Zirrrus

[Release] Prepare for the Jelly

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It's an itchio!

The game is released, but I'll keep polishing it up during this week.

The game page: https://zirrrus.itch.io/jelly

The WJ entry page: https://itch.io/jam/wizard-jam-5/rate/149759

 

 

jellies_10_cube3.gif.5a1a90a13e010c5ba1203dff12f4bfc8.gifjellies_8_cube.gif.ba36d63161b4a764cd56d9a7e51a5d07.gifjellies_9_cube2.gif.a22241657dd244ef100a599c97be9309.gif

 

Original post with lots of outdated information below:

Let the Jams begin!

mmm_itchio_jamicon.png.798040a58eff7c58ec204f6eed50f5fc.png

It's a tower defense game with enemies based on all of your favourite jelly-related things!

 

jelly enemies

Not too sure about these yet, especially the locomotion. One idea is that the basic jellies and jellyfish are pushing the other objects like siege equipment. This can lead to problems where all the pushing jellies get killed and the other things just sit there. Upping the HP of the pushers over time might be able to solve that.

  • basic jelly/jelly(jello) mold - "slimes", move but have no abilities, different kinds/sizes with varying HP
  • toast with jelly - the toast absorbs some of the damage
  • jelly-filled donut - has a little bit of armor before its HP are reduced
  • jar of jelly - has lots of armor and reflects a bit of damage(to your towers or other jellies nearby), turns into regular jelly once armor is gone
  • jellyfish - is faster(?), has an ink-related ability(disable tower temporarily? cloak nearby jellies?)
  • royal jelly - sends out bees when damaged? could be some sort of boss
  • petroleum jelly - damaging(or just killing?) it causes the surrounding jellies to heal slightly

 

towers

All the towers are shooting pieces of *********(Ananas comosus), kiwi, mango and other fruit that prevent gelatin from setting. These will probably be upgradable(if there is time).

Not sure yet if these can be damaged by the jellies.

  • simple pea shooter - does low amount of damage per second to a single target
  • machine gun turret - does a high amount of damage for a short time, then has to reload
  • mortar - slow firing speed, single shots of high damage against a target with some splash damage to nearby enemies
  • splash - short range, does a very low amount of damage per second to all jellies in range

 

map

Tile-based. For now it'll just be a linear meandering path with no branching. If I have the time I'll first add some random generation and then try to maybe implement multiple paths.

I still need to decide if the tower's range and their splash damage will be based on an actual spherical radius or a certain number of tiles around them.

 

help

If you want to help out, at this point I could use some suggestions for jelly-related things.

And at some point I'll need a fun, wobbly piece of music for the game.

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That would be great!

 

I drew up little concept sketches for some of the enemies:

jelly_concept_1.jpg.81683c3f8b6e0386955607cd9bc56895.jpg

 

And one for the splash damage tower:

jelly_concept_tower_1.jpg.4b87ff0f7bbfec10ad993470fbbf3259.jpg

I'd like all the towers to fit with the food theme. The mortar might be a fruit bowl with attached catapult etc.

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Those concept sketches are really nice and cute (though maybe pink makes everything automatically cute)!

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Today I actually started doing some work on the game, well...the map editor.

mapeditor_5.thumb.jpg.4d702c9af29dcccabbdee9f9f2e9382b.jpg

You can draw a path by toggling the squares between wall and path(dragging is not implemented yet) and place the enemies' spawn point as well as the position of your base.

The game checks the path for errors(it has to be a single, continuous 1-tile-wide path) and if it does not find "walks along it".

Finished maps can be saved as .txt files, correctly formatted maps can be loaded. This still needs some work. And an interface.

 

I also made some button graphics:

mapeditor_6.jpg.7a496f440ba51a7d98a1334d3f1967dc.jpg

 

Hopefully the editor will be finished tomorrow, I really need to start on the game proper.

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Those icons look slick and I love the concept art. Interested to see those concepts implemented.

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Thanks y'all!

I'm getting a little nervous because I still have not started working on the main game...but the map editor is pretty much done!

You can now save and load maps, although there is still a weird bug when changing spawn and base location on a loaded map.

The interface for that is still a little rough but at least now you get a hint text when hovering over a button(mouse not pictured for some reason).

mapeditor_7.jpg.8aa828f66254616864809b7d1874c13d.jpg

 

I also made a first version of the main menu:

mainMenu_4.gif.a749e2b77b20b929beb7747444b5be24.gif

 

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Didn't get much done today. Ripped apart a bunch of the code and restructured it so it could be used outside of the map editor.

Then I implemented a level select for the main menu. Which means that now you can make/edit, save and load maps, even select them to be played...at which point you run into the lack of game.

 

I also made a first draft of the game UI, which takes up way too much of the screen currently:gameScreen_1.gif.1ed3f577ae4c2d39442dec359a39e847.gif

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That main menu is really cool, and the colour gradient on the map editor makes it look very swish!

