WIZARD JAM 2016 // Welcome Thread

[Stack Smashing]

Making progress. ('Space' to flap)

For reference I used the second Flappy Bird tutorial and skipped the death animation because I was anxious to play with sound.

 

Super good, glad you're getting the hang of it. Skip the other FB Tutorial/Generator stuff altogether btw. It only teaches features that lead to confusion in the long run. At least I am confused right now how to get Phaser Plug-Ins to work correctly with its System. (Though the auto load server stuff is nice etc.)

 

That prototype looks cool Vasari. Will it play a bit like Pinball, like spots in the level against which you have to shoot the enemies to gain points? (Probably reading to0 much into your description of the enemies' behavior.)

[Vasari]

That's one of the concepts I'm thinking about. I'm not too focused on the details right now, I'm just trying to get the physics working reliably. I could end up even doing a multiplayer mode if there's enough time (Which of course there won't be, but it'd be nice.)

[logorrhea]

Looks like I'm a bit late to this topic, but I'm unreasonably excited for this jam 

 

Haven't picked a topic yet, but here's some that are sticking out to me

234: Mister Neighbor

230: A Farewell to Junior Mints (I really like this for some reason)

173: Ridonkulous Rift

59: Rolling with the Pope (as someone elsementioned)

 

and of  course

 

50: "Farewell, Video Games" or "The Shitty Wizard" (namely the shitty wizard part ;-)

 

I'm fairly new to game dev, but it's something I'm very much interested in. I've only participated in one other jam before, and really had a great time with it! Considering posting in the team-building thread, but I'm not sure...sometimes I like doing things my own way.

[zerofiftyone]

Welcome, logorrhea!

 

The team-building thread is also useful for if you need a specific contribution to your otherwise solo project (music for example). 

[Stack Smashing]

That's one of the concepts I'm thinking about. I'm not too focused on the details right now, I'm just trying to get the physics working reliably. I could end up even doing a multiplayer mode if there's enough time (Which of course there won't be, but it'd be nice.)

 

That's cool! I'm currently planning to do a local multiplayer game as well, inspired by the likes of Samurai Gunn, Nidhogg, Foiled etc. We'll see how that goes. I haven't yet found a specific idea that's interesting enough to try.

[clyde]

@logorrhea

You aren't late, we are just super early. I'm just trying to get familiar with this game-making toolset before the actual jam.

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Btw: the Phaser page has a bunch of examples where it runs in the browser and the code is directly beneath it, Super useful.

http://phaser.io/examples

I like the api page, but it doesn't include examples there like it does in the Unity documentation (which I've always relied on heavily).

I was going to do the Asteroids tutorial this morning, but I got side-tracked trying to understand why I these scripts don't have to declare variables with their type. This 'var' thing feels strange.

[Stack Smashing]

Btw: the Phaser page has a bunch of examples where it runs in the browser and the code is directly beneath it, Super useful.

http://phaser.io/examples

I like the api page, but it doesn't include examples there like it does in the Unity documentation (which I've always relied on heavily).

I was going to do the Asteroids tutorial this morning, but I got side-tracked trying to understand why I these scripts don't have to declare variables with their type. This 'var' thing feels strange.

 

Yes, the examples are really helpful. Also I love the feature that each method in the API Docs links to its place in the source code. This can really clear up some confusion regarding the general functioning of Phaser or what a method really does.

 

The dynamic nature of JavaScript can be really nice and flexible, but it also leads to situations where it is unnecessarily hard to determine what a function expects. You can use the already mentioned TypeScript if you really don't like it. It's a superset language developed by Microsoft that allows for full Object Orientation, and compiles to really clean and readable native JavaScript.

But you can also just kinda roll with it and see if you get used to it. There's some debate over which is better in general - dynamic or static typing - and both sides have good arguments, so it can't be bad to have some experience in both kinds of languages.

[osmosisch]

Looks really cool Stack Smashing. I tried to get a JS thing off the ground during the winter jam, but got sick and didn't finish, now it's on the backburner (https://github.com/DanielReid/beast-tamers).

 

Also, I didn't try to use a realtime thing because I wanted to make something turnbased anyway.

 

I may try my hand at something realtime this round if I can find the time. I'll see if I can follow along.

