GMC Jam Games GMC Jam 40 Games Topic - ENTER HERE!

Status
Not open for further replies.

GameDevDan

Former Jam Host
Moderator
GMC Elder




Games Topic

THEME
🥳 ONE BIG PARTY 🥳

OPENS
Thursday 25th February, 2021 12:00 UTC

DEADLINE
Monday 1st March, 2021 12:00 UTC



Taking Part
  • Any GMC member can take part in the GMC Jam. You must use GameMaker to create your game.​
  • Games must be made between 12:00 UTC on February 25th and 12:00 UTC on March 1st, and posted here in the games topic.​
  • You may use resources such as graphics, sounds and scripts that were made prior to the jam, as long as the bulk of your work takes place during Jam weekend.​
  • You may create one post per entry in the games topic. You may create this post before your game is finished and continue editing that post to update your progress, in fact you are encouraged to write a devlog!​
  • All entries must have a download link in the Games Topic before it closes at 12:00 UTC on March 1st.​
  • All entries must work on Windows as a standalone executable / compressed zip folder. No installers please. Your entry can also work in HTML5 and on other platforms, but most reviewers will only play the Windows entry.​
  • All entries are encouraged to follow the Jam theme. It isn't mandatory to do so, but you'll often get more favourable reviews from your peers!​
  • You may participate alone or in a team. If you're looking for teammates, try asking in the discussion topic or joining the GMC Jam Discord. Only one team member creates a post for the game in the topic - do not create multiple posts for the same game.​
  • If you are participating in the clash of gangs mechanic (see the discussion topic for details) please include your gang color in your post.​

Recommended post format:

Game Title
Developer Name / Team Name
GANG COLOR (if you picked a gang. Red / Green / Yellow)
DOWNLOAD LINK (when finished)

- maybe a screenshot here -

- your devlog here -
You can keep editing your post to write a devlog about your game.
You can also post in the discussion topic as you develop your game.
Do not post more than one post per game in the games topic.


Suggestions - please read!

We have some new suggestions for the GMC Jam 40, because it's the 10 year anniversary and we're expecting a lot of entries!
  • PLEASE, optimize the file size of your game. This is a four day game jam, you don't need 500MB of .wav audio files bulking out your project. Make sure you set your music files to "compressed" in the sound editor in GameMaker, and we'll all be happy.​
  • Make your Games Topic post pretty! We are expecting a lot of entries this time, some reviewers may simply pick the most interesting games from this topic instead of playing every single entry. Spare some time in your jam schedule to make your post here look attractive.​
  • The two consistently most reliable file hosts for uploading your game are itch.io and Google Drive. But PLEASE remember to set your game to PUBLIC before the deadline. We have had plenty of cases in the past where people miss out on early votes because they forget to make their game public!​
 
Last edited:

ghandpivot

Member
I'll put me game here. Me goal be to learn basic 3D and put out some sort of Oregon Trail pirate game where ye partey keeps diminishing.


DOWNLOAD ME GAME HERE


DEVLOG:
Time to learn 3D! This will be a wild ride...

First of all, a 3D modelling software that fits the time I have to dedicate to the project which is maybe 20 hours of work.

I found a tool called MagicaVoxel which works really well for what I'm trying to make and is really easy to work with. It looks like this:


I export my models as .obj, but GMS 1.4 can't load these. GMS 1.4 only seems to use D3D-files, and that seems to be something way outdated as I've found no modern solution to export in that format.
Using the wayback machine, I found something called "Model Creator" on the old GM Forums which I managed to download and get running. It is awful to work with and looks something like this:


With that said it does the job. Using very simple coding I can then get the model into the game and texture it.


Seeing as I have no idea what I'm doing, I'm very surprised how this texture consisting of just a colored line:


yields this result when applied.




Cool!

Now it's time to brute force collisions cause there is no way I'm going to learn that.

Update 2:
Look at those waves:


Update 3:
Collisions are now in the game with every hitbox being manually drawn in using coordinates that I find by drawing squares until something fits the model.
Surely there's a better way to do it but I don't have time to find out what it might be.


Some sort of survival aspect to the whole thing, counting the size of your party and booty:


Final day:
Added text boxes. Didn't have time to finish. Gotta run! The game is playable but there is no real point to it. Thanks for jamming!

 
Last edited:

Mr Magnus

Viking King
Logo.png
Download (V5).



There is nothing quite like a good party, and what is a good party without a good guest list? Can't have a party without inviting some peeps, now can you?​
1614579932519.png

The Crimson Guild has got you covered with it's Glorious guest list. In this jazzy game you are given a list of people the guild wants to invite to the party, and it's your job to find them amongst the crowd. How many can you invite?

Includes such dazzling features such as:

  • Procedural generation (Of people)!
  • A one of a kind big-swing number I found online!
  • A terrorizing clown!
  • Accessibility options for the color blind and dyslexic!
  • Mandatory online high scores!
  • Four different game modes, three of which are really just the same gamemode but more tedious!
  • And so much, much more!
So what are you waiting for? Play the Guild's glamourous guest list TODAY! (Assuming it's been uploaded.)






Want to pay attention to my progress? Here's an outdated trello board i kind of forgot two days in!
 
Last edited:

Sirham

Member
s_Logo.png
The Scattered Army
DOWNLOAD
The link sets off Edge but it is safe.



An evil wizard has sent your party of soldiers all over! Gather them back up and kick his as-... er... Butt.

The first actual day I spent taking a family friend to his doctor's appointments. So I lost a day but I should be alright.

TSA_SS.png
I got a lot of the sprites done.
Equipment is now a thing.
And there's a map.

Army gathering ^ (early stages w/o the map)


Spend all of day just adding stuff. Not too interesting.
Day 3 I had it play tested and just added some QoL changes.
 
Last edited:

Pixel-Team

Master of Pixel-Fu
The Adventures of Robot X

by Pat Ferguson - GREEN GANG ENFORCER

DOWNLOAD FROM ITCH.IO




Interrogator.png
Gameplay_1.png
Gameplay_2.png
Gameplay_3.png



Ok so far so good. 12 Noon on day one, and I got approximately 1 metric crap-ton of pixelling done. In case you haven't seen my twitch streams so far, I'm trying to make a platform game with some MegaMan style robot sprites. I wanted this to be an action platformer, but with some dialog in between the levels. So as it stands, I got the robot standing, crouching, running, and jumping, and getting hit. He also has secondary animations for running and standing while aiming his weapon. The idea is he's unarmed when he's in the friendly areas, and armed when he's going through the factory, where there's going to be hazards. I also got some pieces made for the INTERROGATOR, a robot that greets the player when you first start the game, and he's going to shake you down and scan you to make sure you're a robot. (You are.) He looks kind of like one of the robots from Portal, and he's got a retina that opens and closes, and a laser scanner for scanning the player's retina. I tried to put him into Spine, and I was going to animate his parts separately using skeleton animation, but stuf wasn't working right, and I found out the hard way that even though I used an additive blend mode on the laser in Spine, Gamemaker happily drew the laser just like every other part. So I'm going to have to implement the interrogator the hard way. Not a problem, but I had to switch gears and get on the robot, since he's the hero and main attraction. I'm going to take a pause for the cause, and get some steps in, and jump back in this afternoon and get these robot sprites into GMS.

I got the Interrogator behavior just the way I want it. I had to make him into a object that draws his additional sprites depending on what's going on. I had originally intended all this to be rigged up in Spine, but it didn't work out. However, he's ready for his closeup.

I got the Robot player sprite into an object, and he can stand, crouch, run left and right, and jump, with nice controls that work either from the keyboard or a dual analog controller. Next, I need to get him interacting with tiles, and I have a special technique I use for pixel perfect tile collisions that is lightning fast and very efficient. Once this is out of the way, it's onto hazards, and having him die and respawn. This is the heart of the gameplay.

You can see both the interrogator and the robot working in my twitch channel.

All in all, I'd say today was a success. I want to say I'm calling it a day, but I'm going to keep pushing. I may put in an 18 hour shift. A record for me during a Jam.

So I'm calling it a day. Got the robot falling on tiles, and running up angled tiles.

This morning was all doing tiles. I did collision tiles, and scenery tiles. I did tiles out the yin yang. I'm pretty much covered for tiles, but it would be nice to make some decoration tiles if I have time.I got the robot tile collision refined some more, as I found some bugs with how he touches tiles when he's in the air, versus while he's running, etc. Always something.

I got the robot shooting his weapon, and I got the title screen working. I am starting to think I bit off WAY MORE THAN I COULD CHEW. What else is new though, right? So you know how Megaman can't crouch and fire? Well my robot can! You know how Megaman can't fire at an angle? My robot can. Fire straight up? My robot can. Why in the name of Zeus's BUTTHOLE did I make the robot shoot in every direction?? God help me. I'd better get on enemies tomorrow and see to it that he needs to crouch for some, shoot diagonally to kill some, shoot up to kill some, and so on. I'm giving this game everything I got!!! I just hope I can pull this off.

At this point, I got the dialog and NPC system working, got doors that change levels, got more sprites made, and most importantly, I got the player to take damage, get killed, and reset the level. Next up I need to do the boss fight. This is getting crazy, yo!!!

I now have a boss fight against the INTERROGATOR. He shoots a laser at you. It's friggin' amaze-balls! I'd love to stop here, but the game does not have a start, middle, and end yet. There's still so far to go! I have a few sound effects in the game. I spent way too much time finding the right player shoot sound, and the metal 'tink' sound when you hit bad guys, but these two sounds are the most important in the game, so I had to make them just perfect. The player shot is a combination of a real gun and a synthesized laser sound. The metal hit sound is a heavily processed sound of a iron target being hit at long range from a rifle. It's soooo satisfying to hear it hit the enemies... I need more sounds, and also a way to set a spawn position when entering levels, so I can have checkpoints. I also need an ending. And a beginning. SO MUCH LEFT TO DO!!!!

I've been up for 16 hours today, putting some love and focus on this jam entry. I recorded some voice-overs today for the INTERROGATOR, and scripted out the opening sequence. It's all about the delivery... ;) Tomorrow is the last full day. My game is going to finish strong!!!

Ok, I finally finished writing the npc dialog and making all the npcs and portraits for the dialog exchanges, and got those tested out. Man, my dialog reader is very finicky. I'm going to spank it's bottom when this Jam is over. Anyhow, I also got the end credits and title screen stuff done. Lots more sounds added. The rest of the day will be adding more enemies and traps, building levels, and tying the boss fight to the end credits. I'm going all the way!!!

The game is complete. I worked my butt off on this one!! Next Jam I'm seriously considering going in on a team. Doing pixels and writing code during the same Jam is straight up insanity. There were several ideas I wanted to do, but just ran out of time, but I managed to get a few different enemies and hazards implemented. I'm really happy with it. I hope you have as much fun playing it as I did making it!!!
 

Attachments

Last edited:
SNAKE DANCE
by Greenblizzard

🦖 GREEN GANG BABY🦖

DOWNLOAD

You are a snake and must dance your way through a never-ending series of poses. Are you a DANCING SNAKE, or a SNAKE GOD?



This minimal game was fully created in one long sitting (including sound effects and music) after I gave up on my initial idea because I lacked both the time and motivation to make the game I originally wanted. I was about to throw in the towel completely when I considered "fit-in-hole" style dance gameplay and had the simple idea for this game.

Scrapped initial project:
Party Cleanup Service (working title)
Devlog:
Day 2:
~ Session 1:
Made the view follow the player, added some confetti monsters and puddles. Added several sound effects and composed a music track.

Day 1:
~ Session 3:
Trying out a different artstyle, added confetti and a mop:

~ Session 2:
Made my guy a vacuum cleaner:

~ Session 1 (2 hours in):
Resolved a hostage situation involving GM:Studio 2 (the hostage) and my antivirus. Made a new project, drew some unpolished player character graphics and implemented basic movement.
 
