Day 1 Devlog!

So, I know we are usually reviewing and playing indie games, but we recently decided... Hey, we love indie games so much and have a rough functional knowledge of these things, let's make our own indie game!

We are participating in My First Game Jam: Winter 2017!

This will be Barry and my first game together and my first time ever working with someone else on a game! I will be doing the programming and some of the graphics and Barry will be writing the storyline and guiding how the game feels!

Here's a pic to show where we are at as of today and we will explain more about the concept next post!

Day 2 Devlog!

So, what is the game?

Our game is all about manning an engine room in an amazing spaceship adventure. Unfortunately because your job is so important you can't leave your post and will never get to SEE the adventure but will instead live it vicariously through the crew in your ship. A little cruel, we know.

What we did today!

Okay! After a journey through many ways to progress the story line in our game, it looks like we may be half-way towards a workable system!

Because of the time-limits... Actually, hell, i'll be honest, this is how I would have done it anyways... I have the story running on a timer every time a columns time comes up, it activates the mission in that row. The "New Mission" drops down and it's graphic is changed based on what type of mission the story line says is up next. (drawn in from the column that is next up) Seems to be working!

The spreadsheet we are using map out the mission creation steps and required actions:

An example of it in action:

Now that we have the basic 'Mission' structure in place this allows us to create the objectives and problems the engineer will face. The hard part is next, implementing all the gameplay of the player being able to fix, said events!

More to come!

Day 3 Devlog! - Video Devlog #1

We have decided to do a video Devlog every week to sum up our progress and explain more about the game!

In this video we share the state of the game and explain more of the storyline, introducing the characters you will meet along your journey :) Check it out!

More soon! Feel free to leave comments and ask questions, we are still working this all out! (and quietly freaking out)

Day 4/5 Devlog!

We have decided to do a video Devlog every week to sum up our progress and explain more about the game!

Hello, and good evening! Barry here, dropping to give you a little check up on the state of our game!

This is the first time I've ever been involved in creating a game, let alone writing a story for one or creating dialogue, characters or a universe! This is what MFGJ is all about, gathering experience, learning, and growing from it all.

<Thanks again to h202 / poke for helping us with the line art for our characters!

So far, I've been able to come up with a crew and give them all some kind of quirk, like Kyla McRae, the Weapons Specialist who will fiercely defend her crew, but tries to preserve life wherever possible, or Barnaby Craidell, the Pilot, who derives his skill from his pure will of self preservation. I wanted to create these characters with unusual traits to her how the crew would play into each other, as well as see how they would clash, rather than going with generic flawless heroism types.

I've been wrestling with ideas for the game and have found that creativity is like a rogue wave, it can come all at once, jut just as quickly and unexpectedly as it comes, it starts to trickle away. Having a notepad on hand is almost a requirement as to catch any glimpse of inspiration as it crosses your mind.

To conclude, we have a crew, a scene, and a 'first chapter' written out and ready to go, with dialogue and mission parameters to follow, with which Chris will plug into his events engine and will completely and effortlessly port straight into the game! Kudos to him and his programming wizardry! Without it, all that I would have made is a semi-interesting story.

Thanks for reading and sticking with us for this story of learning, growth and making a gosh darn video game! Stay tuned for the next instalment of DEVLOG BALL D!

Day 6 Devlog - Shields, Comms and Blackouts, Oh My!

Quite a bit of work done since my last update! We now have the beginnings of a Comms system for the characters in our story to talk to the player through scripting, a Shield System for the player to manipulate the shields on the ship and a rough start on the Temperature System.

In addition I have made a few more visual elements including the ability for the ship to be blacked out by an electrical storm, throwing the lights out and switching to emergency power (It's just a different picture with a glowing light, but its still cool!)

So, the Systems in the game are essentially where you will get stuff done. Monitoring the temperature levels, engaging the thrust, using your access key at the same time as the Captain to unlock the docking doors, altering the shields, etc.

It's great to see them slowly coming together! The thing that makes all of these elements a little more difficult is that we have the aspiration of making this whole game scripted, i.e: Once its done, in theory someone else could write a new story-line, drop it in and you have a new game to play!

That probably won't be a reality by the end of the jam, but it looks more and more like we will have a 'finished' product!