Three hours until the jam, and I'm currently a blank slate. It's usually a good thing, but now... Not so much.

Hello, you can call me Meeshster or some version of it. I'll try my best to participate in the jam as much as I can and start on something I can be proud and sink my time and dedication into. Right now, my only plan is to think of a game concept, setting, start of the 'story' if any, then design and develop characters, creatures, and maybe landscape for it. Overall, my goal is to lock into and develop designing characters for a particular setting and have everything look like its all from the same world. 

But, I think I might need to have a game for actual turn-in on the 5th. Unfortunately, I don't know what I want to do to remedy that, but I figure I will be creating an 'intro' of some kind for whatever world I think of either in a Visual Novel or RPG form. Maybe a mix of the two, but I'd rather not get too risky given my lack of coding skills. 

So to condense all of that, please look forward to hopefully seeing a devlog heavy in character, environment, and creature concept and development, and ultimately creating an introduction 'cutscene' or something interactive to the player for the world I end up whipping up. Once I figure things out, I'll edit this OP for it to actually look like a devlog for the project. Until then, if you read this, thanks for reading.

Thank you! Eeeeh, kind of? My only hopes is to get the main idea down!

Awesome to see another FFXI player! Good luck in the jam~

1. Hi there! What's your name? Want to introduce yourself?

Hello~ I'm Meeshster. I'm a black... recent?(if you call two years ago recent) computer game design college grad. My ultimate goal is getting into the game design business, whether that's in indie development doing my own thing or at a company. My ideal plan is... Well, I haven't figure that out, yet. To cut to the chase, I'm generally an unsure lady with terrible confidence in my skills trying my best to find and keep motivation.

2. Did you participate in the last jam we held? If so, what do you plan on doing better this time? If not, what's your reason for joining?

I did participate in MFGJ last winter! My only goal was to find some kind of drive and at least begin the creation of something, with hopes to continue it after the end of the jam. While the first part kind of worked... The second did not. I'm actually very unsure what I should do better during this jam or even how. In essence, everything. But being that general usually doesn't get my anywhere. I'm hoping to figure it out while I go!

My reason for joining again, and continuing to join, is that, personally, it kind of 'forces' me so to speak to be creative and just do something. I'm terrible about doing so by myself, always putting excuses in front of me (mental/physical tire from work, distractions at home, current and past frustrations of my work, etc.), and since my main force of school work with a due date is gone, the next best thing is a game jam. Ideally, continuing this trend will eventually slap me into a habit of creating and building my portfolio on my own time for no reason and without feeling like it's an obligation. I /know/ I enjoy drawing and animating, I just got to get to a point where it's a habit again, like it was in school!

And while building good habits is my main goal, I also want to learn to network a bit more; meet my fellow jammers and communicate a little. I went to peoples' devlogs and commented from time to time in the last game jam, but I feel like I can be more social than that. Maybe make a colleague or a friend or two, maybe even find a potential teammate! I feel it's a good quality to have in the line of work I would like to do, and jams can be a great way to work on that.

3. What games are your favorites? Did any of them inspire you, or made you want to make your own?

My interests flip-flop often, and big changes of opinion has hit me lately. A few years ago, for example, Kingdom Hearts and Fire Emblem would be two major favorite series. Still good, just not on my list anymore! All-time favorites are mostly RPGs and otherwise that had plots I love, whether they're silly, ridiculous or a mass favorite. They also tend to have some neat gameplay mechanics to boot. I really enjoy Lost Odyssey (am enjoying-- working on beating it~), the Golden Sun series, Glory of Heracles, and Asura's Wrath.

I'm terrible with inspiration, but I would want to say that these four game series do inspire me somewhat! They give me a 'huh' faction and allow me to think of what I would do differently, whether I liked a direction they took with something, and get me raving and talking about how they make you play their game. They really do make me want to make my own games, or at least go "I'd love to do some fun stuff like that".

