GMC Jam Discussion The Cosy GMC Jam 39 Discussion Topic

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Micah_DS

Member

Bart

WiseBart
My entry's also up!

I got some great help from @TheSnidr on this one, so a big thanks to him for that!
The animated models you see are his, as is the underlying SMF code to make all that work, and the water fog shader.
Credit where credit is due :)

I'm looking forward to playing the other entries!
 

GameDevDan

Former Jam Host
Moderator
GMC Elder
My entry's also up!

I got some great help from @TheSnidr on this one, so a big thanks to him for that!
The animated models you see are his, as is the underlying SMF code to make all that work, and the water fog shader.
Credit where credit is due :)

I'm looking forward to playing the other entries!
Basically a joint entry then :p
 
I'll try streaming the entries again since it was so much fun last time.
Going to get it set up again over the next couple of days, so if you're interested in joining me, let me know. That way I can make sure to hold off playing your game until you're available if possible.
Just got to work out what times might be best(and days too I suppose).
 

SoapSud39

Member
Six Feet by SoapSud39

Beautiful art and great story with some awesome voice work. I think the mood and theme is great and I love the interaction between Claude and the priest. Music was cool too. The biggest problem with the game I think though is the speed of it. Everything is just too darn slow. Most of the challenge is about going back and forth over and over again without any work and it ends up being mind numbing. The inclusion of a fast mode where all speeds are doubled would go a long way I think. Great game with a lot of potential though. I really enjoyed the cutscenes, though I basically had to skip all the levels past level 3 or 4 to be able to see them. Last cutscene was great also, though I couldn't really understand what the Claude guy said at the end. Overall, very good game.
(from your voting topic post)
First and foremost, thanks for playing and writing a review, and I'm glad you enjoyed some, if not most, of my entry.
However, I couldn't help but notice two things in particular: (1) you played the game correctly and (2) it wasn't Claude speaking at the end.

(2) In the epilogue cutscene, it was not Claude speaking but a plague doctor (who were supposedly often quacks and mostly there to just count deaths), but I think that mistake is my fault, since I had to omit what few voice lines Claude was going to have (he would have a higher pitch voice). If it were him speaking at the end, I think I would have made the two character designs even more similar. (hope this clears things up a bit)

(1) Maybe the game is a bit (or a lot) slow for a jam game, and I think I would be inclined to agree if I weren't the one who made it. However, I would also argue that from a thematic/mood standpoint, the slow pace is fitting. I mean, you do play as a child who has to bury a bunch of bodies. It is hard work (disclaimer: not my own experience). But maybe it would have been better if gameplay were real-time? (maybe not, since time is meant to increase based on the action each turn) Also, if this means anything, I had intended to make each day start at different times to account for level difficulty (based on the fastest possible time to gain full points), so you would have to find ways to do things faster if you wanted full points. Well, I didn't get there, so maybe don't let that change your perception or judgement of the game.

