GMC Jam Discussion The Festive GMC Jam 35 - Discussion Topic

Someone just pointed out to me that when you win in my game, it tells you to press any button to go back to the menu. But instead it goes back to the main room ^^'

 

Congrats everyone! Unfortunately there's not a ton of entries this time but maybe that means I'll actually review all the games?

Also: For some reason I thought it would speed up development if I made a level editor rather than using gm 1.4's one (it did not). But the level editor did turn out pretty nicely if anyone is interested in toying around with some levels, I bundled the editor with the game

 

You can also convert all your WAV-sounds to MP3, that can reduce the file size like a hundred times over, especially important if it's a slightly longer audio clip

 

From my experiences (the first version of my game was 40MB until I realized the mistake, the latest version should fix this) this is exactly what happens... if uncompressed the sound is always converted to WAV, if compressed it's always converted to OGG, no matter source format. Maybe this should be on the "nice to have" bug/feature list? (Give the user a warning if they've set a OGG / MP3 file to be exported as uncompressed)

 

Guilty as charged. I'll remember to use that option next time.

For those who doubt the need to use this option because their source music files are already in a compressed format, I can attest that it's still necessary. There are 2 music files in my entry totalling about 6:44 in length, and both came in MP3 format. But the resulting sizes without and with the compression option are miles apart:

• Uncompressed (submitted to Jam): 35352kB
• Compressed (just tried it out): 7791kB

There should be more awareness of this in GM user circles going forward.

 

What do you think about my idea to have a warning message about this? I'm thinking checking the file type vs its export settings would be a fairly easy feature to implement, and there's very little reason to export already-compressed audio data in raw WAV form (since it won't magically make the audio higher quality) so the false positives would be wide and far between.

 

For those who are playing my game, I would like to point out a couple of things

1. HP is never recoverable and it works fine anyway because its hard to even get hurt by any ghosts anyway. However, it gets a bit more tough by the time you reach wave 6 because then the world gets more crowded by ghosts. The more of them spawn, the greater chances you'll end up triggering one to attack.
2. Once you get to wave 6, you'll encounter ghosts that are hidden in fake objects (which are noticeable throughout the map.) Be on the look out for those. Just click on them from a good range you'll trigger them. Btw, I just remembered I forgot to add the fake spawner in the game and I never remembered until now. Already had that made during the phase but I didn't activate it in the spawner code. So that is one fun part forgotten in the entry. Ill prepare a post version so people can see it.

 

Guess I'll explain some of the weird crap in my game too. In Spectre 2023, the potato enemies shoot, but unlike your gun, it isn't hitscan. Instead, they are shooting along the walls, which you can see from an approaching trail of bullet holes, and you can use your flip to dodge to the other side of their bullet spray as it comes. The flip will also get you past snipers, and, with good timing, deflect rockets.

The "Spectre" can be used to cheese your way through hard parts.

The final boss is basically gun-kata Dark Souls. Enjoy.

 

Oh hey! A Post version of my game! The only changes I did to it was just activating a fake spawner I had made during the jam phase but completely forgot to enable it before submitting.

POST VERSION of my ENTRY

This feature comes along around wave 9 and its to spawn fake objects but do NOT hold ghosts in it. killing whatever hides inside it will result losing points in the game. Good luck!

btw Ill be streaming my gameplay in a minute from now so be sure to check me out playing my own entry www.twitch.tv/misumeow

 

YES a warning would be ideal. I won't remember 3 months from now and to be honest the music is the last thing I add in a last minute rush. There will be no rational thinking of file type.

 

@Siolfor the Jackal Hey! Not sure if you already know this, but at the main menu of your game, selecting "Options", leads to an error:

Code:

############################################################################################
FATAL ERROR in
action number 1
of Draw Event
for object obj_options:

Variable obj_options.isy(100027, -2147483648) not set before reading it.
at gml_Script_sc_textImage
############################################################################################
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
stack frame is
gml_Script_sc_textImage (line -1)
gml_Object_obj_options_Draw_0

Just a heads up!

