I agree the dash isn't great but being a speed running game it felt weird not having something in there. I think it probably needs to ramp up a bit like in Mario, just ran out of time to tune it.
Haha yeah one day is a long time in a three day jam isn't it :D
This is only my second jam but I love the short ones, enjoy the crazy deadlines and rapid fire development. Seems like most jams are over a week which doesn't quite interest me so much.
I'm glad you found the challenge of the speed run, that was a last minute decision given the leaderboard was one of the criteria. Originally there was going to be more to do, maybe some paths to completion allowing for different, more traditional, scoring but had to cut a lot when I lost a day and personally had a lot of fun when I tried the speedrun scoring.
Yeah the idea was to have you select the item you wanted to use from the inventory and have manual combining of items and such but ran out of time in the end.
I liked how the world came together in the end too, fun little place to put together.
Yeah my last day was meant to be the "quality of life" pass :) I'll get around to it some time after the voting is closed and also get some linux, mac and android builds out.
This was my first time doing a game in Godot so I didn't have my multi-platform building ready to go.
Glad you like it :) I've been super busy this week but trying very hard to check out what games I can, I'll make sure yours is on the list (along with everyone else providing me feedback).
Sounds fair, I'll remove the updated files and revert my project page until it's all over. Thanks for the response.
I expected the Jam functionality would pull / mark the active files at the time of submission for the submission page. I didn't expect modifications to a project to flow through :D
After getting feedback about Freedom Forest I wanted to make some quality of life updates, so I made a couple of tweaks and threw an update up onto the project page.
I didn't realise that those updates would appear on my jam submission page so I have re-enabled the old, original files which were submitted for the jam but I still have my updates there for people to view outside the context of this competition.
This is my first game jam and I was just wondering the etiquette is here? Should I just remove my updates until the rating period is over? Do I leave them up there assuming people will see the multiple versions and rate the appropriate version?
For the jam submission of Freedom Forest I made some poor UI choices based on time constraints and lack of testing on people that weren't me so I thought I'd just pop a couple of tips in the forum here for anyone planning to give it a go.
Make sure the animal you want to photograph is in the center of the screen, not down the bottom where the camera is. It's an aesthetic choice to make the camera look like you are carrying it low, it will raise when you take a scoring photo.
The camera has a range to prevent people taking photos of things they shouldn't be able to see. I think I set this range a bit too short, mostly due to animals in trees. If you are having issues with getting misses that don't make sense, perhaps try getting a bit closer.
The camera will only scroll up and take a photo if you are aiming at an animal on your endangered species checklist (bottom left of screen).
If you attempt to take a photo of an animal which is NOT endangered you will register a "miss" and the camera will flash but not move.
Attempting to photograph the same animal twice will also result in a "miss".
Miss is poorly named sorry and ran out of time to improve that or add some kind of tag to the animal to show it was already photographed.
The minimum score to 'win' is 15. The star ratings are 15 = 1 star, 30 = 2 star, 50 = 3 star.
Think of the camera on the HUD as purely aesthetic. It's like a gun in a regular FPS, it's there for looks and you actually want to aim in the center of the screen.
Obviously it's too late to fix this for the jam submission but there will be some updates out soon to rectify these issues for anyone interested.
You have to get the animals in the center of the screen and ignore the hud image of the camera. It was a poor UI choice in retrospect, it hadn't occured to me that it would be confusing, I guess I was too close to it. Think of the camera like it's a gun in Doom, purely aesthetic and you are really aiming with the center of the screen.
A couple of other issues are that if you photograph an animal that isn't on the check list the camera doesn't move and you get a miss, also if the animal is too far away (outside of camera range) you will get a miss which is an issue some times for animals in trees. These things weren't obvious and clearly bad decisions in hind sight.
Ran out of time to play test on other people, this would have been caught instantly I think if I had done so.
If you are interested, keep an eye out for some updates which hopefully will come in the next couple of weeks which will fix a lot of these issues and also add some more flavour to the world itself :)
Completely agree about the camera positioning, it was meant to be like you are carrying it in front of you but it just came out confusing.
I plan on doing an update soon which will fix a few usability issues like that, I also think the camera range is too short among other things. Next update will have some kind of reticle to show you where you should be aiming the viewport, pitty it didn't make it in for the jam submission.
I just thought I would point out that in Freedom Forest you have to take photos of the animals on your endangered species check list (bottom left of screen).
Attempting to take a photo of a non endangered animal, like a white cockatoo, will result in a miss. Also, attempting to take a photo of an animal you have already photographed will result in a miss.
Another usability thing to mention (thanks Uppitydonkey57) is that you need to have the animal in the center of the screen to take a photo of it, NOT in front of the camera (at the bottom of the screen). It was an aesthetic choice but really needed a reticle added to make it more clear.
This is by design but we ran out of time to make that more clear to the player.
