Teljoor

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Posts posted by Teljoor


  1. This looks good! Seems like it is sort of a breakout-style game, but going on infinitely instead of level-based. I haven't played a game like this in a while, but some power-ups that I remember are: larger ball, wider paddle/ship, and multiple balls. Of course, those may not work as well with your 'continuous scrolling' design. If you add lives, then gaining extra lives could also be a power-up.


  2. Well, I didn't manage to finish everything this weekend. I've got all the systems in there, though, and there's four puzzles finished. I'd like to add a few more before the end to bring the total up to 6 or so. Designing puzzles turned out to be a bit of a challenge, too! I think I've used up almost all the cliché ones. There's a spot the difference puzzle, a maze, and a 'spot the liar' logic puzzle. All of them use the dialogue interface, so they're all multiple-choice. That kind of limits the kinds of puzzles that can work, but it should also prevent players from getting stuck. Not that that should be a problem, since all the puzzles are pretty basic.

    image.png.25108689812f4730e46eba1958f7ebda.png

    I probably rig up the intro and outro cutscenes and the main menu/credits by wednesday or so. Getting the game up on itch is the next step, and then I can check if everything works correctly with different resolutions and such. The time left over can be used for some non-essential features. I'd like to add some more dialogue animations, add controller support, and dress up the apartment a little more. I'm keeping it simple by using just basic 3d objects I can add in unity (so, cubes, spheres, and cylinders).image.png.32ef4d113ffed4059be76eba9a9e6664.png  

    Overall, I'm pretty happy with how it's turning out. I had some trouble during the last jam because I left too much until near the deadline, but this time I think I can add everything I planned to at the beginning.


  3. Looks good! My brother did something similar a while back (a puzzle game where you grow a ball by rolling over objects). If I recall correctly, he had made it so that the picked-up objects wouldn't actually stick to the point of contact, but would be moved somewhere in a predetermined configuration so that the the player object always remained spherical, and he just used a growing sphere for physics. So if you can't get the motion to feel right with just physics, you can always cheat! Having kind of erratic movements might be more fun in a game like this, though :).


  4. The dialogue system now more or less works, but I've still got to add dialogue choices and manipulation of boolean values, so that interactions can change the world state. To save time I'm not using text files but defining all the dialogues in specialized scripts for each interactable object. Each dialogue is a sequence of nodes. So, for example, this is a test script for interacting with the detective:

    	startDialogueNode = new DialogueNode("#Inspector!\n%#You're here!");
            startDialogueNode.SetSpeakerPicture(null);
    
            DialogueNode node2 = new DialogueNode("#This is just between you and me, sir,\n%#but I've heard that...");
            node2.SetSpeakerPicture(null);
            startDialogueNode.AddNextNode(node2);
    
            DialogueNode node3 = new DialogueNode("#Sometimes, text can be [RED]!\n#%...\n%#That means it's important, sir.");
            node3.SetSpeakerPicture(null);
            node2.AddNextNode(node3);
    
            DialogueNode node4 = new DialogueNode("#That's what I've heard.");
            node4.SetSpeakerPicture(null);
            node3.AddNextNode(node4);
    
            DialogueNode node5 = new DialogueNode("{Hmmm...}\n%(I should write that down.)");
            node5.SetColor(Color.cyan);
            node4.AddNextNode(node5);

    The special characters are interpreted by the DialogueGUI to trigger actions or adjust the styling. In the script above, '#' means 'talk animation' and '%' means a pause in the dialogue. I'm hoping to get a kind of similar feel to the Ace Attorney games. They do a lot with animation, sound cues, and text speed/pauses in that series to make the dialogues feel 'alive' without voice acting.

    wizjam6_3.gif.119e44aae478984d01810e06465bd361.gif

     

    19 hours ago, hedgefield said:

    Brackeys did a video tutorial on building a dialogue system, if you're doing it from scratch that seems like a good resource.

    Thanks, I watched that video tutorial after typing the description of my implementation above. That seems like a much more elegant way of doing it, especially editing the dialogue from the unity editor instead of using scripts. I think I'll stick with my current implementation, though, since I will probably need individual scripts for most of my interactables anyway in order to set the position and angle for dialogue. The use of animations to transition to and from dialogues could be useful for the puzzle interface. Hopefully I can finish that by tomorrow. That should be the last of the 'systems' needed for the base game (not including the menu, options, credits, and things like that).


  5. 1 hour ago, catherine said:

    This looks great! Are you building your dialogue system from scratch?

    Yeah. I know there are various Unity plugins I could use, but I like the idea of building the system myself to get a feel for how it works. Maybe I'll go back on that if it turns out to be too complicated, but I could hard-code a lot of stuff if necessary.


