Heres my topic for the coming week of gamedev on my gamejam entry: 

https://itch.io/jam/dogecoin-game-jam/rate/943391

I'll be posting more randomly/often on twitter so follow me there if you want to see that chaos: https://twitter.com/Alex_ADEdge

My dogecoin wallet address: DS6jJCrCctoDEp4haj52c8pgPJDLy3G2KJ

I'll be using this thread for (hopefully) once daily updates.

For my entry I've decided its time to try something Ive had in mind for a long time now - making a retro inspired game from the 90s (where my time in gaming began!) So for 'StoryOfShiba' I'll be aiming to make a PS1/N64 style game. So that means very basic 3D art... blurry or pixellated graphics, some whacky characters with big eyes, maybe even some PSX vertex wobble (found a opensource PSX shader which could be worth experimenting with)

Top games of inspiration that come to mind are Banjo Kazooie (N64) & Spyro the Dragon (PS1), thats the vibe and feel Id like since they are fun/playful/colourful games and fit the feel & plot I have in mind.  I might even try to make some Banjo Kazooie inspired music (be warned it will be terrible) XD

Tools: 

•  Game Engine: Unity        
•  3D Art: Blender   
•  2D Art: Photoshop 
• Music: Bosca Ceoil    

And finally Ive gone through my initial pre-jam setup: Blank repository, unity project & trello are good to go for zero-hour: 

Excited for the week of gamedev ahead!

Ok, overdue for a Day 1 update. Bare with me this will be an image dump... 

Things have progressed well with that Day 1 momentum in full swing. Unfortunetly I work fulltime (other than the weekend) so I'll be cramming as much gamedev for this jam into my spare time as I can. I may have stayed up a bit too late last night... but it was a good deal of fun as youll see :) 

Things I have going so far:

• Test area with a PSX/N64/Retro shader (to be tweaked, its not looking quite how I want yet but its a start for the visuals as its very dark, this game needs to be bright and happy) Shader being used is freely avaliable for Unity using the Universal Render Pipeline (here)

• Some very early movement controls a few hours in to day 1 (plus the worlds best Shiba model!)

• The all important dogecoin (I'll be fixing the texture tomorrow, these look pretty horrible...)

• I also imported and messed around with some Banjo Kazooie/Banjo Tooie assets. Im basically using these to study, since BK is the style Im looking for in the 3D models. Theres something to be said about pulling apart models from your favourite game. Ive seen Banjo a billion times but never at this level of detail. For anyone wondering, he's 422 polys! 
• This was also a good test and warmup for texturing and style, it wasnt *just* a simple matter of importing the model unfortunetly. 

• As well as Banjo I also processed and imported the entire Mayhem Temple level from Banjo Tooie (yes this is excessive). I got the character controls working better and dove in, it was a really odd experience running around in this level with my budget-Shiba. Im hoping to make a level or two of this size and hopefully half as good (Id settle for 1/4 as good as these levels tbh).... I did also start on my own level design for the starting spot of the game. Its pretty rough though, ill spare the images and show it when its looking nicer. 

*Note that none of these Nintendo models will be used in the game. Maybe as an easter-egg... but Im showing these because theyre interesting and guiding me as I design my own levels and character(s) in a similar style. Im finding this is a great way to study learn from in terms of level layout, texturing techniques, scale... etc

• The final thing towards the end of Day 1 (and going into Day 2 a bit) I worked on getting a Shiba model up to spec! Im very happy with how this turned out, it ofc took way longer than I hoped for but its the main character (and Ill potentially base other characters off this model), so its worth the time. 

• Here is a doge with Banjo. 

*As a bonus I also screen recorded the entire Shiba modelling session, so if it turned out ok I should be able to post a timelapse of that process sometime

• Finally here is the doge in-game with the movement system as of Day 1.

Pretty happy with how the movement system is coming along, its (surprise suprise) Banjo Kazooie inspired so I had to fire up the emulator to remember how BK's controls and camera work. Basically all player movement is relative to the camera angle, the camera can also be controlled by the player to rotate around. I'll also probably add a toggle to lock the camera behind the player, since it was always annoying in BK to constantly change the camera or hold R to auto-align. 

