GMC Jam Discussion The Stellar GMC Jam #4 Discussion Thread

Status
Not open for further replies.
P

PizWiz

Guest
I'm really tempted to turn Voyage to Alpha Centuri into a 'full' game for burning free time. I figure I need to make it significantly shorter than it currently is (thinking like 8 hours of playing instead of 495), and considering adding so more features such as random events, adding an online highscore board, and being able to save it so you can close and come back. I wanted to know what you all thought of this idea?
Honestly, friend, you should just keep making new games. Voyage to Alpha Centuri is one of the blandest space games ever. It's solid, don't get me wrong, just bland. Don't burn your free time on this game. Burn your free time learning and improving to make better games.

Also I'm full of salt, because you gave my jam game a 0.75 out of 10.
 
O

Oyakiiv

Guest
For anyone who's been having performance issues with Space Taxi, I mostly fixed that, and made a few other bugfixes as well. Figured I might as well create a new thread for it: https://forum.yoyogames.com/index.php?threads/space-taxi.27783/
ooh, I'm gonna have to remember to check that out later, cuz if I do it now I probably wont review any more jam games >_>

@Joh I have no idea how you concieved a smash brothers style fighter for this but I love it! currently my #2 right under space taxi ^_^
 
Last edited by a moderator:
  • Like
Reactions: var

ghandpivot

Member
My 4th and final video review is up. It contains:
Town to Town, Voyage to the Final Lands, Raftraftraft, CHZ, Self-Sacrifice, Ballooning over the ocean, caravan, Into the Earth, All aboard the spudship, infinity infection, Cat Power, Project_Dahlia (+beyonder seperately)

Cheers for this jam, quality overall was actually a step up from the previous one(s) which is super cool and there were a bunch of games that I had a blast playing.

My votes are also up! Now it's up to the rest of you to try to play as many games as you can too, it's the far most important thing when it comes to keeping these events alive :p

Oh, and @theonewhoisodd, do you include the devlog score in calculations for the final score when rating the games or is it only for "best devlog"? Just curious, haven't seen that format before.

@Misu
Usually, people just want to go and simply run the game without pulling a finger. Nothing more. Putting the people to do few tweaks for something that isn't an actual game (but more like an experimental demonstration that ended quickly) is just not worth it.
It's suppose to run perfectly without having the player doing anything. The afterwords are there to help in case it doesn't, which is so far only the case when played on integrated graphics cards (occasionally too, not always) or with scaling turned on. It's very gimmicky and wont run perfectly for everyone, and that's totally fine. Thanks for playing!


Oh, and finally I want to know why on earth one of my devlog pictures has 2000 views on imgur...

/Ghand out
 
Last edited:

The M

Member
The most common question about my game seems to be whether it's worth using the speed boost or not. The answer is that it is, in limited bursts. Boosting cost some fuel and heat but you go so much faster that you'll have lost less fuel when you reach the next fuel refill than you otherwise would have. On the other hand, it's harder to control your movements and you probably shouldn't do it if your heat is high. It's a good idea to go fast if you hit a rock because they heat you up like crazy (meaning you'll want to get away from them as fast as possible).

Now, the question is how do you communicate all this to the player? I apparently failed with that and I can't come up with a good answer. Any ideas?
 
F

Freedom2Fight

Guest
If you ever come across my entry, and you are somehow compelled to finish it, here are some things you need to know ( I should have included in the readme ):
- You cannot crouch walk or whatever you call that.
- You cannot kill sentry guns with the Override Device. It is not a gun. Though it is a reference to Rick and Morty.
- Most sentry guns can be disabled via control panels. ( Also the sentry gun is a reference to a show.)
- To push blocks just keep running towards it. (Dahlia says it in the game but may not be easily understood)
- Use Metal Boxes as defilade.

And that is all.

One other thing though. I made a mistake typing the instructions. Its not Press Shift. Its Hold Shift to Aim. Press Z to Fire. There is no need to press the buttons all at once.

To aim and fire upwards. You hold Shift and Up. Then Press Z to fire. I didn't think Aiming and Shooting upwards would be a problem. Its seems to be difficult for players. I apologize.

If you have presidential hands though can't help you there.
 
