Dotlock postmortem


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Never wrote a postmortem before, wanted to write one, but waited for other users to break the ice, so I know how to write one  8) So here it goes...

The game was an old project I started in Gamemaker 2-3 years ago. At first it was about drawing lines between points with a pencil on a math paper, and the keys/locks were supposed to be erasers. But I didn't knew how to actually draw the line between the points, or at least after you take the erasers so I abandoned it... Also I was tired not making 1 cent with my GM games.
So I googled "flash game builder" and stencyl came first. I installed it fast (version 2.2), played a bit in it, and start converting the game, but the physics system flummoxed me. So I start reading the forums and discovered the simple physics system 3. But for that I needed a licence, so I though that 80$ for a indie licence wasn't a bad investment.
But again the game wasn't working as I wanted to work, even in simple physics. The salvation came from my wife, as she told me "why don't you put the levels in a matrix?", so  I discovered Photon 2d list extension. Also at this time the jam was announced.
And Eureka!, the game worked just as it was intended to work. The next steps were just basics for me, adding sounds/graphics and other polishing stuff.

What went wrong/good ?
Being my first flash game I overlooked some basics, as sitelock and ads... so basically 1h after I uploaded to NG, I saw it on 10000 sites; that's said "bye bye sponsorship"  >:(
The good news came from my brother, as he liked the game very much and wanted it on his phone, so he paid the difference to Stencyl Studio  ::)
But a big surprise came when I tested it on my phone : after connecting 9-10 dots the game practically froze... at first I thought my phone was the problem, and I tested on my wife's, but again poor performance. But I discovered the problem: too much drawing in the draw event (I made the logic to draw the lines very bad, it was reading always in the matrix and always drawing what it was finding there). Corrected this, now the lines are just actors with 4 animations and everything works fine.
Now I hope for sponsorship for the mobile version  :D

At least I learned not to hurry publishing game... and not to draw too much, the actors can have animations :D