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gameScreen_3.gif.18305b20d57a99ed2f25a74417588179.gif

 

More code-rejiggering and stuff today. Getting maps to load properly was a pain.

And there's a game-adjacent thing now, yay!

 

I might release an editor-only version of the game in the next few days so people who are interested can check that out already.

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Today's progress started slow but in the end I was able to get towers targeting, tracking, attacking and killing enemies in.mapEditor_13.gif.dde06a9894b018d60326e610ceb9acbd.gif

 

jam.png.72927174be80f1e231dd49085fea484d.png Tomorrow: some art! jelly.png.08b4ee1b7da618ba523d8de6dca5ef1e.png

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Eh, didn't get all that much done today. It took a long time until I was able to get an animated mesh into Unity:

jellies_5.gif.06f3e30b6529e9d5842165fb9b2deaac.gif

Not perfect but good enough for now(it's a hopping slime btw).

 

Then i made some simple towers:

gameScreen_8.jpg.ca4a93fa5cbac688a94ef510fd320b97.jpg

My original idea has fallen by the wayside for now, i want to have a working game before I tackle such complicated things, there is still so much to do!

 

Here's a geiff of what the game currently looks like(enemies are still being spawned using the spacebar):

gameScreen_9.gif.06380566fa79f63d72c60c75422b1f41.gif

 

Edit: I just uploaded a version of the game so that you can try out the map editor. A resolution of 1600x900 is absolutely recommended, I still have not gotten the hang of Unity's UI system, so at other resolutions the interface will only be partially visible, warped or broken. Feedback(and bug reports) are very welcome :)

https://zirrrus.itch.io/jelly?secret=axUJwaxT1wk6Xppo9Du6WRQ1s

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3 hours ago, Zirrrus said:

I just uploaded a version of the game so that you can try out the map editor. A resolution of 1600x900 is absolutely recommended, I still have not gotten the hang of Unity's UI system, so at other resolutions the interface will only be partially visible, warped or broken. Feedback(and bug reports) are very welcome :)

 

The jelly blobs and towers look great. I'm not sure how much of this you have done so far, but you might be able to fix your UI issue by adding a scaler to your UI canvas and anchoring all your UI elements to the correct edge. That worked for me, at least.

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@One8Two8, yeah, I started doing that. But setting the scaling handles correctly is still a bit of a mystery to me.

 

Just some art stuff today.

towers_3.jpg.f71bd2f9e48c4920628b7e18d7acd58c.jpg

gameScreen_10.gif.9ffa43525dc5004259ba52fb26f45941.gif

The flickering is a bit intense on some of those crystals. The charging effect only really works for the sniper tower.

While the crystals help, I need to do something to make the towers stand out against the background a little more.

gameScreen_11.gif.a98801afbca8e4172f405ce656decb44.gif

Ambient occlusion helps quite a bit but might not work for/on older rigs.

 

I think I should probably close the actual game loop tomorrow and then work on the spawn system and more enemy types.

 

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Thanks! :)

 

Not much to show today. I hooked up a bunch of important logic.

Jellies can now have armor(negates damage until depleted) and damage absorption(reduces the damage each time they are attacked).

Towers now cost money. You get some back when you demolish a tower and each slime killed gives you some.

Each time a jelly spawns an "energy meter" goes down and they can't spawn if there isn't enough energy left. Your base takes damage from slimes that reach it.

I also started working on the different "attack modes" of the towers(single shot, projectile and area).

gameScreen_12.gif.2a3ab7a4b8f5dfc418c90d47208f09c2.gif

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Took a bit of a break today and spent some time in nature. I came back with 2 sheets worth of notes about the game.

The tower behavior is pretty much finished, now I just need to polish them up(the gems are pretty much just "glued on" right now).

towers_basic.gif.6f31800e1e768d94ebc04e88fd9e9ba7.giftowers_sniper.gif.8be4642100557ac4e625bca6cbdfdfe5.gif

The basic and sniper tower use the same behavior, just different numbers(damage and attack frequency)

towers_missile.gif.1411607bf3edaf1092fd4633a3d817c2.gif

The missile tower shoots little homing magic missiles that even switch target when the original one gets killed before they arrive.

towers_area.gif.afd1adec7c7ff751f5f84ef4cc96a06a.gif

The area of effect tower does a tiny amount of damage to all targets in reach.

 

Tomorrow I'll work on enemy types and the script that spawns them.

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I wrote a first version of the spawning script today, that still needs a lot of tweaking. I also created more enemy types(currently there are 5), most of those still need proper models and textures.

gameScreen_14.gif.5c9067e0a48062ce6d58ce194ad078be.gif

Now I probably need to start balancing...oh boy. No clue how to do that.

Then there are still a bunch of small/not so small things to

 

 

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Today a whole bunch of interface stuff got finished. When placing towers you can see their range, you can select and upgrade towers...

 

Oh, and I put in the music Atlantic made for the game!

 

gameScreen_15.thumb.jpg.b44cbcee90979827b588440f5367119f.jpg

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