itch.io

Hi, im a long time music composer with no game dev experience. Id love to join a team. Thanks to my music experience i'd also be keen to give some sound design ago. 

I will say this disclaimer, this is my first Jam and I'm pretty concerned. haha!

Hello, CaptainKitten

I am a computer science student who just finished my sophomore year of college. I have a limited degree of experience with a large range of languages and tools. I am primarily looking for projects which need composing and sound design work. Although, If the project needs another programmer, I can do that fairly well depending on the language and engine. I have been making really small video games and modding games I like since I was twelve. But most of them have been made over month or longer periods or were extremely simple. Most of my programming experience is with making UI and menus or my attempts to make my own game engine in various languages. I have participated in the IEEE extreme 24 hour programming competition with my universities competitive programming team, and I am a teammember. 

Technical Skills:

Languages: Java, Python, javascript(learning), C++ 

Game Engines: RPG Maker,  Unity(learning), Pygame

Other: Audio Engineering, Mixing, Sound design

Other Skills: 

I am a musician who has been playing for over 7 Years. I have had formal training in voice and piano. But I also know how to play the Ukulele to a lesser level. I am also a novice organist. But that likely won't help with any games I work with because getting permission to use and record an organ would take at least 3 weeks because I am not currently in the town with the organ I usually have access to. Although, if you really want me to, I can try to get access to one. Most of my compositions are chiptune, EDM, or digital brass songs. Although, I also have a few Ukulele songs. I can create new digital compositions in about 3-8 hours. If I need to record instruments it will likely add an extra day to the time it takes me to compose and produce a new song. I have been doing live audio work for 6 years and the job I work during the school semester is in that field. I also have very limited portrait art skills. I can also make okay looking non-organic digital art composed of simple shapes.  But I don't know how likely I would be to use either of those and would prefer to be on a team with an actually good artist. I would rather spend jam time on audio, music, or programming work. I have several ideas for projects, but I am not particularly attached to any of them. I also have a bit of experience in doing non-professional editing for hobbiest novels. I have 6 separate friends who wanted to get started writing novels who I helped write one. Although, I am by no means an expert in the field of writing, but I can write a simple story if it would complement our game project.

Project Ideas/pitches:

1. A Tetris variant based on Alchemy. The core game play loop has three elements. Choosing ingredients, Tetris based crafting, and selling your potions. There would be a decent selection of items which have a set of Tetris block shapes and colors predetermined. They would also have different costs. Then you have to try to maximize the potion properties you like and minimize the bad ones. So managing how much of a particular color you have at once is important. You can do this by having as much of the same color as possible when clearing a row if you want to make an aspect stronger. While if you want to diminish, one try to set up your rows in a way where the proportions of the colors are more mixed when clearing that color. Some ingredients or potions might let you do things like clear out a portion of the pieces in a certain area without letting them affect the potion properties. So you can get rid of blocks of bad colors. Then the quality of the properties affects the sell price. And if you hit a certain threshold the item can gain abilities that will apply if you try to use it when crafting another potion. The ideal engine I see for this game is unity as a 2d game. But I could also see it being able to be made in pygame. Or, I guess we could make it in JavaScript and make an engine based on the PIXI libraries. This game likely won't need a particularly complicated engine. For this project, I would definitely be able to tackle sound, music, and programming aspects. The art demands would be within my skill level, but I am not sure if I would have the time to do art and implement any code.

2. An eastern fantasy turn-based time management simulator with a high dificulty level about dreams and whether we allow ourself to give up on them. The game would have a rather short play through time and would be intended to take multiple attempts to get a winning ending. Potentially, it could also have a turn based combat system that could be used to get more resources from a dungeon if time allowed. Muic would play an important role in communicating the protagonists' mood at a particular moment. The main character is an orphan who is stuck in a hierarchical cult dedicated to magic. However, it is also highly competitive. So the main character has to find things to do to make the money they need to pay for lessons to become the kind of person they want to be. When the character fails at something, they get discouraged, so you have to find ways to get their morale/dream up. Morale is very easy to lose and will likely result in many game overs for the player. When your morale hits 0 then the game ends and you get a unique ending message based on what activities you did the most. If you do an activity enough times, the game also ends, but you get a more positive ending about finding your passion in that field and being fairly successful depending on the dream level you were at if you hit it. Most game actions would take a week and there would be random events that influence how well you do. The narrative would overall be about a person with big hopes and dreams who struggle to hold onto them. But when you get good enough at the game they actually get to fulfill their dreams. I think the easiest engine to make this in would be one of the RPG makers. But it could probably also be made in unity or pygame. 

I already sent you a friend request on discord. I am HighTyrol3#0708 I am in the CST time zone and available from 9 am to 9 pm my time. Which  would be 7 am to 7 pm in your time zone. But if necessary to make the project work, I can shift my time of availability by changing when I wake up and go to bed. I should be able to work on the project for a maximum of 10 hours in a day unless we end up really close to finishing and the jam is almost over then I can work 16 hours straight if needed. But I would prefer to not end up in that situation in the first place. I expect to spend an average of 5 hours a day on the project including weekends into my calculations, although It might end up more if I think the project really needs it.