4. Do you have experience with game development? What did you do/with what engine?

I have dev experience mostly through school and last winter's jam. I've messed with Unity and Unreal for my classes as well as Construct, and Stencyl in the last jam. I wouldn't say I'm decent with either of them though, since I don't use them frequently enough to actually remember how to do certain things.

I also 3D model and animate with 3D Studio Max and Maya, and teaching myself a little with Blender! I find those super fun to do when I force myself to make time for it! As of last jam, I've taught myself (pseudo?) 2D pixels and animation as well. Also fun~

5. Tell us about something you're passionate about!

I really like character and world-building, and animation. Those are the 2 things that I find most fascinating in any show, movie or game. Eventually, I would like to make a living doing either of those things (animation being the go-to for a few years. But now, I'm unsure...)!

Dessert Quest!: My First Game Jam edition, is finished!

I tried doing the 'click image' to go to page thing. Oh well!

While I would have really wanted some more detailed Win/Lose/Title/Instruction screens, they get to the point enough for jam submission! I can always go back and work on it some more, right?

I'm definitely going to attempt to continue this concept post-jam, and will post progress via my creative Tumblr when I can get to it. I hope everyone enjoys the level, and please throw in any comments if you'd like!

I used to be able to pull all-nighters. Like, with no problem.

And... And then college ended. And I think my body just said "Yeah I don't need to do this anymore".

So, instead of falling asleep at 2:30AM in front of my desk, I fall asleep at 9:45PM in front of it. And then wake up at 8AM with a dog staring at me like why am I not in bed... I don't think I could do an actual all-nighter even if I tried anymore haha. Luckily, I was able to nix a few potential plans and think of something that will probably be decent enough for jam turn-in at least. While I feel like other people could have done as much as I have done in a regular, 48-hour jam, and in an even better quality probably (ESPECIALLY my menu screens, ha).... I'm proud of myself to be able to finish something.

Despite that, I'll be yelling at myself that I couldn't done better when I turn this in. I'm just gonna tell myself that all I can do is just do better in the next jam I participate in. Also that the end of this jam doesn't mean I can work on this game more!

The layout and enemy placement for the MFGJ level (aka LV 1) is finished! I was going to post it, but I figure it'd be a good idea to keep that under wraps for when people are able to play it. I had to do some resizing for Mac's sprite down to half (128x128 to 64x64 px) to make everything look a bit more uniform. She's a bit blurry now, but Stencyl seems to do a nice job hiding that. I'll probably redo the sprite over to give it clearer lines.

AFTER THAT, next will be sprites for ingredients. Mac will have to survive these platforms and obtain the item before moving on. Only one will make it to jam turn-in, but I'd like to give the forum a sneak peak of them all.

The next step after that will be simple win/game-over/title/credit screens with a main menu. Then I'll be done! Some will be simple, one-color background screens, but I'll do my best to at least have the title screen illustrated in some way!

Stay tuned~

Thank you so much! <3 Haha, I have a live reference always following me around, so I definitely knew the pug sprite would do some justice. :3

Thanks a lot! I figure this jam has a huge melting pot of game characters. We got bird people, mer-people, plant people, etc. I had to chime in some PoC into this~

Thanks so much! I've definitely found the inner pixel artist in me during this jam. :D

Whew boy;;;;

So, work and other errands have completely drained me this week. So it's definitely SUPER CRUNCH TIME for Dessert Quest!

Like, I already knew it wasn't going to be a finished project, but I now know for sure that DQ! will only have a one-level demo finished by the end of MFGJ! It'll be loads of fun, and I hope those of you who will give it a try will enjoy it one way or another~

Now, it's time for me to find some motivation between now and 11:59PM Saturday to go ham and finish up!

I am finally in the part of development that gives me so much joy: numbers.

How fast should my enemy NPCs patrol? Eh, let's try 10. Ten is a small number.

No.

No it is not.

I laughed for at least five minutes.

