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Dognap's itch.io pageResults
| Criteria | Rank | Score* | Raw Score |
| Visuals | #176 | 3.227 | 4.167 |
| Audio | #184 | 2.840 | 3.667 |
| Overall | #222 | 2.905 | 3.750 |
| Authenticity (use of resolution restriction) | #233 | 3.486 | 4.500 |
| Gameplay | #269 | 2.066 | 2.667 |
Ranked from 6 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.
Did you work in a team?
No, I worked alone.
Was the resolution a challenge?
I found that the resolution requirement was a challenge specifically in regards to rendering text in a meaningful way. I was able to overcome this issue by splitting dialogue into several parts.
I did not have many issues with sub-pixels. Developing the game's engine from scratch granted me more control over its inner workings, allowing me to ensure that positions and dimensions snap to the grid.
However, I did encounter some sub-pixeling early in development, but that was ultimately due to the display scaling transformation. Occasionally, the player's sprite would appear to be displaced by a fraction of a pixel. After debugging, I realized that this issue was a result of scaling to a display size that is not a multiple of 64.
What did you learn?
I have never worked on a project with such a low resolution constraint, so that was new! Creating and displaying miniature UI elements in a meaningful, non-cluttering way was interesting.
Aside from challenges related to the jam's constraints, I have never developed a pacifist-oriented adventure game. I originally had an enemy and bullet/bulletpool system implemented, but decided to scrap it to be more consistent with the game's overall bright and cheery aesthetic.
As a result of developing Dognap, I gained an increased familiarity with certain data structures, algorithms, and game development-related design patterns.
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Comments
Beautiful game, but street crossing is too painfull. Anyway, was fun!
The general consensus appears to be that the traffic area is too difficult, so I'll definitely have to tweak the car spawn timings after the voting period is over :)
Thanks for the feedback!
Charming little adventure with great pixel art! Crossing the street was a bit too difficult for my clumsy fingers, but it added a nice challenge to the game. Well done!
Thanks for the feedback!
I am a sucker for this kind of exploration game! Loved it, cute aesthetics and vibin' music. Side note: I went off-screen to dodge the cars :P
By the way, I wasn't able to run it initially, I got an error saying "The code execution cannot proceed because MSVCP140.dll was not found." I went ahead and googled for the DLL in question. Not sure if you should be packaging it, or if it's typical for Windows to already have it (I'm running a cheap old laptop to check out the Windows-only games).
Hey, thanks for checking out my game and for the feedback!
Yeah, world boundary collisions were something I had on my to-do list, but I definitely had a brain fart. I didn't realize I forgot to program it in until after submission. I'm definitely planning to finish, polish, optimize, and potentially continue updating the game after the voting period is over.
Thanks for informing me about that DLL! Windows is particularly complicated when it comes to packaging games. I previously already added two other DLLs (vcruntime140 and vcruntime140_1) in a post-submission patch, because an older computer that I tested on was missing those, but apparently not MSVCP140. Typically, the Windows installers for applications will check if the appropriate DLLs are installed, and install them if not. I don't receive DLL-related errors on my machines because they all have the correct DLLs already installed, so in the future I'm definitely going to do extensive testing in a virtual machine to catch these types of issues.
Thanks again!
Edit: I did a DLL sniff using a Windows tool called listdlls, and the game is using about 80 DLLs in total. Either distributing an installer or launch testing using a fresh version of Windows on a virtual machine is definitely the way to go.