Dev Log 1 (Days 1-3)

Hello! I've recently finished my first year at uni as a Games Computing student, and this is my first ever game jam, and dev log. Since my only real game-making experience was creating a little game prototype at the start of the year in my first module, I decided to begin taking part in game jams to build up my skills and experience before my second year starts. I've been a little busy these last few days, hence the late dev log, but I hope I can still make something worthwhile in these next 2 weeks!

Concept - The Journey Home:

• Alien Family break out of their cage/fall out of van
• Forage food to feed family
• Fight off pursuers who capture them
• Progress bar on distance covered each day
• If enough time, make different events/landscapes appear at different progress levels

The above are notes that I made when the theme was just revealed, to be used as a rough outline as to what I wanted to accomplish, as I am unsure of my working speed.

The story is quite simple. An alien family were captured by researchers(or otherwise) and somehow manage to escape captivity. They then have to survive and make their journey back home, whilst making sure to forage enough food, and not get captured again.

In essence, the user plays as the 'parent' of the family, with a bunch of smaller alien children following them around. I would like for the children to be able to help the player forage and/or runaway from pursuers if they notice them. But, most of the impactful actions will be done by the player themselves.

Progress - The Game:

In terms of the actual game coming together, this is basically all I've done.

For the moment, the models/assets are all placeholders, and will hopefully be replaced in the near future. I just wanted to get some mechanics down and working for the actual game first.

The movement I've coded is very responsive, which is nice, but its definitely janky and not-clean. I think I spent the most time coding on the movement actually, I just suck at it. I'm using Unity's new input system for this, and I'm using AddForce to move, so if anyone has advice for controlling movement without rigidbody constraints and without rolling and rotating everywhere, I'd love to hear it.

For now though, this will do! I'm not exactly aiming for perfection right now. Getting the foraging to work exactly how I envisioned made me happy.

Progress - Learning:

A long time I did a tutorial on Blender, and then never touched it again. In order to get back into it, and newly learn rigging, animation and possibly sculpting, I spent time following a bunch more tutorials! And this is what I made. The happy snowman wishes you a good day!

Looking Good!

Dev Log 2 (Days 4-5)

Today, alongside getting my first covid vaccine, I coded the basic AI for the children. When close to the player, they have a slower movement speed(walk) and wander around in a small radius. When farther away, aka when the player leaves them behind, their movement speed increases(run) and they follow the player as closely as they can. I also made it so that they can help with foraging, and move towards the bushes to do this, although the player is much quicker at foraging comparing to them. But, having companions that help out is always nice.

In the future, I would also like to code them running away from pursuers and other more interesting reactive behaviour, but we'll see how much time I have. I originally planned to work all day every day, but I have other committments, sadly. Still, I'll try my best.

I have also experimented with making the player model in Blender, which will be similar to/the basis of the child model, but I haven't made anything I'm quite happy with yet.