phill

Yeah I really like this control scheme. I think there's a lot you could do with it in terms of colour matching as an extra dimension as well.

My goodness I could almost hear the gang talking through that. I look forward to emulating many episodes

This sounds really neat! Also the idea of programming something you know you can is very good one to take for a jam, especially if you're relatively new to programming. Good luck!

This sounds so good, following with interest and can't wait to play it.

Welcome!

Heh, yeah it's not very visually legible at the moment. I'm going to try and make the next update be very focused on making it easier to look at a gif and know what's going on. All the numbers are mostly placeholders as well (so that I can guarantee a building will be built in one hit for debugging). Thanks, it's going to be fun!

Hi all, I was talking with folks in the #gamedev slack channel about how to keep myself motivated and accountable as a hobbyist game developer and they suggested that it'd be a good idea to put myself out there in the public and commit to a devlog. So here I am. My plan involves weekly goal setting, some brief brainstorming, and then a review at the end of each week of what I achieved. I don't think I'll put up any test builds or anything, but I might do some .gifs. Fair warning that my art assets will be bad, because I tend to reuse random old assets or make them deliberately super shitty so that the look of the game doesn't obscure/compensate for the mechanics. The game I'm making is trying to be a thoughtful top-down/billboard 2D combat game with a focus on movement and avoidance of attack patterns. I want to layer a roguelike resource management game on top of that, but players won't get to that bit if the inner loop sucks so I'm focusing on the combat mechanics first. Anyway, watch on as I try to guilt myself into doing the thing that I like to do in my spare time.

I managed to have a bit of time before I go and get married, so here's a progress gif! In this gif: added the bounce-grab ability of the player to make throwing an enemy more of a strategic decision; importing an old-but-new-again 'dasher' enemy that attacks and then retreats, with a small chance of chain attacking; the player hit mechanic whereby any enemy that hits the player pauses everything else in the arena and then leaves, meaning they can't be used to build things; new 'bouncer' environmental object that throws bounces any enemies that are thrown into it back harder. Next I'm going to work on: importing the old-but-new-again diver enemy; introduce long-range attacks that provide an additional layer of danger that isn't tied to the enemy/building economy (but can be disabled by throwing enemies into them); trying to figure out what a good amount of enemies on the screen might be; replace some of the greyboxing art with something at least a little more interesting.

Hopefully the gif below works! It shows: Selecting an area of the overall work site to build; Going into that work site and seeing the buildings that need to be completed by throwing an enemy into them; Small throws that can be done at any time vs. large throws that need to be powered up while standing still; The completion of a work site by completing two buildings within it (actually only required one in this test room, but will require more in the future); Bouncing an enemy off two buildings to complete them with one throw (important once enemies are used up on throwing); The work site being completed in the main menu. I think I've got a much more straightforward mechanic (banking enemies off buildings) to incentivise smart play and I'm very near a vertical slice that I can give to players to try and see how it feels to them. I have the old AI from earlier versions that I can easily implement to provide more of a challenge. Unfortunately, now that I've gotten back into the project I'm going to have to put it on hold while I go work for two weeks and then get married and then work some more! But really looking to coming back to it and continuing on with this sometime in May.

Thanks Zero!

Whee, long time no post. So as may have been evident in the last few posts I made, I let my theory-crafting get ahead of making the game. The systems I was building in my head vastly over complicated the game; what a surprise. A combination of that and my day job getting more intense and leaving town more than a few times on my time off meant that I basically let the project kind of trail away. But! On a train from Tokyo to Nikko on my first real holiday in three years, I decided to find a good GDD and set out some rock-solid foundations to complete this year. So I have! I won't list it all here, since it seems silly to start wandering down the path that got me into trouble in the first place. But I think I'm on a more realistic pathway now, so hopefully I'll have some updates in the next quarter. Thanks again all for the encouragement and help, sorry I haven't followed completely through yet!

About to start streaming (~5 mins from this post). I'll edit this with the VOD uploaded to YT and tagged with timings once I'm done. EDIT: Here you go everyone! 4:00 - Phaedrus 2010 16:30 - (A Wish Upon) Some Kind of Star Drifter 36:30 - Awkwardness And Harmony 43:00 - Block Busters: The Black Case 49:20 - Cavorting Amongst the Corpses 1:04:48 - Celebrity Explainer 1:20 - The Garfing Garfo 15:51 - Christmas Is Canceled 23:20 - Concentric 35:00 - Dunkin’ Bronuts 37:25 - From Earth to Pluto 46:50 - General Interest 56:00 - Get Hoisted 1:09:00 - Hold on to Your BUTTON 1:19:20 - Ping 2:10 - Idiots Laughing 8:00 - Il Panino di Brutto Sogno 15:05 - Join and Undermine 28:20 - Knocking on Hell’s Floor 33:10 - Pizza Tonight! 40:00 - Serious Ma’am 44:30 - SHADOW of SOMETHING 55:00 - Shoot That Pizza 58:40 - The Boots, The Obelisk and the Eye 1:05:50 - The Mind-Tech Contingency 1:10:30 - The Real Monkeys 1:14:00 - The Rooster’s Stupid Secret 1:27:20 - The World Begins With You 1:57:45 - Veggie Panino Tactics

Yeap, I'll also be streaming as per usual but not sure of timing. I'll post in the #wizardjam slack channel whenever I do.

Such a good concept, I love the idea that perfect matches would be entirely boring and our flaws are what make things interesting. What engine are you using for this one?

Welcome! That premise sounds really interesting, are you looking to explore some social themes there?

This game is looking trash! Love the 'advanced AI'. Also like how you chose the scale of the can and how small the player looks like they will be compared to it.

Heh, that Ballz game always confused the heck out of me. Perfect visual style for the idea though!

Already looking smooth! Have you thought about how to complicate the routes? Are there going to be black holes or civilisations that you can accidentally fall in/destroy on your way?

Looking good, this could be the Mirror's Edge killer of 2017!

Oh my yes. Is that the taxi game from a previous jam where you had to do sick jumps and collect letters?

Yeah, this is the best. All the best with it, can't wait to make some bad gamephysics gifs in the end result

This is a fun idea! As myth said, Unity is pretty easy to slip into if you have coding experience and you've used it before. You could also try gamemaker as a good 2D solution.

Sounds cool! Are you going to stick to just human celebrities, or will we get some crazy combos?

This is a sweet idea! I will definitely stream me and my partner being Idiots Laughing.