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This sort of thing can happen with a Gamepad controller plugged in. Sometimes the 'Dead-zone' isn't configured correctly.  I am sure the Character controller code I used had joystick features that I just completely ignored because I didn't have any plugged in myself.  If instead you had no controller plugged in, potentially some other device is sending that signal. I'm really not sure what else that could be. Sorry about that experience... it would be nice to just build a game and have it work everywhere!!!

PostMortem devlog....   https://itch.io/jam/cgdc-speedgame-hardmode-2024/topic/3788720/for-to-embrace-de...

In a jam that is primarily about the video games I always find your entries really intriguing!!  Your entry to this jam in particular seems to really hit a few key things and does a great job incorporating the weakness as a strength mechanic to it.  Certainly one of my favorites for its unique take, the graphic design well thought out and for the theme and execution. The typos and a certain overall polish and editing all forgivable after seeing the results.  The real challenge for this type of entry is whether people find it hard to really experience.... I didn't end up 'playing' it per-se.... but the instructions seemed pretty clear, enough to have the idea of what that might be like.

This has been a rather barren devlog, Let me expand on the project development here a bit.

Friday.....
I completely forgot about the jam. Nothing was done.

Saturday....
I met up with my friend Carl for dinner, who asked if I was participating... Ohhhh yeah - I was planning to!
We talked about a few ideas. There was a clever idea about 'QWOP' style page turning to find verses.... Powerups made available as you lost health. Some other ideas came up, and at that point, I considered that I should use a 2d engine to save myself some of the complexities with 3d.  I have been meaning to learn GDevelop better as it is something I find familiar from prior experience with Construct2, (which I abandoned when they went to a subscription model).... GDevelop however is free and open source.  At some point in the conversation I mentioned game 'Stray' as an 'unassuming little kitty' as a protagonist that embodied 'strength-in-weakness'.   There was nothing inherently strong about the kitty. It was this idea that stuck with me.

Saturday Night...
I went home from dinner, Launched GDevelop and had a go for a bit trying to find a way to kickstart a project about a kitty-platformer. I found myself a bit frustrated by some of the limitations and as-yet unfamiliar interface. I resorted back to opening up a fresh 3d world in Unity where I have more experience..... I loaded in a Character Controller Prefab (Third-person  Character Controller with Companion Asset) ... and actually managed to attach a cat I had in another 'Low-Poly Animals' asset.  The system was quite broken and a bit frustrating but I think it was mostly exhaustion at that point. I did all this while switching back and forth from some coffee, gaming and youtube trying to stay awake and not get tunnel vision.....   Eventually in the early A.M. I crashed and got some hours of shuteye.

Sunday Morning...
Eventually woke up and made it late to church where I had some good fellowship with friends, and they had some lunch following the service! I shared my project with some of those there and even still was looking for ideas on how to present a game 'strength-in-weakness'.  My friend and a church Elder, Dennis, prayed with me before heading back home.

Sunday...
I was able to load in several of my 'go-to' tools into unity including a Lighting presets, an autosave, a game-jam menu template, as well as a few other ease of use assets.  I got my cat working a better, and had a Low-poly city  asset that I dropped in for the cat to run around in. With the deadline approaching I realized much of the vision I had with the 'Companion controller' wouldn't be feasible.  There was some built in features for enemy AI and button switch controls and other 'more fun' activities and challenges - but in short I was content to "make a maze" by adding in fences around the city as there wouldn't be enough time to figure out much else.

Monday....
I wasn't happy with my progress thus far - it was a maze without any clear exit and I was worried people would just wander around without knowing what to do. I made some barriers to keep the player out of places they shouldn't go (not entirely effective), and just continued to tweak settings to get a better feel to the game. I eventually just shrugged my shoulders and did a build just to get my progress uploaded as is. OH NO... .Itch.io was down!!!! OH NO!  As such I reached out to Raul and it was revealed to me that the deadline was extended! Wonderful!!!

