zerofiftyone

I'm glad you asked! Here's some new stuff: At the end of last weekend I did some work on making the floor/backdrop look less placeholder-y. I had some vague ideas of having a grid of square tiles that ambiently undulate in the background while you play, so I looked into a noise generator plugin for UE4 that gave me some close results when applied to my floor grid blueprint: I tweaked some of the settings until I found something I was more happy with, and put it in the game! Originally, the tiles were much smaller as seen in the clip below, but having so many meshes animating at once was causing the framerate to dip, so I settled for large, chunky tiles instead. I replaced the tile mesh and the material to something nicer and called it a job done! The clip below also shows a post process effect that I originally intended to use for level transitions, but then I decided not to have level transitions so it's somewhat redundant now. I'll try and find a use for it somewhere though cause it's a cool effect. In other news, a player death / game over state is now in the game! When you die, the game will submit your score to an online leaderboard and show you your current global ranking. I've managed to shorten the time it takes to fetch/process that data in the time since I recorded the clip below. Also new: spawn in particle FX! Things I have also done (that don't particularly GIF well): Working pause functionality and menu Save system (for saving stuff like your personal best score, and any settings there might be in the game) An alternate control method that I'll go into at some other point Score multiplier system (that you can't currently see because there's no score HUD lol)

This is a very good GIF.

Sorry!! It seems to be a running theme for me; I'm kind of obsessed with games that pull the player out of their dexterity/coordination comfort zone. Hopefully aside from the weird controls it won't be too difficult to play. Thanks dude!

Finishing up for today, I'm pretty happy with the progress. I made a few more enemy types, and then I made some VFX for when they take damage and blow up.

This is all looking really good.

This looks so cool already!

Good to see you here again, z_bill

Welcome Fraig!

Day 2 Quick update, I spent some time improving the movement and adding a base enemy class that I can use to make different types of enemy.

This sounds fab. Best of luck.

Day 1 Progress So, the reason I picked the title "Half a Brain" is because it gave me the idea of making something with gameplay that involves having to control two objects independently, and having the challenge of splitting your attention between both objects. I started work on player movement tonight. The clip above shows a paddle made up of two independently controlled bodies (controlled with the left and right analog sticks), and a beam joining them. The movement doesn't feel great at the moment but it's enough to play around and see what it feels like to control both parts of the paddle. Messing around in this test level gave me some ideas for interesting gameplay stuff. My current thinking is that this game will be a Geometry Wars style score-attack challenge where waves of enemies come at you; but the enemies can only be hurt by touching them with the beam, and will kill you if they hit either of your paddle's bodies.

Thanks . As long as you make it so that the A of the logo flips upside down dramatically in the title screen to reveal "In Search of P∀Radise". Nah, it's cool. Go for it.

It's just gone midnight here in GMT land, so it's officially time to jam! Looking forward to seeing all of the new devlog threads as people get started. Here is the list of diversifiers! As I said on the first post, the diversifiers are an optional challenge for the jam. They're creative prompts, designed to help you design a game around a specific limitation (or set of limitations). You can choose as many (or as few) as you like and incorporate them into your game. "2D's company, 3D's a crowd" - Make a 3D game using only 2D graphics. Limited Vocabulary - Limit your player's verbs (run, jump, punch) to just one! Make a game that explores that verb to its fullest. "You Just Played Yourself 🔑" - Make a game where you play against yourself, or a game where your past movements or actions are important in some way. Hoisted - The game conspires to destroy the player in some way; or the game allows the player to be the cause of their own undoing. Texture Thrift - Use the same art/prop asset as many times as possible in your game, whilst obscuring the fact you are doing this. Frug Froctions - Include another, entirely separate game inside your game. Also, now is probably a good time to mention: for Wizard Jam 5, we're trying something new! After the jam finishes, we'll be hosting a Showcase Weekend; an opportunity for everybody to step back from the game making process and look at what everyone else has made; with an emphasis on giving feedback and comments to fellow creators. It's covered in the schedule below, and there'll be more details to follow.

Thanks! ☺️👍

In keeping with tradition, I made a trailer!

Ah, it's you! Thanks much for updating the site. I'm using it in the trailer as it's less of a mouthful than the full itch url.

We now have some threads set up for this.

Of course! We've had some great Twine entries in past jams.

This forum thread is wild. Reminds me of that old 2001 macrumors.com thread about the original iPod.

Thanks again for mentioning Wizard Jam.

I could look at these forever

Thanks, well spotted

Yes, that's the plan. Should hopefully happen soon-ish.

Thank you all!

Thanks you guys!