itch.io

Fun puzzler, took me a while to figure out the fish moving and you definitely need to think about what the outcome of your move. Maybe a tutorial that shows some common patterns that you can exploit would be useful (that's basically what I tried to figure out myself after a while).

I actually took direct inspiration from the Break The Targets minigames from the old smash games that you mentioned, so you're spot on there. Glad you enjoyed it!

Day ?

Not much has changed on the surface really (well, except for the tech behind the entire art style) as it's been a fairly empty few days. Still not 100% sold on this weird 3D effect, but I think the art assets need to improve to really sell it. No more gameplay I just wanna show off this thing lmao

https://gfycat.com/PoorHighArabianwildcat

Here's my somewhat late devlog that I will try and update throughout the jams. I am basically not using the theme because I had this idea about a day before seeing the jam page so ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Concept

You control a little sail boat through dangerous waters. You have to avoid crashing onto rocks, being sucked into whirlpools, and the shifting winds. The game is a mobile game, and you control the ship by pinching in and out, and rotating two points on the screen to change the direction and speed of your travel. Pinching out opens your sails to give you a boost of speed, while pinching in slows you down for more maneuverability. The final plan is to have a couple of fairly long levels finished by the end of the jam, with the future possibility of updating the game with a new level every day.

Day 1

Most of the day has been getting the input system working on mobile. The game basically gets the angle and distance between two touches on the screen and sends that to the player. Currently the player ship just moves based on those inputs and not much else, so the next step is making it feel a lot more smooth and fluid.

A gif of the game currently: http://imgur.com/RnA989I

Doing List.ToArray three times a frame should be alright, assuming they're not nested calls or something crazy. I like the implementation you've done with the slices, looking forward to seeing how it works out.

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

My name is Ben. I live in Australia so I'm probably in the future.

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 but I didn't finish. I think I just burned out last time and got distracted. Using this one as an excuse to work on a project and possibly help out other people using the same tools I am.

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

I'm a fan of most games. I got into gamedev mostly cause I like making silly little things.

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

Mostly have experience using the Godot engine, and a little bit of Unity.

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

I like swords. I do a lot of HEMA cause I'm a nerd about it.

6. Any advice to new jammers (if you're a veteran)?

Scope as small as you can while still having what makes the game tick.

Because the jam is a relatively long period of time, you have the opportunity to scrap things and start again. You will do something twice as fast the second time you do it so don't be scared about having to repeat stuff if you do end up starting over.

You will spend 90% of your time making the game and then another 90% polishing it, so don't expect immediate results.

Day 1 progress:

Spent most of the day/weekend building the movement and grapple mechanics for the player. I ended up rewriting the entire thing from scratch as the original Rigidbody based character controller I was using ended up with a lot of physics bugs that I didn't feel like spending hours ironing out, so the player now uses a Character Controller (I know, kill me). The basic mechanics for the grappling hook is that if it attaches to a surface, it will pull you in that direction until you hit a wall, or cancel it with a jump. Cancelling the grapple with your jump maintains the velocity you gain from the grapple, and gives you an extra hop in the air which lets you get some crazy distance if used right. The video below shows a pretty standard way of reaching a higher platform using a grapple jump. The little white circle thing is the current "art" for the grapple, it disappears from the platform it's lodged in when the grapple jump is triggered (which is admittedly hard to see).

https://gfycat.com/LiveYellowishBeardeddragon

The next step:

The current mechanics are basically most of what the gameplay will involve, the next step is figuring out what the use of the mechanics are, and building assets to suit the decision. I'm debating between strictly linear-ish puzzle platformer levels with well defined goals, or a couple of large open areas that the player can explore at their own pace, with little challenges placed around and possibly some larger overarching goal. Smaller levels would probably require the overall speed and craziness of the movement to be dialed down while a more open area would let me design around the currently huge amount of speed that is possible through multiple grapple jumps. I'm erring on the side of the latter.

Oh and now I have to learn how to use Blender from scratch.

Construct is a good starting point, good luck with the jam!

Hello fam.

My game for this jam is currently unnamed, so for now it will just be "Grapple". Grapple is a 3D platformer with a grappling hook where you explore levels and go really fast. There isn't much beyond that so far but I will probably put more effort into the premise later on.

The plan:

I am using Unity 3D for pretty much everything, Blender for pretty much everything else, and whatever I feel like at the time for audio when the time comes (most likely just SXFR and liberal use of the randomise button).

I'm gonna attempt to follow the 4:44 rule in this jam, which basically says that in a 48 hour jam you should spend 4 hours making the game, and 44 hours polishing it. Obviously there's more than 48 hours in this 2 week jam so that's 28 hours to make it, and a fabulous 308 hours to polish. #mirrorsheen

lowercase screams

Random Game Seed: TFW you leave your weetbix in the milk for too long and it turns into that gross sludgy stuff but you eat it anyway because weetbix is delicious

Random Game Idea: An action-adventure game where a snarling flutist explores a splintered cloud city leading the cutest geranium. The real inspiration for the game is coffee.

Title: MetalWind

Idea: An isometric fighter where you play as a disheveled punk rock angel forced to escort a talking flower through a dangerous and unkept outskirts of a cloud city. You defeat monsters by blasting them with music from your flute. Cups of coffee restore health (and also I will drink a lot of coffee in the process of making this).

I figured I would go with a custom seed and I guess it gave me a pretty interesting game idea.

Ho boy life in space, fun times. Have been spending the past few days just noting down anything I can think of in regards to the theme, as well as what fits within the limits of what I can do (having very little experience in libGDX).

I want to keep it simple, that much I know. I haven't done many long-term game jams and most of my bigger projects have had some sort of complexity that usually accounts for the longer development time, so having a month to work on something that to me is something of a 48 hour jam idea will hopefully give me enough of a buffer for MIRROR SHEEN POLISH as well as general inexperience.

Hopefully this blog fills up over the month with space and the act of living within it.

Hello everyone,

I'm Ben, student and... that's about it really. I've dabbled a bit in libGDX but not much. Most of my game dev experience is in Unity and Haxeflixel but I've always worked well under a deadline, so why not learn libGDX in a month and make a game?

In terms of the more artistic stuff, I use Aseprite for most art, though sometimes I pull out Photoshop if I want to composite a big scene of some sort. I use Bosca Ceoil for music and spam the randomize button on Sxfr for sound effects. I may end up adding more tools as I learn more about my workflow with the framework.

Good luck everyone!