Last edited:

Bart

WiseBart
50889fde-6a4a-4bd0-b3c7-31e0d7d6f0b2.png Three Mice In A Trenchcoat 50889fde-6a4a-4bd0-b3c7-31e0d7d6f0b2.png
50889fde-6a4a-4bd0-b3c7-31e0d7d6f0b2.png


by @Bart, @TheSnidr, @Xor, Naterboy
RED GANG

<< Download Three Mice In A Trenchcoat >>


You are a mouse, whose objective is to steal the crown from the evil pug king and therefore replace him. You must rescue some fellow mice along the way and they can help you by holding levers or by wearing a trenchcoat. You have to navigate through a castle without being captured by guards.
WASD: move
B: throw bone
E: change to mice in a trenchcoat (after finding the item)
Space: jump
25/02/2021 12:00 UTC+1 - A good afternoon! Here we are again, this time for the 40th GMC Jam.
Our team has become quite large, consisting of no less than three people plus a fourth team member (Naterboy) doing the music to make it all happen.
There is a lot of work to be done and we have a pretty good idea of what we're going to make already. I'll start first and Xor and Snidr will join later.

First thing on my list is creating 3D models. Lots of them!

26/02/2021 08:15 UTC+1 - A good morning! The start of the second jam day already. High time for a new entry in the devlog!

Me and Xor started out yesterday, both focusing on our own parts. I've been making models in Blender, Xor has focused on getting the basic project up and running and on visual effects. The current library of models looks like this:


Everything is aligned to a square grid. Here I use squares of 2x2. In the game, that becomes 32x32 so we scale the model by 16 when exporting to OBJ, the model format that we're using. For the repeating elements I'll have to make sure they fit nicely so a bit of cutting still needs to be done.

Xor has created a couple of shaders for some great looking effects. The current list already consists of deferred lighting, shadows and SSAO, with all the shaders being written in HLSL. The shadows and SSAO look like this:



Today, Snidr is joining us. Also, Naterboy has been helping with the ideas for the gameplay.

Everything is coming along smoothly so far!

26/02/2021 19:00 UTC+1 - This entry sure is coming along pretty well.

Snidr modeled a mouse and three mice in a trenchcoat today. With that, we can have one big mouse family!


The lighting and shadows have been improved by Xor and basic collisions are in! We'll still need to change to special collision meshes to make this run smoothly enough, though.

Meanwhile, I've been working on more models for the environment today:

modelling_work.PNG

Snidrs Devlog of day two
Day two of the jam was intense! I was busy the entirety of the first day, so this was my first day in the jam. All in all I've modelled and textured four character models, two of which have also been rigged, skinned, animated and put into the game. I've also started working on the game itself, getting the movement system in properly. At the end of the day I spent over two hours trying to figure out a very basic problem. After way too long I managed to solve it, and that's how I knew it was time for bed. PS: Bart, Xor and Nate are all amazing to work with

27/02/2021 11:00 UTC+1 - A good morning again! Off to a somewhat late start today. Though Snidr's been working on animations for a couple of hours :D

Yesterday I managed to setup a scene in Blender in which we can do topdown renders of the levels. With that, we'll soon be able to use GM's Room Editor to place items, as a level editor, basically. I'll continue work on that today.
A quick view of how that looks in Blender:

01/03/2021 12:45 UTC+1 - I didn't manage to write something yesterday, so I'll write something quick here today.

We switched to a custom level editor created by Snidr, Xor and Naterboy designed and added a couple of levels with it.
Snidr also added quite a few dance animations. Today me and Xor mainly tested the levels.
And with that, we're done for this entry. It's high time to submit! The game zip is up and the download link active!

Enjoy playing our entry!
 
Last edited:

The M

Member
Castle Meta
an MMO Metroidvanea


~ DOWNLOAD ~
Devlog:
- Day 1 -
I didn't have much time to do anything today due to other obligations, but I drew the player character in all its iterations and added some basic platforming movement (including coyote jumping and jump buffering, which I don't usually do). It's a start but I should really be far further along to be "on track" with my vision.

Speaking of, my goal is to make a metroidvanea where you explore four different wings of a castle. Each with contains a number of collectibles that lets you access the final boss and each with contain a new ability. The twist is that the location of all abilities depend on where the last player put them. You can only have three abilities equipped at a time and so you'll have to leave something each time you pick up a new move. This means I will have to design each wing to require one of at least two different abilities to clear and one of another two to find all the collectibles. This way you'll never get stuck with a level where you need to beat a wing to find the item used to clear it - there will always be a second path available. I'm also going to do a few fun things, like recording your name and gang and maybe even let you modify the difficulty for the next player.

----

I should have gone to bed, but I just had to add one more feature. I've created the intro sequence that asks for your name and color. This will also be the part where I sneakily connect to the internet to download the current state of the world. Your map won't update in real time (to avoid people moving the same stuff to different places, carrying the same items, and so on) so this is a good time to fetch it. The player character will have a different appearance depending on your choice here!

- Day 2 -
I woke up much earlier than I would have liked, and being unable to go back to sleep I might as well get this started so let's go! My immediate concern is to get all abilities into the game. Since the level design will be heavily dependent on them I need to know exactly how they'll work before I start making levels. This clashes a bit with my usual approach of taking a level design and fitting the abilities to it but it should only make things easier. I'm a little worried about time and considered dropping two skills and a wing of the castle, but ultimately, I feel like those upgrades are still interesting enough that I should try incorporate them. Maybe I'll reduce the length of each wing instead as a time saving measure.

----

3/8 abilities done - now you can swing a sword, throw axes and dash through floors. Up next are shooting abilities and then ultra-mobility skills which are going to be interesting to implement. The caveat is that there are no obstacles to use the skills on yet so it's not like things will speed up a lot just because they're done, but at least it means I have a solid foundation to experiment with.

----

8/8 mate! All abilities exist in some capacity now. Most of them lack visual flair and effects but the basic movements work. This means I'm finally ready to start making the game. We're currently 28 hours into the jam and I've basically done this for the last six hours. I think my next task is to design the hub, show the player's goal and add the first three spawn points. Then I'll start with the different paths.

Here's a gif showing off all the different abilities:


----

I've created the layout of the hub map and started mapping out the first wing. I had a lot of issues with the camera as it's always a challenge to make it show what you need to see while also showing where you are in a dynamic way. The current solution lerps between the player and various anchor points scattered around the level. This lets it follow the player while also giving a decent look of the area ahead and I should be able to freeze it during combat encounters in arenas.

I've also added the first few item spawns where you can swap out which gear is mapped to which button. I still need to add visual indicators of which items you have equipped and (if I have time) an explanation of each. So far I'd say I've gotten a lot done but I'm basically half a day behind schedule. It's not impossible to get it all done if things flow on smoothly (though when does it ever?), right now I think the graphics will have to be sacrificed in order to speed things up. Tomorrow I must start making enemies. That will be exciting!

- Day 3 -
Welp! I decided to start on another path instead as I thought the gardens would be a little more straightforward and interesting. I've worked for almost six hours and I've gotten the first half of the stage done. Granted, I've had to do a lot of tile creation and I've implemented a few new objects and obstacles, but I'm far from done with the area. For now I might leave it and wait with the second half (and the boss) until I've got at least one path done in each zone. At some point I will have to start working on the online server too but I feel like that should wait until more of the game is playable.

----

I'm cutting down on things further. I will have all four areas but only one room per area and no bosses apart from the final boss (and I might cut that one too if needed). I've got two rooms basically done now: the gardens and the dungeon. I feel like the gallery should go pretty quickly, but the belfry might take a little time, given that I had intended for it to be very mechanical, with moving platforms and whatnot. I'm a little sad to see all my cool boss ideas go though, so I would really love to include one or two of them. I't also a little sad that a lot of objects I've created will be underused since the levels can only be so long (and they take a darn long time to make, especially laying out all the tiles).

----

Three zones down. Each zone ends in a combat encounter, and this last one (the gallery) has three in total. I haven't yet coded the logic for spawning enemies in these encounters so the level ends prematurely with an impassable gate that is waiting for you to clear the area before it. At this point I'm getting really tired and I don't think I can add the last area tonight (I've had a 12 hour session so far 😖). With that said, I still want to fix a few things before calling it a night, specifically adding entrances and exits between areas and making them persistent so that you can't just go to one area and collect everything there over and over.

- Day 4 -
With half a day left, I've created the last stage: the belfry. I still need to update all moving platforms to make them better for the player to stand on, and the game needs one more enemy type, but then we're set for bringing it all together. I never made the entrance/exit thing yesterday (instead I implemented triggers for combat arenas) so that will have to be first on my list this time.

----

I've done a lot of general polishing and putting together. The last enemy, the brute, is in the game. It's a bit of a dark souls-like enemy with a menacing walk and a massive club. I still haven't started on the final boss and I think it will have to wait a little. My first priority is to get the server up and running. That means writing the database and api used between it and the game. I have some boilerplate code ready that listens to a tcp socket and pipes data to threads that handles requests, allowing for multiple people to connect at once (though I find that unlikely to actually happen).

----

Dealing with strings in game maker is a nuisance. Why are the functions 1-indexed? I've gotten everything to work now, including a display that shows the 40 or so first entries (then I run out of room). I've uploaded the server to AWS where it will hopefully run during the whole voting process (without bankrupting me in the process). Now I have to create one final challenge: the boss. Since I cut all other bosses I feel like I have to at least make this one count. On the other hand, it's already past midnight and I should be going to work tomorrow. I think I will try to get as much done as possible now and then I'll do the final touches tomorrow morning, however early that'll have to be.

----

Well crud. The boss is done and its late and everything that can go wrong is definitely trying to do its worst. There are so many bugs, and everything is volatile and I'm rage-quitting my own game which is not a good sign. I have yet to finish a test run of the game because of bugs, softlocks and crashes. I can't deal with it today so I'm just going to go to bed. Right now it looks like this will all just end in massive disappointment. We'll see. Maybe sleeping on it can turn things around. :)

~ Day 5 ~
It's been 4 hours. In that time I've added sounds, music and visual effects. Honestly, it's not half bad - those things go a long way in making the game feel good to play. I've also squished what remaining bugs I've found so the game is a lot more stable now. And I like it. It might be that I'm much more rested now than last night, but I'm kind of happy with the game, for what it is.

I'm still a little bummed out that I had to cut so much. The bosses were one thing (those were pretty unrealistic after all), but I would have liked to include more community features, such as common difficulty sliders for certain encounters and use-items that you could choose for the next player. I feel like this jam I should have teamed up with someone, because I did all I could on my own and that wasn't quite enough to see the vision through. With one or two more talented people, I feel like this game could have reached a whole other level. As it stands, it's decent, maybe even good, but great.
 
Last edited:

eimie

Member
THE MATCHMAKER
eimie

team yellow


PLAY ONLINE




You are The Matchmaker. Rule the dancefloor and match people who may like each other! But make sure to stay in rythm.


I realized at the last meters, that I'm currently not able to compile for Windows... so there is no download link, but a browser version.






FEB 25: 01:52 p.m. UTC: That's what a party looks like! :p


----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

FEB 25: 05:30 p.m. UTC:
Just beautyful 😍


----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

FEB 26: 08:25 a.m. UTC:
Back at work!
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

FEB 26: 10:14 a.m. UTC:



----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

FEB 26: 1:16 p.m. UTC: 💞


----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

FEB 26: 4:17 p.m. UTC:
If you don't experience at least one large glitch in
your development process, you are doing something wrong 🧐


----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

FEB 26: 6:48 p.m. UTC:

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

❗❗❗FEB 27: 0:06 a.m. UTC:
Just decided to ditch the original
concept and try something different. Let's see where this leads...
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

FEB 27: 11:07 a.m. UTC:

The changes WORK :D🥳
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

FEB 27: 6:20 p.m. UTC:

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

FEB 28: 7:45 p.m. UTC:
DONE !!!!! 🥳🥳🥳🥳🥳🥳


----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

FEB 28: 8:46 p.m. UTC:

Haha, had to fix a Safari bug... but NOW it's done. :rolleyes:
 
Last edited:

HayManMarc

Member
Survival Party
by HayManMarc



* DOWNLOAD *


Wander the map and collect party favors to attract people into your wandering party. Get the population of the entire map (or as many as you can) to follow you back to your house and throw ONE BIG PARTY!