On a related note, some tips for "Six Feet" gameplay, in general:
General tips (things that you may have already noticed or will very quickly notice, like lose conditions) (and also basic mechanics I didn't explain anywhere):
  • I don't think anyone will, but don't run out of time (bury every body and talk to Jerome by sunset)
  • bodies have to be buried at least one tile under a surface tile (so one tile equals 3 feet)
  • the strength of throws is based on how far away you click (grid based) (grid y position as well)
    • don't hit Father Jerome with dirt
    • don't throw the bodies too hard
  • don't let crows reach the cart, right click on them to throw dirt at them
  • don't carry or throw a body within 6 feet (2 tiles) of a farmer
    • dig up a carrot and right click on a farmer to make him leave
    • you can also bring the carrot to the cart to gain a point
  • Claude can only jump one high, and can dig one next to him or one diagonally to the side
    • don't trap yourself
  • putting a loose dirt object on an underground tile turns it into solid dirt
    • this is an easy way to trap yourself if you're not careful
  • don't fall more than 2 tiles
  • don't bury more than one body in a grid
  • don't remove crosses after placing them
    • crosses can only be placed above buried bodies
  • give the carrot to the farmer to make him leave
    • I may have omitted this from my readme, and I guess a lot of (ie most) people didn't realize...
  • you can give the carrot to the farmer or put it in the cart by walking up and right clicking on the respective object (when the tooltip shows up)
  • you can throw dirt at the crows to knock them out of the sky
    • you can also remove the bodies from the cart, and they'll stop descending
Nuanced tips: (having to do with coded mechanics)
  • it's faster to throw all the bodies 2 tiles at a time than take them one by one
    • I think if you click 2 tiles away and some tiles up (to a certain point) the body will fly faster and Jerome won't get mad
  • if a body stays underground, Jerome won't get mad if it goes fast
  • it's faster to bury bodies in columns (not the same grid), a single cross counts for both or all three (etc.)
  • if you're behind Jerome, you can throw a body harder (don't let it go in front of him)
  • if you take all the bodies out the cart, the crows don't go for them
  • if you stay close to the cart, crows will stop descending (until you leave)
  • some farmer levels are possible without giving him the carrot
    • it is also possible to bury the farmer by taking out the blocks under him
    • if there are less than 2 other dirt blocks around any given dirt block, it will fall
  • the carrot on the December level is a red herring turns out it is possible to get the carrot on the December level
  • you can dig deeper than the tile right next to you if you click the dirt tile (instead of the empty one right above)
    • found out after watching part of @EvanSki 's stream
If you want a challenge, I encourage you to speedrun full points on levels (in terms of internal game time) (full points = crosses on all bodies and carrots to cart if not necessary for farmer to leave)
for this, see above spoiler-ed tips
also, my instance_count is always at 200+ because I've never actually tried learning to use tile-based collisions before 😬 (never really needed to) and didn't want to learn it for the jam
 
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GameDevDan

Former Jam Host
Moderator
GMC Elder
I haven't done many jams, but how did 2/3 the amount of last time's games manage to take up 50 more megabytes??
I know it's not great... I think people need to remember to compress their music when adding it to the GM project as the #1 cause of bloated file size.

Some games will obviously just be big because of art or whatever and there's no way around that.
 

Micah_DS

Member
I know it's not great... I think people need to remember to compress their music when adding it to the GM project as the #1 cause of bloated file size.

Some games will obviously just be big because of art or whatever and there's no way around that.
I agree that uncompressed music is the biggest offender. If anyone reads, I personally recommend "compressed - uncompress on load". I wonder if putting up space-saving tips next jam would help?
I've also said it before, but stereo is double the size of mono, so that bulks up quick too, though I don't expect that's contributing much because mono is the default IIRC, and I expect many jammers just don't change the settings at all (?), so most sounds are probably left mono.

@EvanSki Thanks for doing the video play/review of Flufferpuff. I laughed at your description of "flying around, pooping, and eating cookies". Sorry about the volume, I seem to have trouble getting that right and I didn't get a chance to implement a volume slider. I think my music mix is a bit on the harsh side as well. I appreciate your feedback and I'm glad you got some enjoyment out of it. :)
 
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Neo_Kesha

Guest
Btw, people that played Hole in Space... Did you finish it? Because i am worried people might think game endless, but it actually ends when you close all holes. And progression works in such way that more holes you close overall slower they appear.
 

Mightyjor

Member
Real nice game I like it. The story/concept, the art, the music were all really on point. I beat the whole thing on easy without too much trouble - as you'd expect - I might play again on a harder setting later but I got the general feel for the game. Interesting mechanic being able to see how much damage the monsters would do to themselves before you make your own decisions about what to do next. 1 bug: the HP bar is always longer than the box it's supposed to be in by about 1.5x lol.
Thanks so much! I’m really glad you enjoyed it. And yeah, I found those bugs (and some it doesn’t sound like you found) just after submission. If you ever do want to play it just for fun, I would recommend checking out my updated version on the itch page. The game was much better balanced for higher difficulties and I fixed the healthbar as well (that was a dumb oversight from when I changed the length of the sprite.


However, I couldn't help but notice two things in particular: (1) you played the game correctly and (2) it wasn't Claude speaking at the end.
Yeah I definitely got the feeling I was missing something as I was playing. I couldn’t for the life of me figure out how to get past the villagers so your comment helps a lot. I’ll upload my video once I’ve finished all the games so you can see in real time where I got stuck/frustrated.


