Squires

"Welcome to the year 2145, [BRaIN 32]. In the face of ballooning human population, you and 44 other Biological Resource and Intelligence Networking System (acronym subject to change) have been tasked with constructing 45 Mega-Towers, where you will manage human power with the goal of preserving an acceptable percentage of human population." Hello all, I'm making a dystopia simulator. It's basically Civ Lite, where rather than overseeing an expanding global empire, you manage a single tower, constructing different sections of the building layer by layer. There's nothing revolutionary in the design at this point; just 3 resources (Money, Happiness, and Production) with a basic buildings/sections corresponding to each (Bank, Mall, and Factory). I have plenty ideas for other systems I want to integrate, such as random events deck that basically functions like Monopoly Chance cards, and buildings like Police Stations which will lower the chance of certain events like riots. Beyond that, we'll have to see how long implementing these elements takes. P.S. Ok one bonus idea: I'm considering including a "character" select where you can choose your BRaIN. Anyone know if there's a list of the brains that were accounted for on Important if True?

Ended up spending a significant amount of time this weekend trying to track down a memory leak, and have still been unable to find it. I'll see if I can solve it in the coming week, but this will probably end up turning into a post jam project.

Haven't really posted much, cuz well, progress hasn't been all that visually impressive. Basic menu functionality and gameplay systems are working now though. Hoping to clean up and organize the code a bit tomorrow so it'll be quick to add in more buildings and upgrades.

Happy Holidays! Inspired by this festive season, I've decided to create an Overcooked-style, task management game, where the goal is to get your chores done while keeping the pesky yule lads at bay. In order to keep scope reasonable I will likely only include 1 or 2 types of chores, but am considering adding a twist that will allow you to "cut corners", getting your work done faster, but increasing the likelihood of a visit from Gryla, the child-eating mother of the yule-lads. (source: Important if True 20: Christmas is Cancelled) Edit: Christmas is Canceled has been released and you can download it here - https://squires.itch.io/christmas-is-cancelled The Christmas holiday is upon the wintery Scandinavian countryside, and you've been tasked by your mother with preparing the sausages for the festivities. Unbeknownst to her though, the Yule Lads of lore are more than just bed time stories, and some of them have arrived to frustrate your sausage preparation duties.

Oh man, that's so much better. Thanks! I updated the game with that change, along with a menu that actually works, and some bug-fixes. Hope to do one more update to add in art later in the week.

I took full advantage of the extension and released the game with a couple minuted to spare. It doesn't have everything I wanted to include (but does it ever?) but I'm happy with completing a functional thing and learning multiple things about GML, especially with the Holidays and family time factored in. Over the next week, I hope to updated it with art (the thing I'm actually decent at) and a functioning menu. https://squires.itch.io/christmas-is-cancelled

Started implementing the Yule Lads, and while this isn't what was intended, it is slightly horrifying.

As cool as the sketches are, I personally am really digging the aesthetic of the numbers puzzle.

So I figured out today that I've been doing state machines wrong; well not exactly wrong, but inefficiently (I'm an artist, not a coder). Once I went back through the code and fixed that, the rest kind of it kind of snapped into place. It still looks ugly, but there's a full gameloop now with raw meat refreshing on the empty meat hook, and delivering a smoked sausage to the door increasing your score. My goal for tomorrow is to get a timer/countdown, a basic menu (new game/quit), and yule lad shenanigans, in before New Years festivities start with the family. Any art is almost certainly going to be a "post-launch" update. Anyway, here's a GIF of dishwashing, sausage smoking, and sausage delivery:

The game is starting to actually get to a decent point now, though due to some changes in plans with family/holiday stuff, I'm definitely further behind than I'd like to be. Regardless, I think I can get it to a decent point by Sunday evening. The basic sausage prep loop is ready, so what's left to implement is the overall game (ingredient spawning, delivery, and scoring), yule lad interference, and art. We'll see if that's attainable based on how much I get done tomorrow, but here's where it's at for now...

That logo is way better than it has any business being.