Day 1
So, I started with finding some sprites to use. I found some cute people sprites made by icedman on opengameart.com. Also found some neat buildings by pixel32. The sizing is a little off, but thats okay.

I then spent the rest of the time coding, mostly. First, because I didn't really know what I was doing, I made a character move about on its own. I added a little bob to its movement to simulate animation. Turned out pretty nice.

I didn't want to fuss with making maps, so I coded random generated maps that will increase in size as you gain levels. So, rooms are populated strictly through code. I have one room with one object in it that creates all the rest.

I spent some time making four sprites of the collectibles (party favors) you pick up to attract and keep people in your party: balloon, piece of cake, ice cream cone, and can of soda. All of these have different weights and values that affect the gameplay.

I made a player object with 8-point movement. Then made the NPC AI, which was a chore. Keeping them following the player and not letting them overlap each other took some doing. It seems to be working well enough, tho it's far from perfect.

I used FriendlyCosmonaut's ds-list depth system. The houses need separate masks, tho, and there are no collisions with anything (like walls).

After getting most of these mechanics in place, I went to work on the GUI so I could see some numbers on screen in order to pick up and use items.

I decided to add a quote system showing what the people are saying as a form of visual feedback to the player. Many other things still need visual feedback.

I've got most of the game loop and systems in place, but still need to figure out a "level win/lose" system. Need to figure out a points system for scoring. Need a logo, intro, menu, tutorial/help, credits, level summary screen, game over screen, music, sound fx, etc. etc.

All in all, I'm pretty happy with my first day. Now, the rest of my days are shared with work, so we'll see how much I can get done. I hope I can get it mostly finished, at least.

Day 2
I finished up the game loop, mostly. Goes like this: level starts and you run around gathering up people and party favors. When you're ready, you go to your house and end the level by hitting the space bar. Screen changes to a status screen, and the game resets itself for the next level. Another tap of the space bar and the next level starts.

As it is now, you can power thru levels without collecting anything at all. Infinitely. So I need to implement some kind of win/lose conditions. I think a timer might be the easiest way to go....need to get back to your house before the timer runs out. THEN, maybe you'd need a certain amount of Fun Factor in order to continue? Not sure, but yeah, maybe.

I made a little animation of the house at the end of the level that makes it look like it's a "rockin' party".

Stuff still needed: win/lose conditions, points/scoring system, in-between-levels status screen, music, sound fx, how-to-play instructions, game logo, some kind of intro/menu/front end, a "you lose" message/screen, more map scenery, make player home more prominent.

Stuff I'd like but probably won't get: online high score table, save system for game progress and/or local high scores, particle effects, wall collisions,.... and probably more that is escaping my sleepy mind. :)

Day 3
So tonight, I added in the points and scoring. I think it's working.

Then, I added a timer for the win/lose condition. I made a sprite/object of an analog clock to show the time passage. The level starts at 9 AM and ends at 7PM. Those 10 hours actually only take 2 minutes. When there's 10 seconds to go, big numbers appear on the screen counting down to zero to warn you. I implemented the checks, so failing to beat the clock will end the game, but I still need to code the losing screen. Also, this win/lose condition is only half done since you could actually keep playing next levels just by simply beating the clock. So I need another check of some kind for after the level is finished.

Which brings me to the Level Stats Screen. I mocked up a screen full of stats and numbers, but my concentration was becoming an endangered species. So that's all for now.

One more evening for me to finish this up. I was hoping to get more accomplished tonight, so I'm not very confident at this juncture. We'll see how things pan out tomorrow.

Still needs doing (copied from above): win/lose conditions, points/scoring system, in-between-levels status screen, music, sound fx, how-to-play instructions, game logo, some kind of intro/menu/front end, a "you lose" message/screen, more map scenery, make player home more prominent.

(See video in main part of post.) At the end of that video, looks like I have some wrinkles to iron out with the timer and the clock.
Day 4
I only had 8 hours to finish and I didn't quite make it. It's really rough around the edges, but it's mostly there. I didn't have time to make a front end/intro/menu, so you're just thrown right into the first level. No tutorial - no help screen, so hopefully you read the README file that is included in the zip. lol! I managed to get some music and sounds in there. Also, I was able to get the "Level Stats" screen, the two different lose screens (really shoddy rush job). Sadly, there is no win scenario. But no fears, the game gets too hard really fast and stops progression anyway. lol & SMH. Oh well, it was still fun making it. I hope it's enjoyable, at least as something to laugh at and make fun of. :p
 
Last edited:

GameDevDan

Former Jam Host
Moderator
GMC Elder

(Wham Bam Dan Jam Slam)
by GameDevDan
(no gang)

Download (4mb)



Battle your way to victory in the Jam Slam! Select a character from Dan's historical GMC Jam catalogue and battle it out using a variety of crazy attacks. Will you become the Jam Slam Champion?

Devlog
~1h30m dev time: I've had this concept in my mind basically ever since I realised this was a special 10 year anniversary jam. I've made 30 jam games over the last 10 years, why not celebrate by bringing back a bunch of my old characters and locations in a Smash Bros-style fighting game? So that's what I'm doing. And so far I've got a bunch of concept art and a few bits and bobs of graphics done!


~3h dev time: I've been creating character portraits for the menu screen! I've got 9/24 done so far and will probably get another couple done before I quit for the day.


~5h30m dev time: I've finished the character select screen portraits for each of the characters! you might think that was a bit of poor time management given the constraints of the jam... but celebrating the characters is important to me so they had to look good!


~9h15m dev time: I am still yet to touch GameMaker Studio. I am neck deep in graphics for this project and I *hope* I have calculated the graphics-to-programming ratio correctly or I'm stuffed like a kipper on this one. I thought I'd gone for a fairly low scope project which I could knock up in 2 days but ooooobviously not. Currently I am making small sprite-stacked models of all the characters ready for the actual gameplay. Here is HannaH (from HannaH and Lost Little Hero).


~11h dev time: I am still yet to touch GameMaker Studio. OH LORDY, have I made a mistake with the graphical scope of this project 😂 - Still, here are some sprite-stacked "models" of characters I've done so far! I have 8 of these left to do tomorrow - which hopefully won't take me long - and then I can actually get on with programming some, y'know, gameplay!


~13h dev time: FINALLY! All character & location related art is done. 24 characters all with a big 2D mugshot and a fake-3d model each. PHEW. 8 locations (just a simple bg and floor tile) done. I only have a few graphical assets left to do, which will hopefully be done in the next hour, and then after lunch I can FINALLY open GameMaker and actually start programming a game lol. Here's the last character "model" I made, Lara Dae from Inkletint Island (Jam 36) and Coco Cards Casino (Jam 38)


~14h40m dev time: Finished the last few particle sprites and things for the HUD and now off on my lunch break!

~17h05m dev time: All of my sprites (Which is a TON btw) are finally loaded into GameMaker and I have... dun dun dun! An actual GM project LOL. Currently there is a working intro/title screen and character select menu, which then leads to a sort of "test bed" room for the main game. I'm going to do another half hour of tinkering with the menu tonight, and then tomorrow (final full day of the jam for me) I am going to have to program the actual game so that you guys actually have something to play 🥳


~20h20m dev time: At last, I have some actual gameplay to speak of! I've just programmed the player character and some very, very dumb AI (to be improved this afternoon) and you can basically just run around in circles bashing the AIs with different attacks for different characters. But, as yet, there is no win or fail condition. Very much just a sandbox:


~21h05m dev time: The melee attacks, range moves and AI behaviour of my game are all programmed in! Basically I could make it "playable/finished" in about an hour, but "polished/finished" may take about 5 or 6 hours. Hoping to get it finished today so I don't have to rush it Monday morning!

~23h50m dev time: I've managed to pack a lot of work into two and a half hours! The game now has complete screen flow from start to finish TITLE > MENU > MODE > CHARACTER > GAMEPLAY > WIN/LOSE SCREEN - so it's finished enough that it can be played and (sort of) enjoyed! So I've added a build of it to this post in case I can't finish for any reason. What it needs now is one last piece of music, some sound effects and a little bit of fine tuning to the characters' stats to make it more fun to play! Here's hoping I can get that done in the next couple of hours so I don't have to do any work tomorrow lol.
IMAGE
(I've reached my image limit for this post so have to start using links lol)

~27h dev time: That's it! I think it's done. I've added sound effects, music and tweaked, tweaked and retweaked the characters' stats and behaviours to get the game as fun as I can. The whole thing is polished as much as I care to do at this point. MAN DO MY EYES NEED A REST?! But I'm pretty happy with how this turned out. Great jamming people!
 
Last edited:
W

Wabb

Guest
Get to the Party!! (Download here)
by Wabb and sequential
Yellow Gang

Details
This is a Lemmings-style simulation puzzle game where you control people and try to get them to the party portal. Currently, there are four tutorial levels and two normal levels. (Try out highlighting everyone with the spring [press 3] selected and then fast-forwarding!). We just started learning GameMaker and this is our first game jam. There were a lot more features we wanted to implement, but we lost some time because one of us was sick with Covid. We're still learning GameMaker, but so far we've both really enjoyed building small games with it!
 
Last edited by a moderator:

Lumenflower

Yellow Dog
Lumenflower's Game
Title pending

A game from CRIMSON GUILD

Owing to work commitments I have been unable to finish this game to a standard that would justify entering it into the competition. I had hoped that I would have at least something worth sharing but at this stage in development there is really no point in sharing this project with you all. Best of luck to each and every other entrant, I look forward to playing your entries when I can :)


I haven't yet decided on a good way to position the action buttons after you click on an object, but I have at least optimised their code somewhat which gives me a bit more flexibility (the way I had done it previously, the actions all had to be arranged in a circle). For the time being, they are just placed randomly all over the screen.

I have added in a bit more functionality with regards to navigating the scene. I had a problem whereby the player was unable to access objects which were no longer part of the immediate context. For example, when the player looks inside their wallet, they can no longer click on any of the other objects in the scene since they aren't stated in the text. This is overcome in a traditional game like Zork by allowing the player to scroll up to remind themselves what is present in the scene. I decided to get round this by writing a sitrep() function which pumps out a passage describing all the objects in the scene. You can see this updating in response to the player's actions as well - for example after the player puts the cushions back on the sofa. I feel like this keeps things present and compact, rather than forcing the player to scroll upwards through reams of text just to work out what objects are sat in front of them and how the player's actions have affected them.

In addition, I have added a simple inventory system, which can be added to and interacted with in the same manner as any other object in the scene.

After all this framework was in place, I spent a few hours today putting together some initial content, mainly to test the robustness of my code but also to get my ideas down before I forgot them. Still to work on is the positioning of the action buttons, but otherwise I think the game is more-or-less ready to be filled with content!



I now have the backbone of a working game. Still trying to figure out a good method for positioning the buttons for the various actions you can take with each object, but in the meantime it's at least functional. You can navigate back to the main situation after performing actions and see how things have changed (in the video, you can see that the player is now standing up, and the cushions are back on the sofa). What remains now is to fix those action buttons, and then I can get on with filling the game out with content.



The coloured text and simple formatting is achieved by adding certain characters to the string. Since there's no need to distinguish between lower- and upper-case (as the font only has upper-case characters), you write simple text using lower-case characters in the string. You then use upper-case characters to format it and perform other simple functions. As examples, a capital "R" changes the text to red, "N" inserts a new line, and a "P{x}" inserts a pause of length x steps.

Inputting the string "hello there, my name is RlumenflowerW!NNP{30}my entry is going to YwinW!"

gives:

HELLO THERE, MY NAME IS LUMENFLOWER!
(pause for one second)
MY ENTRY IS GOING TO WIN!
 
Last edited:

Kyon

Member
Nothing
by Kyon

25th
omg I thought this was a weekend jam, I probably start on saturday.
haven't yet decided on a team either! will update when I actually start


26th
-

27th
ok so I am not gonna have that much time this weekend.
not sure if this is going to be an actual game or anything, but I'm using this gamejam to sort of prototype an idea that I got.
I want some sort of nice branching narrative monologue. Today I worked on a cool visual system that looks nice now. But it was way more work than I anticipated.
Like really the game right now is nothing more than this GIF:

Looks pretty cool! Now I have to find a way how to sort of make your decisions matter and have some sort of branching storyline idk. I like my character design though!

