PostMortem #1

I won't look backwards too hard, but I will look forward from the lessons of this jam. I treated this jam as an opportunity to flex some skills while exploring others.

The good

I had several primary goals for this jam which was to create a game centered around my morale mechanic.  What little feedback I got from my battle system at the time of writing is pretty positive. I also was set on doing a side-scroller perspective to solve some numerous key issues explained here.

The wakeup calls

Considering I won Hawktober which I credit for the fact I did my genre research in Horror, I realized I was much more lost for Harold 2023 since I have not done the appropriate genre research. I have a long list of movies I should watch to get a better grasp of what the best storytelling should look like.

My work process also made me realize I need to be writing a plugin for custom text macros so I don't have to manually type out \C[2]Heroname\C[0] which makes devving a little slower. It may seem pretty small but it adds up and especially makes editing slower. On a brighter side, I already wrote a plugin that allows me to put out audio commands via text, it shouldn't take much to expand on that for better functionality.

Also need to think about how to refine the battle system that I have now. I'm looking forward to animating faces in the battle status window, having battle animations play on top of those faces, and removing the stutter when a 'hit' sound effect plays. I have not have the time to debug that and I should get to prepping for the next jam I opt for a battle system.

Moving forward

I will want to adapt more mechanics from the same scrapped project which I pulled my morale mechanic. I have a trade system and a text messaging plugin which should be really good for a survival/horror game.