The aesthetic is definitely coming together. If you're still worried about clarity, maybe some more lit windows, possibly more dimly lit than the ads, could help?

Between work, class, and holiday stuff, it's been a pretty hectic week. I've rethought how I wanted the game to work and made it way more compact. This was primarily for aesthetic reasons (which I hope to get working on soon), but I also think it will help the game feel more focused and less empty.

Spent the latter half of the day attempting to do some future proofing organizing the image layers and, as well as adding in cooking.

Had to run some errands today, so didn't get a ton done, but it picks things up and puts them down.

[UPDATE] Signature Moves is now released! https://squires.itch.io/signature-moves This is my first game I'm "releasing" into the wild so any feedback (especially what still needs work) is greatly appreciated. [ORIGINAL POST] Hello all, This is my first Wizard Jam, and in fact, my first game jam in general, so I'm basically just following other's lead in making a dev log. I'm a full-time graphic designer, who's dabbled in Gamemaker over the past year or two, so my main goal is to keep the scope of the game limited to things that I already have some idea of how to do. That way I can actually finish it. Enough about me though. In light of my inexperience with coding, I've decided to go with the classic top-down shooter structure. The central mechanic that I started with is that the player does not move his/her character directly (via WASD or arrow keys, for example). Rather, any movement takes place as a result of the player's abilities (Signature Moves if you will), such as the knockback of firing a gun. I was inspired by immersive sims like Dishonored, to experiment with the combination of different mechanics, which I concepted over the weekend. Right now I have a pretty good idea of 8 Signature Moves I would like to include, but am going to hold off on describing them in depth until they're mostly finalized and implemented. Once the Signature Moves are working, the next step is creating enemies, which shouldn't be too difficult, as my plan is just to create an enemy type for each of the player's abilities. That will hopefully leave me this coming weekend to finalize some of the more complex game elements, like how the Signature Moves are selected, leaving the last 5 days for polish, creating a simple progression system, and doing all the things that took me longer to do than I thought they would. I'm not sure if I'll be able to post daily updates, seeing as my first post is already well after the jam started, but I will do my best to do a write up at each of the milestones I described above.

SIGNATURE MOVES POST MORTEM: Like with most things on this project, I'm doing this write-up much later than I planned, but it worked out well, as I stayed up way too late last night (aka this morning) doing some bugfixes, UI improvements, and most importantly, a tutorial. When I "finished" the game on Sunday night, I was pretty happy to have just made a full, playable game, even if I knew there was still a lot of work that needed to go into it. The next day, however, the game dev group in my area hosted a Demo Night for projects in process. As others played it and I looked at the game after getting some sleep, it became clear how rough the game really was. There were playstyles I hadn't accounted for, some of the additions I had made the night before had broken other things, and the game was all but inscrutable to players without me walking them through it. Despite all that, once players got the hang of it, they seemed to be legitimately having fun, which was one of the coolest feelings. Taking the feedback from those players and my own observations, I went back in over the last few days and fixed some of the most glaring issues, and am pretty happy with the result. Since this is my first game jam as well as my first "shipped" project, there's nothing too technical to go into, so I'm just going to jot down some things I learned: - Scope: I've heard from multiple devs to scale down every project by 50%, and then do that again. If you're also in the middle of a big project at work and apartment hunting, halve it a third time. I don't think the scope of my game was unreasonable, if I'd been able to consistently work on it nights and weekends, that's just not how the last couple weeks worked out. - Prototyping: My original plan, which I did not accomplish, was to have the core mechanics by the end of the first week. Looking back, I'm pretty sure I should have shot for earlier. I could have saved a ton of time by realizing that my original ability system was too complicated, not to mention setting more informed priorities. - Experimenting: Speaking of the ability selection system, I probably should have just built the simpler version first. I was not entirely sure how to implement the more complex system, but thought the idea would be more engaging than the Tetris-like system I ended up going with. Not only was it not, I fell behind on my schedule, working on a mechanic I would ebentually scrap. TLDR: When in doubt, make Tetris So ya, with that, I'm going to call this a Wizard Jam, though based on the feedback I've gotten so far, I'd like to keep working on the game. Since I'm a graphic designer first, I'm pretty bummed that I didn't have the time to put in the level of visual polish I wanted to, and there are still certain playstyles that kind of break the game. I would also love to add audio, enemy types, and maybe bosses, but right now I'm satisfied with the current package, and am already looking forward to taking part in Wizard Jam 6!

