The game is finished! See my full game dev journey below.

This is where I am putting my progress for my game!

(Days 1-2 are in the first post; days 3+ are in the comments below)

Day 1: I was not able to work on anything, but Acerola said I could reuse code for player controls and states, so I moved that over to a new project. Most of the brainstorming is done, as I have had an idea for a puzzle game with non euclidean spaces for a long time, and it would fit the theme nicely. However, with less than a month's worth of coding experience, I may have to cut corners when it comes to non euclidean spaces.

Day 2: I decided to approximate the non euclidean space with grid of tiles in a 2D game. Not only will this make code easier, but coming up with puzzles should be easier too.

I've have two ideas for setting/plot. The first is that you are part of a research team delving through a portal to another world, for research sake. The other is that you are a wizard/magician of some kind trying to get an item or meet a creature from an otherworldly world. I have not decided on one, but once I do, I will start on pixel art. I will use 16x16 pixel art for simplicity sake.

I also wrote a song. It's in the jam-share channel in discord if you want to hear it.

And I made a little guy! He's wearing his space suit and nothing bad will ever happen to him.**

I applied the character controller and movement seems to work fine. Next, I need to implement my weird aberrant world movement.

Day 3: After a ton of debugging and a few deals with a dark lord, I have finished the core mechanic of my puzzle game: the wacky movement. Basically, when your character moves, the world also stretches around them (approximated by tiles bc I'm not that good). For instance, if you move one tile horizontally, the horizontal rows above and below you move 2 tiles, the next farthest set moves 3 tiles, etc. The same applies to vertical movement.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1kg_vd-btnOdCmVDpSFZ6eKTYrxHLHwOm/view?usp=shari...

Now, I need to add a way to move between levels, and I probably need a movement counter.

Day 3 or 4: I think it is day 4? Time zones differences make things weird.

Anyways, I added walls, a goal (which transitions you to the next puzzle), and a movement counter to the game. I now have all of the tools for basic puzzle generation. I have plans for a few more mechanics I can add to the puzzles: collapsing platforms, switches, etc. 

However, before I do that, I need to decide on an art style. The setting is basically an alternate dimension that the main character is exploring/researching, but I have yet to nail the vibe that I want. It does not help that I am new to pixel art, too. I am thinking of maybe taking inspiration from Yumme Nikki, but I am unsure. Right now, I have two art styles I have made. One was originally placeholders I randomly made, but they have gained some popularity due to hard-to-identify objects. The other is more 'normal,' but I find it very satisfying sliding these barrel shapes around, as they almost click into place next to each other. I will likely take most of tomorrow trying to improve my art.

Rad so far

Day 4, electric boogaloo: We've got shadows. We've got depth. We've got lighting! Oh yeah!!!

No but seriously, it took so much debugging to get these to work. Since every part of the environment moves in the grid, making it where shadows or depth would not be drawn on top of other sprites was a pain.

I also made more puzzles! They are not easy to make; sketching them on paper is impossible since the world changes with every step. But I think I made some good ones. If you are interested in testing them out, I am looking for playtesters! The form is at the top of this devlog.

Finally, I have been experimenting with  backgrounds, as the fog I used earlier was not giving the vibe I wanted. I always liked the moving backgrounds from Yumme Nikki, and the patterns in conway's game of life always seemed so foreign to me, so I tried to combine the two! What do you think of this background? Is it good, or should I go for swaths of color, or something more chaotic. Let me know your thoughts!

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1cE_osBRfrae7hs7r2gSHm_he-nKW1cDh/view?usp=shari...

Wow! This looks very interesting! I'm gonna have to add this game to my must-check list <3

Day 5: Wow, a lot of progress has been made in the past 5 days. Which is good, because work this week will definitely slow down my progress. 

In terms of new things, we have sfx! Weird portal noises, error noises for trying to walk where you can't, walking noises, etc. The world is starting to feel a bit more alive.

I also did some bug fixing with my movement controls. You used to be able to input movements in rapid succession, leading to your character moonwalking or clipping out of bounds. I eventually fixed it by setting a timer everytime a movement is activated, and then all inputs during that time are stored rather than activating immediately. Then, once the movement and timer ends, if there is a stored input for moving, the character moves. Movement is a lot more fluid now.