Monday Night....
I had the opportunity to finally add in that 'Companion'... a man that you would find so that you could lead him to the exit.  Oh yeah... that unknown exit... the unknown controls.  I slapped in some rudimentary UI.... (Had a weird camera glitch that made the initial start look like a 2d side scroller... which I liked so I kept that. And storywise I realized this could be the man's emotional support cat... what a great strength-in-weakness depiction we find in the love from our pets.
      Honestly,  the Title was there from the start.... meant to be a working title to somehow help - but the way it fit with my new story idea was just great.  A man in a desolate fenced off city looking to find comfort with his pet cat .... looking off into the sunset at the end of an adventure sneaking through a locked down city. It all just kinda worked, in my mind's eye anyway...... I'm sure it just didn't come across in the execution, but that's ok.

Tuesday Morning....
I decided to try and get a Mini-map asset into the game.... it was otherwise still very unclear where to go.  I made some tweaks to the UI and other game issues patching some of the things overlooked.... a bit of playtesting and more final tweaks and a final build. I made my submission before heading off to work. At worked I checked that my submission was all in order, but again... Oh no... my entry was submitted but the files were made available for download.  After work I was able to head home and get the files actually uploaded.  Finally DONE!!!  Now we wait for the results.

Friday....
Looking back I finally write the Devlog.... a bit of a post-mortem.  Thanks!

Yes, there is a end..... once you get the man to follow (Green target) the end shows up on the map as a red target.

Oh... the limitations of deadlines.... I had in mind to have obstacles to overcome by switching characters (tab works, but no instructions to use it!) to get through the maze of a city. Things like small spaces to squeeze through for the cat and big objects to push around for the man.

Just not enough time to really make things happen!   There is a whole untold storyline as well, but alas the emotional heartbreaking story is now only a mere hinting in the title.

Neat comparison to Little Kitty, Big City, I hadn't heard of that! I wouldn't be surprised if also compared to 'Stray' which admittedly was something of an inspiration. 

That looks great!

AAAAArraaahhhhhhaahahahhafahahfdlahjsdlfkhaslk;djfl;kasdhjfl;kahdgkljhglkasdf

I'm devolving.

...

...

In my weakness there is strength.

Ok, honestly, in reality it's not really thaaat bad.

Sure.. But this doesn't change the fact that I am third under overall quality and fourth in gameplay.... Only 2nd in originality. A lower averaged rank (3) across the 3 catagories than FS (2.3). 

Also as I am looking at the results page it looks like I may be third overall..... I only show second in originality catagory. Fated Seal had second place overall when all catagory ranks are all averaged.

Thanks for hosting this. and to the sponsor Soma. Youu can donate my winnings to Soma's Soulworks game fund. My reward was the experience.  

 https://somasoulworks.org/game-dev-fund/

It is windows only and was uploaded as a zip file that needs to be uzipped. The exe file to start it is "Empyrean Gateway.exe"

Oh man... been working hard on it... Into the wee hours. I am fairly pleased with what I've got ... but I don't know if I'll be able to get it packaged up and actually ready to 'submit' on time. Also I'm not sure how beefy a rig is needed to play - definitely not mobile friendly - I didn't get to do much optimizing. 

New devlog up.... I made a ton of progess, but still only a fraction of the way done. https://sbjerk.itch.io/empyrean-gateway/devlog/619792/entering-empyrean

Marketing is always at least half of the budget. 😉😜

My advice on game engine.... Advice I unfortunately don't hold to ... to keep scope manageable - a smaller game engine provides certain restraints that benefit a game jam. I'm finding once again that I've definitely approached this with too much 'power' and ambition to get there and what I'll end up with will only be a small fraction of what I want it to be! Good Luck!  (but honestly I'm working in Unity and its a perfectly fine engine for this Jam... Its more my vision that needs a leash! lol)(

Its going to be fun seeing all the variety that comes out of this. We have such incredibly different styles and approaches and it's all kinds of fun watching it unfold!

