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Sooooo. This year I decided to ask my friend, Ant, to join me in this game jam! I've been super busy and haven't had time to write up our devblog, and Ant is too shy to start the first post. Which is why we're only writing this now 😅 

We started off reading all the verses and their chapters to get some context, and ended up choosing Ephesians 4:32

 Be kind and compassionate to one another, forgiving each other, just as in Christ God forgave you.

I wanted to do something more meta and not overtly Christian this year, after last year's entry. Ant wanted to do a multiplayer game. Ephesians 4:32 was particularly nice as it fit both our needs -- a local multiplayer game with manufactured conflicts between the players, where communication and patience with one another is key. Your teammates will make mistakes, but how you react determines how the game goes.

It was really fun brainstorming this game with Ant, and we even have a design doc (albeit a really messy one) to show for it. Maybe we'll clean it up and show some snippets of it in a later post! That's it for now, it's late and I've spent way too much time coding today 😴

P.S. Ant isn't a Christian, so be nice to him!

She* (:

Day 3: Wednesday, 6/13

Design

I'm not a designer, so no design docs for me. Instead, my design is going to be more on the technical side, mapping directly to features to be implemented. Each feature is then broken down into smaller parts, because I'm a programmer and this is how we think (:

Translating the initial design into core mechanics:

• Main character follows behind mouse movement with a varying speed, up to a max value, depending on how far away the mouse is
• Multiple other NPCs on screen which enter the screen at regular intervals
• NPCs move randomly at a fixed speed
• NPCs have 5 states: Stranger, Acquaintance, Friend, RecevingEncouragement,  CloseFriend
• NPCs start off as Stranger. Colliding with it triggers a state change to Acquaintance
• After a random amount of time, Acquaintance transitions to Friend, with a random type and key associated with it
• Colliding with Friend while pressing the its associated key triggers a state change to RecevingEncouragement
• After a fixed amount of time, RecevingEncouragement transitions to CloseFriend
• CloseFriend states cause the NPC to move out of the screen to be recycled

Additional features, in order of importance:

• Point system
  • NPCs in CloseFriend state give a fixed amount of points
  • Game ends when points reach a certain number
• Chain reaction
  • NPCs in RecevingEncouragement state have an AOE which auto increments nearby NPCs state by 1
  • Need to playtest if Friend can auto transition to RecevingEncouragement if it has a different type from the originally collided NPC
  • Multiple NPCs entering CloseFriend state in the same collision give increasingly more points
• Energy mechanic
  • Points are energy, and they constantly decreases at a fixed rate
  • When energy hits 0, game over
  • Recharging area which increases energy to 50%
• Wrong action mechanic
• Colliding with Friend while pressing the wrong key causes a state transition to Acquaintance
• Decreases your energy by a fixed amount
• Should this have an AOE?
• Powerup system
  • Powerups have a random chance of spawning:
    • When a chain reaction above a fixed number occurs. The larger the chain reaction, the higher the chance.
    • After a fixed amount of time during which no CloseFriends have been made. The longer the duration, the higher the chance.
  • Powerups include:
  • Slow: All NPC movement speed decreases
  • Fast: Main character moves faster
  • Energy: Gain a fixed amount of energy
  • Influential: NPCs in the RecevingEncouragement state have a larger AOE
  • TODO: Think of better names and what icons represent them

Good to have:

• Other screens
  • Start game
  • Settings which automatically pause the game, resume, exit, back to main menu, restart
  • Story / explicit explanation on how it links to the verse
  • Tutorial
• End game stats
  • Total time taken
  • Largest chain reaction
  • Time spent recharging
  • Number of each type of close friends made

I may or may not do the good to haves, based on playtester feedback and how much polish I want on the actual gameplay. As for the artstyle, I'm thinking a combination of flat and material design., with low detail, humanoid characters. Audio should be fast paced, bright and cheery.

GitHub Repository

Right now, it has nothing of interest. Just the basic git files and an empty Unity project. I'll be adding more to it as and when.

https://github.com/SarahTan/CDNSpeedgame2018

Day 2: Tuesday, 6/12

Planning

Two days into the game jam, and it's already turning out to tougher than I thought to make time for it. Yesterday was completely packed, and I have less than two hours today.