I hope I have some time and motivation tomorrow to do something with this!!


28th
felt too sad and overworked to do anything sorry all

01st
11:12
I might just make a whole new game in 45 minutes because I literally have nothing that is a real game. lol!

11:42
oh my god, so I tried to do some pixel-scaling and it took me half an hour.
can I make a game in 15 minutes?? :eek:

12:00
LOL what was I thinking.. ok so I didn't make the deadline. This is what I made in that last 15 min:
1614600160583.png
idea was to make a cute pixel band where you could perform in front of a party with arrow keys. But no time to export the audio files etc. etc. so no I didn't make it haha.
I'm proud of how this little pixel band looks though!
(on the guitar is the Slime-man, on drums it's Goro, and on the bass+vocals just a regular person!)
 
Last edited:

O.Stogden

Member
The Annual GMC Party!
By O.Stogden
Somehow, still a member of the GREEN gang

Download Link: Itch

Screenshot Small.png

Enjoy an evening with your GMC friends at the annual GMC party, I hope you all have a good time!

Day 1 is art day. Designing and collecting together all the art I'll need for the game!

Day 1, 3:38PM - It's turned into a bit more than art day, writing all the dialogue for the characters and designed a title screen.

Day 1, 4:12PM - After an hour of Eurobeat, my ears are ringing. Perhaps I was playing too loud and have developed Tinnitus? Regardless, character dialogue is mostly written, work on the opening cutscene is beginning, as well as work on the dialogue system to talk to characters and advance text.

Day 1, 4:30PM - Dev is over for the day. A basic dialogue system is in, the dialogue is mostly written except some edits I plan for future days. The next day I'll focus on the core game mechanic and finishing up character dialogue.

END OF DAY 1 (THURSDAY)

Day 2, 1:12PM - It's been 25 hours since the jam began, the sound of Eurobeat has almost stopped ringing in my ears. Progress has been made on the opening cutscene, and a system for handling player input during dialogue has been implemented. Next, we need to work on adding audio cues to the dialogue sequences. But the Eurobeat beckons...

Day 2, 4:54PM - The Eurobeat has now completely left his ears, however now he notices a 2nd Eurobeat playlist he has yet to indulge in. The basic menu system is almost finished, the opening cutscene is in, audio cues now have a system to be played during dialogue, HERE COMES THE EUROBEAT!!! OOHHH YEAH!

Day 2, 5:36PM - The main gameplay loop is finished and working! Progression is saved and allows you to continue. I just need to add in the other scenarios now, and do slight editing for them. After that, I think it's adding some scenery objects and polishing up the art. (As much as I can, because I suck at art).

Day 2 6:15PM - Scenario 1/6 completed. Added some instructional text with controls.

END OF DAY 2 (FRIDAY)

Day 3 - No work carried out on Day 3 as I had to work on a patch for TRF.

Day 4 - I'm back babyyyyyy

Day 4, 1:32PM - Scenario 2/6 Completed. Changed up some of the writing so it's more varied in each scenario.

Day 4, 1:44PM - Scenario 3/6 Completed. Here we go!

Day 4, 2:18PM - Scenario 4/6 Completed.

Day 4, 4:15PM - Scenario 5/6 Completed.

Day 4, 4:50PM - Scenario 6/6 Completed. Finishing up with some extra QoL and a couple of bug fixes now.

Day 4, 5:06PM - Bugs fixed, hopefully typos are vanquished. It seems to work?

END OF DAY 4 (SUNDAY)
 
Last edited:

Kepons

Lost The Bet
title.png
(Jam Defenders)
by Kepons

Green Gang Best Gang

DOWNLOAD
Jam Defenders is an autobattler/tower defense game where you must position your party-themed fruit units to defend your precious jar of Jam from animals who want to eat it all. It features three types of fruit units, as well as three types of enemies which come in multiple waves. You can only move your units between the waves. Can you protect your sweet, sweet Jam from the animal threat?


Low-effort devlog (sorry):
Will try to stick with making an autobattler type of game. You place units before the wave starts, and then you let the enemies come at you at which point you lose control of your units.
1614287757360.png
Added basic enemies, weapons for pears and a wave spawning system thing. Defend the Party Jam!
GIF.gif
This was quite a lazy day, I mostly added some sprites and a few sound effects.
Binge development day (of course because it is the final day), did a lot of stuff, more or less did everything I wanted with the game.
 
Last edited:

Gizmo199

Member
Logo.jpg

One Big Party
by: @Gizmo199 & @shortbread
About: Play 4 AMAZING mini-games in this Mario-party style game! :p

Original upload: DOWNLOAD

Edit: The one above has a spelling mistake where we said "arrows" instead of "WASD". I don't wanna get disqualified for changing the link so here is the fixed one:
DOWNLOAD - No Spelling Error

Chook.jpg
Ocean.jpg
Edit: Found a bug that made the game crash. fixed last minute
 
Last edited:

Evanski

Raccoon Lord
Forum Staff
Moderator
Untitled.png
by Evanski
GREEN GANG
DOWNLOAD



Current status update:

So my major down fall was the way I went about this, I thought it would be a good idea to make all the enemies 1 object and there image index determine what they actually were,
This lead to many many bugs that could have been easily avoided, The player also used the same object, making things worse, The AI was constantly confused, my old tricks for AI are broken and cause massive memory leaks,
Rather then try to add more duct-tape on this garbage, I looked into changing what the game is, but there is just no way I can make anything viable in 2 days as most of my tools would need to be re-written, and everything in the game already relies on everything else so taking everything out was a big no. Thus I've lit it on fire and walked out. Its not a major loss as I've learned a lot from this, I've come up with new ideas for games in the future and how to do certain things, expect a lot of elements from Color splash to make there way in some shape or form in my other projects! :D
Thanks for all the fish

-Evanski

*I've uploaded it anyway to share what I had in mind for the game, hopefully people think the ideas around it were cool. :)



Having done some prototyping of mechanics for the extra week by the theme being confirmed,
the basics are coming together nicely, Getting all the team names was annoying but shoving them into text files and having the game sort them out was the easier option.
Need to find people in the game with no gang affiliation to add to the "purple team"
damnit.png
Working on AI, title screen is almost done, here you go
Fixed some code so now the mouse changes when its over stuff! :D
Fixed ui stuff
added some ui stuff!
Added the sweet sounds of music!
USER INTERFACES! BUTTONS POPUPS! TEXT!
oh yeah i need to have ai....
NO IM NOT STALLING

After a long night of trying to sleep and failing, i've awoken with 0 motivation this morning,
I have a plan and everything laid out but no will power to sit and focus on the logic that is required
after some motivational messages, dubstep, pancakes, and coffee I got to working
I hate with statements, and the way I've gone about this but too late now :D
oh fiddlesticks.jpg
Everything is on fire, math sucks, collisions suck
the mouse breaks when the camera moves.
How's your day?
The Switch Mechanic works
Arena 1 is done, enemies spawn, and have basic ai
game runs at 53fps so thats an issue
particles dont draw correctly if you use a camera!
AI? broken
particles? broken
gameplay? lacking

Im calling it a night, if I dont fix the ai with in an hour tomorrow, im swaping gameplay, and creating a different shooter
 
Last edited:
gangsbash_logo.png
By D'Andrëw Box
Red Gang

DOWNLOAD LINK




The 3 Gangs, Red, Green and Yellow were celebrating a party pacefully, but there was just 1 pizza left, so instead of being rational and share the slices, they are now fighting for the pizza on multiple party-game like minigames!
The gang with more slices at the end, wins the whole pizza!


2 Days and 15 Hours until the end: I finally got an idea.

2 Days and 13 Hours until the end: Finished the systems for the first minigame: Snails Race.
I will do the art last day, i wanna let at least 4 minigames working today.


1 Day and 12 Hours until the end: I thought on doing like 8 minigames and connect them all into 1 gameplay, but i seem that as impossible.
I just finished a some kind of bouncy karts minigame systems, and i'm literally trying my best, but i have almost no time to work on something better, i'm really thinking on giving up on this jam ):


1 Day and 11 Hours until the end: I keep working on this but i'm still thinking on surrender. But anyways, i develop a falling tiles minigame.
I think i will need an extra day only for art.


1 Day and 9 Hours until the end: It's 00AM here rn, and i finally finished this pinball like minigame. Still no win conditions and i think i will add corners so it's less unfair, but i liked it.
Anyway, i'm gonna sleep rn.


20 Hours until the end: Almost lunch time, i woke up really late, but its okay, hopefully i finish the next 4 minigames, but if not, i'll release a shorter version.
Also, I added corners and lives, after the minigames, the UI will be the next.


10 Hours until the end: I had some stuff to do after lunch, but i resumed work few hours ago, i did a "Tanks" minigame and also added graphics to almost everything except players and UI.
I'll leave some images of the new graphics versions.
( Snails ) ( Cars ) ( Pinball ) ( Falls ) ( Tanks )

7 Hours until the end: So, i decided to not do anymore minigames, it's 1:40am here now and i have to work tomorrow.
Anyways, i'm implementing some kind of stage progression lobby and adding the music, i guess the next entry will be the last one.


5 Hours until the end: This is the final entry on the devlog. 3:30am here. I finished with the UI and music. I really like how it looks right now, but there's a lot of space for improvements.
This was supposed to be a party game for 1-3 players, but i haven't time to implement this, so i made bot AI for every minigame.
Also, you can't choose gang neither, its on red gang by default, that was intensional sorry for that ):

So, i'm gonna leave some screenshots above, but if you want, you can see the whole devlog album on the link below (there are some extra unused images).
Thanks for reading! :)
( Album )
 
Last edited:
One Big Political Party
by Terminator_Pony (GREEN)

(itch.io link)
screen1.png
A political campaign simulator where they either vote for you or a revolution.​

I planned on doing more of a devlog along the way, but between jam and non-jam related things I'm exhausted and never found the time. All I can say is go green!

Feeling super foggy this morning. We'll see how this goes. Progress and entry goes here. Eventually.
 
Last edited:

Josh Chen

Member
Screenshot (12).png

By Little Penguin Studios (@Josh Chen & @bandman28).
Featuring beautiful music from @JordanOttesen.

For the YELLOW GANG.

Download The Golden Balloon


A light-hearted, simple platform game about protecting your balloon from the annoying squirrels in their annoying little trees, collecting coins to acquire the golden balloon, and making it to the big party all in one piece!

Screenshot (15).png

Includes 7 fun and engaging levels, some satisfying animations and sound effects, and of course, a little surprise party at the end that we obviously can't tell you about! Enjoy!
 
Last edited:
G

GVmG

Guest
logo_big.png
by Raechel/GV
(green gang)

The rage party game about a party where you're not attending a party. Run around the grocery store isles collecting the things required for the GMC Jam 10th Anniversary party, then run through the registers to pay and bring the items back home... except these party-goers are fast and you already need to restock! Hopefully you're faster than them...


Note: the times will be 1h off from the actual Jam times (4pm=3pm jam time) because I'm on UTC+1.
4:40pm
Woke up later than expected, thought I was gonna spend time with the nintendo direct but it turns out it's on March 4th and I'm just an idiot. Gonna get to work on the game now lol

5:30pm
Got a basic movement thing going. Very happy with it, this seems to be going well.
2021-02-25_17-31-45.gif
My girlfriend described it as "a lone shopping man meandering through the cold, unforgiving void of space" lol

6:20pm
Took a short break to make a logo. Turned out decent.