Btw, people that played Hole in Space... Did you finish it? Because i am worried people might think game endless, but it actually ends when you close all holes. And progression works in such way that more holes you close overall slower they appear.
I didn’t realize it had an ending. It seemed pretty much impossible to close them all...I didn’t realize they appeared slower as it went on though. I’ll try to give it another shot
 
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GameDevDan

Former Jam Host
Moderator
GMC Elder
Btw, people that played Hole in Space... Did you finish it? Because i am worried people might think game endless, but it actually ends when you close all holes. And progression works in such way that more holes you close overall slower they appear.
ANSWER: no - I felt like my bullets were getting more powerful / I was defeating the holes better each time, but I still figured it was endless. I may go back and try it again tomorrow.
 
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Neo_Kesha

Guest
Basically, if you reach the end, you will get this message:
1606842132826.png

When i entered Jam i still had my amazing, but dull Enterprise job for CISCO, but two weeks ago i got job offer from Saber Interactive as a Gameplay Programmer (I am at AI team!) and now i work on amazing AAA project. Hey, my childhood dream came true, i am at the top of my life. All what i wanted.
So when Jam started i was like "Ugh ough i have no time and energy" so i decided to make something very little and funny with some inspiring message. But it seems i failed little bit, sorry :з
I will also play all of the games soon and make my ratings. Wish you all luck!
 

ghandpivot

Member
The instructions are far too much to take in all at once especially with just a wall of white text on that black background
Yes, that is a crappy way of showing what is actually a fairly simple game to control. I had no time.

And if these online highscores are working then everyone else needs to up their game lol.
Wait what, the highscores should be blank... 🤨
Where they all like "Snakey" "ghand" ghandpivot" "asdasasd" and so on? If that's the case then my playtests have somehow been exported with the .exe...?
 

Toque

Member
@Lt. Farfetch'd

glad I read your description cause I was a chicken farmer and chickens don’t fly. But it’s an Australian bird so I get it.

so I’m going dumpster to dumpster.... is there an end or level to complete?
 
A few "bonus" dialogue paths for "Five Minute Mystery": (as at least one person has asked about it and it was hinted at in my devlog.)

Re-Interacting with objects will bring up new dialogues (when it runs out it will repeat the previous one).
Queues a dialogue when you unlock the upstairs door. You took the key without reason which is rather thief-ish.
The father tries to use it (re-interact for second dialogue), and he takes credit when it opens.
If there is no dialogue up and the music hits its loop, the clock will chime.
 
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Josh Chen

Member
A helpful message for anyone who plays our game, Where Creatures Roam!

Here's a quick screen recording of getting through the portal to the final boss level in a little over 4 minutes. If you're stuck at any part or want to know how to defeat the different creatures effectively, this might be useful to you. But the battle after the portal is for you to figure out! Hopefully more people can get to that point now.


We recommend upgrading your damage at least 5-6 times before entering the final battle, for your best chance at winning first try.

Have fun!
 
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Lt. Farfetch'd

Guest
@Toque a bit of a product of the game being rushed on that one I think. Each bin has a certain amount of trash in it, and the objective is to eat all of it. 😂 But since bins replenish your energy, that might mean that you don't get all the trash first go. I reckon we should've included a little trash meter on the outside of the bins so that it was clear, and maybe even a HUD element to display the number of unemptied bins.

Thanks for playing! And sorry for the confusion. 😅
 

Toque

Member
@Toque a bit of a product of the game being rushed on that one I think. Each bin has a certain amount of trash in it, and the objective is to eat all of it. 😂 But since bins replenish your energy, that might mean that you don't get all the trash first go. I reckon we should've included a little trash meter on the outside of the bins so that it was clear, and maybe even a HUD element to display the number of unemptied bins.

Thanks for playing! And sorry for the confusion. 😅
Ok so stay longer in each trash to make sure you eat it all? Or you need to visit more than once in each trash?
 

Toque

Member
My favourite part of the jam has been watching streams of people playing games and chatting / joking about the entries.

Thanks @EvanSki for today’s stream.

If people stream please post here, much Appreciated as I don’t follow the other areas.

thanks again @EvanSki
 

Toque

Member
@Poizen

I like how you used a old mechanic into a interesting game.

my mouse controls are wonky. Jittery.
Am I missing something??
 

Pixel-Team

Master of Pixel-Fu
Got my votes up HERE. Despite there not being as many games this time around, there were a lot of really good ones. I wanted so many to be at least in my top ten, but there were more than ten that I loved. This was so much fun, and I'm looking forward to the next one. I'm going to still be playing many of these in the next few days, but the rankings are staying put. Great job everyone.
 