Thanks! I'm really glad I decided to go with animating her hair as well. Without it it's pretty stiff!

Hungry Pug and Hungry Rabbit are now sprited! Time to animate~

I WAS supposed to be working in Stencyl but... Then I got... enemy ideas. Hungry animals in Mac's way! There appearances will vary on what kind of environment Mac is in while searching. The pug will probably be in town levels while the bunny will be in the forest!

I got way too detailed on the pug I feel bad for bunny.

Style consistency is a myth.

I'll probably have one more mob for a third setting type. I'll have them into sprites tomorrow~

Is... Is the plant friend saying "Work hard for the money"? I hope it is. This is fantastic.

I took a bit of a break to collect myself after some program frustration, and it was exactly what I needed! I'm unsure how far I'll get by the deadline, but I can at least say I have something on a playing field (bare with the framerate and visible clicker please it's my first recording :<):

List of things to do:

• Mess around more with collision and jump/gravity.
• Map out some level designs
• Create Mac's enemies!
• Create Mac's goal ingredients!

It was the silliest thing. I had events, but I didn't have one to follow the character. So I guess Stencyl has a 'preset' view and if nothing is there it just kind of bonks around. I searched the Stencylforge until I found something I could work with. :3

Well, I'm at a complete standstill. Been trying to test animations on Stencyl for hours, and when I go to test the game, I just get background. None of the tiles or no Mac. :/ Can't seem to find the issue.

Thanks so much! Believe me, I yelled the entire time trying to get the legs right for animation. She looked like she had two left feet for the longest...

Since I had the weirdest work schedule today, I had a few hours to mess around before going in. Here's a new version of Mac's walk cycle:

I'm really satisfied with this, like beyond my expectations. I /might/ have the apron move a bit, but either way she's ready to finally be put into Stencyl~

On another note, I did have intentions to have pixel character portraits for the dialogue bits of my game (if I still finally decide on doing that). Due to time, I believe I'm going to nix that. So sketches of Dessert Quest!'s NPCs will more than likely just be for logging purposes now! Going to just focus on sprite making for Mac and the obstacles that creatures that'll be in her way!

This is very neat so far. Can't wait to see what's next!

We're not in Kansas anymore! I hope the little guy is alright

My hands have been numb for the past hour.

Also I'm surprised it's only been 2 hours since my last post? So I've been working on that since then... I feel like I've been at it for ages!

But I'm proud of it so far, My first 2D animation. Adding more realistic features when I wake up in the morning. :3

Finally! After Photoshop deciding to not run ever again on my laptop and finding an alternative (yay FireAlpaca!), here are Mac sprites for gameplay:

Now I'm gonna animate these babies. Hopefully I'll get done tonight. That's the goal~ Tomorrow: backgrounds.

It's... Almost smashing. (I'm so sorry. Also, I've been digging your game in secret sense day one! I hope you get some sleep~)

Hello everyone~

So, my plan today was to have some frames done for sprite Mac's animation, but work and a few other things has me too tired to do that today. Instead, I started tomorrow's objective: designing NPC characters. I only got to finishing one today, but progress is progress:

Auntie Bonnie

• The owner of 'Bonnie Bakery'.
• Considers Mac her best employee
• Gets lost easily, so she sticks to business inside the shop.
• Takes any difficult recipe as an honorable challenge (she's the reason why Dessertquest! is a thing)

Once I've one Mac's sprite sheet tomorrow, I can start on Bonnie's! She won't be playable, so it'll be some basic ones for screentime purposes.

Oh man, thanks a lot! At first I was overthinking the style for character art then I sat down and told myself to just go with it and the concept would find a style itself. It's really worked so far, and it's really killed some of the free time I've been wasting thinking too hard on things haha.

And I did try to tamper with contour line colors a bit. Thanks for throwing the term at me! I've always seen it and even done it myself messing around from time to time but... Never knew a word for it lol.

