You can find the same post-mortem in Google Docs form and a link to the spanish version here.
First, to everyone who has been following the development of the Linja Project, we thank all of you from the bottom of our hearts.
For those who didn’t know, this game is being developed by a group of two people, basically an artist and a programmer. It’s also the programmer who’s writing this post-mortem. With all of that out of the way, let’s begin now, shall we?
The Experience
Devtober took us by surprise. We were not expecting this amount of attention and support. I’m very satisfied with what we’ve managed to accomplish, we achieved every goal we’ve set before starting the challenge (they were, however, very “realistic” anyways).
The interaction we had with people liking, retweeting and commenting on our posts felt amazing. I felt like some of you became our friends of us to a degree without a single word being exchanged between us.
All of us who took on the challenge have made quite some progress, haven’t we? A certain part of me was always hyped with the “We really are making a game that people from around the world are seeing and commending” feeling.
I could keep writing on and on about all of this, but it’s not what this post-mortem is supposed to do. Let’s continue.
The greatest takeaway
Besides the interactions and emotions, I’d say it was the use of arrays.
I’ve always been one to avoid using arrays, in any programming language. If I wasn’t going to show a grid on-screen, I’d usually prefer to just work my way around them. Then I came to a point where I needed to use an array to solve something (as early as day 2!), I couldn’t store Linja’s last safe position to retreat him to in case of being squished in a variable… What would happen if that last safe position wasn’t safe anymore?... I had to use an array to be able to go back even further to search for safe positions… And to my surprise, it did the job both exactly as I needed it and as simple as I wanted it to. Before I knew it, I wanted to use arrays for everything. Keyboard mapping, optimization of the aiming system, optimization of the level selection map, anywhere it would fit really.
Also, I was surprised with how much progress we’ve been able to make with so little time put into the game during weekdays. The thought of not having much time to do things held me back from making progress in the game for the longest time. Having perceptible progress done daily and having such a warm reception for a game that’s still so early in development rekindled my motivation to keep working on the game.
And of course, with how much we’ve made each day, it’s also a great thing the fact… well… the game has made important steps towards become a complete product, with many bug fixes, new features and polished mechanics.
The greatest struggle
Although rewarding, working on the game everyday besides full-time job and college was certainly stressing and tiring. We often made it just minutes before the clock hit 00:00.
Planning for updates that could easily be seen to show some progress being made was a bit hard too, I wanted to refrain from posting text updates citing bug fixes or posting an update of how things worked that weren’t very visible, e.g., changes to enemy-aiming and shuriken speed (thanks to @NeatGames for the recommendation!).
Using all our free time working on the game also meant sleeping late every day and putting some games and anime on hold.
So, what’s next?
The game is far from finished. We’ll keep working on it, although probably not at the same pace. The game now has a more solid base to stand on than what it had a month ago, we’ve learned things and have many things we’re eager to keep learning. We hope to have your support on the future as well, it really makes it worth it.
If you found this post-mortem somewhere else and have no idea what this is all about, you can head over to https://twitter.com/LinjaProject to check the progress on the game (both from Devtober and the future).