GGJ 2016 - Cockamimey!

This past weekend was the Global Game Jam, a 48 hour blitz of game development & creation.  Participants can jam out to the yearly theme at one of hundreds of Jam sites from around the world.  First time and aspiring game developers meld with the local game dev scene to try and to create a playable game within the time limit.

My Jam location this year was at the New England Institute of Technology, having started a tradition with some friends of mine to do a new site each year.  It was a fun, exhausting, and brain melting time, but we were able to finish a pretty polished product within 48 hours.

The theme was "Ritual" and that first night we plopped down in a swimming pool in our hotel to do some aquatic brainstorming.  Floating around and throwing out every idea we could think of related to Ritual, we finally settled on doing a game about "Mating Rituals".  We knew we wanted to make a Gear VR game, so we settled on a game about Birds Dancing in order to win a mate.  Thus Cockamimey was born!

Cockamimey is a Simon Says type of game where you have to watch a competing bird, and copy their head movements and add your own to the chain in order to win the affection of the mate bird.  Players look around in VR and must watch carefully so they can mimic the moves.  The game was fun to make, despite running into a few hiccups along the way.  Originally we had wanted to do a multiplayer version of this (and we still might), but the first night I needed some additional software installed and the hotel internet was very slow, so I spent 4-5 hours just setting up my development environment before I could even get the Gear VR demo running.




But we did get it all set up, and Saturday was a blast of programming and development.  The other 2 people in the group: Ben & Dawn Taylor, are both phenomenal artists and handled all of the modeling, lighting and effects, and promotional art which was perfect as I handled all of the programming and level design.  One thing we did well was to keep the scope fairly small.  You only have to make six successful moves in a row to win the game, and the demo is short, sweet and gets the idea across.  And it's fun.

We had to keep the game small, and use as few effects as possible, as mobile VR can be rough on phones for rendering and heating.  We'll have to keep most of the scenes small like this, which works because the game consists of only three main characters.

The whole weekend was a blast and it was good to get back into Game development a bit as it has been a while since I've made anything game related.  If you have a Gear VR you can check out Cockamimey on the Google Play Store or at our Global Game Jam page, and if you check it out give us a holler and let us know what you think.

First Look at Tzarr - Global Game Jam 2014!

Good Wednesday!  I've got a video taking a look at the results of week one of production on Tzarr, including the rough basics and turn based game play.  Tzarr is coming along nicely so far, yesterday was tough, as I had a bug that baffled me for the entire day.  Finally I figured out what was wrong and fixed it and wham, everything magically worked exactly like I wanted!

The problem code snippet was this:

As you can see if you click on it, I was setting unit_grid which was the entire 9x9 grid to a shifted version of the move_grid, which was only 7x7 and contained the movement ability of each piece.

But the problem was that I was using different indices so it was rewriting over old sections of the array with 0 when I didn't want it to be.  I was already initializing the unit_grid array to 0s anyway in ClearUnitGrid(); so I just removed that line and everything worked perfectly!

But enough programmer talk, let's take a look at the video on Tzarr:

Honestly the game rules right now need to be changed a lot.  I played a game with myself and it was very easy to stalemate.  I'll be doing extensive play testing and making all sorts of builds to find a good balanced and fun rule set for Tzarr.

In other news, I'll be attending the Global Game Jam this weekend!  I'm super excited, I didn't think I would be able to get in, but because I signed up on the main site, even though they ran out of tickets, the head honcho said I was alright to come.  It's been a while since I've participated in a Jam (Since SBX: Invasion for the GMC Jam January 2013!) so I'm super stoked to get out and meet some cool people and stay up late like a youngster again.

I've been thinking of tons of ideas for all sorts of topics and my work on Tzarr has enabled me to work quickly with C# and Unity.  I think with a good team we could turn out something truly awesome!

Also, I just tried out Infinite Crisis, a MOBA by Turbine Games Inc that's still in Beta, and it's still under NDA so I won't say too much but I'll say this:  Sign up for the Beta, it's fun!

That's all for this update, I'll likely have a large update after the GGJ this weekend with the project my team has created and updates about how it went.

Cheers!

Jason C. / WakeskaterX

[WSS] Ludum Dare Coming up and Press Release

SBX:Invasion

  Well I'm gearing up to do a press release soon for SBX:Invasion.  I've got a list of a bunch of reviewers and writers for various websites and what not and I'll be pushing out info on SBX:Invasion to all of them probably  this weekend!


Also I'm going to be taking part in the Ludum Dare this year and I'm super excited!  It will be my first Ludum Dare and I'll be streaming the entire process.