  6. My previous 2 wizard jam games have both been 2D, but this time I want to do something in 3D using Unity. I've used Unity before, but I never finished anything with it, so I hope I can learn a few things in the process.

    The basic idea is that you play as an investigator trying to find out the rooster's secret after he has been implicated in some crime. You interact with other characters and search the rooster's apartment for clues. At the end the secret turns out to be completely inconsequential.

     

    I'm aiming to have the base game done by the end of next weekend. To that end, I'll limit the scope to a one-room mystery with one interactable character in the room. There will probably be a few puzzles, the answers to which will combine to reveal a secret compartment or something.

     

    So far I've got basic 3d movement/mouse look and billboarded sprites for interactable characters.

    wizjam6_2.gif.feeb436d48107369506ecfe09abfa49c.gif

     

    This is a rough list of what I hope to implement. I'll probably have to cut some corners as I go along.

    • dialogue system
    • interactable objects
    • simple collision detection to limit player movement
    • a full environment for the rooster's apartment
    • music
    • 3 puzzles (probably just popup graphics with multiple-choice answer buttons triggered by interacting with an object)
    • graphics/narration dialogue for the start and end of the game

  7. I really liked the atmosphere in this. The game feels very cohesive since everything has about the same level of detail. Also, nice job on having instant screen transitions when you click to go to the next area.

     

    Puzzle spoilers:

    Spoiler

    I admit I brute forced the first puzzle by just randomly hitting the buttons. I had no idea the frogs were connected to the door, and since the crow was also making sounds on the first screen, their croaking didn't really stand out as unusual. I eventually got through Lord Gobbler's door. At first I was just spelling 'believe' and didn't get why it wasn't working. That puzzle might be easier if there was a 'failure' sound for wrong combinations.

     


  8. I just played this and enjoyed it a lot. Here's a few points of feedback:

    • It seemed like most of the customer's afflictions referred to only one ingredient in the inventory, but I got more impressive particle effects when mixing ingredients, so it wasn't really clear what the intended way to make cures was. I think the feedback at the moment you apply the cure could be clearer.
    • It was a bit cumbersome to have to pick up the recipe book every time to look up the ingredients. It might be easier to have the list just show up as a sort of menu when you press a button, or to have the list hanging on a wall so you just have to look over.
    • I don't agree that it is 'more than unfinished'. I didn't notice any big bugs with physics and such, and I actually tried dropping ingredients out of bounds, but they just respawned, so there was no way to get 'stuck'. The framing of the game is also pretty well done, with the opening zoom in, the book, and the part where you sign your name at the end.

    Overall, I think this game is really impressive for having been made in two weeks. Good job!


  9. Hello everyone!

     

    I didn't do a dev log this jam, but I figured I should at least announce the release of my game, 'The President's Dog'. It is based on the episode of the 'Something True' podcast about president Warren G. Harding's dog, Laddie boy. In reality, Harding wrote letters to newspapers and magazines under Laddie Boy's name. But in this fictional universe, Laddie Boy himself types them out, with your help on timing.

    This is a very short rhythm game with only two different inputs. I was trying for something similar to the Rhythm Heaven series of games.

     

    I didn't have as much time to spend on it as last time, so it came out a lot less polished than my wizard jam 4 game. I had to work fast to finish all the graphics. All of Laddie Boy's sprites are traced, and I just used an existing image for Harding's portrait. I also had to omit a proper tutorial. Still, I managed to finish it in time, so I guess it's been a good exercise in cutting corners to meet a deadline. Next time, I'll try to plan better.

     

    Looking over the other entries, I'm seeing a lot of great stuff. I look forward to playing other peoples' games and leaving some feedback during the showcase next weekend.

     

    Here's the game: https://itch.io/jam/wizard-jam-5/rate/152321

    dog_ss.png


  10. Does anyone know if there's an easy way to download all the games made for a jam through the itch app? I'd expect there to be some 'download all' or 'add all to collection' button somewhere. I ended up just manually adding all the entries to a collection. I think other people should be able to use that list by going to Collections -> Manage Collections and then entering the url below in the address bar, but that just seems weirdly convoluted.

     

    https://itch.io/c/110955/wizard-jam-4


  11. I'm on windows 10, too. Could be that it's not a common issue, of course. Hope someone else can test it too and report back.

     

    Edit: I think I've found the cause. I had the graphics set to 'Fastest', which was the default. When I switched it to 'Fantastic' it ran normally. The red samurai were also falling in different places. There must be some connection between the graphical quality and the way distances are calculated, or something.


  12. When I view the game in the itch app, it says it's not available for windows, but I was able to download the zip file and run it manually. It does run, but I can barely move (the character's just running in place and moving forward very slowly). Also, all the red samurai seem to be falling in one place in the corner near the start. Is this a bug, or am I missing something about the controls? I'm just holding 'W'.  (If it isn't actually supposed to work on windows that'd also explain it, of course)

    Just to be clear, everything's animating at normal speed, it's just my movement that's slow. 