7:20pm
Menu is now in! It includes a how-to-play guide (still missing some bits)
Runner_2021-02-25_19-16-25.pngRunner_2021-02-25_19-16-35.png

7:50pm
I plan to make the chat (the bit that tells you what you need to get at the store) have the nicknames of the people who joined teams during this jam! Here's the process i used to turn @Yal 's list of team members into arrays to pick from :)

10:20pm
Gonna take a small break for today, got a basic item list in with prices and a very hacky way to store the item prices lol - also tweaked the main menu
1614287990588.png
4:15am
The break lasted a bit longer than i expected, ended up watching stuff instead of just programming.
I got a couple things in though, mostly optimization and refactoring. Started working on actual sprites as well, will do more tomorrow :)

4:20pm
Well i wasted a lot of time didn't I. Had the option to get up earlier but instead I decided to go back to sleep. Let's see what I can get done today. I also havea lot of stuff t do around the house so hopefully I get enough work done. At least i can make a 420 joke hehe.

4:50pm
Fixed a bit collision bouncing bug by... just using movement_bounce lmao - it's been so long since i used the actual movement functions and hspeed/vspeed.

there are still a couple kinks but it should be way better now.

6:10pm
Damn it i have so much to do irl i should have free'd the day knowing there was a jam coming LUL
oh well, too late now :/ I'll do all i can with the time i have :)

7:20pm
Got pizza, this should fuel me for a while :)


8:45pm
Just some minor tweaks and more procrastinating. I also made a random bad-on-purpose video thumbnail.

11:20pm
After about 30 minutes of confusion I figured a quick way to replace my old d3d_set_projection_ortho "quick camera" trick from back in gmstudio1.4
Instead of abusing d3d_set_projection, i just set a viewport in the room properties and then use camera_set_view_pos and camera_apply. I also got a decent-enough cart sprite in, not sure if Ieven want to add a person carrying it around lol
LINK HERE (media tag removed so the forums don't scream at me)
Defnitely not frustrated at how little i knew about the new camera system before this gam : )
7:10pm
aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah im so laaaaate with everything lmaooooo
i keep getting interrupted by my parents for one thing or another, right when im getting into the flow of things. it's been pain for my morale, but i want to keep pushing.
i got a font in, took way too long cause i kept forgetting symbols lol



somewhere along the process i created a caesar cypher by mistake lmao


but ye i still havent even eaten today, gonna take a small break to eat something and watch a couple vids to wind down from all the moral drops.

9:40pm
Getting more basic stuff done: now the rendering for the chat that will show what the user should get!


10:50pm
phone fully working!
2:40pm
finally i woke up at a decent time. gonna focus more on jamming today :)

5:20pm
Got some sound effects and textures in. probably gonna change the screeching one later.

Currently, the game starts slow and as time goes on you get more and more notifications, forcing you to memorize where the things are. I think i'll have fixed item positions later on, so you don't randomly find a hammer in a fridge or beer in a candy display.

7:00pm
Tweaking sound effects more, now also changed the rendering a bit so there's a screenshake when you hit something, and also it highlights items in shelves that you need to get (makes the start of the game easier).

7:30pm
Very unsure whether or not i should submit this, there is no gameover condition, progression is slow, music isn't there, i want to tweak the sound design and mechanics, and i don't think i'll have much time to complete it tonight or tomorrow morning. I'll try my best tho, worst case scenario i'll just upload an incomplete tech demo LUL

9:50pm
i might actually be able to pull it off :eek:

11:00pm
Most of the game is now in place, i just need a background song that i can edit and turn into a mall/store/grocerystore atmosphere.

FINISHED - 00:30am, March 1st
WOOOOOOOOOOOOOO
(i still need a sound effect then i'm ready to upload)

1:10am, March 1st
Uploaded! Enjoy the game everyone!
 
Last edited by a moderator:
Prototype

Soooo, I'm not feelin' the theme this time around; instead of trying to work within those confines, I've decided to use the Jam as an excuse to knockout as much of a game prototype as I can in the limited development time.

Initial List of Game Mechanics:
  1. Player Movement/Collision
  2. Enemy Pathing
  3. Enemy Simple Attack AI
    1. Basic melee
    2. basic ranged
  4. NPC Wander/Flee AI
  5. Resource Collection
    1. Attackable resources (trees/rocks)
    2. Collectable resources (fiber/berries)
  6. Inventory
  7. Basic Construction
    1. Walls
    2. Turrets
    3. Buffers
  8. Basic Crafting
  9. Basic Equipment
    1. Head
    2. Torso
    3. Legs
    4. Gloves
    5. Boots
 

Nocturne

Friendly Tyrant
Forum Staff
Admin
MY CRIMSON GUILD 🍎 ENTRY!

Logo.png


This is a full game, although I confess that it's really more like a prototype or proof of concept than anything else!
As usual, I bit off a bit more than I could chew, but still, it's fun enough for how short it is, and I can see potential
for the future if I want to further explore the core concept. So, that said, some info on the game...

In this game you must form a party of plague rats and escape the laboratory where you were created.
The game is 100% mouse controlled, and is fairly polished.

IMPORTANT!!!! There is a rare bug that I couldn't track down and fix in the timeframe
which will cause the game to freeze (it's an infinite loop). PLEASE restart and play
again if this happens, as the game is VERY short and I'd appreciate it being given
a chance. :)

There's no devlog as I really didn't have the time, and don't want to do one now as I have work tomorrow and it's late... :p

Thanks for playing, and good luck to everyone else (especially if you're part of the Crimson Guild!).
 
Last edited:
title.png
Will you be able to manage your party? Try to keep your ungrateful guests happy with plenty of drinks, good music and, of course, pizza in this twist of a turn-based strategy game.

Latest Preview (end of day 3, AI is not doing so good... :/ ):

DAY 1:
A.M

Pro Motion NG sketch of your place:
screenshot 1.png
Map size and item placement are temporary, but I wanted to get a feel of what it would look like before diving in coding. I find having a clear visual of the thing before I even get started helps me not go feature-freak, especially in jam-time.

P.M.
Finished all my sprites (I think...) and imported them in GM. I didn't want to mess too long with the color palette, so I used the Shindler's List trick, overall satisfied of how it turned out.
Of course, I was going to use the gang-color theme in there, but rest assured, there will be no negative consequences if a little red guy is talking to a little green guy 😂
image843.png

For now I can move around with the player and mess around with the sound system.
I want to get the basics done ASAP, because the more time I'll have to work on the IA, the more convincing it'll be, but that's obviously the hard part. Trying to set this all up this evening, to be continued...


EVENING
Finished a lot of boring stuff, and got a little better feel of what the game should be the more I mess around with it.
Tomorrow is going to be dedicated to the "happiness/satisfaction" mechanics, and trying to make the little dudes behave a little bit like humans.

DAY 2:
Well, it can't always sail smoothly.
Snowstorm caused a power outage that went on and off for most of the day. I was able to do some minor work on my laptop, but this day was overall 0 productive.
Let's hope everything is back on track for day 3!

DAY 3:
After spending all morning shuffling the show out of my driveway, I was finally able to get back on the jam.
I wanted to work on my IA, and honestly, it didn't go so well.
Beside being quite a bit stupid, the guests end up often being in the way of the player, blocking important stuff like the door or the phone.
Getting around that would mean MAJOR refactoring, which I don't have time for.
What I'm thinking is maybe try to swap that thing in some sort of maze/puzzle thing.
I really need to find a new endgame/objective to this thing!
What it looks like so far:
 
Last edited:

samspade

Member
Robot Surprise Party
stealth birthday action

Sam Spade (team YELLOW)
DOWNLOAD LINK

Update 1:
Project started and the most basic form of the basic implemented. At the moment, it is nothing more than red light, green light where the outer squares try to make it into the purple zone without being 'spotted'. I'm using GM's built in motion planning functions for this, which I've never used before. I've also never used the path functions before. So I've spent a lot of time reading the manual and watching a few tutorials. I was stuck for a while because I didn't realize (and I probably should have) that if you add the objects themselves to the grid as an obstacle, they can't move because you can't create a path from inside an obstacle. So currently, they don't avoid each other. Perhaps I'll find a way to fix that at some point. Next up, a basic game loop: init sequence, menu, ability to play and win or lose, and then repeat.

1614276049050.png

Update 2:
Did spend as much time as I should in the afternoon, but now there is a basic gameplay loop. A menu, the above game, and you can win and lose. I think the next thing to work on is to make it a little more interesting. The next three things I'm going to try and implement are walls, hiding spots, and directed movement. [edit] that went way faster than expected. There are now walls, cover, and the sneaky friends go where you tell them. The built in grid movement stuff is pretty good. I can see places where it would fail in a more complicated project, but for the basic stuff that I'm doing, it works exactly as expected. Next step, turn it from a game of red-light green-light to a game of actual stealth birthday action. But first, decide what that means.

1614291292420.png

Update 3:
It's a little janky, but the birthday bot now moves around and goes from room to room. It needs to be fine-tuned a bit, but I think the basic idea is there. Functionality wise, I'd say the core is maybe 50% there? It depends on how many different features I want to add.

Update 4:
Spent the morning trying to find some good art. Art is not my strong suit and I haven't spent much time on it, so this is slow going. But it is probably is compensated for the fact that I'm not going to make any of it myself (as it would look terrible). So I think I've found a decent set of tilesets and I already knew what robots I wanted to use. They don't quiet match, probably if I knew more color theory I could make the robots fit a bit more, but it makes me smile. This won't actually be a level, but here's the test art so far. Now it's time to break for lunch and then come back and probably create some actual levels with this art. Then maybe sound?
1614365072829.png

Update 5:
Still no sound, but I've got most the basic gameplay loop working with the art. The art style also requires additional coding to make things function correctly, but look at the robots trying to sneak up on their friend for a surprise party! Everything still feels kind of lifeless though. Hopefully sounds, some visual effects, and better level design will help with that. I also spent some time learning how to use broadcast messages and they are cool and very useful. A built in pubsub system for animations.

View attachment 38367

Update 6:
Started adding in some sounds and music. It definitely helps. At this point I need to polish the very tiny existing game loop. Things on the todo list:
  • Menu (make it look nice and add a few things like music on/off)
  • Instructions (somewhere)
  • Game End Screen (make it look nice)
  • Transitions (currently none, and therefore very abrupt)
  • General polish on existing gameplay
After that is done, I can work on building out at least a few levels and maybe a couple extra features as well. If I can get everything on the above list done by tomorrow I would be really happy.

Update 7:
I've made a little progress on most of the above list, mostly in the decisions on what those things should be. I really need a good pixel font.

View attachment 38401

Update 8:
More progress. From the above list, I still need instructions. If I have time, I'll create a tutorial level, but I'll leave that towards the end. Otherwise, I might just put in a screen with written instructions. Most of the things from the above list except for that are done and the game is in a state in which it could be submitted. But it currently has only one level, which is basically the tutorial level and impossible to fail at without trying. Next up, creating more levels, along with a level progression system and probably trying to fine tune different elements along the way. But at least I know I could submit something.

1614466576259.png

Update 9:
Getting a very late start on what for me will be the final day of the jam. Current goal is to get a few levels done. I didn't get to implement all the mechanics I wanted, so I'm not sure how many levels what I have can support. Probably only 4-5. At that point, I probably need to decide whether to spend time polishing existing things, or trying to get one or two more mechanics in so that there can be more levels. We'll see how it goes.

Update 10:
First new level created. New levels require a some code modifcation, and there's a few issues. But onto level 3.
View attachment 38441

Update 11:
Four levels doneish. I'd like to get one more in, but there's definitely some polishing that needs to happen first, and of course a way to go from level to level. I think at this point I'm going to call it good and start polishing the things that exist. If it goes super well, then I'll try to get that fifth level done.

Update 12:
Level progression and level select screen done. A bunch of minor things to try and fix here and there. But in theory the game is playable and complete (minus a how to play section). Next up, get instructions written in somewhere and then start tackling the various polishes and improvements that will hopefully make it more enjoyable to play.

Update 13:
Mostly finished. In case I suddenly lose all motivation, I've uploaded version 1.0. I'm still making a few tweaks and running some tests on the zip to make sure everything is going right, and maybe it'll be the final version or maybe I'll get a couple more minor things in. I want to make a least one more update.
1614575632095.png

Update 14:
Calling it finished. I updated the game (and the link, so hopefully that still works, I did test it). I fixed one very minor bug and didn't fix a few things I probably should have. But it's late, and it seems to work.

