I learned a lot from it. If you compare this to te simple Battle Pong, there is a huge difference. I learned a lot about everything and got a lot of experiance. I also learned that I can make a game in small amount of time if I just take my time and work on it.

Made a decision

I hope I spelled that right. I decided that I won't make any remakes. All my project till now were remakes or more remixes that haved additional stuf. Space Invaders was the biggest remake because it is very diffrent from the original and there are 3 modes to play in.

From now on I decided to make creative games. More indie games. So I will make something that noone has done or at least it isn't a remake. I alredy have a great idea for a simple game. 

Not using the full power of C++

I noticed today when I was looking how to make a level editor, that there are some vital C++ functions that I don't use and know. And these are: Friendship, inheritance and Polymorphism. These are some vital things that I need to know before I start on my next project. If I learn this I will know how to program more object oriented, that will make my games better.

So what is next

I am now plannig to start learning these vital things. I will realy need them if I want to understand how to make a level editor, that is very important in the next game. Because the game won't be that complex but the levels + interesting gameplay style will make the game nice. So first will be learning, then I will make some example programs to test my knowlage. I hope I will start the next project next week. Till then I will draw the ideas for the game on paper and plan everything out so it will be easier to develop it.

That was what I wanted to say. I hope I didn't complicate much. Also thanks for all the support that you gave me. Specialy Swarmer that gave me support by easily just testing it and giving feedback, that can be a lot for somebody.

I also put the video of the development process on YouTube today. The quality that is on youtube is s**t, but I can't help it.

I will also post a video with all my games till now.

Bye for today.

3 comments:

  1. Nice job! I posted some comments on gamedev.net, about the controls. It's preventing me from playing the game fully.

    You should indeed study object oriented things, like inheritance and polymorphism. It really makes structuring the game a lot easier and a lot cleaner. http://cplusplus.com/ has a pretty good tutorial on it. I'm looking forward to seeing your next game.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Thanks a lot. Yea I need to check the comments. Yea I found the tuts on that site and will learn them.
    Thanks again. I also wait for your game :D

    ReplyDelete
  3. Did you see this video? :)
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bb5DjyoDObA

    ReplyDelete