Latest Devlog ... includes Teaser Trailer for my game: https://sbjerk.itch.io/empyrean-gateway/devlog/618228/a-trial-of-tools

Today I took some of that progress from before and conceptualized it into a walkable map where I can quickly get even just the basic sense and feel for the vast world I hope to create. This has been shared to the game page Empyrean Gateway - Passage to Eternity by sbjerk (itch.io) and so you can wander around Island (or even through the waters to be honest).... the idea here is to get a sense of scale and purpose for what the player may need to do... 8 cities with 3 activities each; 12 "Blissful Moments"... that is me being ambitious in a game jam again - Will I really be able to create a full and lush world with 36 different things to acomplish?!  ..... perhaps I've been too engrossed in playing games like Horizon Forbidden West and Assassin's Creed Odessey lately to want anything less than a massive sprawling Epic Action Adventure! Shoot for the stars - Land on the moon they say.

[TLDR;  1. I researched a lot, including using AI and decided to make an exploration game on an outlying area to Heaven Eternal, a Heavenly island  2. Jesus the son, God the Father, along with the Holy Spirit is the essence of Heaven- anything depicting Heaven without this is simply a concept that is without God and assumes a place opposite of Heaven!] 

Hey all you jammers and others with interest!!

I've been brainstorming over past couple of days and just started setting up the Itch page for this project: Empyrean Gateway - Passage to Eternity by sbjerk (itch.io)

My first thoughts about this idea were, "How is it going to be possible to create a game about such a peaceful and perfect world where nothing is wrong - where there isn't much to resolve?" and also, "This topic is too broad and the jam far to open to style, subject, and interpretation to have any quality comparison for what counts towards a best-of award", and also "What is Heaven even really like?".

That last question though is what brought me on board with the idea. It won't matter what we create - the act of creating, at least for me, will be a much more thoughtful exploration of the ideas and teachings on Heaven than I had perhaps ever given it. I searched for some video sermons and teachings about heaven and found many of them don't have much specific to say. Sure there are the golden streets, the river of life flowing through it, the crystal sea, the Gates of the New Jerusalem etc., things I had heard in the past. I found that several of these sermons would remark on the need to be in Heaven as that is where our eternal fellowship with Jesus resides. Also revisiting the Chapters of the bible that would attempt description didn't really give me a fantastic sense of how it would be portrayed.

I also took up searching for how A.I has done in interpreting scripture - saved myself some hassle just by finding videos where this had already been attempted - and for a lot of it I'd shrug my shoulders and think.... that's kind of the commonplace portrayal I suppose, but not quite how my understanding would have it if we understand it to be a real place with world attributes - some were clearly more fanciful than others. I might also note that I went down a rabbit hole of looking at how these image generators depicted futuristic cities which also led me down some of the concepts for actual future cities for our-world cities in development such as 'The Line' in Saudi Arabia.

Of all this my favorite depiction of Heaven was this one, (which also had what looked like a strangely distorted watermark for 'Futureye'... so I'm not so sure this was AI... or more accurately wondering what it was trained on to create this and how much of that original is here!)

So.... with some ideas in my head of Heaven as a real place... with cities, kingdoms, rivers, light shining through and through .... I begin to contemplate how I might go about creating that world - and how would I 'gamify' such a place.

As a game developer I get a special bonus that comes with my past-time of being a gamer - I get to count some those many hours as "research". At first I'd say that is just wishful thinking, but the truth of the matter is, that knowing what size a 2 km² fortnite map feels like gives me insight to how big feels small enough to manage but big enough to explore, and puzzling through the Talos Principal shows me how one might go about a largely 'non-confrontational' beautiful world to explore and a story line that ponders over what life even is.

However even with that.... I struggled to consider how I would approach this - Ahhhh but we are living on the brink of a new technology. Love it or hate it - as I already alluded to, I'm not one to turn away from the likes of generative content (I'm not such a fan of calling it AI, but that's another topic).  So I turned to ChatGPT and prompted it for some ideas on what you might do in a utopia where all your cares, wants and needs are met.... There were some ideas there. I prompted for a game idea  - and there again, much of an exploration activity based game as I was already leaning towards, but with bullet points and many considerations that I hadn't even dreamt of. I will say that I don't intend to include a 'multi-player mode where you can explore heaven with friends to earn virtue points' .