I also have a basic jump implemented with some test platforms you can see in the background... but its pretty rubbish so far, a few more constraints are needed to keep jumping through the air under control. That will be a lot of work to balance I expect.. but not a day 1 problem. Movement should also look a lot better when the shiba is animated. Something I'll hopefully get to tomorrow if I have time (altho unfortunetly Friday and Saturday dont look great for gamedev). But it will look a lot more natural and alive rather than a sliding statue once some animation is happening...

Thats all for Day 1, a massive post, other days will be shorter since I shouldnt be spending this time typing things up and making gifs, Ive just gone crazy this past 24+ hours getting some intial progress on the board. 

Quick update for Day 2:

I got around to putting together the Shiba modelling timelapse, so if youd like to see a timelapse of me speed-modelling a Banjo Kazooie style Doge, check the video on twitter below:

https://twitter.com/Alex_ADEdge/status/1365104434598977539

I wanted to update the dogecoin model as well, Ive been itching since I threw together that terrible quick version to make something more unique and polished. After much brainstorming I had the perfect coin in mind, and it came together great!

Heres the old vs the new:

Super happy with how these coins are looking now! Im really liking how the texture turned out, I threw it together in photoshop with various shapes and hand painted the rest, then hit it with a ton of filters until it had that textured/painted look I was wanting. I didnt expect to get it looking this nice in my first attempt to properly design the coin. Sparkle animations took longer than I wanted (Unity's animation system is a pain), but adds a nice level of polish. Very shiny.

Finally Ive worked a bit more on the character controller, and rigged the Shiba model. Now that I have animation states I can get my overall character state machine going, which means jumping mechanics and better controls/platforming soon.

But tonight Ive gotten a bit stuck, my version of Blender is too old for newer Unity builds, so my animations arent importing. I think thats the only issue... I havent managed to fix it yet. But thats an issue for later tonight because Im about to head out for some socialising and much needed drinks. Hoping I can at least get a run cycle up and running later tonight before calling it a day.

Until then... Shiba will just have to butt-slide his way to any nearby dogecoins. 

Day 3 Update:

A bit of progress but knew it wasnt going to be great this past 24 hours. Friday night was busy with social stuff and Saturday morning I caught up on some sleep. 

But first up for Day 3 I added some more constraints to the custom character control system Im developing here to get some playable platforming. Previously jumping was very 'floaty' and you could zoom around in the air like a rocket. Now its much more constrained, and so you can control the Shiba on both air and ground a lot better - pretty important for platforming!

First basic example of platforming (no animations yet but ill get to that later in this day review, arrrgggh!):

Im constantly balancing and tweaking this stuff, but its coming along slowly into something that feels nice in terms of movement and control. Its still feeling a bit 'sticky' though, or at least the wrong kind of 'sticky', so theres some room for improvement in the coming days. 

I did spend a good chunk of time in the afternoon adding a new feature - portals/triggers to move between levels and areas. This is again inspired by the way you move between levels in Banjo Kazooie (which is way more complex than I ever realized), so think of this as a budget/quick implementation of that. Pretty happy with how its turned out and I think this is as complex as Im going to go, the main thing is it will make it very easy to set up multiple levels and move between them. More details after the gifs:

^Moving from test area #1 to test area #2

^Going back from test area #2 to test area #1

You can see in the first gif the Shiba approaches the portal, and the camera snaps to a predetermined 'locked' portal viewing perspective when hes close enough to have the portal's 'attention' (this perspective is easily customized for any portal and will likely be used in other areas in the game too, to get your attention for important objects/characters/spots) then when the Shiba touches the portal (portals will be invisible in the actual game level) the game takes over control, and 'pulls' you inside. Once the portal is pulling you inside a timer starts, and after 2-3 seconds youre teleported to the next area + the camera is set to a new portal viewing location. The previous area is despawned, and the new area spawns in (this will be handy when theres a lot of items and objects in levels to keep the game running ok)

In the second gif you can see the Shiba move away from the portal, the camera 'unhooks' and goes back to a mode where you can control it. The shiba then goes back to the portal, the camera hooks back up to the portal viewing perspective, the Shiba enters the portal and teleports back to the previous portal. All the same things happen again with area #2 despawning, area 1 spawning back in, the camera doing what it needs to do etc. And this is a system that can easily be setup to work between as many portals as needed. It was a lot to plan out, but its working quite well! 