If there's one thing I've learned since starting at my current company, it's to start planning by defining your goals. This sets the foundation for the rest of the development process, and gives you something to refer back to when you're making a decision. Here are mine:

1. Don't overstretch myself. I'm still recovering from crunching, and the last thing I want to do is burn out.
2. The game should not turn non Christians away. I have a lot of friends who are turned off by anything that's too overtly Christian. While this game is based on a verse, I think some subtlety can be afforded here.
3. Become more familiar with the art pipeline. This is the first time I'm soloing a game jam, which means I won't have anybody to beautify my programmer art. It'll be interesting to learn about the process involved in getting something presentable out.

Already, Goal #3 has informed my decision of creating a 2D game, and Goal #1, to use Unity and GitHub, tools I'm familiar with.

Next comes the timeline. It's crucial to know how much time you have before you start scoping out your project. I estimate I'll be able to carve out at least 10 days worth of time.

• Day 1: Brainstorming
• Day 2: Planning and initial design (today)
• Day 3: Finish design and set up GitHub repo.
• Day 4: Implement core mechanic. Create a test build and get some eyes on it.
• Day 5: Add additional features. Iterate on feedback. Create another build to playtest.
• Day 6: Finish additional features. Iterate on feedback. Last day of feature work. Create another build to playtest. 
• Day 7: Polish mechanics and bug fixes. Start figuring out art. Create another build to playtest. 
• Day 8: Create sprites. Create another build to playtest. 
• Day 9: Finish sprites and start animating them. Create another build to playtest. 
• Day 10: Finish art. Search for audio and hook them up in the game. 
• Additional days: Polish and make the game feel juicier

As you can probably tell, playtesting is incredibly important to me. I'm a strong believer that if you don't feel at all embarrassed at the state of your game when you start playtesting it, you've started playtesting too late. The earlier you get feedback, the better the product.

Initial Design

Chosen verse:

1 Thessalonians 5:11 
Therefore encourage one another and build each other up, just as in fact you are doing.

Breaking that down into points:

• You are the main character in your life
• You are surrounded by people all the time
• When you interact with strangers enough, they become acquaintances
• After awhile, acquaintances become friends
• We are to encourage and build up the people around us, but can generally only do so effectively if we're friends with them
• Sometimes, we try to help a person but fail, possibly because we misunderstood / did not listen to what they really needed
• This can negatively affect a relationship, and can be draining for both parties
• Successfully edifying a person is a rewarding experience
• A person who has been edified is more likely to pass it on and do the same for the people around them
• While loving and edify others, we must not neglect ourselves, and remember to rest in God lest we burn out

I've an idea for how to turn each of the above points into mechanics, but I shall sleep on it and leave it for tomorrow (:

Day 1: Sunday, 6/10

BRAINSTORMING

When I first saw the three chosen verses, I had zero ideas on what to make. No surprise, given how I had been crunching at work and had exhausted my creative juices. (Side note: we just shipped so crunch is over, which is why I can join this (: ) In times like this, my go to solution is... Google. A programmer's best friend :P

The first thing I did was to Google "simple game ideas". In game jams, I always find it easier to come up with a core mechanic first, then figuring out how to link it to the theme. One of the top results mentioned Orisinal, a website with a ton of super simple Flash games which I fondly remember playing in high school. After spending an hour or so playing all of them, I decided I really loved the mechanic in The Hatchings. This felt like I could potentially link it to 1 Thessalonians 5:11. Another game which stuck out to me was Cats, because of its premise of following the leader, which lent itself nicely to 1 Peter 2:21.

The next step was breaking down their game play and identifying what exactly I liked about those 2 games. It came down to this: in both games, your only action is to move the mouse, but you could accidentally trigger an action which you didn't want to. In The Hatchings, the eggs all tend towards you, and the more eggs there were on screen, the higher your chance of accidentally bumping into one before you were ready. In Cats, the quick movement of your mouse made it easy to accidentally touch a cat and change its action, especially in higher levels when there were a lot more cats. I decided this would be my core mechanic. A game controlled by moving the mouse (no clicks!), in which you need to come into contact with certain moving objects given certain conditions.

At that point, I switched gears and started looking at the verses instead. I wanted to dig deeper into the meaning behind them. Here are the articles which I found the most helpful:

• https://enduringword.com/bible-commentary/1-thessalonians-5/
• https://bible.org/seriespage/9-comfort-and-challenge-concerning-day-lord-1-thess...
• https://bible.org/seriespage/conduct-assembly-1-thes-512-22
• https://enduringword.com/bible-commentary/1-peter-2/

At the end of all that reading, I was leaning more towards the verse about building others up. I didn't really have much time after that, so I decided to leave planning to Day 2.