[Vasari]

Update on my prototype:

 

 

It works! It's not perfect yet but I got what I wanted out of it. If anyone's interested I'm going to put a proper explanation in the team building thread later on.

[Ben X]

Would it make more sense to start a new thread for that as (it sounds like) it's not to do with team-building?

[Vasari]

I assume like previous jams we'll do individual threads for games, but I'm looking for some other people so I'll need to post in that thread. Or do you mean the current team building thread is for people who don't already have ideas?

[Ben X]

Oh, sorry, it sounded like you were going to post an explanation of how you got your prototype working in there!

[Merus]

I'm pretty sure I'm going to do "The Wizard". I have a cool idea for it and, more importantly, an engine, of sorts.

[cschwartz]

I'll try to participate as well.

 

I've got two ideas:

• Alt-F4 Delete Local Content: A Monkey-Island-Insult-Sword-Fighting inspired game, set in a LOMA
• The Classic Alien Form: A classic roguelike in an Alien inspired setting

I personally like the first idea a bit better, but but the second one probably suits my personal skill set better.

[Space Anchor]

Just popping in to say I'm totally doing this. No particular plans or ideas or anything to share yet, just stating my resolve to take part so the public shame of coming up short'll stop me wimping out. Thanks william for introducing me to Tom Francis's GM tutorial series - what a superhumanly cheerful man!

[Knight]

I think I'm going to take a go at this. I missed the previous jams (and I've never made a game), but this looks too fun to not try at least. I know there's a team building thread - and I'll make a post there soon™ - but for a first post, this seems like a good spot.

[zerofiftyone]

Welcome, new people

[phill]

Hello all. Long time listener, first time wizard jammer. Looking forward to playing all your games and making something vaguely enjoyable for others to play!

[CEJ]

Haven't decided yet if I'm doing something! But I sure felt disgustingly nostalgic when looking through old idle thumbs episodes for some reason!

 

Anyway here are the titles I found inspiring.

Mostly idle thumbs, but the Terminal7 ep. title was the first to jump out at me!

 

Anyone is more than welcome to use these ideas even if I do/don't.

 

Terminal7 26: Life as a  Dung Beetle     <-- Could be a classic SNES platformer but you are a beetle that have to roll a dung ball through all of the levels.

Idle Thumbs UK 2: Conversation Killer   <-- You are some kind of grim reaper that kills by calmly conversing your target to death?
Idle Thumbs 186: Doctor DNA                <-- some kind of puzzle game where you are completing DNA strings
Idle Thumbs 147: The Titan Falls           <-- just sound ridiculously dramatic and I like it, I imagine this would be a literal titan guy where you avoid birds and stuff while falling down
Idle Thumbs 137: Data Complete           <-- a fast paced game where you have to fill in missing Data in some kind of data stream?
Idle Thumbs 122: Mario's Picnic             <-- mario clone where you eat food but the goomba are trying to steal it?
Idle Thumbs 89: The Ship Economy       <-- you manage the on ship economy: the ship will move forward when you are making a profit but backwards when you are taking losses

[Broxxar]

Random Thumbs: the idle thumbs random episode selector!

Here's yet another version of the page panzorfork and mattishii cooked up. Now includes Playscape LA and let's you filter which Podcasts you want to get random names from. I also spent a bunch of time styling it all pretty like because I've been brushing up on web development.

[zerofiftyone]

Random Thumbs: the idle thumbs random episode selector!

 

Here's yet another version of the page panzorfork and mattishii cooked up. Now includes Playscape LA and let's you filter which Podcasts you want to get random names from. I also spent a bunch of time styling it all pretty like because I've been brushing up on web development.

 

Wow, it's so fancy! Do you mind if I use it on the front page?

[Broxxar]

Wow, it's so fancy! Do you mind if I use it on the front page?

 

Not at all, go right ahead!

[Toureiro]

So, according to that random episode selector I'm doing "Breckon's Similar Sausage Face"... Challenge accepted!

[jan]

Hi, I'm new here. I've never really made a (finished) game before but I'm excited to try and work on something for this jam anyway. I've been thinking about doing Zombie Train Beyond Earth as well, but I might choose something different if I can come up with a better idea in the next three hours...

[Vasari]

Welcome! Remember you don't have to start your game right away, just have it submitted by the end date. Take the weekend to think about it if you need to.