Jam Summary:
Overall, fun. I've said it before, but I don't like coding for long periods of time which makes jams difficult (and even this one, I probably spent less than 6 hours a day on it over the course of the four days), but still now that it is finished, I enjoyed it. Here are my three take-a-ways.
  • I learned how to use mp_grids and stuff. They're decent, but kind of buggy. I'm sure with more work, I could figure out what is going on, but for a quick game jam, they worked extremely well. (if you spam click around though you can definitely get the bots to walk through walls and such).
  • I learned about broadcast messages. I'm probably going to do a tutorial on them. They are great.
  • I think I need to spend some time searching through the various free, or inexpensive art and sound packs that are out there and practice building some things with them. I almost never try to make anything I code look nice and for jams, that really hurts. It would probably make my tutorials better as well.
 
Last edited:

SoapSud39

Member
"Forty; or the Modern Big Brother"
by Ezra (SoapSud39) (yellow)
with music by anonymous friend K (previously known as Friend B)
(they have chosen to remain anonymous - for the sake of developer name, let's go with "Ezra and co.")
Drive Link

grand daddy is watching you.jpg

Play as Winston the Dump in a society ruled by the Party and its enigmatic leader Grand Daddy.
What happens when Winston begins to wonder whether the Party is really correct about the things that it says?

"Forty" is a narrative-heavy game focused on a lot of dialogue and text besides, as well as several minigames which contribute to the heavy story. It also features some metagaming, which is always very very fun.

The narrative is inspired by and even parodic of George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four. It is quite enjoyable (if I may say so myself), and full of literary surprises, as well as many references to the GM community.

The Theme: The Party is One Big Party, just saying.

mockup 2.jpg
Featuring GameDevDan and Winnie-the-Pooh!! ! (mockup from a few days ago)


Disclaimer: the story may express some false views. Some of the characters, inspired by real people, may also have dubious views. These views are not indicative of the views of those people who have inspired the characters.

Note: you will need to access local app data during the game. Instructions are included on the readme if you do not know how to get there.

Nearly everything was made during the jam.
All artwork and programming by Ezra during the jam.
Some music by Ezra during the jam.
Two soundtracks (the longer ones, I might add) by K.
Sound effects (about 4) were also made during the jam.
The main font was made from the existing Courier font during the jam. One pixel font was made beforehand.
The story, dialogue, etc. were written prior to the jam.
For full list of inspirations, see the readme in my zip (after playing).

- - - - - - -
Devlogs:

I won't spoil too much of narrative/gameplay, just because my concept's too good, and it'll be a good surprise.

I wake up at 9 and there are already 35-ish replies. Whoops. I had meant to wake up a couple of hours ago (which would have been 3 hours after the start, instead of 5), but I didn't. Which is fine, because that means I actually got a healthy more-than-8 hours of sleep.

I also got a head-start on planning (like no-doubt many others did) and most of the narrative and dialogue (which aren't actually assets, so I hope you'll forgive me).

I'll try not to spoil too much of the narrative or unexpected gameplay, but it will be different from most others' conceptions of "One Big Party" (I hope). And in case I do spoil it, I have solace in knowing that I've already spoiled the whole game to Friend B, so it doesn't really matter too much (lol).

For now, I will say that this time around it will be a very narrative-heavy game, consisting of some 'minigames' (let's call it that) here and there. So a lot of dialogue, hopefully pretty art, shocking narrative, and my friend's music.

Concept art:
winston concept.jpg

Featuring Winnie-the-Pooh and @GameDevDan ! (I hope that's fine lol)
I think the actual art will be in pixels. Or pseudo-pixel-art, anyway, where I draw everything in Aseprite, make the game at a low resolution, blow it up, and call it a day.

The plan:
Today will be devoted to art, and hopefully I'll be able to finish everything within the day. There aren't animations this time around (foolish me, going for animations last time), nor tilesets to worry about, just a few character portraits and some backgrounds, so I think it should be doable. Then I'll have three days to code. Hopefully Friend B can come up with some music that they are satisfied with. In any case, I'm not going to worry about music this jam.
I drew some stuff on Aseprite, as I said I would, and I'd say it's looking pretty good. I did that for a couple of hours, through class (dw I was listening), and took a break to prep lunch. After actually eating, I'll probably keep drawing character portraits (expressions, etc.), and maybe some backgrounds (or whatever the heck my game actually needs). After thinking about it, it's not actually too much, so I can hopefully finish by night time.

In the meantime, here is a mockup of one of the concept-art scenes (above):
mockup 1.jpg
I was thinking earlier of drawing a pixel font to use for this game, since the only one I have that I like (made it myself) is only 5 pixels high and all-caps. But then I realized I could just use normal fonts, turn off anti-aliasing, and call it a pixel font. A little cheat-y, but it'd be too much effort to make a good font for only the jam (though I suppose I would have used it after). I like the courier font anyway.

I'm not sure if I'll post any more artwork after this update, since I don't want to spoil story. Maybe some of the character portraits? (idk)
Hopefully, I won't need to fill up this post with too many artwork updates, since the workload for art is much lighter this game.
I thought it was about time for another devlog update. I posted a lot more frequently the last two jams (or maybe it's just because today's the first day and I started later). Maybe I'll go easier this time on the devlogs (or maybe they'll pick up once I get to coding), since I've already got 'best devlog' once under my belt (to be fair, I got like 2 or 3 votes).

For the past 3 or 4 hours I've been drawing a bit here and there. I do believe it was the title/menu, the city scene, and my character Dan (who may or may not be based on GameDevDan design-wise). I can't show the title or city scene until the end of the jam since both contain major spoilers, but here is a mockup of Dan's dialogue with Winston:
mockup 2.jpg
I still need to draw backgrounds for scenes involving Dan.
The party part of the game will be apparent when playing (I hope), but for now that is also major spoiler.

What to expect from gameplay:
--> a lot of dialogue
--> somewhat heavy narrative
--> plot twists
--> not too much in terms of 'actual gameplay' (but still some)
--> some 'minigames' which will be pretty easy, but they contribute a lot to the story
--> metagame
--> quite a few references to here and there, as well as some other easter eggs

Stuff to do:
- draw Winston's expressions (two of them, I think)
- draw some more characters (three, I believe)
- draw some backgrounds (two, probably)
- draw some miscellaneous props (quite a few)
- code!
- sfx, later
- playtest (on the assumption, of course, that I finish with extra time)

I'll make another update later, probably after dinner, around 8 or 9. Hopefully, I'll have all the drawing finished by then, or at least the first three on the list.
As promised, a devlog update.
I realized that I forgot to make a 'Devlog 1.0' (as I had in my previous jam devlogs), but I'm not going to change it.

I managed to not only have dinner, but I also managed to complete the first three items of the aforementioned list. Save for the second background, which I'm omitting because I deemed it ultimately unnecessary and not worth. Now, I just need to draw some miscellaneous props and I'll be done with the artwork. That should be pretty simple (I hope).

I hope that I can manage to finish almost everything within tonight and the next two days, leaving Sunday mostly free. I'm trying out a lot of new mechanics for this game, but there's only really one part I was having trouble conceptualizing. The rest is brute-forcing code inefficiently because I haven't really touched GameMaker very much for a while, and I've forgotten how to optimize things (if I even knew at all how). I just hope that no unforeseen difficulty appears. Finishing early will also give me some time to playtest and maybe even polish the game (every jammer's dream).
Next up, everything else!

I still need to export and import all the images though. There shouldn't be way too many, but I did spend a whole day drawing, so maybe there are way too many (still). Fortunately, it's pretty easy to export from Aseprite.

Overall, I'd say the artwork is pretty good. Judge for yourself from my mockups and when you play the game.

I did say I wouldn't post anymore, to avoid spoilers, but here's another preview:
arcade play games.jpg
(I've borrowed the cheap-vaporwave look from Yal)
This one is for one of the 'minigames' that I've mentioned (three of them, to be exact). Yeah, video games inside a video game. How original.
It'll probably take like 10 (or 30) minutes to code the minigame. And then it'll be three resprites of the exact same game. Exactly why, you will see when you play. Implementing the minigame(s) into my actual game will take a little longer.

Anyway, no more image spoilers until much later, or if I feel like it.

And now, onto coding. I'll probably start with the 'minigames' to get them out of the way, and then work on the dialogue system. And hopefully everything will come together as intended.

I'll update the devlog (with a new devlog section) later on in the night. And by 'later on in the night' I really mean early in the morning. Probably once before I go to sleep, or twice if I finish 'Star Blaster', etc. soon enough.

I am tired because it is 5 in the morning. Therefore, I shall go to sleep now.
I am long overdue for bed (sorry! for those concerned). I'll probably get up around 9 or 10, or 1.

After finishing exporting all sprites (very few compared to previous jams, btw), I took a break and watched anonymous Friend B write some music. Then I got along with starting the programming. After importing the sprites (for some of them, I messed up the export, so I had to do those again.

Overall, a very productive first 24 hours of the jam. I got all my art done, and I feel good about it. At the very least, my game will look pretty good.

I also got a good amount of coding done. And by 'a good amount' I actually mean not much. Remember when I wrote that I could pump out the minigame in 10 or 30 minutes? It's been almost 4 hours and I'm still not done yet. Now, if I had cheated and just used a ton of objects (instances, I mean), I could probably have finished it within the hour, but I decided to put jam time to use and learn how to create a game in a single object/instance (a minigame, that is). Probably not a terribly difficult thing to do, but I figured out how and I now see that I am a slightly better GML programmer than I was three or six months ago. Which is pretty good because that also means that I am a better programmer, in general, than I was three or six months ago, considering that I only know GML.

Anyway, thanks to my perseverance (though some call it foolishness), I now don't have to worry as much later on about the existence of a ton of instances here and there and everywhere. I can actually just use the one at a time. (to be clear, I'm not actually done with the minigame, but I can see the end in sight, so it's probably an effort-save)

It's a pretty good outcome, in any case, since I've learned something useful, had fun (maybe) while experimenting, and can maintain a clean-ish workspace.
I was also willing to waste a bunch of time on it because, as I may have mentioned above, my programming workload (and workload in general) is lighter this jam because of good planning and good scoping (I hope) (and, of course, my friend's help).

Now I sleep. I'll probably update with a quick note when I get back to work, and then again when I actually finish the minigame in question. Then, the other minigames, and then finally putting everything together. (music and sfx later though)

Good night, morning, afternoon, etc.
I am up now. I think I slept too late, or woke up too early. How did I go by with so little sleep every day in high school?

Plan now is to recover my sanity with some mango that I cut yesterday, and perhaps a bit of sweet caffeine juice, and then remember what I was trying to achieve before I called it quits at 5.

I'll update with an actual Devlog post after finishing the minigame. No need for a gif though (I did consider it), since it's really just another knock-off Space Rocks.
After a quick snack of sliced mango and sweet sweet caffeine juice (actually too much sugar lol), I've managed to finish the space-rocks-like (it's a genre now, I guess) minigame, just in time for a normal-time lunch. Surprisingly, I got through most of it without too many issues. Strange, considering my code is usually buggy as heck.

In case you wanted to try it first, here is a link to just the minigame: I can't believe this actually took 6 hours to program (drive link).
WASD or arrows to move, mouse to aim and shoot. You have three lives, don't die. Get to 100 points (10 asteroids) to win. The game will close out after 3 seconds of winning or losing.

Pressing 1, 2, or 3 will change the game version. Which are basically just recolors of the sprites. It won't interrupt the game.
I personally like number 3.
Not too much in terms of spoilers. I also haven't added the music or sfx yet.

Next, after lunch, is onto the other minigames. I think doing one object per minigame is pretty good in terms of organization. Then, later on, I can just create the minigame instance, deactivate the main game controller, then when the minigame is done, reactivate the main game controller, destroy the minigame, call it a day (or something like that; I'll have to see how well that works when I get to it).

I'm not too eager to work on the other minigames, because they're all heavily reliant on strings, and those are generally a pain to deal with (not to mention proofreading, etc.). Though I am generally eager to try out some new mechanics.

