GMC Jam Discussion The Tropical GMC Jam 38 Discussion Topic

Status
Not open for further replies.

The M

Member
I, too, am done! This one was great, challenging and I'm happy it ended well. I didn't have quite as much time for polish as I'd have liked but the game is fully playable at least, which isn't always the case šŸ˜

 

Toque

Member
Worry not! I just approved your post (and some others, too)!
Generally, these posts to approve are visible by me and Dan, so whoever compiles the Jam ZIP sees the publicly visible and approval-awaiting posts alike.

Also, I wouldn't say the Jam is almost over, there are still over 12 hours left (vide countdown clock. So if there's something you still want to add, go for it!

Also, for the sake of our internet connection and the planet, please make sure to use the appropriate soundtrack compression options.
Right now, your file has 125MB according to itch.io. While maybe sometimes this huge filesize is a result of assets having objectively that much information, in most cases it's because of forgetting to pick the correct audio compression option (it happened to me, too).

So please go through all your background music resources (leave SFX as-is) and in "Attributes", choose the Uncompress on Load - Not Streamed. With that your BGM should weight much less in the exported file.

Happy jamming, will check your game once submission period is over. ^^
Alice Swoops down and saved the day......
 

Toque

Member

GUESS WHO, HOSTAGE RESCUE!
created by Mightyjor (a.k.a. Jordan Thomas)

View attachment 33931View attachment 33933View attachment 33932View attachment 33934


Hi Everyone! This is my first game jam and I would love for you to play my game! Hope you enjoy!

How to Play:

1: USE YOUR PHONE TO LEARN ABOUT THE HOSTAGE

2: DON'T SHOOT THE HOSTAGE


3: SHOOT ALL THE TERRORIST
Thats looks good. Looking forward to playing that.
 

TehPilot

Member
I don't know why I have always left level creation for dead last, but I sure did it again for what feels like the fourth GMC Jam in a row! Graphics, sound, all the mechanics I could want... all done but little "game" to speak of. (I really need to improve my workflow and focus habits during these...)

Currently have two levels down at least, shooting for eight or so (minimum five) and then I'll upload my game (and catch a little bit of sleep before I have to log on for work...) - I've gone ahead and posted the logo with the name in the games thread at the very least!
 
R

Red Phantom

Guest
Please go through all your background music resources (leave SFX as-is) and in "Attributes", choose the Uncompress on Load - Not Streamed. With that your BGM should weight much less in the exported file.
Just wanted to re-iterate Alice's comment. This is the first time I've done this and it reduced my game size from 32mb to 9mb!

If we all do this then the GMC Jam download package will be much smaller, making the voting system more accessible.
 

Pixel-Team

Master of Pixel-Fu
Whew! I just finished my game, Night of the Winning Dead. I feel like I've been the living dead for the last 4 days. Never worked so hard in my life. 16 hours a day for the full 4 days. Here's a couple screenies. **** UPDATE**** 2:14AM PST, I spent a couple hours making some improvements, mainly an indicator of how many zombies have come out of the crypt (Last screenshot) as well as a fast forward feature, thanks to my lovely wife's criticism. (Husband of the year, here I come!) There's not much more I can do in the next 3 hours, so that's a wrap. I wanted to do some more character stuff, like have military guys you had to eat, but I ran out of time. Perhaps I can revisit the game after a bit of rest.

DOWNLOAD LATEST VERSION
The latest release fixes a bug that caused draw surfaces not to clear between levels.



NOTWD_TitleScreen.png
spr_how_to_play.png
NOTWD_Screenshot3.png
 
Last edited:

woodsmoke

Member
Didn't participate this time and spent a lot of quality time with my girl and our dog on the weekend. I didn't like the theme and worked a bit on my main project instead.

I haven't seen any "rock, paper, scissors"-inspired games. That's what I would have tried.
 

Micah_DS

Member
Well, I'm afraid I won't be completing my game in time. It's not worth playing at this point, but perhaps it is interesting enough to see, so here's a video:


The project was too ambitious for a jam (at least, for me), and I knew that from the start, but I still had to try.
The original idea wasn't even realized, still, I don't regret trying - not at all. I learned a lot from this, and it's a step in the direction I want to go.
 

