Post-jam update

Thank you for trying out Spleef Xtreme this week. Looking back on development, I wish I knew a few things before I submitted and went to bed (almost 8 hours before the deadline).

Always plan to spend time testing your game, not just during development, but afterwards as well. A bug manifested itself after playing multiple sessions of Spleef without closing. Wind force was never reset, so wind just got stronger and stronger, forever.

I fixed this issue, and stripped out all unused content from the game, lowering the size from almost 900MB down to almost 150MB. I know that the sheer size of the game deterred users from trying it, and that is unfortunate. I hadn't check other submissions before submitting my project, so I had no basis on average size of games.

I also added some keyboard inputs to make navigating menus faster. This game is almost entirely a keyboard game now unless you want to quit or go to the main menu.

My main takeaways from this jam are:

1. Leave time for play-testing, this could have prevented some major bugs from making it into the final product.
2. (Related to Unreal Engine) Play-testing in the PIE and in a stand-alone window are different, the physics are handled differently. This really threw a wrench into my submission, I was frazzled after this discovery and that led to me missing opportunities for getting the game play-tested by friends before they went to bed. I tried my best to smooth things over, but I am still new so I am sure there are easier and more effective ways to prevent this issue in the future.

3. Know exactly what you want to make before starting, on-the-fly development can be hard to forecast.

Thank you for reading, and good luck with your future ventures.