Hello!  Koolkirby here.  This is the first year I've been able to participate in the game jam.  I really wanted to last year but I was taking summer classes learning how to make games in Unity.  This year my summer schedule perfectly aligned with my month+ change summer break window and I wanted to dive headfirst into learning Godot for various reasons.  For background here are some example student projects I've worked on.  My role has mainly been programming, learning how to script a 2D platformer (player movement, enemy ai, health and score, etc), and learning how to design and code enemies in 3D using state machines.

Since it's a solo project and I'm learning a new engine and language (GD Script) from scratch I wanted to pick a genre with a wealth of tutorials and example projects for Godot.   I decided on making a "Survivors" style game in the vein of Vampire Survivors.  My original idea was to implement a bump combat system like in the early Ys games, with level ups and stat scaling inspired by Fire Emblem.  In essence, the gameplay loop would running into enemies head on, swapping damage, and deciding between raw stat upgrades vs stat growth rate upgrades for long term scaling.  I still really like this idea, but I got a bit scared off it as the first week came to an end and I was only just finishing up a long 16 part tutorial series by YouTuber Branno that more strictly mimics Vampire Survivors.   Also, I revisited Ys Chronicles on Steam and found the bump combat way less dopamine rich than when I played the DS version when I was younger.  Still, I like this idea and would like to revisit it after the game jam.

 So after the first week I was sitting with a competent version of Vampire Survivors, but no concrete plan to move forward with.  I really didn't want to just make a reskinned version of Vampire Survivors, and I'm not a very experienced artist so I wanted to stay within my comfort zone for graphics.  So I started to sketch ideas for what the game would look like.  Since the start of the year I've been slowly practicing digital art in my free time in between classes, occasionally submitting art to the art show even, and after watching this video by Jack Sathar I was inspired to try out his recommended workflow within Procreate.  I already had the tools on hand thanks to a digital art classes me and my partner took back in February so it just seemed like a perfect fit.  Using the symmetry tool and syrup brush to make a (mostly) symmetrical front facing character I had made my first custom asset for the game, Jambon!

I'm really proud of how she turned out!  But I did put the cart before the horse a bit, I wasn't considering how she would look scaled down in game to fit a 1920x1080 default resolution.  Once I realized this I decided to sketch out everything using a 120x120 grid to determine the size of future assets.

The grid lines are in procreate itself, so you'll have to take my word for it, but now I have reference sizes for all the elements in the game I want to create.  I had also decided on a weapon mechanic, Dorbs!  I haven't landed on the final in-world  acronym yet, but something like Defense Oriented Robot Butler.  Visually they are meant to look like MAGs, and mechanically they function similar to the floating hand appendages in Brotato.  Each orb will fire projectiles in unique ways, targeting enemies closest to their position around them.  Upgrades will revolve around upgrading individual Dorbs with upgrades like attack speed, base damage, piercing shots, etc.  Then on top of this will be broad upgrades for the player, like HP, movespeed, experience multipliers, as well as lesser upgrades that apply to all weapons (all weapon base damage, all weapons crit rate, etc).  Hopefully I can make enough interesting Dorbs designs and upgrades to make the game really engaging and interesting on replays.  If time allows, I'd like to include more playable characters as well.  I liked Jambon as a well rounded starting character with a starting Dorb that acts like a revolver, steady single target projectiles with high knockback that you can upgrade to pierce through mobs.

That's all I have for now, here's a screenshot of the game as it stands right now.  I have three functioning weapons, and one custom mob sprite.  He's a little egg guy cause the villains will be workers from the unnamed Fried Chicken restaurant.  I gave him a little Kizaru face just for funsies.

Quick update, the past week I have been mostly adding weapons and clamping down on some high priority bugs.  I want the different Dorbs to be a surprise so I'll hold off on sharing more on them for now, but I did create a new proper sized Jambon idle animation!

It's my first time hand animating anything, so I'm pretty proud of how it turned out.  I struggle with line weight consistency, and that becomes very noticeable when animating a character frame by frame so maybe this will be good practice for me in the long run.  Could probably work on keeping the arms more consistent and the neck cuff doesn't quite work but good enough for me I think.

Here's a full sized screenshot of the game so far.  I still need to add 3 more Dorbs, a run cycle for Jambon, various new enemies and bosses, icons for the various power ups, and clean up the UI.  Still have plenty of time so I'm not sweating it.  Oh, and also custom sprites for each Dorb, right now they are just recolors of a placeholder design.  I'd like them to be characters in their own right.  Once done with all that, if time permits I'd like to add another playable character or two, but definitely trying to pace myself on this project.

I spent most of the last week creating and implementing new art and more upgrades to the game.  Jambon has a run cycle and dropshadow now, I created an explosion animation for the Rocket Dorb, and I spent the better part of a day trying to make a nice tileable texture.  I really didn't like the result at first, but once I added the small details like flowers and misc. mossy bits I started to come around on it.  Still very much a novice artist, and I'm aware the grass colors aren't the most beautiful, but I committed early to a specific color palette and I'm hoping that registers once all art is implemented.

Character upgrades are going well, and I improved the draft window UI to better scale with resolution.  All the pixel art is placeholder, I will be creating icons for each upgrade once they are all fully implemented.  I've added quite a few new upgrades just today in fact, including increased experience gain, crit chance, and max health upgrades.

As for the Dorbs themselves, I had a lot of fun creating a spreadsheet to help ballpark balance.  For weapons like the Rifle and Rocket Dorb that can hit more than 5 enemies at a time I capped at 5 for practical comparison.  I'm not an Excel wizard so apologies if it is a bit scuffed.  My initial design for these Dorb upgrades was to make them linear, where each upgrade required the previous rank, with rank 4 usually being the most impactful/exciting.  When I went to implement these changes though I decided to make only the base Dorb required so that players have more interesting and dynamic decisions to make each level up.  I don't wanna sand off every edge to make the upgrades "equal" as I think there should be some amount of excitement when certain upgrades show up in the draft window.  I tested these numbers against the first wave of Egg enemies and things felt roughly equivalent.  The base/pistol Dorb is meant to be a little weaker, as you will always start the run with it.  I've committed to just having Jambon be playable at this point, so I don't have to balance each Dorb as if it were a starting Dorb.

From here I'm largely gonna be focused on designing lots of new enemies to flesh out 10-15 minute runs.  Gonna try to aim low for overall difficulty, but I also intend to implement a currency you can collect for "ferociously hip" permanent upgrades from the Smoke House to give players struggling an extra boost.  After that, if there's still time I will try to setup an intro cutscene and increase overall polish where I can.  Thanks for reading, hope to see you back next week!

Gonna keep this weeks devlog brief as in the interest of time and keeping things fresh for the final version.

Had a lot of overlooked issues I had to work through last week, but I still got some forward progress going and managed to fix some frustrating bugs with collision and knockback.  Added some music and sfx by Ovani sound that I purchased during a Humble Bundle sale late July.  Happy where things are visually, but definitely feeling the time pressure to just make enough enemies and art for the final release.  I want to have an intro cutscene too but it might a little simplistic depending on how much I can cram into this last full week of development.  Classes start again for me next week so I'll be running low on time towards the deadline.  No matter how the project turns out I'm really happy with my art progress and the knowledge I've gained working with Godot!

I'll leave you with a look at my T-Rex that I drew using a photo I took at the NC Museum of Natural Science's Dueling Dinos exhibit as reference.  Since I'm running low on time and pretty inexperienced with animation as a whole I just used 3 frames with a little bit of scale animation within Godot, hope it looks alright!!

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