Chaser

Member
Despite my valiant efforts and up all night creating sprites, sadly im ruling myself out now, i have to much still to do and i will never finish on time. bit off more than i can chew. :) good luck everyone else. il look forward to playing your games. :)
 

Ninety

Member
Got mine in just in time (10 minutes to spare).

Screen Shot 2020-08-31 at 9.52.34 pm.png

I ended up having less time than I'd hoped, but I'm pretty happy with what I managed to achieve! It's a puzzle platformer called Igor where you pick up and drop rules to change your abilities and the world.

EDIT: So I guess the jam is over?? Dammit Dan, I want a post about it
 
Last edited:
Great job everyone! I'm excited to play everyone's game.

I'm happy I was able to get a completed product out, but I fear I didn't have enough hours into mine to be competitive.
 

Evanski

Raccoon Lord
Forum Staff
Moderator
If anyone finds out how to activate the debug console in my jam game, I'll be both happy and amazed
 
Last edited:

Selek

Member
*there is a 46th entry which is linked underneath the main zip but the link is either broken or set to private. Download it later if you're feeling kind.
That would be my entry. I've asked Dan to remove my game from the voting, as I did not meet the deadline -- and more importantly, I omitted my splash screen and instructions on how to play.

If you're still curious, you can find the game here: Tobruk. The hard thing to grok is that it's a "simultaneous execution" or "WeGo" game, in which you plot your moves before any are actually executed. (You click a Brit, left click on a hex within its range to give it a movement order, but it doesn't move then; you click the rest of your Brits, give them orders, then hit Enter to execute both your moves and the AI moves.) My UI doesn't make this clear enough, alas, even though the game does work and is relatively bug-free.

Anyway, good luck to all of you still in the competition. I'm out.
 
Last edited:

Mercerenies

Member
As a note to reviewers, some people seem to be experiencing an odd visual glitch when starting up mine and Alice's game (Three Rules Standing). If the game looks super weird when you first start it up (i.e. textures are the wrong size), then switch to fullscreen and back (hit F twice), as that seems to fix the problem.
 

KPJ

Member
For anyone wondering, the alarms/lasers in my game (Robber Rules!) are the red lines going from the floor to the ceiling, just a quick note in case anyone gets confused! (It might be obvious what they are, but I'm just leaving this here since it wasn't specified in game)
 

Selek

Member
EDIT: I've asked Dan to remove my game from the competition, as I submitted a broken link and thus didn't comply with the deadline. More importantly, I omitted my splash screen and rules instruction, and my wargame "Tobruk" is a complex wargame with an unusual simultaneous-execution ("WeGO") model. So no one understands how to play. FYI, you give all orders before any units actually move.

How to play: (1) Left click a British (brown) unit; (2) click on a highlighted hex to order the unit to move there during the execution phase; (3) give orders to more British units; (4) hit Enter to execute all your (and all AI) orders simultaneously; (5) press spacebar to step through each phase of the execution phase.

I didn't realize I'd be unable to make devlog entries after the deadline, so my "game topic" post has no devlog to speak of. Live and learn! So here's a little substitute after-the-fact devlog. (Should I put the following paragraphs in a spoiler to save forum space?)

1. My game Tobruk is a wargame set in North Africa in 1940, featuring Operation Compass, the British effort to push the Italians back from Egypt. You play as the Brits. The goal is to take Tobruk, Bardia and Sidi Barrani within 20 turns; VPs are awarded for each city, and for units killed. I used a "WEGO" system: the player and AI plot orders, and then the computer executes them simultaneously. You plot orders by left-clicking on units and left-clicking on a destination -- a UI feature I described at the top of the screen, but not in sufficient detail. Combat happens as the turn is executed by the computer. Messages report combat results. Units can take two hits; if hit once, they get red markings and reduced stats. This I didn't explain well at all.