I also wanted to note that I've stumbled on your devlog. Your idea looks fantastic! Very interesting~

here is my art/gamdev blog! im really glad about this jam since ill be finally putting it into use!

and this is my main blog. i will occasionally reblog my dev progress there, but im sure once i get deep into development, it'll only be key highlights. other than that, it's random fandom things and stuff i find neat and/or funny

Hello, I am Meeshster and this is Dessert Quest! A 2D Platformer of tasty proportions!

Also logging here, so follow where you'd like!

1.6.2016 ; Changed the title name a little. It's funny, but the small 'q' was bothering me!

1.10.2016; Slight overhaul done on development direction as well as my devlog!

1.11.2016; Enemy sprites created!

1.15.2016; Overdue posting and updates: resizing Mac sprite, LVL 1 readjustments, enemy A.I., bonus enemy!?

THE GAME

Story/Objective

A very rare pastry sampler has been ordered by the town mayor! Can Mac collect all of the ingredients before the party??

Gameplay

At first, I was torn between Visual Novel, Puzzler, and Platform genres. THEN, I had decided on doing a VN/Platformer hybrid. Now... Let's just do a Platformer!

I told myself that if I feel like pushing this idea further past MFGJ, then I can always add something like dialogue scenes later! For now, let's try to get the meat and potatoes done and let Mac collect the sweets and flour!

3) 2D Platformer

• Avoid pits and enemies to reach the end and collect ingredient in time
• Think Mario Bros.
• If there is time, we'll have a time score!

The Player Character: Macalana

The player character of Dessertquest!. Macalana, Mac for short, works summers at her Auntie Bonnie's local bakery. Occasionally helping in the kitchen, she is usually the first to go to for running errands as well as deliveries. As a result, there was no doubt Mac would be asked to be the sole ingredient collector for this rare recipe!

BONUS: Auntie Bonnie

• The owner of 'Bonnie Bakery'.
• Considers Mac her best employee
• Gets lost easily, so she sticks to business inside the shop.
• Takes any difficult recipe as an honorable challenge (she's the reason why Dessertquest! is a thing)

Enemies

Hungry animals after Mac's ingredients! They're... way smaller than I thought. I figured half the size of Mac's sprite would be good, but maybe not. We'll see soon.

THE DEV

About Me

Hello, you can call me Meeshster, or Meesh! I am a recent graduate of Computer Game Design and I am trying my best to build up enough motivation and inspiration to build my two-year old portfolio. I stumbled upon myfirstgamejam and decided to finally give this thing ago; with the much longer schedule, I really had no reason to refuse this jam like I have others!

Experience

Through college, I have had some experience with Unity, UDK and Gamesalad engines, as well as Autodesk Maya and 3D Studio Max. Even though I've done a few small projects in Gamesalad and worked with Adobe Suite, my major focused mostly on working in 3D workspaces. Since then, I have tried out Construct2, which I enjoy the most out the other engines I've used!

Personal Goals

My biggest goal is to get out of this 1.5/2 year creative slump that I've been in since the end of my college career. Although I still really want to work in the game industry, I have not been willing enough to prove my worth through portfolio building and just learning and re-learning programs and tools as I should. With this game jam, my number one priority is to kick that in the bud and get started with my career, no matter how small the step is.

Other than that, I'd like to learn a few new things. Build up my pretty low experience in coding, as well as strengthening my drawing and writing skills. I would definitely be happy to meet a few friends along the way, too.

Programs I'll Be Using

Initially, my plan was to use RPGMaker since I haven't been able to mess with my copy just yet. But unfortunately, my Windows desktop is in the shop for a malfunction and won't be shipped back until 4 days before the jam ends. So, a lot of my programs of choice have changed up.

So now, I'll be using Stencyl for my engine. As for my digital and pixel drawing, I'm using FireAlpaca and Clip Paint Studio. A handful of assets, including scene business, sounds and music will be coming from free sources and will be credited accordingly!