M

Misu

Guest
So far, theonewhoisodd and The M have both potential spot for Best Devlog in my book. Not sure what else to say since the seem to elaborate more than other members.

Also I just have to LOVE @nvrogers reviews although he only done very few but I have never seen someone in this jam who can do reviews excellently until now. Would be great to see him be able to review all entries.
 
T

theonewhoisodd

Guest
Oh, and @theonewhoisodd, do you include the devlog score in calculations for the final score when rating the games or is it only for "best devlog"? Just curious, haven't seen that format before.
Just including them for best devlog. Scores are the average score of theme, concept, presentation, and story.

So far, theonewhoisodd and The M have both potential spot for Best Devlog in my book. Not sure what else to say since the seem to elaborate more than other members.
You should give your vote to The M then. Seriously I just used my devlogs as a way to procrastinate and give myself mini breaks. He actually showed his progression through use of gifs and had a very nicely put together devlog.
 

Posho

Member
Reviews are up for Wraithious, dadio, TehPilot and TheFugue , and Posho.

Don't know if I'll make it through everyone, but I'll try.
I loved my review, man. So much truth in there.

I've been in over 20 jams, I think, and my rule of thumb is always to think of reeeally basic ideas and polish it like a turd but I never had to experiment with an open-worldish, craftish, exploreish, automatedish kind of game before so the feature creep hit me hard this time.
 

lolslayer

Member
I would just like to briefly remind everyone that we're here to make games and learn how to become better developers. Winning isn't the real prize here, and the reviewers are giving valuable feedback. If your game isn't reviewing as well as you'd like, well, we've all been there. This is an opportunity to learn from that.
If you adress this to me aswell, I don't care about winning, I just wanted to see reviews of the game I worked on so that I know how well I did it and what I can change.
 
M

Misu

Guest
I just reviewed 10 more entries today. You can all check them out if you like. I even reviewed @dadio 's entry. This time its something different...

Tomorrow I "might" do a live stream of few more entries during the morning (but it depends if I dont have any last minute errands for tomorrow). If you interested in checking it out, stay tune on the forum in case I mention if I do (during tomorrow that is).

Also Ill leave the stream link here just in case.

https://www.twitch.tv/misumeow
 
T

Thexel PIN

Guest
I just reviewed 10 more entries today. You can all check them out if you like. I even reviewed @dadio 's entry. This time its something different...

Tomorrow I "might" do a live stream of few more entries during the morning (but it depends if I dont have any last minute errands for tomorrow). If you interested in checking it out, stay tune on the forum in case I mention if I do (during tomorrow that is).

Also Ill leave the stream link here just in case.

https://www.twitch.tv/misumeow
Sorry, but I am new on twitch. How can I see the video?
 

dadio

Potato Overlord
GMC Elder
So Misus videos aren't archived then? That's a pity I really wanted to watch!
 
W

Wraithious

Guest
Reviews are up for Wraithious, dadio, TehPilot and TheFugue , and Posho.

Don't know if I'll make it through everyone, but I'll try.
Thanks for the insightful review I really enjoyed hearing what I need to work on and improve in detail! I am grateful for that. I shouldn't have made an rpg for a jam since no one really has time to get very far in it, and should have included a map, there actually are treasures in certain rooms with the keys needed to find the bosses. also I didn't realize my level up speech was drowned out by the music, in fact all the speech I put into the game is barely audible (on the start screen if you turn sound on then press start there's narrative there, barely hearable tho :( ) but there's a text pop that notifies you of leveling up. Graphics definitely are something I've been struggling with for awhile and you have given me some great pointers on what exactly isn't working out so I will continue to try and level up on that! Again thanks VERY much for your honest and very in-depth review! Also I noticed I screwed up the locks in both cave 2 and 3, in rooms cave 2 - 12 and cave 3 - 13 I put the doors in the wrong rooms! So you can't fight 2 bosses and therefore can't beat the game because the only boss that will show up is the first one, that burns me because I thought I had fixed that before submitting my game :(((((((((

 
Last edited by a moderator:

Posho

Member
Hey, kind of unrelated question to this jam anymore, but whatever.