As this research was transpiring, I would also be having thoughts of my strengths as a developer... what tools do I have? What assets will I use? What might I invest into this - there is afterall a nice White Castle that could be used for adorning the kingdom. I have some things and notion on how to bring about the vision. I may spend some time documenting for myself more of the project before jumping in to create. 

With the idea of a main river running though it, I went on Google Earth and found that in fact Venice would be the inspiration  for a bounded area with one main bridge leading away from it to the mainland.... my thoughts turned to an idea that perhaps this would be where an experience into Heaven begins and in using the idea of a bridge to the mainland - in game this region will become a Gateway to Heaven Eternal.  

In making this a bit of paradise, but not quite Heaven I also realized this little concept could in turn be an explainer point for Abraham's Bosom or other notions of seeing Paradise but not being fully committed to being there. (Granted the Theology on that comes up with different viewpoints but in this Game it can be just its fantasy lore and its artistic liberties).  Afterall, if the goal is to ponder over the concept of Heaven as it actually is, well it certainly has done that for me - and this game will never be and can never reproduce that.

Somewhere in the midst of all this research I landed on the term Empyrean which has been used to describe the Highest of heavens, a place of pure fire and light.... I liked the term and having placed my world at the edge of its borders - named the game accordingly.

What I've got now is the seeds of an Adventure Exploration game set on the outskirts of heaven. 

One final note, and perhaps this should have been my first and foremost note. Of all the research this hit me most:  Heaven is only Heaven because Jesus Christ is there.  For all our thoughts, ideas, or imaginings, Heaven could be truly anything at all - except for one thing, it can never be absent of the God head - Father God, Christ Jesus the Son, and the Holy Spirit.  

(note: I may decide to move and continue this devlog on the game's page now that I have created it).

I do wish I had more time to add more of a 'tutorial' for guidance..... getting beat-up early on is by design. While David's not afraid, it isn't until he returns with his Mighty men that you can really battle the Giants.  Abishai is there at the gate waving for you to get out of there.  You can keep fighting until you 'give-up' and go elsewhere. So you basically were experiencing it the 'correct' way in a sense... just didn't find your way out. It's unfortunate that I didn't have more time to flesh out and test all my ideas through to completion..... I'd assert that adding in better tips and queues would be mighty helpful - otherwise the player (as you may have done) may never walk away from the fighting as intended! Oh well.... it is as it is.

Due to file size limitations and the lack of optimization I've uploaded a 'Scuffed'  version which excludes much of the textures and shared resources. To play the game you will need to also download the resources file,  "sharedassets2.assets.resS.zip" and include that in the "CGDCSpeedgame2023_Data" folder.  I may try to streamline this later.

Everything is blowing up! Can't get a final build to upload.... The hour is near --- fate is enevitable --- my oh my! I will not be afraid. I will not falter.... none shall stop me - This battle is OURS!! 

Seriously though.... I'm struggling to get a final build that I can submit. Even if I do, I know there is so much of the game that didn't get in there - I certainly made a mighty effort though. At this point I think I should still be able get something for an entry in time. 

So much progress... still so far to go!

1 - Character Interaction could use some real polish at this point.... and that's unfortunate because my story and instruction is primarily though this interaction.

2  - Since having implemented the Combat system I am enjoying it and it is working out well... I probably would have liked something a little more player friendly than it turned out to be (player doesn't always feel like he faces his enemies), but I'm working with a pre-built combat framework and the guts of it are beyond me to work out for now. But hey, it works!

3  - Collection system - the same combat framework I am using already had a built-in inventory and health system, but I didn't find the inventory useful or intuitive and there didnt' seem to be a 'currency' system I could find, so I hijacked the health system and built a small counter that way. (the Crystal count  goes up instead of down (as previously health did) when you 'hit/touch' a crystal.

4 - A cool success was the implementation of the Crystal distribution! I didn't want to place 100's of them so they are randomly populated across the whole of the map, and once I did that the areas that felt sparce and empty now had slightly more purpose to visit.

