- Match patterns using mouse
- Source code included

Windows 2000, XP

• Post mortem report

This was the second time I entered an LD48h contest. The only preparation I did before the beginning was to try to get my microphone working.

While I was slightly disapointed at the selected theme, I decided to write a simple puzzleish game for the LD48 contest. Unfortunately I fell ill right at the beginning of the contest, but was still able to, more or less, finish my entry.

The name for the entry was primarily chosen to be different. I was rather confident that nobody else picks the same name. (And no, I have nothing against certain finnish grocery chains).

What Went Right

1. Scope
   
The scope of my project was small enough so that I could finish it easily in time. If the theme had been something else, the scope might have been wider, and given my health at the time of the contest, I might not have been able to finish it.

If you consider the game's scope, it requires very little content, very little scripting, very little tuning and it has no overly complex subsystems (such as physics or 3d collisions).

2. Scheduling
   
The schedule was forced by my health, but I had meant to do it that way in any case (albeit not exactly so aggressively).

The contest started at 4am my time, but I woke up at 8am (thanks to our dog, actually - I most likely would have slept till 10am without her). I meant to take a shower, eat away from my computer, take the dog out, and have a good night sleep. Due to the illness, I had to call it a day around 7pm.

It was a good thing is that I got my first full-featured version done at that time, so even if my illness would have gotten worse, I would still have been able to compete. (At 7pm the contest had been running for 15 hours). The next day I still didn't feel too good but was able to tune the difficulty a bit and create the tutorial.

3. No killer bugs
   
Thanks to the simple scope, clear vision and strict programming dicipline, I only had one bug during the whole contest that I had to hunt, and that was found easily.

I created a simple 'screen' architecture which let me add menus, intro and endgame screens easily, and starting a new game, something that I had problems with in my earlier entry, came for free with this framework. Funnily enough, my last entry post mortem praised that I did NOT do much OOP, while this time doing classes for most important things was a good thing.

4. SDL
   
Like with my last LD48 entry, SDL was all I needed. This time I didn't even plot a single pixel - filled rectangles and image blits were enough. Mouse and keyboard input was a breeze.

5. Difficulty
   
Since I finished the feature-complete version early enough, I had time to test the difficulty of the game. Since I managed to play up to the "sick" difficulty level, and other people managed to solve the "childish" level on their first try, I'd say that the game has a good range of difficulty levels. I also made sure that even the "insane" difficulty level is solvable by limiting the mutation strength, and adding keyboard shortcuts for the tool keys.

What Went Wrong

1. Scope
   
The small scope of the game was also a bad thing. If I had selected a more complicated game, it might have been a better game. However, I most likely would not have had the time to finish it in that case, again due to..

2. Health
   
What a rotten time to get ill! At first I thought it was a food poisoning, as my girlfriend had the same symptoms.

Unfortunately the fever rose during the day, and when I finally took my temperature it was at 37.5'c (99.5'f). Sort of ironic, considering the theme.

3. Graphics
   
Yes, yes, I know, the comic sans font is horrible. Had I been healthy, I would have redrawn all the graphics and made it look even somewhat like a serious game. I had the idea of rendering the "tekramytic-k" pill box etc, but simply was too ill to do it.

I also made a bad design choise in tinting the "target disease" towards the red; it felt like a good idea ("evil disease") but this was confusing for some people at first, as you could not _exactly_ match the pattern.

4. Audio
   
My microphone died. End of story.

5. Difficulty
   
While the range of difficulties is good, their variety isn't. The only thing that changes from one difficulty level to the next is the size of the grid. A better idea, in retrospec, would have been to stop the grid growth at about 4x4 and make the game more difficult in other ways, such as more aggressive mutations and more than 2 color choises for the tiles; both would have been easy to implement.

Project Stats

1 PC (p4/2.6GHz)
1 bag of chips (350g)
5 bottles of coke (7.5l)
9 classes
11 images
17 source files
59kB of source code
1800 lines
total of about 16 hours spent working on the entry (including shower, eating, taking the dog out, but not sleeping)

[April 16, 11:33pm]
About 4 and a half hours until the contest starts. Since there's no sense in staying awake that long, I'll hit the bed and check out the contest theme in the morning.

[April 17, 08:00am]
Can't remember when I last slept this badly. Got a great idea for 'swarming' yesterday, which I most likely will build at some point whether or not that is the contest theme this time.

[08:15am]
Got online, theme is 'infection'. Great..

[08:30am]
Oh well, I have one more or less silly idea for the contest. 2d speed puzzle kind of thing.

[08:56am]
Got background drawn and written down the coordinates. Time to hit the
shower..

[09:20am]
Shower done, time to lay down some simple code.

[09:38am]
Background loaded and drawn. Breakfast..

[09:50am]
Coke, irc and back to code. First I'll need a rect fill..

[10:16am]
Got the basic rendering done.. taking the dog out.

[11:03am]
My stomach feels a bit unstable. Oh dear. Well, next up: "screen" architecture.
Music: kemopetrol, "play for me"

[11:36am]
8x8 grid is way too large. Oh well. Might as well make it configurable now..

[12:39pm]
Coming along nicely. Now I have the virus inspection stuff done. First backup time and after that I'll split the source into several source files. 11kb of source code.

[01:11pm]
Vaccinate-button now works. Next I might as well perform the vaccination itself, and add the last vaccinations database, so that I won't have to start struggling with the biggest problem which is the disease itself quite yet..

[01:33pm]
Vaccination and old vaccines are now functional. Phooh. Backup time.

[02:02pm]
Posted some screenshots.

[02:31pm]
Added six difficulty levels, outbreaks..

[02:52pm]
First playable, sort of.. oh boy this is going to need some tweaking..

[03:15pm]
Added some colors, did some tweaking, figured that I'll need a couple
of buttons more..

[04:10pm]
Added intro, menu and gameover screens, and a mechanism to swap screens.

This also automatically makes it possible to play multiple games in one
run (yee). The abovementioned screens don't actually have any code in
them yet though. Time for a backup.

[04:54pm]
Drew intro, menu and gameover images, and made another backup.

[05:46pm]
Gameover screen more or less done. Tweaking the game will require
tweaking of the game over screen as well..

[06:16pm]
Ate.

[06:24pm]
Spaced out for a while. Still not feeling too good.

[06:48pm]
Menus and intro stuff done. Backup time, and then I'll make the first
feature-complete build.

[07:04pm]
37.5'c fever (about 99.5 fahrenheit). Calling it a day.

[April 18, 10:50am]
Slept for a bit, watched 'Highlander', slept over the night, feeling
somewhat better now. About 17 hours left in the contest, so I might
as well try to improve my entry (unless I start feeling ill again).

[11:19am]
Changed the vaccination to give people limited resistance to the
disease, and changed outbreak to only mutate pre-vaccinated strands.

[12:58pm]
Tweaked difficulty, added more keyboard shortcuts. Mutations are a killer.

[03:07pm]
Did some new graphics, changed the intro into a tutorial, and created the tutorial screens. About 13 hours left in the contest.

[03:14pm]
Re-sorted this timelog so that most recent entry is last.

[03:37pm]
Made menus to have some mouse hover functionality.. not too neat
but better than nothing methinks.

[03:54pm]
Fixed a bug where it was possible that no new diseases could be found
in 'childish' difficulty level.

[04:08pm]
About 12 hours left in the contest. Time for a backup, screenshot and
release of version 1.1.