Skip to main content

On Sale: GamesAssetsToolsTabletopComics
Indie game storeFree gamesFun gamesHorror games
Game developmentAssetsComics
SalesBundles
Jobs
TagsGame Engines

how is this working?

A topic by razcore-rad created Sep 24, 2016 Views: 1,836 Replies: 24
Viewing posts 1 to 9

Hello fellow virtual entities!

I'm new with game jams in general and I want to be sure about some things:

1. does 4 colors mean, 4 colors on top of the 2 white and black non-colors? example: white, black, red, green, blue, yellow, would this be allowed?

2. can there be shades of these colors? say have red and play with saturation or luminosity?

3. what's stopping us from starting developing the game today? how does this work exactly? do we need to start building the game when the jam starts? or can we gather resources and start developing on it right away and just have it submitted during the 10 days?

I'm Razvan Radulescu, razvanc-r around the web and pretty much unknown as I've only been lurking in the virtual shadows but I'm trying to make my way towards game dev. somehow :). I'm a fan of Godot and would like to use this engine, but it can't export for gameboy, would it be enough to just have the specific resolution and the color thing?

Thanks for all the help!

As far as I know black and white are counted as a colour on their own, a different shade means a different colour. As for question 3, I guess you could technically start working on the game now but that's not the spirit of the jam.

You can make games for any platform you want, it is not required to be exported on Gameboy.

Thanks, that clears up things! I wouldn't start the developing before the jam starts, but I definitely need to do some research as this would be my first game and I don't know if I'm able to do it in 10 days... :). Hope that's not breaking the spirit of the jam! I don't like being the "cheat" :P

(1 edit)

White and black counts as colours, look any gameboy game for reference and you will see only 4 colours at any time. Any shade or modification of a color counts as a different color. And for question 3, this is a jam. It's not a competition for any prize or something, we're making games for learning/fun and because we love to make them! So there's no point for starting right now to make a game for the jam.

And you can use Godot and export to any platform, you don't have to create a cartridge.

Host

Thanks for answering all these questions for him your right on the money with your answer!

(2 edits)
1. does 4 colors mean, 4 colors on top of the 2 white and black non-colors? example: white, black, red, green, blue, yellow, would this be allowed?
Nope. Think of it as 4 shades of the same colour. So if your colour scheme was say RED for example, you could have:
  • BLACK
  • DARK RED
  • RED
  • WHITE

And these would be your 4 colours.

2. can there be shades of these colors? say have red and play with saturation or luminosity?

Again, nope. Imagine if we took a screengrab of your game and put it in to photoshop then asked photoshop to count the colours in that screenshot. More than 4? Well, this would be outside the spirit of the Jam.

3. what's stopping us from starting developing the game today? how does this work exactly? do we need to start building the game when the jam starts? or can we gather resources and start developing on it right away and just have it submitted during the 10 days?

Start building your game when the Jam starts if you want to be part of the spirit of things. It's about pushing yourself to see what you can make in 10 days, that's the only real prize on offer here.

For the first two questions, you can only use four RGB values. So for example you could use $f5f5d4, $96cf85, $4b6d85 and $352b31 (such as in my display picture). No other RGB values should ever appear anywhere in the game. For the third question, no one will know you started early but it is very strongly against the spirit of the game jam. You are essentially cheating, and given it is an online competition with no prize you are only cheating yourself.

Host

That last bit about the starting the jam early is very well put Daniel, thanks for helping with the great response! Happy jamming :)

I'm currently trying to make something similar to the pico 8, but with gameboy limitations, for the jam. Would this be in the spirit of the jam?

Host

Yes that would be cool, but good luck getting it out there before October 1st.

Yeah, it probably won't be out there that soon. But I'm having fun making it, and I've made better progress than I would have expected.

Host

What language are you going to make the standard within your GBJAM IDE?

I am using Haxe and Kha to make this engine, and so I'm using hscript ( a more limited version of Haxe ) for my IDE. This is mostly out of convenience. If I decide to keep working on this I may switch to a different language.

I have just uploaded my current progress to Github. There's still a lot of work that needs to be done.

https://github.com/desttinghim/GBEngine

(1 edit)

It took the pico8 guy a few years... ;)

Well... that's a really good point. So far it feels like I'm making really good progress though. We'll see if it's in a usable state by the time the Jam rolls around :)

I think the question fits the thread: Would it be okay, if the player may choose at the begin between different Color schemes? Like you can do on the GBC. :)

(1 edit)

if you have time! Tbh it's easier just to do GB pal considering the time span ;-)

Host

Yes that is fine! A couple people in the past have done that in the options menu and you get to pick a palette to play with.

Submitted

If I recall correctly, you can have palette swaps, but you are required to only display 4 colors on the screen at any given time. There were a few entries from last year that did some really nice palette swaps between levels (green palette to red palette, etc).

(1 edit)

Hm! I think the rules should be more explicit about this since if you were to take it literally you'd think only 4 colors for the entire game... so! It does say "Use 4 colors per game" not... "per level"

Submitted

That was my thought too with the first GBJam I participated in. I do agree.

Host

I'll write something up.

Submitted

Can we dynamically change the color palete during gameplay?

I'm kinda of thinking in some mechanics that explore color shifting during gameplay...

Host

As long as only 4 colors are displayed on screen at any one time you are fine :)

Submitted

Thank you!

I have some interesting ideas to do with that :)