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Bread is not a weapon's itch.io pageJudge feedback
Judge feedback is anonymous.
- The game plays quite well in the browser. The GDD is very detailed and a great base for the requirements of the game. The poison bait didn't do much for me, it would be great if the slime would be killed or significantly weakend at that point. Also why does it have to be slime and not jello? This way you could run a fun little breakfast theme. The jumping felt really good in the game and having some movement animation within the bread will make it even better feeling. So for optimizing games you might be best suited to get involved into a conversation on the official PirateSoftware Discord. There is an entire section for game developers to talk to, people are very helpful there. Generally said when it comes to optimization of code. Don't have redundand code. Use sub functions to do the same things. Limit the use of global variables. Make sure to release memory correctly to avoid memory leaks. Using a lot of arrays in loops can be killers for performance.
Link to your Game Design Doc on Google Drive.
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1RKGhk9Ix-PXZde40XGf8cxifY9idEVrERp6aZvO5Lww/edit?usp=sharing
Have you checked that your GDD is publicly accessible ?
Yes
Is your game set to public on itch.io so we can see it?
Yes
Summarise your game!
A short and simple platformer, W to jump, AD to move left and right. The goal is to collect ingredients to "bake" the bread with new upgrades.
Please explain how your game fits the theme:
The player decides how the bread becomes a weapon.
Is there anything you'd like the judges to pay particular attention to?
As this is my first game jam, I was very limited on time so certain things like art and music were left aside, as well as certain additions like new enemies and new upgrades. But my main issue so far is optimization. With the short amount of time, I had a number of extra variables and functions that serve little purpose. Is there any tips on optimizing games in such a short time, especially 2D games to make it run smoother? Preferably if they are general optimizations that any game engine could use, or in Godot 4 as that is my current game engine.
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Comments
i think the game is solid in its current state as a platformer, but i think that what would really help the game out would be solid level backgrounds and design, because as it stands it was pretty confusing to navigate a grey terrain and i couldn't really tell if i was making progress or not. and i think it would be pretty neat that if every ingredient you collect visually changed what the bread looked like. But overall i think it was pretty decent
Thank you for the review!
I will definitely be working on the backgrounds and design. I tried experimenting with gradient backgrounds as I didn’t really have the time to draw an actual one and it seemed really horrible, so I stuck with a full color background for now. The design was also really simple as I was more focused on the programming part, so it will be my main focus now.
The idea that every ingredient changes the bread is great! I was originally thinking of that as well, as the bread was supposed to just be a dough, and the upgrades were adding onto it to fully become a bread. But due to the lack of time, I left it as a bread for now.
Great work on your first jam! Game is pretty basic right now, but if you put time in it, it can grow to something pretty nice. Liked the smoothness of your animations, even if you had little time for them.
Regarding optimization, game ran smoothly yet with a couple of bugs. Seems like you're planning on updating it, so 1) collecting honey after a death with having it doesn't display it; 2) collecting poison after that and ending the level crashes the game; 3) BGM slider didn't control music's volume.
General optimization tips : Optimization takes your precious jam time, decide if it is worth it; Some things do not need to be ran every frame, move them to creation or on event scripts; For something simple you do not need giant textures, if you're shrinking them to what you need anyway; On major steps check how your game runs on your to-be-exported-on platform; Know the limitations of that platform; Keep learning and look for help if you're stuck! (but look at the documentation first)
It is true that the game is pretty basic, as most things were rushed through unfortunately. I do want to put more time into it and see where it leads.
Thank you for the bug reports! I did not have time to do much testing with the upgrades so these are really helpful. The BGM slider seems to keep breaking, I’ve had the same issue twice while testing the game out and had to keep fixing it. I fixed it yet again after the jam so hopefully it is working in the next update.
At the start of the jam, I took some time to do proper event signals, as well as dynamic code to make things optimized. But as time went on and I started rushing certain things, I basically dumped a bunch of stuff in global variables and hardcoded a bunch. In the short run it seems fine, but if I’m hoping on a full fledged game, it seems like really bad practice. So I’m still trying to figure out where’s a good balance for this.
Once again, thank you for the kind words and review!
Nice job making a cute little bread themed platformer! You got the basics right, I'd like to see how wild you can take the concept of bread as a weapon.
It ran smooth for me, so I'm not sure what optimization you were thinking of beside code cleanup. Pre-optimization is potentially unneeded optimization! Searching for good youtube videos and asking questions in discord can probably help answer your optimization questions.
Thank you for your feedback! I will definitely be going crazy on how far I can bring the game.
Regarding the optimization, when I initially ran the game on browser about 3 hours before the deadline, I realised the game was running at a very low framerate as it was stuttering. I did some minor changes to the size of the textures and it improved a little. But it was really surprising to me, as running the game as an app was completely smooth, while the browser version still has parts where it feels slow/laggy.
The game is super fun, even though I keep dying! I picked up the poison upgrade and was trying to reach the next area, but I just keep getting wrecked. Also—why can't I toss the bread?! I need to toss the bread!
Overall, great job!!
Initial plan was to have the bread be able to be thrown or dropped! But sadly the throwing part was left out due to a lack of time. Will definitely add it in a future update though!
Thank you for your time!