The current problem:

Unfortunetly Im having some big issues with the animation system at this point also. It seems like the Blender -> Unity animation is broken in more recent versions, for well over a year now, and no ones found a solution or fixed it <___< Its not an issue Ive had before so its very frustrating that its popped up in the middle of a gamejam. Ive been struggling to fix this since Day 2, so its taken up a bit of time I could be using for other features. 

But animation is very important ... I need to get it working now. 

It doesnt help either that theres barely any information out there on alternatives, or what the actual issue is, let alone how to fix it. Ive tried a few different things and have a few new ideas to try out... I really need to get this sorted out asap. I cant add any other characters or animations until I get this full character development 'pipeline' working, otherwise I risk doing hours of work that will be broken and/or unable to be used. 

Until then, heres the blender view of a couple of quick animations I have done and ready once this issue is sorted out, there will be a lot of tail wagging!

Day 4 Update. 

The test area expanded quite a bit with some portal test zones and other bits and pieces of experimentation from over the days. I think Im done here and really need to focus on some proper levels. 

But first the thing I *really* needed to get done (carrying on from Day 3 & Day 2 issues) was solving my animation import issues. 

Long story short, I finally sorted it out. So now animations finally work! I straight away got a walk cycle together, and it adds a lot more life to the Shiba overall. 

I also messed around with moving platforms, mostly out of interest. Managed to get some working nicely but Im not sure if Ill have any puzzles in the game that use them, we'll see though. 

Otherwise Ive been working on bits and pieces all over the place. Ive got a proper state maching working now for the Shiba controller and some UI work done. Ive also worked on the dogecoins a bit as well, you can pick them up now, and theres a counter in the UI to keep track of how many youve found.  Ive also been ramping up efforts on the first couple of game areas. Portals are hooked up and the basic terrain is there so you can move between a couple now, Ive also just got a workflow sorted out to do multi-material texturing on the terrain:

I really need some more characters to liven up the world now, some enemies and platforming challanges well, that should be coming up soon. 

Yes, Awesome work !!!

Perfect!

such shine, much wow....

Wow, absolutely love the style! Great work!

Thankyou all :) 

Glad youre liking development so far!

Almost in the final day O_o

Awesome!

Day 6 Update:

The jam is almost over! We're into the final leg, so Ill keep this brief. 

Dialogue system is now working well, still a bit of work to do there before Im happy though. 

Level design has been getting a lot of attention, getting into the 3rd area (which is looking like it will be a couple of areas stuck together) Not sure how far ill get into this but hoping to get most of it done. 

New creatures/enemies are in the process of being added, even some dogecoin coin varients (why didnt I think of that sooner?)

Ive got a lot on the todo list still, lets hope I can get through (most of) it

Shiba coming in for a landing soon!

Ok so, Day 7 final update + post-jam thoughts?

I finished a game worth submitting (well, more of a demo), thats the first thing I guess! 

Certainly far from 100% happy with it and it was quite the rollercoaster on that final day, but thats just how gamejams go sometimes.

So before I talk about the gamejam overall this is what I did on the final day:

• Added in the bear creature. This guy shows up in the first area, he was very quickly modelled and animated. But actually turned out ok. Setting up the intro to learning how to bark by scaring him took longer than I wanted. I wish I could have included more moments like this, its a very retro-gaming moment that throws me right back into games of the 90s with the cut scene and silly setup & payoff. 

• Added in more skill progression. There was meant to be a few more abilities in the game, but I had to cut them in order to focus on more important things. Below are all the abilitis I had planned. The only ones that didnt make it were 'Floof Ahoy' (glide ability), 'Very High uwu' (double jump) & 'Best Shiba!!!' (mystery final ability)

• BATTLED with the dialogue and tutorial system. The tutorial system itself was pretty solid, but I think the way it worked in with the dialogue system was just problematic. This caused a lot of lost time in that final day since I had some very game breaking bugs on my hands, which I didnt realize until I playtested it a few times. 

• More work on area 3: Now this is where I was starting to really stress out. I had level 3 designed to some degree, at least as far as the concept and layout went, and how it would work in with unlocking and then utilizing the final abilities. Its a shame because I had some really cool places I wanted to make, and characters to add. But it ended up being far too much. By the time I fixed the dialogue system I'd burnt through too much time and had to cut my losses. Thankfully I think I saved it a bit and managed to find an idea to give players *something* at the end of the game....