 

Still waiting for that voting topic to happen.

Btw I encountered a problem with my entry and it may be the only one in it so far. I realize the spawning system for the 3rd ghost type is a bit broken. It sometimes spawn their transformation at a specific coordinates in the middle of the room and it gathers up several of the same ghosts on top of another. I might have to do a post-post version to fix this I guess xP

 

For those playing my game, I just realized there's a slight problem with my jam entry: It kinda sucks.

 

Oh damn! Nice catch! A last minute change in a completely different part of the game socI completely missed this! I just fixed it!
https://www.dropbox.com/s/s9vtswlpvgjwiho/Paranormal by Siolfor the Jackal.zip?dl=0

 

I definitely support this idea. I've tried to look at the results for other jams just to see how they went but I'm not really invested enough to go search through the old games topics to find specific games

 

Anyone beat this? This is hard :O


Edit: oooooo I didn't even realize I had that space bar ability.

Working Pieces out:

Grey: Unpossessed
Skull: Best piece
Pumpkin: multiplies, possible other best piece
Fire disappears eventually?
Everyething else: just moves around?

It seems like the winning strategy is to lock in all the sprits except pumpking and just let the pumpkins spread like a virus.

 

LAB 23 --- Post-Mortem

Here's a little post-mortem I'd like to share about our attempt at a game. (from my perspective)

Spoiler

First of all, Micah and I had a great time working together and making LAB 23. It ended up being super-short and rather shallow, but we hope you still enjoy it for what it is.

The first day of the Jam was Thanksgiving holiday for us here in the USA, so neither one of us did anything for the game. We both said we'd try to think about ideas on this day, but neither one of us came up with much. However, I ate a lot of turkey and stuffing so it wasn't time wasted, at least.

I had to work all the rest of the 3 days, so I didn't have much time to spare. This resulted in a lack of content such as flingable items, story line, help screen / how-to-play, and sprite animations. Micah did a great job using place holders while I did my best to fill in the blanks.

When we first started working together, we both tossed around a couple ideas that neither one of us cared too much about. Then I mentioned telekinesis and the game idea evolved from that. We didn't really have a plan, but we tried to keep scope in mind by limiting the features of the game. We didn't realize how big a feature "flinging things" was, as it took a while to get it working. In the end, it sorta worked, but things weren't quite right.

Ideally, we didn't want the items to be pushable by the player. Also, the items floated around a bit too freely as if they had no weight, and slid across the room too far after being released. There was just not enough time for us to balance it all. Collisions worked for the most part, but they ended up wonky as well due to using an anti-collision hack trick. If you played the game, you might notice a thrown object bouncing into another object, then into a wall, then suddenly being teleported to a different, closeby position. We wanted the bouncing around, but the teleporting was the hack doing it's thing. So, for game purposes, we'll just say the teleportation is "a side effect from the supernatural realm".

It would have been nice to have a dialog or message system. I didn't even think of having one until after the jam was over. With some kind of message system, we could have explained that teleportation bug in-game as a "Whoa! Did you see that? My powers are still growing!" moment. (Haha - cheap but effective.) Also with a dialog/message system, we could have added tutorial-ish help for the player. We were rushing in the last hour to finish up the game. I didn't even get the Main Terminal sprited until then. It wasn't until we were completely out of time that I realized that the player probably has no clue what to do in the first scene of the game, being trapped in a cell by a laser beam force field that kills you. We just had to hope people would figure it out.

I would have liked to have made a better help screen -- one that had it's own menu button, not as part of the intro. Time constraints and poor planning. With a better help screen, I would have shown the instructions with pictures, and spaced them out more, instead of having the infamous wall of text.

