theschap

This game is looking super satisfying to play, and I love the aesthetic.

I personally couldn't echo the advice above enough! I am very good at researching a topic, hoping that I will be completely prepared for whatever situation may come up. I will do this for days/weeks/months... for fear of messing something up when I finally decide to do it if at all. I do this still in regards to many other things in life, but once you realize nobody knows all the pitfalls of a game project they are undertaking, and it's a learning process for people of all levels it becomes much easier to just jump in and see what happens. There are some things you can only learn by doing it, and no level of planning will make it easier or better after a certain point.

I felt bad for neglecting the forums this jam so I wanted to throw up a quick devlog and bring over everything I've written in my itch devlog. First, a quick background on my game. It is a 2 player (local same mouse) board game in which each team starts with 6 units, and they take turns rolling to destroy the other player. Once a player has destroyed at least 3 of the opposing player's units they can attack the Titan. The player who defeats the Titan wins the game. Two 6D dice are rolled to calculate whether an attack is effective or not, and if a player rolls doubles they are given a 15 for their roll. As it stands the game is pretty basic, and the art is incomplete. There also isn't any sound, Part of me is tempted to just over time replace units in the game with models I have done in previous jams, so it could just be a progressive thing. I think that's it for a setup. Now the copy and pasted posts from the Itch devlogs!

I recently uploaded version 1.6 of my game and I'm more or less done with it. I wanted to share the nightmare of my camera transitions triggers in Unity and the solution I finally came to. So I made heavy use of triggers to push the camera from animation state to animation state. However, it became a major pain to manage triggers that sometimes reset themselves, and sometimes didn't. At first I was resetting triggers a couple states after they were used to make sure they were ready the next time the game looped around. This was a mess. Then I tried just resetting them all at certain points, but it always messed up the current state the camera was in and it would skip. So I came to this! private List<string> cameraParameters; void Start() { foreach(AnimatorControllerParameter param in MainCam.CamAnim.parameters) { cameraParameters.Add(param.name); } } private void resetCameraAnimTriggers(params string[] triggers) { bool match = false; foreach(string param in cameraParameters) { foreach(string trigger in triggers) { if( trigger == param) { match = true; } } if (!match) { MainCam.CamAnim.ResetTrigger(param); Debug.Log(param + " reset."); } else match = false; } } This way I could pass in the current trigger that was active to keep my state machine functioning. Here is my state machine by the way. I'm not going to say this was the best way to make this game, but hey. I feel like I learned a lot of stuff.

I bought the same book when I wanted to start making games and had a similar feeling. I want to make a game while reading this. I didn't have any experience at all so the thought of making anything was my main motivation. After some one searching I landed on these tutorials: https://forums.tigsource.com/index.php?topic=3251.0 It offers a very detailed step by step on going through game maker. I'm not sure how well it holds up to the new GM however. While this wasn't the perfect way to practice some of the things I was learning in the book, it did reinforce the reasons the tutorial maker (Derek Yu - Spelunky fame) gave for decisions he makes. Also in the end you have a good beginning for a scrolling shoot em up that you can play with indefinitely. I hope that helps and enjoy the journey.

I haven't been streaming things per say, but I have been working my way through games and putting it on YouTube. I think this is a link to the playlist?

I've been playing around a bit with the mood of the game. Some music should help push it along. Someday.

Posted June 20th - Bare Bones I submitted a very bare-bones version of the game to meet the jam deadline. There is a bit of mechanics stuff to work out yet, and nearly the entire aesthetic is missing (visual and audio); just about everything is a placeholder. I would like to see this project to completion, but with a larger project in the works I'm not sure I will get there. It may be better to just take what I learned from the experience and move on. Posted June 22nd - Near Mechanics Complete I've made some good progress towards the original vision. You can now attack the Titan once you have downed 3 of your enemies units. The nemeses will now assist you if you roll doubles. This is a pretty simple advantage at the moment and will get fleshed out a bit more later. I have noticed a couple strange bugs with the camera transitions yet, but it doesn't seem to affect the game play, so it's a bit lower on my priority list than actually getting everything working. And maybe someday I will put some art in there?!? Posted June 25th - It's a Game! I can officially consider this a game now. Players battle one another. Once they have defeated 3 of the opposing teams units they may attack the Titan. The first player to kill the Titan wins. There is still no real aesthetic or sound, but at least it's a game now. If you run across any bugs please let me know. Thanks for playing. Posted Today - Art Incoming I have finally taken some time to put some artwork into the game. There still aren't any units models, but the environment is new, and the PSX aesthetic is starting to shine through, though it may be a little closer to PS2. I haven't played with the UI yet, but I suspect replacing the images I am using with my own will go a long ways to making it cohesive. If you are reading this, thanks for sticking with me as I tweak the project! Related to the jam, I recorded myself playing through a few of my fellow Wizard Jam 5 submissions. Check it out here if you are interested. The pill units are starting to grow on me...

