A post mortem on
cronusX
is well over due. Even though the files aren't online right now ( The
webhost the files were on got hacked, and it turns out their talk of
backups was a big fat lie, so they just closed rather than restoring
things. Nice one ) we did document every day of it's
development.
I will re-upload all the files when I get chance.
What went right:
The
development diary, which I've already mentioned. It's something we're
definitely going to be doing again on the right project ( So many are
covered by NDA's, others are quite risky and there's no need to fail in
public ).
It really gave us focus and allowed for really quick and great feedback from you dear reader.
The
look & feel. I'm really pleased with how the game looks. The screen
shake when the asteroid hits the screen during the attract mode is
pretty sweet ( And if you've got a 360 joypad plugged in you get a
cheeky rubble ), the rgb split transition works nicely ( There were some
comments that it took a little long, some comments I just choose to
ignore ), the between level tips are a nice touch too, even though one
was broken that no one noticed which got hidden with a nasty 11th hour
kludge.
Olli did great work with the players ship, the asteroids and
the title screen animation. Funnily enough it's the closest we've worked
together on a game, and it was really smooth ( I'm sure I'm looking at
that with rose tinted spectacles though, I'm pretty positive I pissed
Olli off untold times ).
The curved text was a pain though, as I
didn't use code to curve it, so it meant using the art package for every
text amend. Painful.
Code. It's a really solid game code wise, it uses our
distance based broadphase
collision routine which worked perfectly for this game. Also
procedurally generating the background was really cool, something I'm
proud of. The data mining in there is pretty good too, with Olli doing
the clever server side stuff.
The game itself. I really enjoy playing it, it's a good game, and that's the best I can ever hope for.
What went wrong:We had this really good data mining system, and just failed to use it. I did code up some widgets but they never went anywhere.
A real waste, but there comes a point of diminishing returns.
The
sponsor requirements meant that we had to rename it, which I wasn't
over the moon about, and actually remove some features. This meant that
the version on Candystand isn't as good as it should be, which is a real
pity.
( Just for the record, Dave @CS was a joy to work with, I'm
really not criticising Candystand in any way, it's just frustrating
removing working features ).
We experimented adding twitter
support, being all web 2.0. Total waste of time, it was badly
implemented, took far too long to add and no one used it. Lesson learned
there.
Old wip grabSurvival
mode. Another important learning point. I thought adding a half arsed
feature to increase the "value" of the game was a good idea. It turns
out that players expect things to be good, rather than just tacked on,
crazy talk I know. The perception isn't that it's a bit more to the
game, which is how I saw it, it was treated as integral part, and seeing
how it was weak we suffered because of that.
Fair enough, it's not something I can argue against.
No
one liked it. Ok, a little bit exaggerated for dramatic effect, but it
did fall between two stools. Old gamers were expecting Asteroids
controls, and were disappointed that we'd gone "Dual stick" with it. New
gamers who didn't grow up with Asteroids felt it was lacking in other
ways, such as a lack of bosses ( Amongst many other things ).
Basically we hit the middle ground perfectly, which pissed off both sides ( Spoiler alert. The
Ionic post mortem is going to end the same way ).
It
got an ok-ish 3.80 on Newgrounds, died it's death on Kongregate (
Naturally ). I honestly don't know what it's done traffic wise, we
weren't allowed our own tracking in there, the moch-ad figures say just
over 385,000 impressions, so add in the skips and the site lock plays
and we're looking at a piss poor million or so hits. Nothing really.
This
is why the widgets never saw the light of day, there's only so much
time you can throw at a project that's not going anywhere.
Before
this gets too pessimistic and ends on a low, it's a game we're proud of
and it's still fun to play even now. I'm more than happy to have it as
part of the GYW back catalogue, it represents us well ( A technically
good, pretty game that no one likes aside from us ).
If this was the last game I'd ever written I wouldn't be upset.
Squize.