Following my recent experiences of participating in my first ever game jam, I thought I should make a devlog on what I plan to do next, now that I have completed my first ever game jam.

Participating in the jam was interesting and rewarding, and while I do plan on participating in more, I definitely have more to learn.

At the moment, I have several projects on the go, and things I would like to tidy up.  The overall plan is to continue to learn more and figure out how to make the games I want to make, with each project getting more complex and refined.

Current Projects

The projects I currently have in development are:

• A 3D Shooter - This is being made as an experiment to figure out the mechanics I need to make a playable 3D shooter.
• A Last Stand Story - This was the game I submitted to the GDTV game jam.
• Santa's Crash - This is a 2D platformer I made for Christmas 2023 for family members to play, and was the first game I made to any kind of completion.
• Nightmare Produce - This is being developed as a 3D survival horror style game, nothing too complex.
• Unnamed Easter Game - Following on from the Christmas game, I started working on an Easter themed game, but didn't get far.
• An attempt to make a story for a story driven game.

3D Shooter

This game is currently in development, and has been created as a way for me to figure out how to implement shooting mechanics in a 3D game.   The idea overall is to make a 3D arena where enemies spawn in waves, and the player has to kill the enemies to progress through the waves.

The enemies for this game will be a mixture of 2D and 3D characters that I have created for my other projects.  This is to reduce to the time to build the game, as I have already created the character art and some applicable sound effects for my other projects.

Currently, this project has shooting mechanics and I am presently working on getting the other game mechanics and elements in place to make it more of a game.  So far I have managed to create a shooting mechanic, a wave manager system, a spawn manager system, and figured out how to use Resources within Godot.

The shooting mechanic presently uses raycasting to detect if an enemy object has been "hit", this then transfers the weapon's damage value to the "hit" enemy.  If the ray hits the environment, it spawns a decal at the hit location.

The wave manager system has been created to manage the enemy waves for the game.  It currently manages the variables and has functions to configure a new wave, start a wave, start a boss wave, end a wave and trigger an in between wave phase.  This has been set up as a global script to ensure that it can be accessed, used and updated from other scripts within the game (for example the World/Level or Enemy Spawners).  In the main level, there is a series of timers that are then used to trigger the various phases or wait times, and the end of a wave is triggered by defeating all the current enemies.

The spawn manager system has been set up so that from a script attached to a container object for the enemy spawners, that container can count the number of spawners and then randomly choose a spawner to spawn an enemy.  This provides a randomly chosen spawn location from a series of fixed spawn locations.  The spawn manager calls the spawn enemy function attached to the individual spawn locations.

For using Resources, I have currently only used them as data containers.  While it appears that Resources in Godot can likely be used to apply functions, this is a feature I don't think I'm ready to play with yet.  Using the resources as data containers, I have managed to implement a standardised template for creating and spawning different enemies.  An enemy resource holds all of the references and parameters for visual, audio and custom variable elements.  This is then used by an initialisation script that loads the variables onto an empty object, that is then loaded onto an enemy instance.  The enemy instance contains all of the necessary components and the main enemy script to allow the enemy object to function, while the parameters used for the enemy are then passed from the Resource through the empty object.  I have also set up a similar system for weapons in the game, but at present I have only created one weapon, a sci-fi style rifle.

To get this experiment to a playable point, I want to include UI elements, a loot drop system, maybe a skill or item shop, and maybe one or two other minor mechanics.  I also need to finish the 3D environment and animate a couple of 3D characters before I include them in the game.

A Last Stand Story

Although my game did well in the jam, a lot better than I was expecting it to, some of the feedback gave me little things to improve upon.  As such I intend to make some updates to the original upload that will hopefully allow for a smoother gameplay experience.

The planned updates are:

• Scale play area to fill the screen when in fullscreen - I noticed when my game was played on the GDTV stream that they seemed to playing it on a very high resolution screen and my game appeared as a small area in the middle.  I don't use a very high resolution, so it didn't occur to me that the game might not scale when using a very high resolution screen.  This will likely be a simple fix for me to make, but left me a little disappointed when they played my game as they were not really able to play it fully.
• Enable sound by default - More than a few of the comments on my game were how the sound was disabled by default.  I implemented this as when I was looking up how to export for Web play, I read some information that suggested it was good practice to disable the sound by default.  This will be a quick fix.
• Update the Main Menu background - When I was making the game during the jam, the menu system I created was little more than a place holder, and while I didn't go back to change it, it has been suggested that it could be better.
• Possible Mechanic Changes - Although the base gameplay seems to be pretty fun, there is a bug with the navigation system due to rounding errors in running maths on a computer.  I plan to try and fix this bug, and look at some of the ideas for expanding the gameplay.  This might include having waves of enemies that get harder as the game progresses, having more random locations for enemies to go to, and maybe having a second weapon or other enemies.  As most of this is about adding to the game, I do not know which elements I would like to add to the game yet and might just focus on bug fixes for now.

Santa's Crash

This project is about tidying up the game I made for Christmas 2023 and getting it uploaded here so that others can play it if they want.

When I made the game, there were a few minor bugs that made some parts of the game flow incorrectly.  Initially, I intend to fix these minor bugs and then upload the game pretty much in its current state.

I would also like to try remaking the game, or making a sequel, at some point, with more levels and redrawn graphics as the current game definitely looks like a "first ever game".

Nightmare Produce

This project is in development as a survival horror style game where you are hunted around a map by monstrous fruit and veg.  Currently I have created a testing level that includes that majority of the mechanics and elements I would like to include in the game.  The next steps for this project are:

• Finish implementing the mechanics
• Remodel the current enemy model
• Make 4 other enemy models
• Tidy the environment models
• Do the sound work for the game

Once this game is finished, I will upload it for people to play.

Unnamed Easter Project

This project was going to be made for family to play for Easter earlier this year.  While I never got the time to actually make the game, I did make a lot of the 3D models I wanted for the game.  As such, I would like to finish making the models and actually try to make the game.  Although it's not a priority at the moment, it is another project I have planned.

Story Driven Game

I recently started thinking of a story and a scenario that I thought would make a fun game if I could make it.  This is a project that I expect will take a long time to make as I am hoping it will be a game with a full story and gameplay that follows and supports the story.

So far I have outlined the story elements in a style that reflects how a game made with the story would play out.  At the moment with this project, I am trying to see if I can turn it into an interesting short story.  When I finish the short story, I might upload it as an eBook and see how it performs, but my overall aim with it is to be able to make a story driven game that has an engaging storyline and fun gameplay.

Final Comments

Looking at this list might seem like a lot of projects to have going on when I can only do this in my spare time, but some of these projects have been going on for a while, or were started and left behind for "reasons".  My current active project at the time of writing this is the 3D Shooter experiment.  The other projects are things I would like to do provided I have the opportunity to keep moving forwards.

After doing the game jam only a few weeks ago, the biggest thing it gave me was the confidence to keep going.  This came from the realisation that I could make a game, and better yet, I could make a game that people would enjoy playing.  If I could do it once, I can do it again, and I will keep working towards being able to make the games I want to make.