5 - There are even now some "desert jackles"  (which are  really just the guards frome earlier with the mesh and animations replaced with a wolf model.... kinda goofy to watch the mismatched colliders in the editor, but the basic gameplay still works out.

5 - I also scratched an earlier 'carry' system with another. I started with a different approach for for the Package delivery quest. Again, it was a pre-built tool but part of a different framework I didn't end up using - it was breaking things and I decided to simplify things and just make my own basic version. Basic is never basic though and that took more brain power than I think it should have!

6 - Finally In general I also added in a ton of small improvements like several colliders.... fences and such, to keep the player from going off track. I added trigger areas to cycle Objects on or off according to progress and for optimization... and other such generalized "simple" improvements.

The crazy thing with all the work put in, it feels like the end result is a rather rough and bloated version of the game and in the end not quite like the game I had envisioned.

Diggin it!

The four dev blogs are looking like such different games its going to be hard to do a good job evaluating a tier list and proper ranking! I imagine the variety is also there with the other 4 joined participants (if we see those entries as well)... Keep up the good work, can't wait to give it a play through!

👍 Keep up the good work... this looks like a fun little collector platformer! 

A quick observation about rolling the same number 3 times in a row.... there is a '1 out of (6x6x6)' chance... which is less than half-a-percent. It almost certainly needs to be played with the Faith in the battle that value increases to a still rather low odds 12.5% (1/8 so I would hope in this case its not a single use buff.  I found a neat dice roll probabilty calculator to use just to double checked  my math (and correct it before replying, nice)  https://www.gigacalculator.com/calculators/dice-probability-calculator.php

I swapped out the main third person controller code I was using for another that is built specifically for Combat. I was wary of doing this - it wasn't clear at first how to properly use this (and in many ways still is unclear!).... I lose a few things, but it adds a lot more options and opportunity including a way to do Inventory - which for the supply delivery and collection quests this should come in useful.... plus (and the main reason for the switch) I can now fight in the battle.

I am really enjoying the results thus far.... but lots yet to do to flesh out the vision... Now blocking out the rest of the quest progression is probably what I need to focus on. I've done a decent amount of refinement on the beginning portion of the game. It can be easy to get focused on just getting one part working well, but it may be better to get a start-to-end playable that works a bit janky first.

:) thanks for the good words.... it was however hyperbole.... I'm not actually frightened or stressed about it in any real sense. Never-the-less what a neat testimony! I've been at these jams a few times now and things are on pace for my workflow and steadily moving forward. It's just a process and I always think and dream bigger for my project than what is sensible.

Thanks. At some point I was thinking to do a disclaimer already, although I admit that the thought was probably lost in as I have been working to get the rest of the project assembled. I will add a todo to get a disclaimer card at the start... That should be an easy addition.  (However that ever growing todo list is starting to frighten me with less than a week remaining).

I'm catching up on things in the community... and I really am liking the ideas here. As I work on a specific point in David's life, the idea of following the pathway to his Kingship feels like a great way to explore the life of David full of opportunity to engage the player.

Here is the story and gameplay as I have it in mind presently (subject to change of course)... 

1.  On battle field. David has fallen, but gets up. Having lost his weapon he is battling to stay alive. He gets waved over by a messanger (Abishai, the warrior who saves him from the Giant by killing said giant.) Abashai sends him to speak with Commander Joab who orders David (albeit more of a suggestion since he is an advisor to the King) , “Never again will you go out with us to battle, so that the lamp of Israel will not be extinguished. (see 2Sam21:17b)”.  Joab instead sends David to deliver supplies to Shimeah (David's brother) at the Outpost stationed just outside the Great Wall. 

2. Upon taking the supplies to Shimeah and recruiting him to fight alongside him, David learns that Shimeah's son Yohnathan (David's nephew) would also be a great fighter, but has been hiding away at the Oasis.

3. Yohanthan and David must dual in an effort to prove his ability to fight.... (some clever storyline to come up - as either party could instigate the dual.)

4.  Upon Recruiting Yohanathan David learns he has been fighting along with great mercenary  warriors, Sibbekai and Elahnan, who are camped out in the Cave of Wonders. They are known as "The Crystal Outlaws" and for the right price will aide you in your quest.

