PLAY IT NOW! https://josilver.itch.io/40-weeks-lowres-game-jam-2020 PLAY IT!
My entry for the Lowrez Jam, 40 Weeks. Everything was made for and during the Jam by me. No reused code or art. Frankly I'm amaze I was able to get as much as I did done in these two weeks.
Unfortunately I Missed the Deadline by a few minutes because UE4 chose to break my game as I was packaging it due to a long persisting bug with DefualtEngine.ini. I really should have been doing daily builds just to make sure if packages with out issue. Made a post about it. https://itch.io/t/930847/help-ue4-a-jerk#post-1882386
I got kinda bummed and clock out after that, you don't work on something for two weeks straight only for one stupid thing to ruin everything. But I decided to clean up game page add a cover image and Let people play it.
Making the game was heck of a process. Early on I decided to make the game using UE4 partly because I wanted the game to be 3d and gosh darn it if UE4 aint just great for prototyping games.
The first major step was getting unreal to just trust be and have the game at a 64 by 64 resolution. I managed to accomplish it with a scene capture and post-process effect that just replace whats on screen with capture. Cruel but effective. Then I got enemies following me and chasing me and I could shot and kill them easily the easiest part of the whole thing.
The next big step was getting the game to build a city, first step was roads and buidling. I wanted the game to be procedural generated so this was the first big step in make the game even happen.
Next I needed HUD elements. Using widgets for this project thanks to 64 by 64-ness of it all was kind of a no go. Or at least I wasn't willing to waste time trying to make it work. So I make a UI Actor that just had hud elements and with another scene capture Boom, HUD. Last major step as far as HUD elements was Text. I thought at first I'd just have all text in the game be Bitmaps but then I'd need a new texture for every piece of text and that wasn't gonna happen. SOOO I ended up making my own text component, It one has one font and on size but I can space out characters in even fashion and even can have a drop shadow!
Next I need to Generate Indoor spaces. My First attempt was very rudimentary. Basically Generate Bunch of random boxes and try and connect them. The spaces it produced we random hodgepodges of Rooms and corridors, Spooky but I would have been able to give the spaces real purpose. I ended up scrapping that system in favor or a node based system that connected rooms to rooms. Allowing the space to be random also Logical.
Then I got started making art for the game. I started by making a quick generic human mesh that I'd build off of for the characters. I never got around to making a proper zombie model and I had something gnarly in mind for the zombies but I ran out of time as It was more important to me the have the player model. I also started making some simple animations for things. REALLY SIMPLE. Like one frame, except for the reload animation... that's the only real animation in the game at the moment.
i started to flush out the game building the inventory system deciding of weapons health and items work. I had to make alot of cuts to systems and mechanics because time was running out.
The last major step was populating the world with static meshes. BEHOLD! A TOILET! After that I just really bulked up the connective tissue of the game. Making it beatable and the like. I had alot of fun making this game and I'm really proud how it turned out. Let me know what you think guys.