Unfortunately, my friend that drifted across the screen in the background has to go. Turns out, if you have a full video playing in the background of your game, it does not run well in browser. So I have to think of an alternative for the background. Since the background was based off of Conway's Game of Life, which is just pixels that often move in patterns, I figure I can just draw the sprites frame by frame and have it loop while going across the screen. It would not look as cool, but the world would still feel alive, which is what I care about.

Next on my list of things to do is tile variation, which I am not looking forward to, as I do not like my pixel art. But it has to get done sooner or later.

Update: my Conways are back! Not only that, but they have random presets, and I think the background lots decently cool now. What do you think?

Day 6: So... what has been accomplished?

About the hints: they are now wavy! This actually took a lot of work, because I do not understand shaders, and Gamemaker only allows you to apply effects to certain layers/depths. I had it set up where depth changed with every move, so I had to do a lot of rearranging to make it work. I wanted to add a glow to the hints too, but any realistic glow effect made the game lag, so no glow. Maybe that will be a future polish issue.

I watched some tutorials and edited some tools from a previous project to add dialogue to my games! All the dialogue is stored in one big switch case statement (I know that it's ineffective, but I understand it, and I do not have enough dialogue for it to slow down my game).

I also got more inspiration for the story and atmosphere. Hopefully, I will have the story somewhat implemented for playtesters on day 7. In terms of environment, I am taking a lot of inspiration from Yume Nikki. I like how there are plenty of ways to interact with the environment, even if they have no gameplay effect. I want to do something similar in my game. ie Interacting with obstacles may play a weird noise and animation. This way, players can not only enjoy puzzles, but enjoy exploring the world as well.

Day 7: I have vanquished the spork. It now lays dormant as a collectable item.

I completed the dialogue system, allowing for different speakers and dialogue options. I also added an intro/tutorial area with some story, and I included a pseudo ending with the introduction of another entity. 

I have more sound effects too.

The reason this post does not have any pictures or gifs attached is because it is 2am and I am frankly too tired. I have been coding all day, and I just want to go to sleep so that I can wake up tomorrow, finish the feedback form, and send the game out to playtesters. Which means that if you want to playtest this early version, this is your last chance. Links are at the top of the devlog.

Looking forward, I have college midterms next week, so while I technically have another week in this game jam, I really only have a few days before I have to stop focusing on game development. So here's to hoping that I finish in time!

I have released my playtest build! If you want to be a playtester but did not fill out the form previously, send me a dm on discord.

I have already found some bugs just by releasing the playtest build. Apparently, code that works perfectly fine as a windows .exe will break and glitch out if exported for html5. Thankfully, the only broken thing that I have found is at the very end of the playtest build, but it is still a problem I need to fix. html5 also runs slower sometimes for some reason, and it lags on occasion. If there are any more experienced programmers who know how to fix this, please let me know! I am using Gamemaker.

Here are some screenshots from the playtest build:

Omg, it is looking awesome!

Thank you for everyone who playtested! I got some amazing feedback, and while I might not be able to make all the changes I want by the deadline, I'll definitely be improving my game thanks to you all <3

Also, new mechanic coming up?

I posted this in a separate community post as well, but I am at the point in development where I need to decide between two options:

A) Make the game for both windows and browser, spending a lot of game development time to debug the browser version.

B) Make the game windows only, spending all of game development time improving and adding on the already existing product.

EDIT: After lots of thinking and reading community input, I think I will make the game windows only. I might release a browser version, but it will be released after the deadline if at all. Apologies to anyone who does not have windows ;-;

Unfortunately, due to the severity of college midterm exams coming up, I think I might need to end early. I will make a title screen, rewrite some dialogue, and do some final debugging, but I will not be able to make more progress before the deadline. However, I plan to continue this project even after the game jam, regardless of how well it does. More information will be shared in the coming days, along with my final additions to the devlog.

It is done and published! Sorry once again to people without windows, since I did not have time to patch the bugs in the browser version. I'll be updating the game in the future, so follow me on itch.io if you are interested, or if enough people are interested, I will make a discord server for game dev stuff.

Welcome to the Shiftscape! https://itch.io/jam/acerola-jam-0/rate/2582607?before=2#post-9547253

I woke up this morning and there are over 950 submissions???? That's wild. I don't think my game is getting top 10 with so many talented game devs competing, but I am excited to see how it all turns out. GL!