2. On "three simple rules," my idea was: resupply, move, attack. But I didn't stress those three basic rules enough in the game itself, especially supply, as my supply rules were too cobbled-together to describe in a pithy way.

3. The game does model supply, in a basic way. I implemented basic pathfinding (flood or breadth search), which was good enough for orders, but not good enough for supply. Supply requires a more sophisticated search algorithm, and I didn't have time for A* pathfinding. I used brute-force workarounds for supply instead.

4. I spent a lot of time on Day 1 just researching the historical orders of battle -- what units to put where. I probably should have thought of this ahead of time, lol! Still, I learned from the exercise.

5. I am pleased that I implemented victory points and victory conditions fairly early. This is my first "complete" game: it can be played from start to finish, it has coherent rules, and it has specific victory conditions.

6. I waited too long to worry about presentation things: opening screen, basic rules instruction, music, sound, etc. I didn't want to have to click through an opening screen every time I compiled the game. I guess that's dumb, because I never got around to implementing one. You guys just suck it up and click thru the opening screens every time you test?

7. Likewise, I found music I liked but had trouble integrating it into the game and gave up on it. I did manage to make sprites for all 30+ unique unit counters, but I ran out of time to make adequate alternate sprites for damaged units, so I had to slap on red squares indicating damaged sprites instead. I couldn't find any public-domain "tank" or "infantry" sounds and gave up on that.

8. I wanted to implement waypoints for ordering units, but that was a bridge too far.

9. I spent too much time on features important to me that likely no one will care about! E.g., tweaking my AI, trying to refine supply rules, implementing stacking (!), hex overlay, toggle-able units, hotkeys to show hex control, etc.

10. I'm proud of my effort, but it could be a two year project! Next time I will design a less ambitious game. I am pleased with how much I achieved, but 3 days is just not a lot of time to make a detailed wargame about Tobruk, complete with historically-accurate orders of battle.

Anyway, I hope people will play my game, not because I expect to win anything (I certainly don't), but because I'd like feedback on how to improve. Thanks.
 
Last edited:
As is the usual trend, because I didn't do much work on my entry this time (the weight was done by the others), at the moment I sort of feel like I could review them. We'll see, but I'm optimistic I'll have video and written reviews this time around.
 

Selek

Member
I've asked the mods to exclude my game from the voting. I submitted a broken link because it was 4:30 a.m., so by rights I should not be in the competition. Perhaps more importantly, I forgot to include my splash screen with instructions on how to play, and my game is a complicated "WeGo" wargame that needs a tutorial.

Here's a short version of the instructions, FYI. To play:
1. Left click a British (brown) unit.
2. Left click again within the highlighted area to give it a movement order. (It won't move til the execution phase -- that's what's probably most confusing.)
3. Repeat for your other British units.
4. Hit enter to end your turn, and watch the execution phase begin.
5. Hit spacebar to step through the execution phase as your orders are carried out, one hex at a time.
 
Last edited:

HayManMarc

Member
So, here's a little rundown of a post-mortem of sorts concerning my stab at programming our game, Wizard's Pub Crawl:

First off, our team. Siolfor The Jackal and I have been threatening to team up for quite a while. Neither one of us had a lot of time (initially) to dedicate to the jam, and the theme wasn't very inspiring to either of us, so teaming up this time seemed like it might be a good idea.

We agreed that I would do the programming and he would do the art and music. This made me happy since I love me some original Jackal jam tunes! I knew we had to keep the scope as small as possible because I had to work a full time job during all the days of the jam. Turns out I spent about 6 hours each day the first 3 days, and 9 hours on the last day. 27(+/-) hours all together.

I had already had the idea to make a 'shooting gallery' kind of game, so for lack of a better idea, we went with it. A shooting gallery game seemed like it would be easy enough. No tricky movement mechanics and collisions to mess with, like in platformers and top down dungeon crawls, right? It took us a while of chatting ideas back and forth, and with me being an after-work lush with my fancy beers, the idea devolved to be about an alcoholic wizard. You play an alcoholic wizard who needs to keep a medium amount of intoxication to perform as well as possible (aiming). If you got too sober, you'd get the shakes. If you got too drunk, you'd get too wobbly. Could be fun. Maybe.

