Hello everybody!
What an exciting time! Myself and my friend matsuringo have teamed up to take part in this jam. This will be the first game jam either of us have taken part in, as well as the first time we have worked on a game as part of a team/partnership. There are a number of reasons we really wanted to get involved, from stretching our scripting legs, working against a clock, testing our capacity for cooperative development, etc. The important thing is that we are both very excited to be taking this challenge on and are already finding it a great deal of fun!
Our development is being done remotely due to Covid and there were many aspects of this that we had to consider. In our own work we use different engines (Unreal and Unity), as well as having generally different skillsets and comfort zones. In the end the best combination of these has led to the development being done in Unreal Engine. The bulk of the scripting is to fall on matsuringo, while I will be taking on more of a mish-mash roll involving project management & game design, as well as (hopefully) using some of my 3D/art skills.
While the 2 of us make up the official development team, I have worked in the past with a few of my talented friends who make pixel art & music. Depending on availability and how things shape up I would rather get them in on the action and have folks I know in the credits than whatever creative commons sounds we'd have otherwise, but it remains to be seen!
I am writing at the start of the third day, so to bring you up to speed here is the story so far;
Day 0;
I just wanted to include this image before the official start as it's one I drew up on the run up to beginning. matsuringo and I are both very keen to get the best out of this experience and one of the key things for us is properly considering things on the macro scale - that is, not getting bogged down on any single element. As such, I composed this plan (that I hope will not age poorly)
Day 1:
We have our first official meeting on discord to discuss ideas. We quickly realise that one of matsuringo's ideas is really jamming with us (pardon the pun). The concept is for an 'Overcooked' style game in which the player is an alchemist or magical artificer who is trying to combine ingredients &/or items to craft magic items with a limited amount of time to do so. At this stage we were unsure whether this would involve a set timer and attempting to make as many as possible as orders came in, or a set number of things to make in a given time with chances to increase time through performance.
Having spent some time nurturing the idea, we created a list of essential features to complete first, as well as some stretch targets for if there is time. The goal is to be able to have the core loop testable by us and others in the first 3 days. This would include;
1) A player character capable of picking up and placing materials, with 2 hands allowing for 2 carried materials (max) at one time.
2) A rough-cut version of the HUD, going for a multi-window style a-la Papers Please.
3) A storage cupboard that can dispense magical ingredients (think eye of newt).
4) A crafting table capable of taking in items and creating new ones according to a set of recipes.
5) A kitchen island/holding table for the player to hold a limited number of materials close at hand.
Well, come the end of the first day, things were shaping up better than we'd imagined! This is mainly due to matsuringo's skill and familiarity with scripting in Unreal, he absolutely killed it from day 1! We had a functioning dispenser, a player character with hand slots and a rough HUD layout. We also had a hearty list of ingredients as well as potential composite materials (for creating magic items that require more steps at higher difficulty) Things were looking good.
Unfortunately I neglected to collect screenshots from matsuringo on day 1, but I will remember going forward.
Day 2:
On day 2 we made some changes to the position of HUD elements and matsuringo made still more blistering progress on the scripting of game elements. By the end of day 2 we had most of the basic prototype we hoped for by day 3 done. The player could pick up, place, craft and store items. The next steps will involve implementing some of the other procedures the player must take to refine or cook certain ingredients, as well as providing a hand in area to tie up the end of that gameplay loop.
I spent my time putting together a bunch of placeholder sprites in the evening. Sunday was unfortunately a day where I had prior plans, but I was happy to have gotten these done :)
We also made the decision that the structure of the games challenge should be such that when a level begins the player has a set number of items to craft, like 3. These would be of differing complexity and all must be finished before a timer runs out. HOWEVER. There would also be very simple requests given to the player that could be completed quickly, that would reward additional time.
On to day 3!