What went right
Even before the competition started I was pondering on what to do. In a previous Ludum Dare I had used a nifty 3d side perspective which I hoped to use again. And all in all it worked quite nicely. Built a really simple level loading system which would allow me to build levels fast. Not too comfortable, but it works.
Also, following my own advice from a pre-compo post, I did set up an empty project with base setup. Turned out there were two minor things that I could sort out before => less time wasted during the competition itself.
Getting the boring polish tasks done before the last days worked out nicely. It took me a day to get the displays, menus and settings done. I could afford the time as there were still three days left.
What went not so good
Lots of programmer art. I usually whip up something fast with the intention of touching up during the last days. Changing images is a rather pain free exercise. Unfortunately on saturday I was not able to do anything and on sunday my steam was gone. Therefore most art stayed as it was the first time.
I'm a lazy git :) There's one stage (Platforms!) I reused four times with little changes. The differences do change how to play parts of that stage, but overall it shows. In afterthought I'd probably kick at least one of them and spread the others apart a bit more.
My impressions of the competition
I love me my competitions with tight deadline. It's a reason to force myself to get something finished. That, and the organisation, competitors all went great and fine. However the progress reports are all over the place. It's probably the point of the participating points, but I prefer Ludum Dare's approach to this: There's one place to post, and it is used by everybody.
Here at GameDev there is one competition thread, but there's mostly links to journals and blogs. Maybe I'm old fashioned but I'd really prefer to have it condensed at one place. But that's just MHO :)