I feel like I wasted so much time on art stuff for my game this jam that I left some pretty important aspects for my game unfinished. I'm thinking that maybe I should try working on a script library that I could use on future jams (not only the GMC kind). Do you think this is an okay thing to do? Was this accepted on this particular jam, for example?
 
O

Oyakiiv

Guest
now that I've gone through and given about 1/4 of the games at least a half-hour of playtime (or a full run-through if it was short) I have put up my CURRENT top 10.

will update as I play more.
 

dadio

Potato Overlord
GMC Elder
Posho - its allowed for every Jam, just don't push it too far (ie: don't have the entire game engine made beforehand) and it should be fine.
Worth noting tho that I think most people here do everything from scratch in the 72 hours.
The spirit of the Jam is more about trying new things and giving and getting feedback than winning.
 

Posho

Member
Posho - its allowed for every Jam, just don't push it too far (ie: don't have the entire game engine made beforehand) and it should be fine.
Worth noting tho that I think most people here do everything from scratch in the 72 hours.
The spirit of the Jam is more about trying new things and giving and getting feedback than winning.
Thanks. And no, I obviously won't be making a pre-made engines or anything. It'd be more like constants I want to have and UI/camera stuff that always takes me way too long to get right.
 

ghandpivot

Member
I tend to use 1 prewritten code in my projects for variables about input registration (key_right = max(vk_right,'D') etc). It doesn't save too much time but it's something you have to do no matter whan kind of game you make so it removes that dull part of getting started.
 

dadio

Potato Overlord
GMC Elder
nvrogers: In a world full of people who just don't "get" my work, it is a breath of fresh air to find someone who so intimately undertands and appreciates the true meaning and intent of my work.
(Cracked up laughing, cheers, added to my sig, lol)

PS: I actually really enjoyed making that spudship - I really want to make a "proper" *cough* game out of that someday.
 
F

FunkyB

Guest
You all should thank me. My bad game makes all your good games shine even more.
 
Last edited by a moderator:
0

0.Bytes

Guest
You all should thank me. My bad game makes all your good games shine even more.
In my opinion the cat animation looks really fun, the idea of a karate kitty is hilarious to me, I think you can develop this character more if you want to use it for future projects
 
M

Misu

Guest
Alright I did 10 more reviews for you all to see. I will do the rest that is missing tomorrow for then to do the scoring on Sunday.
 
F

FunkyB

Guest
In my opinion the cat animation looks really fun, the idea of a karate kitty is hilarious to me, I think you can develop this character more if you want to use it for future projects
Thanks : ) This being my second Jam, I was just happy to finish. Jam 3 here I come!
 
M

Misu

Guest
Btw, the reviews I have made i total so far were 31, I miscounted but dont follow the list on the side panel because it only displays 29 since it doesnt display very long names. Just scroll down the pages until you spot yours ;)
 
T

Thexel PIN

Guest
Im gonna be streaming today in the next 20 minutes from now. Also @dadio I dont know how that works since Im new to Twitch. I went to settings and enabled archive streams (not sure if that is it).

https://www.twitch.tv/misumeow
Well, I'm kind of sad I missed the stream. Will you stream more? In that case, will you stream games you've already tried off-camera?
 
M

Misu

Guest
Well, I'm kind of sad I missed the stream. Will you stream more? In that case, will you stream games you've already tried off-camera?
As much as I love to, apparently I think I wont because I had several complications during the streaming process (since Im new to live streaming and probably my set ups were bad). If I have the time to fix up the settings to get them working properly, then I will probably do a rerun of the best entries that won and do a rerun of the top 3 most WTF entries just for hilarious fun (if this becomes a reality)
 
T

Thexel PIN

Guest
So I recorded a no-death run of my game for people to see but my computer is so slow the whole recording came up lagged.
 
T

Thexel PIN

Guest
So I recorded a no-death run of my game for people to see but my computer is so slow the whole recording came up lagged.
 
N

nvrogers

Guest
Reviews are up for Joh, Pizwiz, Cat and Var, and Misu and Alice.

Some good games in this bunch.
 

var

Member
Reviews are up for Joh, Pizwiz, Cat and Var, and Misu and Alice.

