Damage the Walls - Postmortem

I'm trying out writing my postmortem here on Itchi.io since I don't feel like Medium is the appropriate place. I don't think anyone else  has much interest in these postmortems - the purpose of them isn't entertainment, but for my own reflection. I'm also curious to try out Itch.io as a writing forum, to see if there are any unexpected benefits.

Now, getting to "Damage the Walls": all-in-all, I'm pretty pleased with the technical experience I gained in Godot physics & leaderboarding, the community interaction, and the fact that I was able to strategically pivot and produce something despite the obstacles that arose. However, I was never pleased with the idea nor proud of the finished product, and I ran into some game-breaking challenges with Godot physics.

What Went Well

Technical Experience

I'm pleased that I was able to get my feet wet with the Godot physics engine for the first time and start learning some of its concepts.

I'm also happy that I was able to implement a leaderboard for the game. SilentWolf made it super easy to set up a leaderboard and integrate it into the game. There were some weird authentication issues that the GDFG community pointed out to me, but for my purposes, I'm okay with it. The authentication issues aren't a dealbreaker for me given the scope of my games, and especially given SilentWolf's responsiveness when I reached out about the issues. And, of course, the fact that SilentWolf is FREE.

Community Interaction

I love that I was able to create community interaction with this game via the leaderboard and get players talking to each other and competing.  It's really cool to see people playing your game, and particularly cool to see people talking about your game.

Pivoting

I was never particularly pleased with the concept for this game, and I'm not exactly pleased with the result. However, I am happy that I was able to produce something despite the challenges I faced. I found that I didn't have the time to work on the game this month that I thought I would have and I could NOT get the Godot physics to do what I wanted it to do. There was weird behavior where, after creating a joint between two or more rigid bodies, the cluster would start rapidly spinning and then "explode", sending the rigid bodies in all directions. I didn't spend a ton of time trying to fix this unexpected behavior (given my time limitations), so I decided to pivot the game and make an RNG/slot machine experience rather than the strategic game I had planned. Again, I'm not actually proud of the game, but I'm proud that I was able to produce something in spite of my challenges.

What Could've Been Better

Planning

I never loved the initial idea for the game. I don't think I spent enough time planning and brainstorming. I should've spent more time on this part, and probably should've just created a game that I wanted to create rather than something that fit the jam theme.

Physics

I'm honestly a bit concerned about Godot physics going forward. I'd be happy to chalk up the challenges I faced with physics to my inexperience. However, browsing the internet, it sounds like the Godot physics engine can be quite buggy. I'm not ready to write it off just yet, but this leaves me some pause for concern. Luckily, I don't think the types of games I want to make often involve a lot of physics.

Even if Godot has the perfect physics engine, I'm not sure how much I like working with physics. It involves a lot of tweaking the variables to get the feel just so and I didn't find myself enjoying that part of the game development much. We'll see how I feel about it going forward - my lack of enjoyment could have had more to do with not loving the game concept.

Going Forward

• Move On: I'd normally spend some time addressing feedback and improving the game after the jam. However, I think I just want to lay this one to rest. One suggestion I might follow through on is including particle effects - I believe this is a skill I should learn.
  
• Polish: I'd like to develop a refined, polished game with nice menus, art, sound effects, and a generally professional feel. A game jam is probably not the venue for this, but wondering if I can figure out an idea for an extremely small scope game, I could pull this off. Or maybe I don't participate in a game jam next game.
• More Community Interaction: I really enjoyed the community interaction that resulted from this game and would like to keep that going. A leaderboard is an easy way to do that (and I should give Gerald's Leaderboard API a shot). However, I'd also like to think up alternative ways I could create social interaction in the game (that fit within my technical scope limitations).
• Flexibility: If I'm struggling to come up with an idea that fits a jam theme and running out of time, I'm going to allow myself to diverge from the theme. From this experience, I think it's more important to create a game I'm excited about rather than challenging myself to get creative with a theme.

UPDATE: Attempted to add particles on collisions. Seems to work in the Android version, but I don't think many browsers support the necessary WebGL functionality - saw the error:

WebGL warning: drawArraysInstanced: Illegal use of buffer at TRANSFORM_FEEDBACK_BUFFER[0] while also bound to <enum 0x8892="">.</enum>