Maybe I'll update again after finishing the next minigame (which hopefully won't take as long as this one did).
...but I still managed to finish it. And it's pretty cool.
To be clear, I haven't actually finished it. I still need to put in some other strings and make a win condition, as well as a progression thing (there are three versions of this minigame, all about the same difficulty, probably).

Remind me to never mess around for 4 or 5 hours with strings again.
Wait, syke, that's what I'm going to do with the rest of the game.

I'll try not to spoil anything, but there's some pretty cool interacting with the text. Well, interacting with the text itself isn't all that cool (just a click), but the code's pretty solid. And it might be funny. idk

Now to finish this one up, hopefully within the hour, and then, after dinner, I'll keep grinding through the minigames. The other ones should be hopefully much simpler to program.
How many minigames had I finished before last update? It might have been two (I now realize the previous title does in fact say 'second'). Fortunately, the next two minigames were easier to do. They still took a while, as everything does. Not too bad for five hours though, considering I also took a dinner and shower break (and a break in general). Both sections also have the benefit of both looking and feeling great, so I'm pretty excited to put everything together.

The minigames, overall, were pretty difficult to program, I think. The first one took a really long time because I was optimizing my workspace by using a lot of data structures and for loops instead of object instances. I don't think a space-rocks-like would have taken so long otherwise. I still do have to worry about connecting it to the main narrative game though, but it should be pretty easy. I think I have an idea of how I'm going to go about it (that is, quite simply, and without overcomplicating things). It'll be sick with the music, I hope.

The second one, which I will not spoil (nor the third one, for that matter) was conceptually difficult, because it required some manual string parsing. Actually, it probably wasn't terribly difficult, but I'm not good at math, so it ended up taking a lot of thinking. That one probably turned out the best of all four minigames though. I actually can't wait to see people's reactions in reviews (or, better, streams). There will, of course, be other very exciting-to-watch-reactions parts in the game. That minigame's not even the peak. But no spoilers.

The third minigame was, I think, the quickest one. Actually, it can hardly be called a minigame. But it's pretty important to the narrative.

The fourth minigame was alright. I can slightly spoil this one: it's something of a quiz. This one wasn't hard to program either, but it's been a long day, so I wasn't really feeling it. That's probably why it was just alright. It's not a very difficult quiz either. Though it might be easy to mess up (idk, maybe?). Once again, this one's important for the narrative (though I guess they all are, except maybe space-rocks-like).

I think the hardest parts are over. Almost. I almost forgot about the metagame (kind-of a fifth minigame) I had in mind. It shouldn't be too difficult, but we'll see.
Unless the dialogue/narrative sequence turns out to be really hard to manage because I'm bad at those and also don't have 2.3 sequences at my disposal (still on 2.2). But I've done some dialogue systems before, and if I split the scenes up into different objects they'll probably (hopefully) be easier to manage. Or rather, I was planning to do that anyway, so that it would be easier to enumerate them and make a save file. I think the save file will just have a number, and the game will start on a particular scene-object depending on the number (if one chooses to continue rather than restart when coming back, ofc).

Anyway, the plan now is to program something that will make my life easier, and still make a good game. Or maybe several things that will make a good game but not quite make my life easier. And then I'll probably sleep earlier (maybe around 2?) depending on whether I get stuck in another object-that-takes-five-hours-to-write by that time. I'll probably need it, since I didn't quite get enough sleep last night (I mean: this morning) and have programmed my brain to mush.

There will probably be another devlog update before I go to bed. And that one will start Devlog 3.x, because my numbering convention sucks anyway. (In case you were wondering, I'm not actually numbering based on day, though I realized it may seem that way, but rather based on how I feel like numbering)

Until then, so long.

I got distracted. Though some would call it taking a break. And then I couldn't think well enough to get any substantial work done.
But I did get a working menu-thing. I call it a menu-thing because it's not really a menu, but really just a title (with image) and a button that says "Begin". But it looks really cool and turned out as I had intended it to (look forward to a kind-of great surprise).
Actually, I guess I did get some substantial work done, since the menu is actually a bit more complicated than I thought it'd be at first. Plus, it makes a great first-impression to the game.

I realized earlier that I have quite a few scenes to create, and I don't really know exactly how I'm going to structure the dialogue, etc. sequence. But I'll figure that out tomorrow (today). I'm too tired to stay up until 4.

Tomorrow, I'll try to finish everything in terms of programming. And then hopefully Friend B will be able to get me the music by tomorrow night or former half of Sunday. I will also try to make some of the music too (assuming that I have time for that on Sunday).

Hopefully, I'll be able to have a playable game (prospectively missing only sounds) by tomorrow night.
I try to go to sleep before 4 for once, and of course this and that keep me awake. But that's okay, because I still got a good amount of sleep.

I got up a short while ago (about half-an-hour ago) and dealt with some business (which may or may not include private information, so I will withhold discussion thereof).
Now it's back to work.

Last night, as I lay awake, unable to fall asleep, I figured out how I would deal with the remaining programming. That is: just fenagle it and call it a game. I feel like I wrote some pretty good code this weekend (or rather the latter half of the weekday-week), but I may not be mentally capable of continuing to do that hahaha. Well, I've gotten out of the jam what I can in terms of trying new things out, and now all that's left is to make a fun(?) game (or at least one that people will enjoy).

So, for now, it is onto fenagling some code into doing what I want it to. And then, in an hour or two, a break for lunch, and then I'll see (probably keep doing the fenagling after too).
After implementing some small features that I was too tired to make last night, I took a lunch break, and then I managed to figure out a working dialogue loop. It's not as fenagly as I had feared it would turn out to be, so that's pretty good. Code's not too trash and I managed to fit it into a script, so I can just use that for most of the scenes that require dialogue (actually, rather than dialogue, as I have been writing it for a while, it's probably more appropriate to call it monologue - it's not dialogue until the latter half of the game).

It'll still require some fenagling though, so I don't expect to finish very soon. But the first minute of the game is looking very good (if I may say so myself).

I'll see where I am at around 5 or 6 and update with another devlog at that time.
So I am now at about the same place I was last devlog (actually, now that I think about it, I did manage to transfer some dialogue into an array).
A friend came over (unwarranted), so we hung out for a while. It was a pretty good break though. I am somewhat mentally recovered, and I think I have a pretty clear idea of what I need to do for the rest of the dialogue scenes.

After dinner, I'll get going with the rest of the code. I think (optimistically) maybe I can finish what I was going to finish today by 2 or 4 in the morning (I'll try to go for 2 not 4).
Oh boy, time is running out faster than I thought. Looks like the 'distraction' from earlier really took its toll (I don't regret it too much though). And here I was planning to almost finish programming by tonight. Looks like it's going to be a long night, because I don't want to do it tomorrow.

I have about a quarter of the game done (and by that, I mean most of it, but you can only play a quarter of it). Still have to write the sequencing for most of the remaining scenes. I wish my scripts worked better for multiple objects, but each scene requires this and that, so it's hard to adapt without copy-pasting large chunks and editing small parts of it. My brain hurts and I want this to be over already, but I've got to do what I've got to do.

Therefore, it is now grind time (whatever the heck that means the last few days have been).
I'm gonna keep working on it and hopefully not stay up too late. Maybe just until the caffeine wears off.

I'll probably write another devlog update before I go to sleep, or at around 2, and again if I decide to go to sleep later.
I think I might be about halfway through the gameplay loop now. I'd say I'm making pretty good progress. If I keep it up I should be able to finish by tomorrow afternoon at the latest, minus sounds.

The scenes that include minigames actually take so long to code, especially since the code is so fenagly. But I can't be bothered, with only 26-ish hours left, to optimize everything. It looks fine anyway, for the most part (the only part I don't like so far is still passable, since it's only really a very minor visual feature). The scene with the space-rocks-like was especially bad, but I think that should be the most complicated part of the game, so it should (maybe maybe) be smooth sailing from here.

I'm going to stay up for a while longer and see what I can do by 4-ish. Hopefully a lot.
It's Sunday tomorrow/today, which means Church service, meaning: (1) I should get at least somewhat adequate sleep and (2) I should pay attention to the sermon.

But I have caffeine water to fuel me, so maybe I'll be fine.

also, also
I got some music from my friend. I'm stoked to put that into the game.
Alternatively, it's early.
I feel like I might get a scolding tomorrow/today.

The game is almost done! Of the 13 necessary scene-objects that I needed to create, I have 9 (leaving 4 for later today).

I think the objects I made after the last devlog were on the easy side. Probably because the one aforementioned was especially difficult.

The last one I just did was the metagame one. That was pretty fun, so I didn't mind staying up for it.

I also had too much caffeine earlier, so I don't know how fast I'll be able to fall asleep, in spite of the fact that it's almost 6 now (insomnia sucks).

Tomorrow/today, I finish up with the gameplay loop, and then deal with music and sound effects.

The game's gonna be great. If I finish with time to polish, I'll actually have peaked my gamedev career.
I got up and my my whole body kinda hurt. I wonder why 🤔

And in time for Church service. I think I'll just listen. I don't have anything I need to do right now that doesn't take too much concentration.
I'll consider attending Sunday school, but I'll probably skip anyway.

Afterward, I finish the gameplay loop in a few hours (hopefully). I'm also considering whether, if I have time, I should take a nap. It might end up being more than just a few hours. We'll see at what time that is and how my condition is.

Actually, I just remembered I was also going to do sound stuff, so probably not happening.

At this point: a little over 18 hours left to finish everything, which seems doable at this point (for once).
I'll update with a devlog once I've gotten some work done, after service.
Thankfully, my lack of sleep didn't weigh on my functionality as much as I had feared it might. It might be bad later on though. I'll try to finish early and then get a full night's sleep (remind me: no caffeine at night).

At around 12:40 I finished the last scene-object (and then got pulled away by another friend). Minus some details like assigning speaker names and face expressions to certain lines.

After lunch, I'll need to make sure everything strings together nicely, then make a quick save function (quick save-function, not quick-save function, that is) and add some subtle UX details.

Then, it's adding and/or writing music, and finally, sound effects. If everything goes well, I should finish by 8 or 10.

I'll finally reveal the game title and an image or two once I have a ready version.

It doesn't really feel like I've done that much since the last devlog. But I guess I did pretty much finish the game.
I'm not exactly eager to code in the music, because, iirc those are some of the messiest parts of my projects. But I'll manage (probably).

I also wrote some music because of all the extra time. So now I have a short 'dark-theme' loop and a very-exciting section for the ending, in addition to what Friend B sent me last night.
I don't really feel like doing sound effects, because I still need to edit the music into loops on Audacity and then prospectively record sounds for sfx. Maybe I'll do some simple ones if I have time.

This is the earliest I've been done with a jam game.
Past few hours: worked on audio (four sound effects and getting the music to loop) and implemented it. It has to be the jankiest part of my code. But that's okay, because I'll probably never go back to it (if I'm going to be completely honest haha ha).

I've played through the scenes a few times (a few too many times), so now I've sent it off to my friend to playtest (going to watch on discord), and then if we don't find any bugs, I'll probably update this post in about an hour's time with the link, some screenshots, and maybe a post-jam reflection/devlog.
And the game is complete, play-tested, and up a mere 3+ hours before the deadline.

Time for a good night's rest... eventually. Surprisingly, I'm not feeling extremely tired. It'll be a while until I feel like passing out.

No post-jam reflection though. Or maybe I'll post one in the discussion later.

Enjoy the game.

PST is about 8 hours behind UTC
 
Last edited:

Mightyjor

Member
1614539500829.png

Mightyjor : Twintertainment : Brett-Bit
|CRIMSON GUILD|


DOWNLOAD THE GAME HERE

First dance room layout:
1614312745998.png
Second dance room layout:
1614312672951.png

Credits



All art, code, and sfx were created for this jam in the jam period. Game was created in GMS 2.3.



