... final post continued
Post-Jam Thoughts:
The dialogue/tutorial system was a big point to learn from. Too much complexity and bad code written by me at 3-4am while half asleep... The dialogue system (which I thought on day 6 was pretty solid) actually ended up being very bad because of this. There were some major bugs with that system, one bug in particualr I didnt fix until after the jam had finished, at a time when I was really done with bug fixing and bashing my head against a wall, and should have been sleeping (you can still break it in the current build quite easily). A lesson to learn from though, I now know I need to put in the time to get a bit better at coding these kinds of systems for future gamejams.
The scope of this game was far too much. A problem I had often with gamejams. I always seem to want to build complicated systems that work together, which is something Ive accepted is what I enjoy in making games. But I really need to reign that in and focus on some smaller and more achievable goals. Its easy to think to yourself "I have 7 days to make this game, lets aim super high!" and then bite off way more than you can chew, which is exactly what I did.
Things I really wanted to add but didnt have time for:
- More characters and creatures! I originally wanted a lot of things to talk to in the game, from enemies, to grass (you can find 1 demo bit of grass to talk to), trees rocks, houses and so on, I basically wanted everything to be something you could talk to. It would have been super silly but pretty fun at the same time. Plus theres a lot of potential for world building, if youve got multiple characters all talking about various things
- Enemy bear - that initial scene was meant to setup the bear as the main enemy in the game. If there was more levels or even an end section, he would have harassed you at various times and likely would be the end boss for the demo.
- Beeeees - bees were meant to be the first general enemy, sent in by the bear to disrupt and control the land. I even had a neat bee model I threw together!
- Health - Yep no health or damage, since there was no enemies I didnt bother to add this
- Final level - I had a great idea for a final end-game area, consisting of multiple smaller areas. But ofc was far too low on time in the end to make it happen
- Music - I made the start of an attempt, but didnt get very far, you can find a banjo playing doge in the game whos play a very bad section of music on repeat, becasue why not! I initially wanted him to be the main one playing music in the game, and the music would likely be bad, so youd be able to pay him to stop XD
- More abilities - You can see in the screenshot above, there were a couple of abilitys I didnt get around to.
Things Im really happy with:
- The overall N64/PSX theme - this was what I was most excited to make and it shows, I put a lot of time into the visuals. But both the shiba and the coins and various parts of the levels turned out really well, very happy to push myself in terms of that stuff
- The controls and camera - again something very N64 inspired, I spent a lot of time playing Banjo Kazooie, trying to pull apart how the controls and camera worked, so I could make my own version. Its a much simpler version, but I feel like Ive got it pretty close & the feedback so far as been very positive in this area
- Animations - an area that use to be super intimidating, I think for gamejams I at least pull off some ok animating, the key is to keep the model and rig as simple as possible and just smash out the animations ASAP
- Tutorial system - this turned out very straight forward and I think is a strong point in the game, it took a bit to setup and was pretty closely linked with major bugs with the dialogue system, but overall was a strong point
- Just getting a game completed! This is always the main thing, nothing worse than coming to the end of a jam feeling defeated and with nothing decent to show
Some final stats for the gamejam overall:
Scripts written: 32
Lines of code: Over 3800 (540 lines of code per day average!)
3D Models: 20+
Textures: 54 (+64 for each frame of the coin spin sprite)
Unity Materials: 80+
Animations: ~48
Prefabs: 48
Also surpised to see no one has found any secrets yet. Theres a couple! (one of the shiba gives some clues)
At this point Ive played everyones entries in this gamejam now as well, some quality games created in the past week, its been a blast interacting with everyone and getting into the gamedev. Thanks to Billy for organizing, and I hope we see everyone again for another future #dogecoingamejam .. soon!
If youre wanting to play/rate/give feedback for StoryOfShiba, you can find it here: https://itch.io/jam/dogecoin-game-jam/rate/943391
How many dogecoin can you collect?