I'll also be streaming for a few hours on certain days to start building up a stream audience and let people see what I do on the game.

You can check out the Ludum Dare here:

http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/

Cheers!

-Jason Carter-

WakeskaterX

[GMC Jam #9] SBX:Invasion - Entry 3 - Completed

SBX:Invasion:

  Well the entry is submitted on the contest entry page, and I got the first five waves of the game done.

  It's just a short demo, maybe 10 minutes or so, but it'll work for now.

  Here is the MediaFire Download:
http://www.mediafire.com/download.php?bp1l7u6i1pblg8v
  And here is the Sandbox Page:
http://sandbox.yoyogames.com/games/211944-gmcjam9----sbx-invasion

There isn't any sound in the game, and there are lots of things I want to add, but for now it'll give you a taste of things to come.

Today I woke up a bit late but I spent the last five hours getting the game ready for submission.  I spent the last hour before submitting it balancing resource management and acquisition from enemy drops.  There is a small random factor in how much you will overall get from drops, but I think I narrowed it down so that you shouldn't have so many resources the game is a joke, but you aren't resource starved all the time.

Things I still want to add:- More Stuff!  More Turrets, Generators, Walls and Buildings
- Interaction with Buildings (i.e. Be able to build more Miners from 1 building, etc)
- Explosion Effects
- Pause Menu - including cost descriptions of the basic items when you pause.
- Add costs to the Hud when items are selected (somewhere)
- More Items (other than the Build Item)  such as an item destroyer, an extra weapon, speed boost, other things to help assist you.
- A MiniMap (with enemy locations, ore locations, base and turret locations on it)
- More Levels!  With varying locations of portals and the base, limited resources and tougher enemies.
  note:  I might include more items in later levels too and keep the starting items for the first level limited.

Well, try out the demo and let me know what you guys think!

Cheers
~WakeskaterX~

[GMC Jam #9] SBX:Invasion Update 2

SBX: Invasion:

  So far things are going well.  I've had issues with views and had some bugs in the inventory system but at least for now I ironed out most of the bugs.  The player side groundwork is nearly complete, I need to add functionality to Turrets and Buildings and I'll need some way for the player to click on buildings and use the assets they provide.  (Such as making extra miners for the mining station, etc etc)

  The biggest thing that I probably won't get done before the competition is over is:  More information.  As an RTSish Tower Defense game, I know the player will want more information but coding that in with the type of view system Game Maker has takes some time.

  I think I will add a pause screen that shows the costs of items and gives information when you pause so that players can look at that if they need a reference.  Also there is the game help file with F1, but i know for the Jams not a whole lot of people read that.

  Well I have some screen shots!  Here you will see the two different modes (short and long flight modes) as well as the engine particle system and the GUI.  Two of the items are the Turret, and the Generator which powers turrets.  (This functionality still needs to be added in).

  The goal for today is to finish the core elements of game play so that tomorrow I can work on the wave system and start tuning costs/balancing enemies and defensive structures.

  The demo for the GMC Jam will be missing some ideas I have for the game as well, but they'll take a bit too long to implement so (like Player HP) they are canned for now.

Cheers!

~WakeskaterX~

 

[GMC Jam #9] SBX:Invasion

SBX: Invasion:

  I decided last minute to participate in the GMC Game Jam #9 and my entry is SBX: Invasion.  It's going to be a base defense game and I have spent the past 8 hours tonight (until 6am) programming some of the core features and designing new art assets.

  The game will feature a new ship modeled after the 3d model I made earlier.  Here is a little sample:

  So far I have the auto resolution for the screen size working ( i think ), I have programmed the initial stages of the building functions, I have got some zoom features for the view port to give better versatility and range on looking around, and a bunch of other small things I have got done so far (Like a particle system for the boosters)

The big things left are:  Enemy AI, Base System and graphics for all the items available to build, A Wave system to sent out enemies periodically and the GUI.

Some other things to note:  The Ship has 2 modes:  Long and short range, the graphic changes for the ship on each one and your maneuverability changes as well.

The contest ends Monday at 5PM so you can expect a working demo by then.  

I'm now completely and utterly exhausted and need to sleep some, but tomorrow I hope to get another large chunk of the game done.  

Kind of a last minute decision to join the Jam, but I had the weekend off so:  Why the heck not?

Also the Topic for the Jam is:  Science gone Wrong

and the handicap is:  You cant use any humans or humanoids in the game

So I'll leave out the characters from SBX2 and focus on game play and make a little tutorial or intro scene to explain the controls and the game.

Time to crash,

Peace,

WakeskaterX