Evanski

Raccoon Lord
Forum Staff
Moderator
For the people who play my game
I did follow the theme
but saying who the pathetic creature is a spoiler even tho that It wasnt obvious in the game.

ummm. heres a hint

Filicide
 

GameDevDan

Former Jam Host
Moderator
GMC Elder
Wait what, the highscores should be blank... 🤨
Where they all like "Snakey" "ghand" ghandpivot" "asdasasd" and so on? If that's the case then my playtests have somehow been exported with the .exe...?
Oh they were blank, that's what I meant. That everyone else would have to up their game because I was the only person on there. I am guessing they were just local ones then ;)

EDIT

@EvanSki thanks for your streamed playthrough of the Frootinis! It was really fun to watch your progress - it's so funny being sat here willing you to get past certain traps and then letting out a huge cheer when you make it :) (especially the boss fight, when you had the small revelation about how to do it I was like AWWW YEEEEEAH BUDDY, GIT DAT WIZARD".

EDIT 2

The Frootinis by GameDevDan, Allison James
This is an exceptional effort for a game jam game, and there's an interesting game mechanic where you control the individual arms of the frootini to move around and hit switches. Interesting level design, and power-ups are included. I ended up playing this through to the end, and I dug the boss fight, even though I probably got 10,000 frutinis massacred before I finally won. I think this one deserves the top spot, mainly because it used the game theme, was original, had a start, and an end, and above all was fun to play.
Thank you! I'm so glad you enjoyed the game :) don't feel bad about killing the frootinis. They're in a better place now.

It's unfortunate that GameDevDan knew the theme all along when the rest of us had to play hangman, with GameDevDan strategically revealing letters that would suggest that we were going to be making Pandemic themed games, but hey. The strategy worked, leaving us all unprepared, unlike GameDevDan, who had at least the broad strokes down weeks in advance.
Haha, if only you knew! I do tend to think of some ideas in advance... but right up until the last minute my game was going to be about a man who gets turned into a slug and has to become human again. But in the end he falls in love with another slug and decides not to transform back. Then when it actually came to the jam I was like "wait this is all story and no mechanics" so I just dumped it and came up with the Frootinis instead :D ... "Help I've been turned into a slug!" - the jam game that never was.
 
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Poizen

Member
my mouse controls are wonky. Jittery.
Am I missing something??
I did do some shenanigans where the game captures the mouse inside the window. But it works fine on my PC. I don't know if there are potential problems with other setups.
 

Alice

Darts addict
Forum Staff
Moderator
I thought...
There may have been some oversights on digging mechanics, like being able to dig lower than right next to you.

That being said, how did you get it???
I first went near the carrot area, dug a staircase next to the pillar and dug two cells underground below the pillar. Then I covered the staircase and dug the dirt supporting the pillar, with two cells below carrot covering the hole and carrot being nicely delivered next to Claude.
Then I went back, claimed the carrot, arranged the bodies one to the left of cart, two bodies just to the right of the cart and the remaining bodies spread evenly further (I kept tossing the bodies en masse when advancing).
After that, I started digging two cells below the bodies (dig one, throw the dirt, dig another, fill it after body falls in, cover the hole with dirt).
Then for the last burying part, make the staircase near the cart, dig a cave below the cart, throw one of two bodies in the case, cover up the cave and staircase.
After that, just place all the grave marks - this body layout is roughly optimised for least possible distance to walk with grave marks.

So yeah, being able to dig lower probably is one of the things that make it possible.
 

SoapSud39

Member
So yeah, being able to dig lower probably is one of the things that make it possible.
I just tried it again, and it turns out it's possible even without the botched digging mechanic.

I should probably change my guide....
 

TehPilot

Member
A few people gleaned it from my vote topic reservation post, but I'll make it explicit here - I'll be streaming playthroughs of all the GMC Jam games, too. A friend of mine will be joining me and we'll see to getting through everything over the course of a few days.

We'll look to go live on my Twitch channel around 8pm EST today (in a little over two and a half hours from time of writing). Due to some extenuating circumstances on my end it may start a bit later (and I may need to reschedule future dates), but hopefully not by a significant margin. If you entered the GMC Jam and you drop by, follow the stream and let us know in chat and we'll prioritize playing your game.

I haven't done a full review of all entries in a GMC Jam before so this'll be exciting and different for me. Looking forward to going through the whole suite of games!
 