Code: Twintertainment

Art: Mightyjor

Music: Brettbit

SFX: Brettbit/Mightyjor

Announcer: Amber (Mightyjor’s wife)



Special tools:

Pixel Planet Generator -




Starry BG Generator-


 

Attachments

Last edited:
N

NoodleHead

Guest
The Way Back To The Party
Team Yellow

(Download link : https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1oRJTFEepCyIQzvoP8S7_OAjAmO1-vkzL )
46 mins in I have basic menu and controles rooms and I am starting the story.
0 Days 1 Hours 28 Minutes 0 Seconds
I have done all the basic code so it is copy paste from here!
Abou 2 hours: I have started the copy paste rooms of my text adventure and its going good.
The Way Back To The Party 25_02_2021 20_18_03.png
About 2 amd a half hours. I ' m finishing for the day. i have about an eighth of the basic game done
2 and 45 mins
I have made a basic song in my spare time
4 hours
I have coded a quater of the game
5 hours
I have more time to code today so I will most likely finish the main stuff and spend tommorow doing the pixel art
6 hours
I am almost done half the game:)The Way Back To The Party 25_02_2021 20_18_03.pngThe Way Back To The Party 27_02_2021 14_02_37.png
Those are some examples
At 17:19 My final update on the game i have done all the game and i have since added Graphics
The Way Back To The Party 28_02_2021 12_38_28.png
 

Attachments

Last edited by a moderator:

ThinGinger

Member
HERO HUDDLE
Jason Accardo (ThinGinger)
RED GANG
DOWNLOAD HERE

1614585948249.png

Hero Huddle is a game about controlling an ever expanding party of adventurers Rescue party members from captivity, and convert enemies in order to defeat the crystalline evil within the dungeon.

Didn't quite get everything done that I wanted to such as more sound effects, music, and more general polish. In the end I think it turned out alright for my first game jam. Definitely learned a lot.
Hope you enjoy :)


Woke up this morning a couple hours after the jam started. Worked on basic movement and attacking mechanics.
Things went well today. Implemented the main mechanic and mainly worked on movement code. Turns out its hard to move a large group of objects while having them not overlap, stay relatively close together, and pathfind around obstacles. Movement is feeling good, gonna start work on a proper game loop tomorrow

Pathfinding while staying somwhat bunched


The main mechanic: Defeat enemies to add them to your party!
Decided to change up the mechanic and general flow of the game. You now rescue new party members from cages.
The main idea behind the design is to balance size with firepower. Obviously if there's more people in your party, you are a bigger target, but you hit much harder.
As far as game flow goes, i've given the player the option to fight the boss whenever they choose, while offering the opportunity to gain more party members before facing the challenge.
Unfortunately couldn't get much done on the third day. Was feeling kinda burnt out so i spent the day just finalizing some decisions and doing some minor polish.

On the last day, I implemented a 3 phase bossfight, title screen, death screen, win screen, metagame functionality, changed up some mechanics and adjusted difficulty, added some sfx and called it "done".
Theres part of me that wants to keep going, but I'm pretty satisfied with what I have and I think its been a great first game jam. I learned a lot and thats whats most important after all :)
 

Attachments

Last edited:

Cat

Member
download link

download if u wanna feel like this
unknown.png
you see, this is why var does the art :p

Redserved!

6:31 - I'm still going to call this Day 0, and no one can change my mind :p
6:33 - I have a couple ideas, but I'm not overly confident in any of them.

19:00 - Oh yeah so uh... I had big plans. irl stuff happened. I really didn't wanna miss this jam though, so var and I came up with something small. Time for some work!
20:55 - So I've planned out just about everything, all of the assets are more or less done... should just be some programming and hopefully done in time?
24:33 - So I kinda stopped updating here because I was trying to get work done. The game is mostly finished, but the hosts are being weird, so idk what to do now. Probably sleep.
 
Last edited:

Director_X

Member
Hi everyone. Due to constant battle with my system, various SDKs and constantly misbehaving GM, unfortunately I was not able to compile any output.
https://forum.yoyogames.com/index.php?threads/help-not-compiling.84055/

Good luck to everyone who participated!

Remember to contact me if you came in 5th, 15th, or 25th for the prizes mentioned in the event post. :)

Dev Log:

Day 1:
Sprites and UI elements added.
Spent the whole day making.... the Main Menu! :oops:
Spent the night making the main menu music... o_O

dev_001.jpg

Day 2:
Stuck on Character selection bit... still working on it. :mad:
Arrgh.....!! 😬
Still no game play! :confused:
Going to e a long night......


Day 3:
GM is constantly behaving erratically. Declared vars in Create event are unrecognized. instance_create_layer/depth are not working in GML, but "sometimes" working in DnD.... I have spend 50% of the time fighting GM and it has not been pleasant....
 
Last edited:

filiprb

Member
The Mega Epic Party (Working Title)
Filip Budd / Mediocre Media Team
YELLOW IS THE BEST AND YOU CANNOT CONVINCE ME OTHERWISE.
DOWNLOAD LINK (when finished)

- maybe a screenshot here -

Devlog:
02-25-2021 - I am streaming on Twitch to start this off. Join me!

2-27-2021 - Darn it all! It's been a couple days but writer's block SUCKS! And it's not even that- I know exactly what I want to do, but no motivation to do so.
1614482510841.png
 
Last edited:
"Candles Have Feelings"
By Jordan Ottesen
(Red Gang)


DOWNLOAD "CANDLES HAVE FEELINGS"

Screen Shot 2021-02-28 at 5.58.42 PM.png

Concept: You are a sentient birthday candle at one big party... and you desperately want to keep your flame alive.

08 - Title Short (3).gif
Devlog
  1. I created the candle character sprite in Photoshop with idle, run, and jump animations. I brought it into GMS with the basic walls and logic for a platformer.
  2. I tweaked the player object to have acceleration and deceleration until it felt natural but still frantic with the animations (as it's a candle running for his dear life). I also created a wall slide and jump state so the player will be able to wall jump. I also... also made the flame that sits on the candle and coded animation logic to make it feel organic.
  3. I drew the sprites for the idle, inhaling, and blowing birthday kid in Photoshop.
  4. I brought in the Birthday Kid sprites to GMS and built in the state logic based on timers to have him follow the player, inhale, and eventually exhale to shoot a burst of air across a straight line. The player will have to dodge this line. In testing this, I realized the player will need to be able to crouch, so I drew the crouch sprite and built in crouch logic to the player object.
  5. I poked around on the forum and realized I needed to start posting my progress. So I just barely wrote devlogs 01-05. Everything else will be in real time as I complete tasks.
  6. I created the additional animation sprites to make the birthday kid look more realistically like he's inhaling and shooting a burst of air at the candle. Also added the alert indicators to help the player see where the burst of air is going to go.
  7. I created the air sprite for when the birthday kids blows, built the logic for the air sprite to behave and animate such that it grows and follows the inhale indicators, and made it destroy the fire object. With the fire object destroyed, a death animation sequence starts (the candle grasps for his head and cries a single tear of defeat as he realizes the fire is gone) and the room resets. My wife thinks I'm crazy as I laugh quietly to myself at the animation. Maybe it's dumb, but I think it's funny...
  8. Added trigger objects to adjust camera scroll speed and birthday kid blow timers. This will allow me to increase or decrease the difficulty whenever the player collides with the trigger(s). Starting to look at obstacles that will lend themselves well to the birthday kid and candle fire mechanics. Kicking around the idea of having interactive flammable elements in the level too... though I might not get to that if I don't have time...
  9. I created a wall that acts like frosting, causing the player to stick in place and slowly sink, making him completely vulnerable to the air flow of the birthday kid. Makes for a different approach to death by falling. Also added coyote time to the jump. Doubled up the "can_jump" variable with the sticky wall.
  10. I completed a rough first draft of level 1 and decided to shoot for 8 levels in total, each with increasing difficulty designed around the mechanics established in level 1. I also organized my haphazard list of to-do items on a trello board: https://trello.com/b/sU6mGZ0W/candles-have-feelings
  11. Started working on a tilesheet for the cake platforms... Super tired and going to bed finally...
  12. Finished creating the auto-tile tilesets in Photoshop for the cake (on which the player can run and jump) and sticky frosting (in which the player gets stuck and cannot move). Something super satisfying about finishing and using a tileset. In other unrelated but related news... I have a colonoscopy scheduled for today (no joke) - hence I've front-loaded a lot of the work to yesterday. Depending on my recovery time, it might be several hours until my next update. Or even until tomorrow. I dunno.
  13. I added footstep sounds to the candle (which I think are hilarious) and brought in music. Also added squish sound when the candle gets stuck in frosting.
  14. Started work on the title screen. Will need to add imagery to show controls. Also set up controller inputs so the game can be played on a keyboard or a controller (controller is better for this platformer... and most platformers). Added more sounds to the player object in relation to the death animation. Also... the colonoscopy several hours ago went great lol.
  15. Feeling very distractible. Spent a good chunk of time debugging wall jumps and making the airborne mechanic feel natural while the player inputs are being overridden. Recorded a fun little jingle of myself singing "candles have feelings" in a barbershop harmony type thing for the title screen. I'm hilarious. Or at least I think I am.
  16. I finished creating the background in photoshop. I admittedly did some tracing...
  17. I stayed up wayyy too late. But I finalized the title screen by adding a fancy title, list of controls, and a prompt to start the game. I also made a fancy gif of the title screen. Took me several attempts to get the file size small enough to post here lol. Also added some of my assets as attachments.. just because. I dunno it's late.
  18. I recorded my toddler making the sounds for the birthday kid. Perfect.
  19. Made levels 2 and 3. Added a collectible cookie coin thing for an added challenge. See if the player can get all of them by the end of the game. Added a death and cookie counter to the GUI. Used Photoshop color editing to make a chocolate cake tilesheet out of the original cake tilesheet I made for the game. Added more music. It's coming together!
  20. Finalized Level 3, Debugged Cookies, Added in-game Timer. Tired. Next Jam I need to learn to pace myself better. Maybe choose a smaller scope lol.
  21. Working up to the buzzer, just finished. Didn't have time to update the devlog in the meantime. Next time, Imma manage time better. This has been nuts for me lol.
  22. Created an itchio page: https://jottesen.itch.io/candles-have-feelings. I originally submitted as a Google Drive link (don't worry it was before 12:00 UTC lol), but I like this delivery method better!​


 

Attachments

Last edited:
"Florida Man"
A game by BreakfastBoy
GO LEMONS
Download link: https://breakfastboysp.itch.io/florida-man
-------------------------------------------
Devlog
-------------------------------------------
2/25

Haven't started programming yet, but I have a character design and a concept
1614309940573.png

*The game will be a 2D platformer
*The player uses his pet alligator to attack enemies
-------------------------------------------
2/26

player_idle.gifgator.gif
Sprites for my main characters!

orangeSlice.gif
Juicy Orange Slices! If the player collects 100, they will become temporarily invincible


I also finished the basic platforming stuff (moving, jumping, etc.)
The player can also throw the gator and recall him afterward.
I can't add any more files, but I'll still keep you all posted.
-------------------------------------------
2/27

*Added an enemy, finished all the animations for the main character

*Script for hurting the player and added a shader to indicate when either player or enemy is hit

*When the player has the gator equipped, the gator's health will be added to the player's.

*When the gator runs out of health, it will disappear

*When the player has the gator, they will swing him around to attack (2 points of damage)

*Without the gator, they will do a kick attack (1 point of damage)

*Added a gator cage: When the player loses their gator, they can break the cage to retrieve it

*If they already have a gator, the cage will replenish all their health
-------------------------------------------
*Finished programming all enemies
*Added sound effects, music, and background graphics
*Created the full level
*Added pausing, and the option to restart or quit the game
*Everything I wanted to complete for the game jam is basically done, except for the boss
*Had my brother test, he approves
-------------------------------------------

 

Attachments

Last edited:
S

SamBean

Guest
Untitled Pirate Game
SamBean
🍋 Yellow Gang 🍋
(Eventual Download Link)

Concept: A semi management sim where you order around your own pirate crew.

After a late start yesterday, I have a basic textbox system and the beginnings of NPC movement. Crewmembers will wander around the deck until given a task, they will then move in the general direction of that station.

Unfortunately unable to finish the game in time. Maybe in a few weeks I'll tidy if up and post it somewhere anyway. I am looking forward to playing all that did get finished!


 
Last edited by a moderator:
Status
Not open for further replies.
Top