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[Post-Mortem] SuperHeroU!

A topic by aliengeometries created Jan 23, 2017 Views: 280
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So I made a demo.

That in and of itself is a win for me; I typically finish a project and then show it only to a small group of people IRL. Or maybe I never finish it. Or maybe I never start to code it (see: SuperHeroU! in the months before this jam). So here I am! A dev project of mine finally has an online permanent home!

I liked being a one-person team because it meant I wasn't reliant on anyone else's feedback and I didn't have to wait for anyone else to finish something. Could I have done more as part of a larger team? It's possible, but having done group jams in the past, this was a lot more fun.

I found that the level of work I assigned myself was actually completely doable. There was never a part where I felt rushed for time, and I even ended up doing a lot of things I'd put into the third level of priority because I'd finished levels one and two. Seeing the itemized list of everything I'd done gave me such a feeling of accomplishment and relief.

I coded everything myself. My plan was to use Stencyl, but I had to abandon that when I learned it wouldn't play nice with my machine. So I used Game Maker instead. I learned a lot about Game Maker -- I'd installed it previously, but I'd never touched it after installing it. I think my experience with Construct 2 helped, as the programs have several similarities.

I drew everything myself. I used freeware placeholder assets during the early stages of production, but I had time to implement my own art for everything. I also made all the sound effects! The only things I didn't make are Game Maker and the public domain font I used for the text.

I felt like I used my time well. I do have a tendency to space out, but I got a lot done in a short amount of time, even with weather shutting off my hardware and one day of depression where I just couldn't bear doing anything.

That being said, the game is nowhere close to complete.

While there's two ways the NPC can appear, it's really just one NPC. Same with the PC. There's only one possible fight and you gain nothing from it. There are no levels either in gameplay or in character skills. My turn structure only supports two combatants, one of whom is player-controlled and one of whom is not. I have four attacks of Type Undefined, which are bonded to the player appearance, as well as one pass turn button, rather than the more complex attack logic I want to implement. There's no visible indicator of turn order -- not that it'd be interesting at this stage, since it's just A, B, A, B. There's no narrative, no background music, no animation, and worst of all, no real character customization.

So those are some things I need to work on.

All in all, this was a good experience and I think I gained from it. Now I know some things for future jams and future development.

Here's the demo!