Hello! I'm fairly new to serious coding and game development, but I've been futzing around with it for years now. I'd really like to develop some skills/knowledge, but I need motivation. I'm hoping joining this Jam and getting into a community will help me stay accountable and on task. This is my first Jam, first real game (potentially), and first coding language I've spent enough time with to actually feel comfortable with. I'll be using GML in Gamemaker Studio. really excited about it.

GOAL:

I don't really expect to finish a whole game in a month, but I do have the first steps of a bog-standard metroidvania worked out. I have a loose idea of where I want it to go and some ideas to spice up the game play. I'm going to just keep adding stuff to it to see what's possible, what works, and what I just don't "get" yet.

GAME:

A dentist is kidnapped and flung into the mouth of a giant space monster to do root canals on its gigantic teeth. He's accompanied by a little hovering laser drone that the player can detach and control independently of the doc. It'll be cut or weird or something maybe.

COMPLETED:

☑ A dude that can run around a level and jump and stuff

☑ A hovering drone that follows him

☑ The drone can detach and fly around independently

☑ The drone has a battery level that depletes with laser fire, shield generation, and free-fly.

TO-DO CHECKLIST:

☐ Melee weapon for doc

☐ Chainable combo attack

☑ Dash and/or slide (completed 10/3)

☐ Gutta Percha gun (and "buildable" blocks)

☐ Drone can tractor doc around

☐ X-ray bomb (and layer masking)

☐ Plaque monsters

☐ Destructible and x-rayable blocks (teeth and plaque)

☐ Level design

☐ Game art

EXTENDED GOALS:

☐ Polish dash to compensate for jumping, changing direction, etc

Thanks for following along. Really looking forward to participating and seeing what everyone puts together.

DAY ONE:

I tried to get the dash working, to minor success.  It's a little more like a teleport right now. There's a timer that measures double-clicks left and right, so you can tap-tap in either direction, but at the moment the little guy just like, poof APPEARS where I'd prefer him to dash toward. At least he's pointed in the right direction?   Now that I've tried to work this out on my own I'm going to watch some dash tutorials and see what I wasn't compensating for.

DAY THREE:

Already missed a day, nice. I couldn't find a tutorial that did exactly what I wanted (a 2D platformer dash a la Mega Man X), so I just made it up! I think it's actually working really well now! I think eventually I'd like to give it a little more finesse and flare, maybe mange air dashes differently than standard dashes, but for now I'm marking that off and moving on!

I might spend the next day or two working on art and character design. Right now I'm mostly using Mega Man sprites, but some of the stuff like melee weapons and attacks aren't served by that. So I at least need something rough and more appropriate to work with.

DAY TWELVE:

Well I guess I'm not so great on deadlines, huh? I got discouraged by the art process and spent FAR too long working on walk/run cycles. Maybe that's a task for another day. Today I finally got back to actual coding and make destructible blacks for root canals. I started making something more than a test level, and I got the idea that the teeth should be made of two blocks: one that is supposed to be destroyed (the infected root) and one that is healthy and "hurts" the world if shot. So, I'm not making any real progress but at least I'm giving myself more stuff to work on?