Archive · August 2016

Ludum Dare 36: SPATCON Postmortem

If you haven't tried it yet, please check out our Ludum Dare 36 submission!
play SPATCON here

Since summer was going to end soon, I figured, what better way to spend a nice, sunny weekend than with a game jam? That's exactly what I did! In this post, I'll briefly discuss my experience with the 36th Ludum Dare game jam.

Challenge: Lack Of A Unified Vision

The theme for the August game jam was Ancient technology. The team decided early on that we would be making a rhythm game that would feature ancient instruments. We failed to discuss the specificities of the project prior to the start of development which resulted in a misunderstanding of expectations. This caused a lot of the earlier code to be scrapped and narrowed our development time frame.

Furthermore, it was difficult to proceed whenever I encountered a situation that would need the team's input. This caused development to be occasionally interrupted to allow the team to discuss whenever a critical decision was to be made.

Resolution: Hourly stand-ups

We decided to hold hourly stand-ups to update the team with our individual progress. This proved incredibly useful as the standups allowed the team to refine the end goals of the project as we dove deeper into development. The team was also able to discuss and make critical decisions as a whole. It essentially enabled flexible development of the game as we found our vision and design to be constantly evolving.

Considering that we only had the weekend, I did not think my experience with SCRUM would have been relevant. The agile methodology allowed us to produce a well-polished game in such a short time.

Victory: Team Ownership

With that said, the resulting shared ownership by the team was wonderful. Everyone had a say in every decision the team made. We were able to voice out our opinions as the team critiqued ideas and not people. It enforced the spirit of collaboration and made the project uniquely ours.

Challenge: Technical ability

The biggest challenge I faced during the game jam was my technical ability. Since I was a student who was trying to keep up with professionals, I felt like I should not have been part of the team. My capabilities paled in comparison to the technical prowess of the indie veterans that were my teammates. Evidently, I felt that I was holding the team back and felt bad for it.

Resolution: Mentorship

Despite the weakness of my technical abilities, the team was very supportive of me. Every question I asked was met with answers, suggestions, and explanations. My relatively slower development time was met with patience and understanding. For example, I was taught some of the mechanics of midi files and how we could implement the timing for each beat.

Victory: Initiative

The guilt pushed me to work a lot harder than I expected. I did every little thing I could do to contribute, no matter how minor. I took the liberty of scrapping deprecated code and tidying up the code base. I tried to ensure that the game was usability-oriented by repeatedly applying heuristic evaluations. I also assisted in the discovery and resolution of bugs and defects throughout the weekend. Finally, I took charge of creating our Ludum Dare submission entry which took a lot more creativity than I initially expected. Although my contributions to the game have been relatively minor and slow, I think I earned my place in the team by the end of it.