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I'm devolving.
...
...
In my weakness there is strength.
Ok, honestly, in reality it's not really thaaat bad.
This has been a rather barren devlog, Let me expand on the project development here a bit.
Friday.....
I completely forgot about the jam. Nothing was done.
Saturday....
I met up with my friend Carl for dinner, who asked if I was participating... Ohhhh yeah - I was planning to!
We talked about a few ideas. There was a clever idea about 'QWOP' style page turning to find verses.... Powerups made available as you lost health. Some other ideas came up, and at that point, I considered that I should use a 2d engine to save myself some of the complexities with 3d. I have been meaning to learn GDevelop better as it is something I find familiar from prior experience with Construct2, (which I abandoned when they went to a subscription model).... GDevelop however is free and open source. At some point in the conversation I mentioned game 'Stray' as an 'unassuming little kitty' as a protagonist that embodied 'strength-in-weakness'. There was nothing inherently strong about the kitty. It was this idea that stuck with me.
Saturday Night...
I went home from dinner, Launched GDevelop and had a go for a bit trying to find a way to kickstart a project about a kitty-platformer. I found myself a bit frustrated by some of the limitations and as-yet unfamiliar interface. I resorted back to opening up a fresh 3d world in Unity where I have more experience..... I loaded in a Character Controller Prefab (Third-person Character Controller with Companion Asset) ... and actually managed to attach a cat I had in another 'Low-Poly Animals' asset. The system was quite broken and a bit frustrating but I think it was mostly exhaustion at that point. I did all this while switching back and forth from some coffee, gaming and youtube trying to stay awake and not get tunnel vision..... Eventually in the early A.M. I crashed and got some hours of shuteye.
Sunday Morning...
Eventually woke up and made it late to church where I had some good fellowship with friends, and they had some lunch following the service! I shared my project with some of those there and even still was looking for ideas on how to present a game 'strength-in-weakness'. My friend and a church Elder, Dennis, prayed with me before heading back home.
Sunday...
I was able to load in several of my 'go-to' tools into unity including a Lighting presets, an autosave, a game-jam menu template, as well as a few other ease of use assets. I got my cat working a better, and had a Low-poly city asset that I dropped in for the cat to run around in. With the deadline approaching I realized much of the vision I had with the 'Companion controller' wouldn't be feasible. There was some built in features for enemy AI and button switch controls and other 'more fun' activities and challenges - but in short I was content to "make a maze" by adding in fences around the city as there wouldn't be enough time to figure out much else.
Monday....
I wasn't happy with my progress thus far - it was a maze without any clear exit and I was worried people would just wander around without knowing what to do. I made some barriers to keep the player out of places they shouldn't go (not entirely effective), and just continued to tweak settings to get a better feel to the game. I eventually just shrugged my shoulders and did a build just to get my progress uploaded as is. OH NO... .Itch.io was down!!!! OH NO! As such I reached out to Raul and it was revealed to me that the deadline was extended! Wonderful!!!
Monday Night....
I had the opportunity to finally add in that 'Companion'... a man that you would find so that you could lead him to the exit. Oh yeah... that unknown exit... the unknown controls. I slapped in some rudimentary UI.... (Had a weird camera glitch that made the initial start look like a 2d side scroller... which I liked so I kept that. And storywise I realized this could be the man's emotional support cat... what a great strength-in-weakness depiction we find in the love from our pets.
Honestly, the Title was there from the start.... meant to be a working title to somehow help - but the way it fit with my new story idea was just great. A man in a desolate fenced off city looking to find comfort with his pet cat .... looking off into the sunset at the end of an adventure sneaking through a locked down city. It all just kinda worked, in my mind's eye anyway...... I'm sure it just didn't come across in the execution, but that's ok.
Tuesday Morning....
I decided to try and get a Mini-map asset into the game.... it was otherwise still very unclear where to go. I made some tweaks to the UI and other game issues patching some of the things overlooked.... a bit of playtesting and more final tweaks and a final build. I made my submission before heading off to work. At worked I checked that my submission was all in order, but again... Oh no... my entry was submitted but the files were made available for download. After work I was able to head home and get the files actually uploaded. Finally DONE!!! Now we wait for the results.
Friday....
Looking back I finally write the Devlog.... a bit of a post-mortem. Thanks!