5. David is sent to collect collect crystals from loot points scattered around the map and after collecting enough for payment he is able to hire the "The Crystal Outlaws"

6. Everyone has their business to attend to... David learns that his brother Shimeah had died to Raphachik (un-named in scripture, here meaning 'little Rapha') in battle. Yohnathan, David, Abashai, Elhanan, and Sibbekai all return to the battle field to fight the giants of Rapha- Ishbi-Benob,  Saph, Lahmi (Goliathh's Brother), and Raphachik. David is offered a place to fight alongside and be known as one of the greatest warriors - A Crystal Outlaw.

2Samuel 21: 22 "These four were descendants of Rapha in Gath, and they fell at the hands of David and his men."

7. In a final scene (perhaps in a public award ceremony perhaps?) , Joab commends the 5 warriors. and gives a speech that though they may be considered Outlaws in a world fighting against them to never lose hope or faith in God for he is our salvation. There will one day come a King - like David - who will be a Messiah for all eternity - one who will reign forever on the Throne of all People, The Throne of all Warriors, and The Throne of all Crystal Outlaws.  (and then gives them a medal or something.) roll credits.

I am realizing the whole notion of 90% is half the work....   The basic environment, the primary character controller, a battlefield, the intended path of travel.... All done within the first few days - all lending itself to the vid I linked.  Since then I've mostly done Quality-of-Life improvements (adding in boundary collider,  creating more apparent pathways for travel, I also added a dust-storm and some other such things. I have some NPC characters roughly placed around the game and some very rudimentary quests (ones without any actually logic for completion.... and I might have to settle on that as time is ticking).  I like the idea that the story will be an adaptation of 2nd Samuel 21:15-22  - The Four Philistine Giants that fall to David and his men. 

Scope. HAHA what is that?!  I should worry about this foe myself? I'm pretty sure I'm come up at odds with ol' Creature'Feep before. The many foes of dev... 'Relentless Bugs'; 'Dead(ly)Lines'; 'Fog-of-Doubt'

Isn't it remarkable how much work it takes to just get the little things done. And that is how it is for the firs  80-90% of the work (aka half the project - while the other 90% is just as tedious in the polishing, debug, and final build and upload!!!)  Good to hear you're Father's day was a relaxing one.

I think this should link to the image I was trying to post here... https://drive.google.com/file/d/16qeAxcMuLilK5LFXItIJnHhxBc9bGzQj/view?usp=drive...  also just did a video capture....

Spent a while getting through a lot of bugs. I over bloated my project with assets trying things out. I have had some real positive success getting a David on the Battlefield setup and was going to post a picture of the progress, but itch.io is erroring when I try to post a screen grab.  🤔  I'll try again later and see if I can figure out what's going on.

Dev Log - Throne of the Crystal Outlaw

Been struggling to really grasp what it is I am trying to do here. I've gone through a few iterations of ideas - One might say I'm feeling uninspired by the given verses but I think I've settled in on doing something with Psalm 27:1-2.  

I can definately tell that several years of dabbling and asset acquisition has done me well.... I did a quick voicealtered-voiceover of the verse using Voice.AI that I may play in the intro... (*or scrap altogether) just trying to further inspire ideas. I found a random name generator and from a few iterations there pulled away and combined a couple of suggestions for a title (merely a working title perhaps?), "Throne of the Crystal Outlaw"

I loaded up a Unity game jam Menu template, pulled in some AI gen art and some other packaged art assets I have had on hand to put together a nice little opening menu system ... (something that I've neglected until the past the end of a project in jams past.)

Gameplay wise I might have it be Collect, Attack, Survive, and find the Endpoint in a fairly common third person action style gameloop. I may need to reassess, but I have the tools to build something like this - I don't know how well I know them - I will just need a goal and motive for the player and some tools to add in collection and combat.

Looking forward to sharing more as I progress.....

Here to participate as well... Happy Deving!

I was having a similar issue. I kept trying and eventually got it to work standing just a little further back while on the right side of the car.

Took a few tries but I finally got them all!