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Alice

Darts addict
Forum Staff
Moderator
I just tried it again, and it turns out it's possible even without the botched digging mechanic.

I should probably change my guide....
While you're at that, you might also mention that burying the farmers allows you to get past them without needing to give them carrots. ;)
(not intended mechanic, but effective)
 

SoapSud39

Member
So I'm watching EvanSki's playthrough of "Six Feet" (most of which I was in class for), and it has occurred to me that maybe I really should have explained some of the mechanics:
The carrot goes into the cart by going up to it and left-clicking on the cart (when the tip shows up), same for the farmer (posted before getting to the part he figured it out haha) and
you can throw dirt at the crows to knock them out, by moving the mouse over them and right-clicking (I'll add these to my above post as well)
 
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@EvanSki The reason I didn't add block(apart from laziness) is that you're an angry little man, too angry to be defensive, all offensive, baby. Haha.

EDIT: I just watched you play my game, I'm glad you enjoyed it so much!
The NOTES section in the readme was just there for posterity really, Info dumps like that go straight out of my brain too, but like you noticed, most of the stuff you pick up as you play anyway, so it was a backup.
GAH, the logo screen, I commented out the timer to test something and forgot to uncomment it...
You had me worried at first when you died so easily, but you got the hang of it pretty quick. I was worried people might only spam the spin jump, but I realised I spam it too and I thought it was still fun, so no worries haha.
Also, you reading out the story text gave me a good laugh, thanks. Sorry I wasn't there, looked like a fun stream.
 
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The M

Member
I thought part of the fun was figuring out how to play my game but seeing how some people have struggled with the controls, let me explain one thing: to pick up the princess you need to be near her and bend all four legs. That's all :)
 

GameDevDan

Former Jam Host
Moderator
GMC Elder
I thought part of the fun was figuring out how to play my game but seeing how some people have struggled with the controls, let me explain one thing: to pick up the princess you need to be near her and bend all four legs. That's all :)
I got that instantly! I was like oopsie she fell off, better crouch down so she can climb back up... seemed the most intuitive thing to do!
 

ghandpivot

Member
@TehPilot
Big kudos for the playthrough. I think a lot of the issues you found came down to me playtesting the game too much and thinking it was too boring after a while, which made me:
- Add more mechanics just for the sake of it, since I was familiar with all of them.
- Increase snake speed by a lot because it was too easy to run away from.
- Making tracks spawn every 20 seconds, since that felt fully reasonable for me when an avarage run could last 2-3 minutes.
- Music looping: Once again, if you play long runs, you don't notice it. There is a build-up before the music starts grooving, which felt nice to have for the start of every run, yet if the runs end before the groove then it's awful.

I'm interested that in every playthrough I've seen, people are not very keen on touching the robot arm. I tend to carry it around a lot, but most players leave it, maybe even never carry it. I think it's partly due to the wall of text in the beginning of the game which I threw in just before uploading it (probably almost would have been better without).
The game had walls from the start, but the player kept getting stuck even though the code was perfect so in the end I made holes instead, which you can jump over by the way if you need some more room (kinda fun to have to do that when the snake is very long).

Originally the snake hitting itself only destroyed 10 of it's segments instead of ending the game. I thought that was too easy too. I should probably have made a toggle or something.

Oh, and I do not know how you softlocked the game. I know exactly what must have happened but I can't figure out why. Nicely done!
 

HyprBlu

Member
Hey ghandpivot, just played your game as well and I really struggled. I didn't seem to be able to grab anything and even with the "wall of text" as you put it, I still didn't have much clue on how to play. Wanting to give it another shot though as I feel it's the only game I've played so far that I didn't get to really play but whenever I do play, because I've filled up the highscore screen, it wont let me restart so I have to close the game and reopen every time to try again
 

ghandpivot

Member
Hey ghandpivot, just played your game as well and I really struggled. I didn't seem to be able to grab anything and even with the "wall of text" as you put it, I still didn't have much clue on how to play. Wanting to give it another shot though as I feel it's the only game I've played so far that I didn't get to really play but whenever I do play, because I've filled up the highscore screen, it wont let me restart so I have to close the game and reopen every time to try again
Oh, guess you solved the mystery that TehPilot found. That was fast. You'd have to go into the appdata folder and delete the highscores table then I suppose, who knew :)
 
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