That looks pretty great! I enjoy your charcoal stuff quite a bit and seeing the improvements overall. I have just a few minor critiques: The contrast between deltoid and trapezius on left side is a bit too harsh I think. Something about it makes the shoulder blade look to high or something. Also given the build of this guy, his tricep seems a bit undefined on the left as well. The V shape of the back lumbar muscles down to the buttocks are a little uneven. I haven't had an anatomy or drawing class for about 10 years at this point, but those were just a few things that stood out. Overall I love the values, weight, and balance of the piece. Keep up the good work!

Those level tools take me back. Are you planning to extend the level or just rebuild it for now using the new tools?

Screenshots? Information?

I = excite! Rogue Robot Rogues is a great game/concept, and I'm excited to see where you will take it.

I love the promo above!

It's an itch io! Clone-Ridden Fields!!! Lot's of stuff didn't make it, but it's mostly functional at this point. Hello Wiz Jammers! This is my second Wizard Jam, and coincidentally my second game jam! My first game is The Three Antidotes. For this jam I wanted to do something a bit more focused, and not as system and content heavy as an action platformer. The idea behind Clone-Ridden Fields is that you are in an Elysian Field farming simulator. You walk around the field searching for souls to aid in the harvest of the field. The souls(clones) will chop up the wheat field, and you will need to gather it to complete the game. The aesthetic is very grim, high contrast, and low resolution, while the actual field will be pleasant and comforting. Think Diablo/Diablo II. As far as mechanics go, the player must TEAR the wheat from the ground, sacrificing the yield, to search for a clone to help them out. The more clones, the faster the field can be harvested, but you don't want to sacrifice too much of the yield. You then must gather the yield. The game will be scored based on amount of yield and time it took to harvest. If time permits I would like to create some type of leaderboard, local... maybe global? <- I have no idea how difficult that is but GAME JAM! Things I want to focus on/learn: A* pathfinding 3D pipeline for unity (models, materials, animation) Unity particles Leaderboard? Aesthetic, I really want to focus on the style of this game, and I want to push the production values as much as I can. @JoelWmusic has already provided a fantastic track to set the tone of the world. I plan to put it up here once I get the art style more established so STAY TUNED!

There was some discussion and interest in slack earlier today around rendering 3D assets in more of a pixelated style. Fairly early in development I played around a bit with some pixel rendering techniques using shaders. The screenshots below are rendered using 16 colors. Basically the shaders will clamp the colors being rendered to a color of your choosing. Looking at this again, I feel like if I would have spent a little more time with it, and maybe expanded it to 32 colors I could get something that looks pretty cool.

I love the illustration and the game mechanics sound right up my alley. I look forward to seeing more.

There is a lot of depth mentioned above and I am very curious to see things come together. I am enjoying watching things progress thus far. I hope you are feeling good and that things are working out.

That's an interesting looking world you have there. It looks like a great place to just explore and figure out what's going on.

I love those transitions between screens, and the way the text scrolls up from the bottom.

Those are great.

Great work Flay! Where do you look for inspiration on each piece? There is a good variety here.

Looks great Travis! How did you go about doing this? That sounds awesome.

In my recent Wizard Jam 4 entry "Clone-Ridden Fields" I wanted to implement a leaderboard system, but I didn't want to spend too much time developing it, and I find phpmyadmin super confusing so I went on a quest for another solution. I happened across this site: http://dreamlo.com/developer Following the tutorial series linked below, I was able to get an online leaderboard in my game very very quickly. The tutorial uses Unity as an example, but the dreamlo site should work for just about anything. I hope this helps people with their own projects. I imagine you could use it for non-leaderboard purposes but I don't know what kind of latency there is in the system. Rounds last about a minute in my game, and I've never had a dropped submission. Happy deving!

Yeah, that is a bit strange. It was perfect for someone like me doing a game jam game. I can see a lot of value it it for more temporary projects, but I don't think I would personally use it for a product I planned to release and sell.

Oh! This is the game I saw in the GIF you posted to slack. The concept sounds great and I'll definitely follow the development of this. I will try to take some time this evening to check out the jam submission. I like the updated style on the new trees though the second one is a bit off for me. It looks a bit like a cabbage head or brain. Maybe a bit less separation and some shading similar to the third tree would help. Excited to follow your devlog!