Cavexploder post mortem 0 6

For this jam I have decided to ditch LÖVE and Lua for the good old C++ with SDL2. I have very much enjoyed using lua but being not the most of efficient coders, I like to have a bit of a performance edge. And did I need it :D

I was always a fan of shoot em up games, usually the vertical kind. One thing they don't usually have is destructible terrain.

So there was my idea: "A horizontal shoot em up inside a cave composed of descructible rocks"

What went well

• I really liked coding in c++ again. C++20 has brought a lot of goodies.
• I am very happy with the end result, although all of the boulders are a simple bunch of triangles, piling them up creates a reasonably good approximation.

What went poorly

• I didn't have time to make music and sounds, again.
• What C++ giveth, Windows taketh. I had to modify the code (post jam) to be able to compile the game on windows, and I've spent quite a bit of time making it work.
• Performance is not that great when a lot of stuff is on the screen. Since I am rebuilding all the buffers all the time this is not that surprising.
• Initially the enemies should have been spiders, I wanted them to crawl over the rocks on tiny legs. Haven't had time to code these so blobs you have!

Takeaways

• I really need to make some sounds and music on the side, in order to know what to do during a jam. Learning tools during a 48h jam is way too late.
• The same goes for windows, for the next time I need a solid basecode that has already everything setup to produce binaries on all platforms.

Post jam ideas

• The game needs more juice!
  • Shaking when hit and when big rocks get destroyed.
  • A scrolling parallax background.
• The game needs more content!
  • Noise!!
  • More weapons, bonuses, different enemy types. (e.g.: smart ones that shoot where you will be if moving at the same speed)