itch.io

I started working on my engine ~29 days before the jam started, which was a definite crunch time. There are so many things I’m changing as a result of this jam for sure!

Here is my engine if you’re curious: https://github.com/bluesillybeard/ZEngine. I highly recomend NOT using it unless you’re OK with using extremely early software.

And, I made a post with more details of my experience: https://itch.io/jam/acerola-jam-0/topic/3579185/my-experience-using-a-custom-game-engine

This was just the right difficulty for me! Definitely deserves a good rating.

There are only really two issues I had with this game. Most importantly the window is too big for my 1080p screen, which makes playing very difficult. Secondly, there is not much to do, but at least the gameplay that does exist is fun.

I used Zig for my programming language, which has a convenient function called @embedFile that will put the file into the exe.

For python though, I have no idea how one could do that. There might be some way to create a virtual file system, but my knowledge ends there.

Next to your username, there is a button that links to the page.
Here's what the button links to: https://itch.io/jam/acerola-jam-0/rate/2581798

I would have used Raylib, but it's missing a lot of features that are somewhat fundamental to the big project I plan on using my engine for. Thanks for sharing your own project, I can't wait to give it a look!

Around February 1st, I started working on a custom game engine. I was originally intending to use it for a large project, but I did have plans to make some smaller games along the way. At some point I heard about the Acerola game jam, and I knew this would be the perfect opportunity to test my engine!

My engine is written in the Zig programming language, and makes use of a library called Kinc (Kore in C) for opening a window and drawing graphics. Using Kinc might have been a mistake, but we'll get to that. Since I only had 28 days to make a fully functional engine, it was a bit of a crunch to get it working in time. Add onto that the fact that I am taking 16 credit hours of college courses (so ~48 hours a week of schoolwork), not to mention other things that happen in life.

What was easier than expected
I actually had a pretty solid idea immediately: fruit ninja, but with a twist. I won't spoil the twist (play the game yourself bro). It was also surprisingly easy to do the art - I am extremely bad at art, but it actually only ended up taking a negligible amount of my time.

What was harder than expected
There were so many problems that I don't think I could explain all of them without writing a book. The most annoying problem was how I integrated my entity component system into the rendering system. Each entity could only represent a single draw call - so for example, text has to have an entire object for every letter that has to be drawn. Speaking of text, my engine has no text rendering. All the text in the game is drawn ahead of time, and rendered as individual entities. Implementing the main menu was also unreasonably difficult. My engine has no scene loading system, so I had to manually delete all of the entities and spawn them back with every scene change, which caused a number of bugs and a lot of wasted time. My game engine also does not have utilities for things like cameras or physics, so getting a "camera" working was difficult, and I'm pretty sure I did it incorrectly since the horizontal positions are all inverted and I still have no clue why.

Kore in C: the most badly made windowing and graphics library ever created
The most difficult thing, despite all of that, was dealing with Kinc. My first issues were before I was working on the engine, but when I was getting Kinc working with Zig. Their build system (a program that turns the code into an actual binary that computers can understand) is completely insane. It's a fork of Node JS, which means their build system is also a fully self contained javascript runtime. Not only that, but compiled versions of this build system are included as git submodules for every platform. So when you use it, you're downloading the same thing about 7 times, which ends up being >1 gb of useless junk. The build system also does not have cross compilation, so to export a Windows build from my Linux computer, I have to spend an hour running a virtual machine to get it exported. But that's not the worst of it. As I was working on the primary mechanic of my game, Kinc had one more painful trick up it's sleeve: event spamming. When someone develops a game, they expect mouse movement events to occur once per frame. Each frame, the mouse moves x amount in some direction. Instead, Kinc would send somewhere between 1 and 4 events each frame, which wreaked havoc on my game. In the end, I had to apply a seriously janky patch directly to Kinc's source code to get my game to work correctly, and that was that point when I realized I should probably just finish the game and submit it before I loose my mind.

If you're still here, congrats! I myself barely made it through this jam without having a mental breakdown. If you want to play the result of my suffering, you can click the link next to my username.

This game is ready to play, no need to read the game's page! Although I recommend reading it anyway.

Personally, College and Youtube are the biggest things slowing me down.

This is the point where my terrible code practices start to cause issues and things get complicated xD. I definitely won't be able to have the amount of polish I originally wanted, but I think I'll be able to submit something decent. All I have left to do is the main mechanic (which you'll have to play my game to find out), menus, scores, levels, and of course polish.

My reason for doing this jam was to help develop my custom game engine, and I've already learned so much of how it can improve. So in my book, I've already won!

I'm making my own game engine, using the Zig programming language. Unless it's not ready before the jam starts, in which case I'll either use Raylib or Godot.

It's so simple, and surprisingly fun for being essentially a clicking simulator!

Runs fine on Linux (using WINE)

Too bad for that finicky fire button! It was easy to compensate for it by playing more defensively though.

It's just about perfect, for a game jam at least. The story, the gameplay, the music, it all comes together into something that I can only describe as wonderful.

Bonus points for running the game in a window instead of fullscreen. (personal preference)

Runs fine on Linux (using WINE)

It's hard to understand what's going on while battling, zooming out a bit certainly would have helped.

It's otherwise a pretty neat game!

As with most games made with Unity, it runs fine on Linux (using WINE)

I love puzzle games, and this one in particular just hits the spot for me.

Runs fine in Linux using WINE

Neat game. It's missing a lot of polish, but it's still fun to play.

It runs fine on Linux using WINE.

I like the simple graphics, and it plays very well.
The difficulty curve is a bit harsh, but not too bad.

Runs perfectly on Linux using WINE, for any other Linux gamers out there

I used to think I'm good at Tetris. Now I wonder if my life has any meaning.

I all seriousness, this game is real fun to play.

It's a horrendously buggy mess, and it doesn't feel great to play, but the cool concept and sound effects more than make up for it.

 I might consider creating my own (better) version using Processing or Raylib, since those libraries are better suited to this genre compared to Unity, since Unity focuses on entities that behave separately, while Processing and Raylib (and SDL, and SFML, and Monogame, and so on) are designed with a central control paradigm.

I played this for about an hour.

This is definitely the most unique one. I really like the concept, the polish, the gameplay, all of it really.

5 stars in all categories for sure!

I like that you supported Linux (Even though it would probably run fine through WINE or Proton)

The game feels nice to control, I like the parkour aspect and the little bit of puzzle as well (I had to move some dominos to get to higher places)

The only negative thing I could think of is the small map size, but this is a game jam and not everyone has the time to play each game all the way through so it might actually be a good thing for some.

You wouldn't believe how long it took me to get the other sides to render properly

Just me and my computer

The game play is nice and feels good, but it would be nice to have more puzzles.

Nice math game

I don't know what to say. It's a brilliant game.

This is literally the game I made but it's a billion times better xD

Pretty nice game. I almost considered making a game like this, but random level creation sounded too hard for me.

It's a pretty frustrating game. It seems like one of those ideas that sound great in theory, but is actually pretty awful to play.

It's still better than the game I made, so I'll give it that.

This would be an absolutely perfect mobile game - not too hard to be annoying, but just enough to be a good distraction

It's so simple yet so fun