Hey there! Just sharing a GIF of our current prototype, cause why not?
How is everyone's jam going!?
Thanks! All the textures and assets come with the software (RPG Maker MV) that I'm using, and there is little to no coding involved in the whole process (I'm not a programmer to any level). It also has a character creator tool, so I was able to make lots of custom NPCs. It's really not as impressive as you made it sound :)))
Of course, I could make custom assets anytime I liked, since I'm actually a fan of digital art and got a little practice, but for the sake of the jam, I'd rather get the bare minimum in place before spending too much time on esthetics *sniff*
As for the writing, yeah, all the lines of dialogue are off the top of my head. I love writing fiction, so this part was honestly the easiest of all :D
P.S. Sorry for the late reply, somehow your comment got lost in the notifications and I only came by it by accident :/
Great idea to post. Here's something much less impressive to help those with imposter syndrome feel better!
Started writing spam then decided to can it and pop it in a project blog post! Also figured might as well start pushing WebGL builds since maybe that'll mean I won't leave doing that to the last minute ;)
GL everyone!
My progress so far! My inspiration for this was Sniper Elite 5 as I am very excited for that game to come out this week :D
https://i.imgur.com/xgmC51K.mp4
It's hard to see the bullet cam properly on that video due to the low quality gif, here's a screenshot:
Don't worry mate, as long as you are able to submit a game you'll have won, it's not the end result what matters, it's the journey and what can you learn about it.
We, for example, are a team of two, but we don't have enough time to produce all the art so for the environments and artwork we're using some free assets and we're making custom characters and enemies, but we don't have any level layout yet.
Cheers
Very very very true. We're all on journeys, some further ahead, some barely begun. Most are very happy to encourage others and offer help where they can. Keep it simple, keep it manageable and see if you can submit (even if it's broken or embarrassing). We've all been there. You learn an unbelievable amount simply from trying to make something submittable. GL!
Sorry I hope some of us aren't discouraging you! My first game ever was a very simple poop emoji that could jump up and down on neverending spawning blue squares. That was about 6 years ago - now I'm at a higher level but I'm still learning a lot! You'll get there as well :D Don't try to see it as a competition, but more of a learning curve/challenge for yourself. As for me personally; this is the first time I'm dealing with some sort of AI ánd combat in a single project and I'm having a blast while learning many new things! I also took the opportunity of this jam to learn about key remapping on the new unity input. Good luck!
oh that is AWESOME! I will definitely be playing this!
My little ghosty isn't anywhere near there yet -- got way too bogged down in 'AI' framework coding.
Geeky tangent: How're you doing yours? Line of sight on something marked as "scary" or something? (I'm doing similar -- AI has 'sight area' which, if something strange is within, they react by investigating, correcting or running from!) Seemed like a cool idea but whew! turning out harder than I initially assumed :shrug:
Oh and don't belittle your graphics. I'd give yours a play with those graphics! I love the semi-8-bit aesthetic :)
Thanks. I'm just using raycasts. When the ghost haunts something the object sends a raycast and if it his a person facing it they panic. Also the people have a raycast in update and if they come across a haunted object they'll get nervous for a few seconds and reset it. If they come across another haunted object while nervous they panic. You have to scare everyone who lives in the building before time runs out and there will be other people like paranormal investigators and priests who try to slow you down and stop you.
My philosophy on this stuff is just get it done as quickly as possible. It can always be changed later.
What are you working on? It sounds like you're doing something similar? I'm looking forward to trying it out.
This is my first game jam! Wasn't sure if I was going to join or not, but I slapped something together using mostly free asset store assets and I'm happy with it so far. Very early WIP, I'm hoping to add skeleton enemies to fight and make the furniture destructible. Tentative title: Skeletons on Skeletons
Day 3 is looking good so far. I'm working mostly on creating NPCs and maps so I have the foundation for tomorrow when I'll focus on actual story progression.
So far, the player can watch the guards train in combat, chat with random NPCs, rent a room at the inn and make the tavern owner angry because they don't have enough money to pay for drinks (I should probably create one or two side quests so they can actually get the money!). There's plenty more to come. Here's a sneak peek at some of this stuff.
Ooo looking good. You can easily mess around with some vertices to give him a little more dimension. There's an option in Blender to drag one vertex and have those in the vicinity follow proportionally. I found it does wonders for polishing a rough mesh. Also, in case you haven't done so already, using a reference image in the background is super useful for getting the proportions right with minimal effort.
Hey,
this is my very first game jam ever. Try to make a souls like 2D Arena Game :D
The Skeletons are still placeholder Art from a itch.io asset. The other stuff is my own . I'm also new to pixelart.
I startet to make a MVP(minimal viable Product // Prototype with placeholdergraphics) now i can add my own Graphics and more stuff.