     

    Edit: I just checked the app again and saw I could install it through there now. Maybe I overlooked it the first time. The movement issue is still there though.


  13. Since I've finished all the features I was planning to include I've just uploaded what should be the final version. There's two 'visual distractions' at higher difficulty. I'm actually not sure if most players will see them the first time. In my test runs they activate when there's around 30 seconds left. However, I didn't I think they'd probably be too annoying if you had to play with them active for a long time.
    I also added a sausage creator so you can mix-and-match features to make your own sausage. Probably should have done it earlier actually, since it could've helped when testing new facial feature sprites. It's just for fun though, it doesn't have any effect on the main game.

     

    On the whole I'm pretty happy with the end result. I'm glad I chose a simple concept so I had time to add a lot of extra stuff. That was fun mostly because I hadn't done it before in gamemaker, so I doubt I'll put as much effort into that aspect in future jams.

     

    https://itch.io/jam/wizard-jam-4/rate/101604

    wizardjam4_ss_4.png


  14. I did a test upload, so the game should now show up submission feed and be downloadable from https://itch.io/jam/wizard-jam-4/rate/101604 . Everything seems to be working ok. I added one 'visual obstruction' (ducks flying across the screen at higher difficulties). I'm not sure it really does much to make matching the faces more difficult, but it should at least be a fun surprise the first time you play it. Also, there's a bug in the current version where the sausages aren't properly randomized. Apparently I just have to call randomize() at the start, so that should be an easy fix.

     


    The game is pretty much complete.There's a few more things to do, but I don't foresee any problems finishing it by sunday. I look forward to playing everyone else's submissions as well.


  15. Quick midweek update. I've finished the menu system and the options and added enough facial features that I'd be happy leaving it like this, though I could add more if I have time. There's 6-7 different types for each feature (eyebrows, eyes, nose, and mouth), which means there's about 1500 possible combinations. I've also added a countdown at the start and a results screen. I think I'm on track to finish it next weekend. I'll aim to try uploading an initial version friday or saturday to make sure it works.

     

    To do:
    - some visual obstructions to make the game harder at higher difficulties

    - animation for full internalization

    - polish

    - 'how to play' instructions (probably just one or two screen with instructive screenshots and text). I'm leaving this one for last, since any changes I make before the final version would mean I'd have to redo the images.

    wizardjam4_ss_3.png


  16. On 11/26/2016 at 1:32 AM, voxn said:

    haha that's fantastic.

     

    idea: a timer to pick the right face, and an internalization meter which goes up with concurrent successes making it increasingly short.

     

    I was already planning to have some sort of combo meter, so I combined it with your idea. In the current implementation the internalization meter goes up when you make a correct match and down when you make a wrong match or the timer in the lower left runs out. You get a larger multiplier on your score depending on total internalization. The timer also gets shorter as internalization goes up, so it should be a challenge to stay at full internalization and rack up the points. There should probably also be some kind of visual effect for full internalization, but I haven't done that yet.

     

    General update:

    I've added all the features in my previous todo list. I also added a some simple facial animations (mostly blinking) to make the sausages look more lively. There's also a game timer to stop the game after a certain time period. I still have to work on that though, as it doesn't seem independent of the framerate right now (the same goes for the internalization timer). The screen is definitely a bit cramped/busy now with all the meters and timers, but I kind of like that, so I don't think I'll be altering it.

     

    To do:
    - menu system

    - balancing

    - some visual obstructions to make the game harder at higher difficulties

    - options (window size, fullscreen, sound levels)

    - 'how to play' instructions (probably just one or two screen with instructive screenshots and text)

    - more facial features!

    sausageGif.gif


  17. I'm a little late in joining since I didn't want to commit before getting the project off the ground. Also, I hadn't used game maker in a while.

     

    Concept:

    I'm making a game where you have to pick the right sausage face out of similar faces in a lineup, with Nick Breckon commenting on your performance. Since I've had trouble with finishing game projects I've started in the past I thought I'd keep it simple. The fun part for me is definitely feeding features into the generator and seeing what faces come out.

    Right now I've got the basic loop done (generate target, generate lineup, pick out a face, feedback, repeat). I'm hoping I can finish all the basics this weekend and then focus on adding extra features.

     

    To do:

    - increasing difficulty (more targets, more sausages in the lineup)

    - replace placeholder graphics (font, breckon face, lineup transitions)

    - add more facial features (also replace some of the current ones, since they look like the same face with a different expression)

    - sound and music

    wizardjam4_ss_1.png