The premise of this project is to work in an engine i haven't used before. 

I am used to work on rpg, now i want to start working from scratch in between an engine like that and completely coding myself.

So i have studied in those 3 days the principles of Gdevelop and i have decided to work in some kind of side scroll game using the suggested theme: Love.

The game

The game should be about a guy collecting items to reach certain points with the girl he chooses.
I plan it to be retro on the mechanics, but also on the way to express love. That romantic thing we have forgoten actually.

The first goals on the game should be:

Main frame and mechanics for the side scroll.
A decent hud
An exchange interface to create items.

Tools i'll use:

Inkscape, Graphics Gale and Krita for the graphics

Gdevelop engine for the code.

I don't think i will make original music or sounds for this project but i will look around public resources to have a good ambience.

Yesterday was a day off so i had time to advance on the mechanics of the game. I found some tutorials about making a platform game on gdevelop that covered the main issues, at first it was confuse but i decided to go on myself instead of downloading a template.

Surely downloading the template and working on it should save precious time. But i'm pretty sure it will not be so much learning by doing that, so... this is what i did from scratch.
In a paper i wrote the mechanics, goals, and gameplay, there is no plot at this time, so i think it will be developed right on the fly.

Variables where decided and engines needed.
After reviewing the variables i expect to use, (always on the development i found i had to use more variables) I started declaring variables on the start. This is something used in almost any language, so it's a good practice even using an engine to try and declare them at first.

After that i started to make the main scenes that should work as templates for the more.

I've found there should be some procedures that should be generals for the most of the scenes, so these should be external events to call them everytime i need them.

This is a practice i did ton of times on rpgmaker, instead copy/pasting the events i used random numbers to call specific behaviors inside a common event, this way the coding size is reduced and you only need to make changes in a place to see them changing all over the game. For programmers this is the object oriented programming so, as i'm planning to emigrate from engines to code i should use, and abuse this feature as much as i can.

At this point i have declared 2 external events:
Hud_scoring > To update always the number of items shown in the hud.

Objects> These are the rewards found on the maps, Think of them as Mario Bros's coins, but they are surprise items: you don't know what is inside until you open them. So far the system is working, after a few mistakes done, but is already working ok and i'm pleased with the results.

Before doing this external events, i need to draw at least a platform where the character lands and the gifts where, so i opened my classic graphics gale and made a 32x32 tile of grass and soil... in game these detailed items does not look as i wanted, so maybe i should edit them later an made them lesser detailed.

I used my own chara template from rpg to make the player animations and checked they run smoothly, again, i have to edit later on the graphics, because 2.5 D looks rare on a sidescroll view... details... details...

Next step is working on enemies and make the rest of the tiles i will need,

.For enemies i will need an external event again. At this time the player can walk from one side to the other, jump and collect the randomized items... not so bad for a half day of work in a new engine.

I have worked on the main frame to asignate the points buying skills, not used on the sidescroll, but in the talking system.
Main shop is done and also the talking with a girl system. Very primitive but working at least.

Now it's time to come back to the sidescroll engine. I don't have a clear idea about the monsters the player should find and defeat and if there will be any reward for defeating those enemies. Anyway i noticed i haven't played scroller or platform games LOL, so i have to play some of them to understand at least how they are done.
YES! This jam is for learning... learning a lot. So before throwing the towel, i should keep myself on fight.... Next round is about to start... making this ugly frankestein beauty.

Still running

I played enough platform games to understand the basics, so i started to work on platforms and leaders.

I found interesting the use of ladders to jump from one side to another and try not to fall and die.

I noticed the game needed a reason to fear and try, and it's: Don't die, or you should start over.

Found a big bug, when the game is over (3 dies) you start with a -1 live. It was easily repaired and working again.

The  choose the girl part was hardly cut, from the concept to the game, and that's just because time keeps on running and i will not have enough time to work on it. In fact (i hope not) it is possible that i don't have time to set up all the girls :(