It took me the first day just to get a basic scene going. Using really bad placeholder art I made, I was able to get baddies moving around on a scrolling background. I tried to code for dynamic level dificulty progression by using algorithms to determine enemy movement speed, spawn times, shooting frequency, level length, scroll speed, etc. I tried to think ahead and include these things. It worked in the long run, but i think my particular method was wonky and confusing.

Day 2, I was able to get the sober side of the tox meter aiming working, sorta. Im not totally happy with it, but i knew I could spend days tweaking on it, so I called it good enough for now. Maybe, if there's time, I can do more with it. ("If there's more time..." hahahaha!) My eyes and brain was shutting down, so this was it for day 2.

Remember, I spent 9 hours each day at work (running around a grocery store, stocking, cashiering, helping customers) before these coding sessions.

So day 3 was spent getting the "wasted" side of aiming working. I used two sine waves, one vertical and one horizontal, to get the swaying wobble effect of an over-intoxicated wizard trying to aim. Not perfect, but like the shaky, sober side, it would have to do. The wobble took forever to get right. I started working on adding food and drinks to affect the drunk amount, then came the problem of clicking/selecting only one instance under the mouse. I started looking at my code to figure this out, then woke up a couple hours later with a kink in my neck.

Day 4 was the roughest,, but also th most productive. I had a pretty easy day at work, so I was feeling good when it was time to code. But also, I was feeling a bit overwhelmed with what was left that needed doing. Still didn't have level progression. No damage points. No food or drink items on screen, so the tox meter wasn't fully functional yet. Didnt have the pub in place. No game intro, title screen, help screen. No in-between levels info screens. Everything that made this thing feel like somewhat of a game was done in the final day of 9 hours. By the time it was over, I was a wreck.

There were many more ideas we wanted in the game, but lack of time and over-scope got the best of me, yet once again! Haha, oh well. I had a lot of fun making jokes with Jackal and sharing progress along the way. Im still pretty happy with the goofy game we made.

Hope you all enjoy it, at least for how awesomely stupid it is! Lol! Thanks for reading.
 
Last edited:

Alice

Darts addict
Forum Staff
Moderator
@filiprb Regarding our entry, Three Rules Standing:

1. You can fix the weird scaling issue with going to fullscreen and back (press F twice); or you can stay in fullscreen, I guess, since the crux of potential performance issues doesn't seem to be caused by drawing specifically and game looks better at 1920x1080 or higher fullscreen
(especially if the "beefy" laptop you mentioned has dedicated GPU; my latop uses processor-integrated GPU, and I didn't experience much difference in performance compared to windowed version)

2. You can mitigate the performance issue by holding the speed-up button (Shift); it speeds up walking, blocks shifting, etc., and also fast-skips through the dialogue.
The unwanted side effect is that if also skips through the introductory dialogue if you hold Shift while moving between rooms, but you can repeat room-specific dialogue by pressing Q.

3. As for what to do: the general objective of the game is to explore the world, find control panels and disable rules in panel-specific districts. There are four districts total, that you can recognise by different music.
You clear districts in linear order - once you disable rules in one you solve the puzzles entirely in the other, without going through other districts midway - so hopefully exploration won't be too overwhelming.

How to get started:
Go through the rooms in following directions, starting from the beginning: north, north, west, south.
At this point you're introduced to the rules system and need to navigate specific rooms while respecting the room-specific rules (earlier rooms also have rules, but they're inconsequential).

After the room with essentially walking through a straight line, the real puzzle gameplay begins.

Hope this helps. ^^
 

Yal

šŸ§ *penguin noises*
GMC Elder
I wish there were a way to actually heal beside hoping to get the "money heals you rule,"
The shop occasionally has a "HP Max Up" upgrade for sale (it's not guaranteed, but the probability is much higher than any of the guns) which also fully heals you. Maybe I should've made it guaranteed to always be present...
 