Hope i got the game in a "okayish" state till jams end....
I have a busy week ahead so I went ahead and summitted the game. It has a few mechanics, two mini games, and a puzzle element. I spent much of the time on lighting and getting a simple shader I made to do more then it should... It you guys/girls could check it out and leave feedback as this is my first Jam and most polished game so far. https://docdoc116.itch.io/afterlife-keys
I'm currently working on the ONE thing that requires quite a bit of work with its animation: A singing totem with 4 freaking heads. There's about 500 frames of sequenced animations and I'm at the 310th frame done.
I could have done a much better work on the model and the armature/bones, but I'm saving that time for the new gameplay mecanism I just revised.
(For the commercial release for the end of next month, I'm planning on having a system to customize the totem, hence that one will be scrapped.)
The new gameplay mechanism is a mix of Tetris' controls and sequences and Snake set in a Maze where you goal is to guide souls of the departed into the afterlife.
Long story short, that totem is Ba-ho, a guide that has a flame above its head that attracts lost souls in the Ukhu Pacha (Inca's underworld). Think of it as a representative of Pashamama, Goddess of fertility that guide the souls back to Kay Pacha (Inca's world of the living).
I don't think I'll be able to reach that far in the project by the deadline, but I would really like to be able to bring in the Supay, demons that would stop the souls in their track.
Ba-ho's animations are finished and the gameplay-related element to it's animation are done too. The controls (inputs) are all done and can use the mouse and/or keyboard or a controller. The ring system is done on a physical level, but I have yet to implement the souls and their behavior. I also got to create the rings' paths.
The ring shown above display the selection. The highlight 3 rings closer to Ba-Ho are the rings that rotates when left or right is pressed. Pressing up and down change the rings selected. There are 3 possible difficulties which, for this jam, will fix the number of rings controlled by the player. Easy controls 1 ring, Normal controls 2 rings and Hard controls 3 rings at a time, which makes it harder to set the souls' path properly. The souls system spawn a random number of souls on the outer ring which move following the path (not yet visible) on the rings' pieces. Each soul has limited life time before it has to reach the center-most ring.
When a soul reaches one of the piece on the ring next to Ba-ho, it stays in that position for a short while before being absorbed and send toward the sky. While it can't die once at that position, souls that collides to another soul fuses together and count only as 1 soul. Obviously, the goal is to save as many souls (out of an finite number of soul per match) as possible.
What's remaining to do are:
• Recording me doing Ba-ho vocals. It includes only 5 vocals, but it might requires a tiny bit of work to make them sound good.
• Create the pieces' possible paths of each rings.
• Create the souls & their behavior (a.k.a. Soul System).
The catch is that while most ring pieces doesn't allow a soul to move back on an outer ring from its current ring, some some rare ones does allow particular move back and forth. The outer rings have more "path" variations than the smaller rings.
• Add the UI for a better look and seeing the Soul Score as well as the few settings and option in the game.
• Making a main menu and a game's logo.
I'm trying to be done with the pieces and Soul System by the end of 27th. The UI and Main menu can be done in a few hours at most.
I did implement the basics to allow the player to change certain colors in the game in case some people can't see specific colors and, if I have some time to spare, I would like to also add an option for a visible effect on Ba-ho to represent its vocals so that people who can't hear or can't play with sound (or simple hate Ba-ho's voice, a.k.a my voice) can still play without any issues.
I started making models for the rotating pieces (a.k.a. maze paths) and once I was done with about 10% of the pieces, I decided to simplify the process at least for the Jam and the paths will be done purely via the textures of the pieces. It's much more simple and faster to just draw the paths than modeling them. The Souls uses invisible nodes I set on the pieces' prefabs in advance, hence the paths (or normally the model) are purely cosmetic which is why I'm taking the quick route on that one.
Edit - Once I was done with the pieces and got them ready for 3D painting (UVs and layout-wise), I made a quick logo for the game.
I'm taking a break for today so that I can get into it and be done with the soul + maze tomorrow. :p
Halfway through the game jam and I have slightly over half of my game finished. I better hope everything goes smoothly! (or just spend more time on it)
It's going to be a turn-based tower defense game. The enemies have full AI pathfinding. (the most difficult part to program) Still need to add UI and get the enemy spawning to change over time for difficulty. Huge thanks to CMaxo who helped solve a UI overlay problem! I found out that I think I actually enjoy graphics design more than coding since I started this gam jam! (I still love programming)
Well, looks like everything is going pretty good for a lot of people. I do not have much time, but I have managed to create a prototype level and the mechanics are working. Of course everything is dummy, and the code logic is the worst ever... just quick code to have things working. Here is a screenshot of the prototype level (I have 3 in mind... but I might not be able to make it)