Thank you, both for the Itch.io tip, and for the submission advice. Looks like I get to take part after all!

Well the game's done, and unfortunately I missed the submission deadline due to some last minute bug fixing, and never having used itch.io before. Definitely had fun though and am planning on spending some more time polishing it. I'll write a more detailed write-up tomorrow, but for now bed time. Here's the link for anyone who's interested. https://squires.itch.io/signature-moves

Today was the first significant time I've been able to dedicate to the game, and while I'm not as far along as I'd like, the game is functional at this point. The game is definitely in need of some polish as It's probably not clear at all what's happening in the clip. The plan right now is to more clearly indicate which Move is being selected, along with possibly simplifying the entire system, as right now it's a little too difficult to keep track of everything. Basically the game works, but the amount of times it's fun or satisfying is too low compared to how often it's frustrating. Home stretch tomorrow.

Decided I wasn't going to skip out on posting for another day, regardless of how late it was. Over the last few days, I learned quickly that my plan of attack was actually pretty inefficient in that I needed certain elements of enemy AI and code reorganization before I could finalize the abilities. Two of the final Moves also ended up being more difficult to get right than I thought they would be. But anyway, here's what the abilities look like as of now: Dash Burst Decoy This was one of the Moves that I added to the "roster". It actually came about as a result of a tool that spawned non-player objects, which I made to test out the other Moves. It wasn't a giant leap to figure out that this could be a fun game mechanic... Swap ...especially when combined with Swap, which felt like a natural compliment to the new Decoy Move. I cut the other two abilities, Lunge (single target melee) and Strafe (similar to Dash, but shooting bullets to the side), because they ultimately felt too straight forward. The idea I'm going for is to figure out creative ways to combine the Moves, and make up for the inherent lack of mobility. Synergistic mechanics like Decoy and Swap felt way more tuned toward that goal than more one-dimensional attacks. Blast Explode Implode So in closing, I like how the abilities work and combine, but I still have a lot of work to do. It seems likely that I may not include differing enemy types due to time. Though I like the ideas I've come up with and don't think they'd be too difficult to implement, I'd like the game to have some semblance of polish, so I think that's probably where my time will end up going.

And... we're back. Unfortunately, due to some necessary late evenings at work, I haven't been able to work or write updates on this project nearly as much as I'd like. What I have done over the past few days is decide and implement the Signature Moves I will be including. There are two types; "Aimed" (in the direction of the cursor) and "Targeted" (at the location of the cursor). Dash: (Aimed) Move a moderate distance, damaging Enemies passed through Burst: (Aimed) Fire a short-range cluster of bullets, damaging/knocking back the first Enemies hit, and propelling the Player backwards Decoy: (Targeted - Anywhere) Creates a Decoy which exists for a limited time, drawing Enemies' attention and mimicking the player's next Move after a short delay Swap: (Targeted - Any other Unit) Switch the locations of the Player and an Enemy or Decoy Blast: (Aimed) After a short delay, fire a large, long-range bullet which damages Enemies passed through Explode: (Targeted - Any Unit) Damage and knock back any Unit in the surrounding area Implode: (Targeted - Any Unit) Pull in any Unit in the surrounding area These Signature Moves are mostly coded and working, other than the two abilities I added later on: Decoy and Swap. I'll go into the thought behind the addition/cutting of these abilities, but in the interest of brevity, will save it for my end of day update. Instead, to keep myself on task, here's my goals for the rest of the weekend: Saturday Add Enemies Set room boundaries Finalize abilities Sunday Basic Enemy AI Add ability selection/limit tool and UI Score/Combo system (Stretch goal) Bullet Time system (Stretch goal) Can't wait to show you guys the completed Moves and how they work together. Feedback is obviously welcome.