JosephEllis

Member
The shop occasionally has a "HP Max Up" upgrade for sale (it's not guaranteed, but the probability is much higher than any of the guns) which also fully heals you. Maybe I should've made it guaranteed to always be present...
still a good game nonetheless, and the aesthetics alone are good enough to overcome any ragey aspects. cloaked and evanski can attest that i was excited for this one!
 

Bart

WiseBart
I couldn't figure out how to replace the mask, so i couldn't get more than ~40 seconds of gameplay. The turning was a bit weird, and super sensitive, and going down the elevator just brought me into a white void. Not sure if I was missing something but I couldn't figure it out.
Thanks for trying my game! Guess I'll try to clarify some things since proper instructions didn't really make it into the game.

You can replace masks at a trash can. And to get your infection level back to 0 you can wash your hands at a sink. That's all done using the Space key. It's the key used for interaction.
The elevator is confusing alright. The exit at the metro level is on the same side as where you got in so you're facing the other way when the elevator arrives at the bottom level. It also takes a bit long before it gets there...
I really should've added some visual guides to make things more clear. But they didn't make it in in the end...

Hope these hints can help a bit :)
 

JosephEllis

Member
votes aren't officially counted until the end of the 2 weeks, right? looking at some other votes (and bart's reply while i was typing this), there seem to be some things i didn't get due to me being smooth brain and not bad-game-design, and will probably change some of my rankings
 

Alice

Darts addict
Forum Staff
Moderator
votes aren't officially counted until the end of the 2 weeks, right? looking at some other votes (and bart's reply while i was typing this), there seem to be some things i didn't get due to me being smooth brain and not bad-game-design, and will probably change some of my rankings
Yup, the voting ends at September 17th, which is more than 2 weeks from now. So there's plenty of time to get falimiar with the entries, and perhaps revise some votes.
While you are at this, could you please give our game (Three Rules Standing) a feedback? I noticed that among dozens of games you reviewed our has no comment. ^^'

(by the way, I approve your correct usage of "smooth brain" even if I don't think you're one)
 

Alice

Darts addict
Forum Staff
Moderator
Just noticed this:
The folder for the game Grow a Plant by Poize is empty, there is no game to run.
I guess that's a problem that needs to be fixed.
It's fine on my side, and other reviewers also had no issue.
Maybe you have an overeager antivirus that moved the game to quarantine or otherwise tampered with the entry? Some games - especially made in GM:S 1.x - are prone to false positives in antivirus checks.
 
C

Calepiaro

Guest
Just noticed this:

It's fine on my side, and other reviewers also had no issue.
Maybe you have an overeager antivirus that moved the game to quarantine or otherwise tampered with the entry? Some games - especially made in GM:S 1.x - are prone to false positives in antivirus checks.
Oh ok I'll take care of that then!
 

Mightyjor

Member
Guess Who Hostage Rescue by Mightyjor

Click and shoot!, I like the rules being clues but there not rules they are clues, its pretty fun game but gets repetitive after awhile
Thanks so much for the feedback! I know how much time it takes to get through all these games and write about them and I appreciate it.

I love the aesthetic, incredibly psychedelic and creative. I can tell a lot of effort was put into the little details to make this game feel unique. The concept was also pretty interesting. It reminds me of the game 'Fingered!' by Edmund McMillen. The biggest criticism I can give is that I think the clues, as they are, make the game too easy. Sometimes you only need like 1-2 clues to find the hostage. I think that introducing 'negative' clues (i.e. the hostages DOESN'T have red hair, or DOESN'T have blue eyes) would've made things more interesting. You could also maybe make more clues based on things not related to their appearance., like their position on the screen or position relative to others, for instance. Overall, an interesting gameplay idea that was a little too easy with a rather impressive aesthetic.

Great name btw.
Thanks so much for the feedback! Iā€™m so glad you enjoyed the artwork...I completely agree about the game being too easy...I watched my wife breeze through the whole thing in about 3 minutes. Those are some great suggestions! Thanks for taking the time to go through these and add meaningful criticism!
 
Last edited by a moderator:
Status
Not open for further replies.
Top