Hi there!

I'm Matt a.k.a LemonBalmGames and this is my third ever game jam. I played the first two a bit safe, making somewhat similar games and it's time to change that! My aim for this jam is to create a game that includes a bunch of things that I haven't tried before (third person perspective, animations, AI, UI, combat system and more). Enter - Volcanic Island.

Elevator Pitch: 

Third person adventure game. Low poly style. You control a mage with a few water-based magic abilities (projectile, dodge, self-heal, super-jump etc.) fighting and platforming your way through the titular volcanic island on some sort of a generic quest :)

In case you want to know more about it, check out the design doc included in my Trello board (linked below).

Plan of Attack:

During the first week of the jam I'll try to create as many core game-play elements as possible (main character movement and abilities, AI, combat system). Then - depending on what I manage to create - I'll reevaluate, most likely scope down, and try to make what I have into a game during the second week of the jam. I'm determined to finish 'something', so worse case scenario I'll create a third person character with the ability to hurl projectiles at some basic AI characters. Best case scenario I'll make something that actually resambles a game with a working combat system. Wish me luck!

List of Tools:

Unreal Engine 4.19.2

Blender

Gimp 

Reaper

Trello - Click to view the board!

Stay tuned for future updates! 

Day 1

I won't be able to do much today but I wanted to take at least the first step on the path to finishing my game. Meet the hero of the story in his glorious T-pose. I think I'll call him Marvin. It's not my model but it comes with a very gracious CC BY license so I gave him a quick paint job and I'll be sure to include the name of the author in the game page and credits. Graphics are the one thing that I most likely won't be able to do on my own (other than the odd prop or particle effect that is) so given how I'm working alone I'll have to rely on the kind people posting their free stuff on the interwebz. Anyway, tomorrow I'll try to make my hero move and maybe even cast some spells if I'm lucky. Stay tuned! 

Day 2

So... I have your standard, run of the mill 'good news/bad news' kinda rigmarole. Due to my poor time management skills, I skipped like two full days of development doing 'work stuff' instead. That's the bad news. The good news is that from now on, I'm going hard on this whole thing, and while I might not be able to finish even 50% of the stuff that I initially envisioned, I'll try to submit #something, come hell or high water.

Onto the actual dev update. Meet Marvin in his new and improved version (turns out that animating robes can be... tricky, I'll probably still use the previous model for something). He now has a monstrously powerful mustache and he looks more like an apprentice than a master of arcane arts, which works better for the extremely generic storyline that I have in mind. Oh, and he can now move, and also heal himself with some basic magic. Neat right? 

I've managed to set up a very basic animation blueprint using animations found on the extremely useful website called mixamo. I have a very rudimentary health and mana system (two variables and two UI progress bars) and I created a basic 'healing spell' that uses said system. I'm not done for today, and I might have more updates so stay tuned!

Day 2 - Continued 

I made even more stuff! A mana-pickup that will be randomly dropped by fallen enemies, a short dash (a.k.a 'water slide') and a super jump ability that spawns a giant geyser below your feet (this will be used mostly to traverse terrain but it can also serve as 'get out of jail' free card during combat scenarios). 

ToDo list for tomorrow:
- Basic UI for abilities.
- Clean up and balance cooldowns (I'm using magic numbers for now).
- 1 or 2 combat abilities.
- Start working on the AI and combat.

Wish me luck!

Days 3 and 4
I now have a rudimentary but functional combat system. Which is great because that was my main goal for this jam. With a bit of polish, one or two more enemy types, and an actual game level, this may yet become a real game and a reasonably fun one at that!

What I managed to do:
- Improved ability cooldown system.
- UI.
- Combat ability - water projectile that staggers and deals damage to AI.
- AI that can both take some and give some.

Here's how it all looks in action:

Day 5

I made two new enemy types - a ranged stationary mage character periodically hurling balls of magma in the player's general direction (that's a mouthful), and a cute kamikaze imp that's faster than Usain Bolt (gifs below).

I also created low poly 'water' and 'magma' materials (or shaders like they are often referred to in other engines), imported some NPC characters that I'm going to use later, removed costly and unnecessary particle effects from AI characters and made a bunch of other small improvements that I can't recall now.

Plan for tomorrow:
- Level design a.k.a actually making something that resembles a video game and not a prototype of a rudimentary combat system.

Gifs!

Day... umm... second to last?
Another good news/bad news kinda scenario. The bad news is that I was too busy working on the game to update this devlog, but the good news is that I have some stuff to show for it! 'Volcanic Island' (hmmm... now that I think about it, it's possible I might still go for the late title change) is almost ready. I created the main level, I'm almost done with sound and UI. I just need to program a bit of level logic, polish the whole thing a bit and the game should be done. 

Oh, and this project gradually became a very light Dark Souls parody which is another reason why I'm considering changing the title. Still, the parody elements aren't super overt (well, maybe a few of them :P) so additional reference in form of a title might be an overkill.

Gifs!