gerbilsinspace

I'm going have to get on a windows machine and troubleshoot... sorry again that such a big bug was released.

I agree whole-heartedly with Clyde. You did a good job!

For the moment I'm just posting the windows and mac builds of stuff, but if I make an actual game, rather than experiments, I'll give this more of a shot. Thanks for your help!

I'm still going to work on this, probably porting it over to processing. Sorry you guys had trouble with it. I found that the mac version works cool, but the windows version has more bugs. I think in the final version of the game I'll give the burglar more tells, and obviously fix all the bugs. I'm working through The Nature of Code, which I think was recommended elsewhere on this forum. when I think I've gone through enough of it, I'll come back and work on this. I've decided to move my devlog over to my site, www.josephabell.co.uk, although I'll let you guys know about the state of the game periodically. Thanks for checking it out!

WOW! I loved this! That was a masterclass on the game jams!

It didn't crash my macbook. Hurray!

I'm probably voting green due to their policies on government spying. Other Parties seem to have conveniently forgotten that Edward Snowdon exists.

As I still have time tommorow to clean up, if I find time in the day I might do so, although it will be a busy day tomorrow for me. I'm happy with people thinking the current build is the final until I change my mind later.

I've posted my game. If I want to continue my devlog on the game, should I continue updating here even though the work for the Jam is over, or should I move over to the game dev sub forum?

The build is up! (Or will be very shortly, it is still uploading.) I think, for the time given, I'm quite happy with the game. It is not perfect, and I am going to clean it up after the submission is finished. Things to note: We don't have all of the animations in, as I can't figure out how to transfer between moving and not moving in the animation. Although you will see that there is a character selection, as of now the game ignores your choice, and chooses the second character. This is because at the moment, there is a bug that prevents the first character from moving. I would also like to have a cleaner ui, the font sizes are everywhere. There is only one song, and no sound effects, as I ran out of time to implement them. That being said, I'm proud of what I've managed to do, and I think the artwork from Meanhouseart is stunning. I've loved working with him.

Good Luck!

I knew the sight of MeanHouseArt's artwork would get people talking. I've done quite a bit tonight. I have set up a controls scene, game over scene, and credits scene. I have hooked it all to flow from one part to another. I have worked on the ui, so it shows how many burglars and alive people are left per level. I also have a dialog box which lets you choose whether to accuse someone of being the burglar. I have used PlayerPrefs to set things like total points, level count, gender of main character. I decided that instead of artificially limiting what level you can reach, the level you were on after you wrongly accused people after 3 times, along with the people you saved, as a double points. I have a little bit to work on tomorrow. I still need to put in the lovely animations, hook up the dialog boxes, get the logic right for counting down the amount of chances left you have to make accusations. I need to prevent the user from going up to the next level withour finding the brain burglar. I need to prevent the brain burglar from killing after you successfully accuse them, which is a big problem in later levels. Whoops, that still sounds like a lot of work, but hey, at least it is the weekend. I feel pretty confident that I can manage this with the extension to the deadline. See you in the morning.

Looking forward to the sax!

I still haven't managed to implement all of the sprites yet. You will notice the ladys idle animation is half her, half a floor sprite until I get the idle animation. none of the walking animations are in yet, which is a shame, considering how amazing they look.

We have a new build of the game over on Itch.io! I wanted to post this despite the fact that the game is still barely playable, to start showing of some of the incredible work that meanhouseart has done. In terms of this build, we have a character select screen, half the animations, movement mostly sorted. You can click on NPCs to accuse them of being the brain burglar, but I have no window telling you whether you are correct or not yet. If you go to the furthest top right of each level, you'll be teleported to more levels. the game will increase up to infinity if you let it. I'm happy with the progress tonight, but there is still a few issues: The npcs can walk into the same space, slamming them together. The only character to be able to escape that is the burglar, who will promptly kill the other npc, and walk over their body. This can also happen to the player, and the burglar will just leave you there, taunting your newly trapped existence. Obviously we would like a scoring system. I want to make it so that you have to stand next to the npc before you can accuse them, otherwise why have a playable character at all... I would also like to work on the ui a bit, maybe have one. Create a menu, a selection for how many levels you want to compete in... And finally, I would like to fix the AI a bit more. The eagle eyed among you will notice quite quickly that if an npc is wandering upwards, away from anything, it is usually the burglar, who has gotten lost. Sometimes the burglar will walk in a square, too, which is nice for them.

Fantastic!

I really like the style you have going on! Can't wait to play this.

I'll be passing a playable build tomorro, as it seems like I am getting too tired to function. Until then, hee is my progress. I have implemented the artwork that I have. This was more amount of work than expected, due to the sheer amount of animations that I am going to have to do. The scoring system is mostly in place, and the ability to catch the enemy so far leads to a debug message saying you caught the enemy, but not much more. In terms of animations, the animations for enemy and npcs turning around is there, but not hooked up. I doubt I'm going to be able to do any form of scoring board, which is sad. We'll see. Most of my work tomorrow will be making it be a playable game. I know that I'll only be able to do a small amount of work on it tomorrow, due to life things. I think this will be cutting it short for the deadline.

The enemy and npc ai is doing well. it is not great, but it will do for the moment - there is so much to do! I've added sound - some pretty happy jazz music, but here are the next things I want to focus on, then I'll come back to the AI. Implementation of artwork: - I've got some wonderful artwork from meanhouseart, which I want in my game as soon as possible. the ability to catch the enemy. Character Selection. Level amount selection - this game is randomly generated, so I want the user to choose the length of game they are willing to play. Scoring system. Online scoreboard (Offline if it will take too long) UI AI

I've managed to get it so the npcs are avoiding each other, by switching where they are walking to if they bump into other npcs. I have made it so disabled npcs cannot trap any character in by turning them into the floor essentially. I don't like the fact that people will be walking on the bodies of victims, but it stop the game from being unsolvable. The artwork is coming along nicely - we have some walls, floor tiles, and exhibits for the museum we are setting the game in. the characters we are creating have a Superbrothers sword and sorcery vibe about them; lanky, low res pixel based wonder. Thanks again to @meanhouseart - I'll show it to world soon.

My brain burglar now understands how not to keep running away from and running towards one of his previous victims. My next step is to make the npcs move around to obscure the brain burglars actions. Then, I will need to give the user a way of accusing the player. I think the stage after that would be to make the enemy run up the stairs to the next level. Man, my ai sucks real hard right now. I knew well enough to choose a simple game for my first, but my second was too big for me. EDIT: typos.

So the NPC is moving correctly, the Brain Burglar can disabled NPCs, effectively stealing their brains. I'm running into trouble with the Brain Burglar just running into a brain-dead npc. it doesn't understand how to walk around the NPC. Yey scripting.

I got the NPC Moving! unfortunately all my npcs just chase after the player, pushing each other out of bounds. At least it is a start.

Yesterday I went back to a previous build, where everyone was walking, and I started again. So far, I have it so that the enemy will go between the npcs, and kill them. I also have it so that the NPCs want to walk around, but they seem to have forgotten how to do so. No coding tonight, but the weekend will be full of it, so hopefully I'll be in a much happier place with it all. We have the beginnings of artwork now, so hopefully I'll be able to post screenshots soon.

If real life gets in the way of making a game for a game jam, please don't beat yourself up over it. You are more important than a game jam. Your game idea sounds good though. If you end up needing more time than the game jam allows, I would be interested in helping out after the jam. At the moment I'm stuck with my own game, but as soon as i am free, I'll help. Until then, I'll be a cheerleader.