Post by voveostudios in How do you map out your project schedule for a game jam? (Some thoughts from the jam)

Viewing post in How do you map out your project schedule for a game jam? (Some thoughts from the jam)

Hi GoldShots,
I got to play your game and the graphics is completely out of the world! The voxels, the particle effects, the lighting... SERIOUSLY GOOD JOB! 3d's always been really intimidating to me so it's super cool to see someone do it so well in a game jam context.

I got to spend ~10 minutes making the jump onto the ramp, but unfortunately couldn't make it to the jump after that :( . It's very hard. Another dimension might be not just difficulty, but the punishment element. The jump itself being hard is one thing, it's also the fact that we had to restart from the beginning. I can see having save points on solid ground help the game flow overall!

Good job! Crazy that you were able to get this quality within the time constraint, congrats!!

GoldShots106 days ago

Thank you! You're completely right. Not everyone got to have hundreds of test runs, and it can be very frustrating for somebody not adept to the level. I'll definitely be adding some sort of system to help with the difficulty. You had an amazing game, and thanks for trying mine out. :)

voveostudios105 days ago

Of course! Are there any tutorials you might suggest to get into 3D? Feel like I'm at the point where I should brave it and get over my fears ahaha.

Looking at this game first, I found the need to balance the boxes for my jump very interesting! It could be helpful to have a "sandbox" tutorial where you can learn and understand the mechanic first without dying in the goo. The question of the day is "How do we communicate crucial information to the player?" Also encountered that issue in my game 😅

GoldShots105 days ago

You're right, having some sort of "tutorial" or way to teach the player is crucial, and for a game jam, it's just hard to do that without dedicating a day's worth of work to it.

It's hard to recommend specific tutorials as there are so many disciplines, especially in 3D that take extensive knowledge on to be really good at (and that you likely are above my level of competency anyway), but I find that getting a proper workflow is one of the most important as opposed to 2D. Because you're working in 3 dimensions rather than 2, a change in the pipeline can cause massive issues (like having to retarget skeletons for animation, or dealing with normals and tangents for shading, etc). So figure out or do some small projects to get down what you want your workflow to look like, and don't change it up if it's not necessary. For example, I would make a model in MagicaVoxel, export it to Blender, do what I need to in Blender and export that to Unreal. For animations, I was very careful with using the same skeletons if it were on the same model, etc.

itch.io

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