Some good games in this bunch.
Thanks for the review, it was very imformative! The reason the menus took a while to load and the ship moved so slowly was almost certainly due to frame rate issues; it sounds like it was running at around 5-10 fps (this is fixed in the latest version).

And yes, it was pretty difficult to code it all in 72 hours. However, unlike many teams, we were sitting in the same room, so coordination was pretty easy.
 
O

Oyakiiv

Guest
I know I'm not ranking well, but hey alot of the comments are nice and constructive. So all in all I would say I did pretty well, since I really only worked on it for 14 hours, never actually finished a project before....though I guess finished is a bit loose here...and I had never tried making an arcade shooter before so...

yeah I think I did pretty well and will probably update Defector from time to time, just to see it at full potential with all the mechanics that I didnt have time to play around with and include, that little bit of plot that originally inspired the name, and the art that I kinda wish I had fixed up instead of wasting the last 2 hours I had putting in a boss battle at the end...

YES THERE IS A BOSS AT THE END! all in all it takes less than 15 minutes to actually beat the game in a single run...

I also learned alot from this as well, like I'm actually pretty good at pixel art (the ships look about as well as they do on paper)
and also how to use the OTHER function with scripts... never did figure that out before, only with the D&D....but now I can destroy all those workarounds I have in my other projects!

I learned other stuff...but I"m forgetful so I'm not sure what they were at this moment... it's 2:30 am, I'm ranting, I go sleep now...
 

dadio

Potato Overlord
GMC Elder
Reeeally hope I'm going to have time to play and review these things properly this time...
just had a qucik watch of some video playthroughs - some of these games looks freaking sweet in action!
 
  • Like
Reactions: Yal
V

Vonnbit

Guest
Been so busy lately that I couldn't play the games, sorry people! Will try to squeeze in some short reviews in a few days.
 
M

Misu

Guest
@nvrogers ok i have to criticize your review of my entry. First off, the game was incomplete. Second, the idea of the game we had was NOT a demo. It was suppose to be a game where you travel to different islands, interacting with more npc and go through dungeons with a story plot. The whole idea of the balloon was something I put up in the game at the last hour before deadline because it turned out i ran out of time since I spent 8 hours trying to fix a mysterious bug that ruined the terrain generation and height detection. Never got the chance to add those dungeons and story within those 8 hours. I actually solved the problem few days after the deadline, where it had to do with GM not accepting RGBA as a color format; it accepts BGRA in that order.
And lastly, if you knew that Game Maker is not meant for building 3D games, you would realize the type of work here is not easy at all. Not everyone can pull off any 3D models in games (in gm) especially if its animation, which is the hardest to pull. Anyway the real biggest flaw about this entry was that it was a complicated idea for a 3 day jam. Its not the right idea to go for with a program that limits 3D experience. That should have been the true flaw behind this. Even I understand my mistake. I thought I could have pull it off on time but my scripts werent ready to make any good 3D game at all.

In the end, I should have worked on something simplier and less time consuming for a jam entry. Thats pretty much jam lesson right there.
 
T

Thexel PIN

Guest
I made like reviews for 2/5 of the games and then grew tired of making them. I dunno if I should continue (since I already played all the games)
 
I've played through all the games and left some comments. I will find some time before the deadline to play through them all again to see if I still feel the same, maybe flesh out my comments.
Pretty impressed with some of the entries(good and bad), and oh my glob, got confusing with a few games with similar titles.
 
N

nvrogers

Guest
ok i have to criticize your review of my entry. First off, the game was incomplete. Second, the idea of the game we had was NOT a demo.
I should have made this more clear in the review, my bad. I do realize that the game is incomplete and that the original idea was not a tech demo. I also know that 3D in GM is extraordinarily difficult, especially on this time scale. What I was trying (and apparently failed) to convey is that I don't really give bonus points for the difficulty of the programming. Instead I reviewed what was there, but in hindsight it does come off as a little bit too salty.
 
T

Thexel PIN

Guest
I am still wondering what is that Juice bonus that @Posho has in his ranking.
Juicy Juice Hypotenuse Apocajuzz.
 

The M

Member
I have five games left to play. I'll probably post them and my final scores tomorrow.

Deadline is this weekend people, there aren't that many posts in the voting topic yet so take the chance to get your opinions out there!
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Top