The final pivot - with only 2 areas completed, I knew I needed another area to give players something else to do. Luckily I had a great idea come to me. I cant remember when or how, it was during the final night of gamedev when I was completly mentally scattered. But I realized I had that entire dev-testing area sitting around. So in the final 30mins of the gamejam I made a final shiba character to meet you outside area 2, who would thank you for playing the game and then give you the option of travelling to this develoment area. At least that gives players something else to check out and do in the end, rather than cutting the game short at that point which would have felt like a massive let down. 

.......

... final post continued

Post-Jam Thoughts:

The dialogue/tutorial system was a big point to learn from. Too much complexity and bad code written by me at 3-4am while half asleep... The dialogue system (which I thought on day 6 was pretty solid) actually ended up being very bad because of this. There were some major bugs with that system, one bug in particualr I didnt fix until after the jam had finished, at a time when I was really done with bug fixing and bashing my head against a wall, and should have been sleeping (you can still break it in the current build quite easily). A lesson to learn from though, I now know I need to put in the time to get a bit better at coding these kinds of systems for future gamejams. 

The scope of this game was far too much. A problem I had often with gamejams. I always seem to want to build complicated systems that work together, which is something Ive accepted is what I enjoy in making games. But I really need to reign that in and focus on some smaller and more achievable goals. Its easy to think to yourself "I have 7 days to make this game, lets aim super high!" and then bite off way more than you can chew, which is exactly what I did. 

Things I really wanted to add but didnt have time for:

• More characters and creatures! I originally wanted a lot of things to talk to in the game, from enemies, to grass (you can find 1 demo bit of grass to talk to), trees rocks, houses and so on, I basically wanted everything to be something you could talk to. It would have been super silly but pretty fun at the same time. Plus theres a lot of potential for world building, if youve got multiple characters all talking about various things
• Enemy bear - that initial scene was meant to setup the bear as the main enemy in the game. If there was more levels or even an end section, he would have harassed you at various times and likely would be the end boss for the demo.
• Beeeees - bees were meant to be the first general enemy, sent in by the bear to disrupt and control the land. I even had a neat bee model I threw together!
• Health - Yep no health or damage, since there was no enemies I didnt bother to add this 
• Final level - I had a great idea for a final end-game area, consisting of multiple smaller areas. But ofc was far too low on time in the end to make it happen
• Music - I made the start of an attempt, but didnt get very far, you can find a banjo playing doge in the game whos play a very bad section of music on repeat, becasue why not! I initially wanted him to be the main one playing music in the game, and the music would likely be bad, so youd be able to pay him to stop XD
• More abilities - You can see in the screenshot above, there were a couple of abilitys I didnt get around to. 

Things Im really happy with:

• The overall N64/PSX theme - this was what I was most excited to make and it shows, I put a lot of time into the visuals. But both the shiba and the coins and various parts of the levels turned out really well, very happy to push myself in terms of that stuff
• The controls and camera - again something very N64 inspired, I spent a lot of time playing Banjo Kazooie, trying to pull apart how the controls and camera worked, so I could make my own version. Its a much simpler version, but I feel like Ive got it pretty close & the feedback so far as been very positive in this area
• Animations - an area that use to be super intimidating, I think for gamejams I at least pull off some ok animating, the key is to keep the model and rig as simple as possible and just smash out the animations ASAP
• Tutorial system - this turned out very straight forward and I think is a strong point in the game, it took a bit to setup and was pretty closely linked with major bugs with the dialogue system, but overall was a strong point
• Just getting a game completed! This is always the main thing, nothing worse than coming to the end of a jam feeling defeated and with nothing decent to show

Some final stats for the gamejam overall:

Scripts written: 32

Lines of code: Over 3800 (540 lines of code per day average!)

3D Models: 20+

Textures: 54 (+64 for each frame of the coin spin sprite)

Unity Materials: 80+

Animations: ~48

Prefabs: 48

Also surpised to see no one has found any secrets yet. Theres a couple! (one of the shiba gives some clues)

At this point Ive played everyones entries in this gamejam now as well, some quality games created in the past week, its been a blast interacting with everyone and getting into the gamedev. Thanks to Billy for organizing, and I hope we see everyone again for another future #dogecoingamejam .. soon!

If youre wanting to play/rate/give feedback for StoryOfShiba, you can find it here: https://itch.io/jam/dogecoin-game-jam/rate/943391

How many dogecoin can you collect?