Then came playing the game. I hadn't had time to playtest the game because I was spending all my time making sprites and art. Especially at the end, when it's probably the most important. So, when playing the game after the fact, I noticed the game felt really shallow and empty, as Micah had mentioned to me leading up to the deadline. Along with story elements being thrown in from time to time using a message/dialog system, the game could have benefited from some kind of seek-and-find-and-collect mechanic. Perhaps finding a keycard in order to access the stairway to the next level, or something of that nature. That would have made the player need to explore more, instead of just evade the bad guys. A couple more levels might have been better, too.

But, in the end, I'm pretty happy with how it turned out. LAB 23 is short and dumb and shallow and vague, but I still find it a touch charming even if I say so myself. I had a great time doing my part for the game and hope it's enjoyed by all those who play it!

 

Thanks for starting the topic Alice! I'm aware that I usually start it instantly after the jam closes and dropped the ball this time - I was quite distracted yesterday

 

Thanks, man.

 

NERDY AUDIO POST WARNING​

REGARDING AUDIO recently discussed above:

I realized that HayManMarc and I's game (Lab 23) would've been 3.06 mb zipped with music attribute 'Uncompress on Load - Not Streamed', as opposed to 12.7 mb zip, which had music as 'Uncompressed - Not Streamed'. WOW , sorry guys!

Funny though, because I do know better, but my brain was such a mess at that point that I wasn't really thinking straight. I even did something else stupid with the sample rate on some sounds, putting them at 22050, so the highs got cut a bit. The reason for that was that I had a delusional thought (no doubt brought about by the final crunch) where I thought mono required only half the sample rate as stereo in order to retain the same range of frequencies, which is absolutely incorrect and rubbish (I'll explain more below).

Anyway, in the interest of education and smaller jam games, here are what I believe are the two most practical & effective space-saving things you can do (for audio data):

• MONO, I choose you!
  
  Mono is one audio stream and stereo is two audio streams, which is why stereo is TWICE THE SIZE of mono.
  Unless you absolutely need the L/R information, going mono is a great way to save space.
  Of course, don't just mono everything; be smart; choosing stereo when it's needed for the desired experience, or use mono combined with sound positioning code, or some other genius hack that I don't know.
  
  Lastly, the music enthusiast & producer part of me must say that sometimes the experience of a wide and wonderful musical mix can be worth the doubled space of stereo.
  Please don't let space saving become more important than the experience.
  
  
• (REGARDING MUSIC) COMPRESSED? DrakeYes.jpeg UNCOMPRESSED? DrakeNo.pepeg
  
  Using the 'Uncompressed - Not Streamed' option for music will DRAMATICALLY increase the file size.
  Compressed is the way to go for music in most cases, especially for jams ('Uncompress on Load' is okay as well, since it's saved compressed, so the file size is still far lower).
  That said, you should avoid using 'Compressed - Streamed' when handling music looping yourself via the audio_sound_set/get_track_position() function, as positioning will offset inconsistently, and it's even possible to get fatal errors if your loop points are too close to the start/end of the track, since the position can go out of bounds.

But that leaves 3 other options: Sample rate, Quality (a.k.a. Bit Depth), and Bit Rate (kbps).

Spoiler: because it just felt like too much information unless you want it

The default settings strike a great balance between quality and size, so you probably don't need to change them. Also, in most cases with these settings, the trade off of audio quality for saving space isn't worth it, in my experience.
But there are some things you could possibly do to trim off some more audio data without altering/destroying your sounds too much.

-- SAMPLE RATE --
Sample rate is the horizontal resolution (time).
I'm going to simplify this, but just know that this can work together with bit depth ("Quality") to create better dynamic information as well, but the biggest thing this changes is the high frequency information cutoff.
In explaining, 44100 essentially cuts all frequencies that are a little over 20 kHz. Human hearing drastically rolls off in that range, so whether that information is there or not won't matter.
In almost every case, you want to keep it 44100. Any lower and your sounds will be 'muffled' because the sample rate will be too spaced to retain the faster/higher frequency information.

-- QUALITY --
Quality (Bit Depth) is the vertical resolution (amplitude/volume).
This will affect volume dynamics, and perhaps many other things to a smaller extent.
For e.g., if you have a 16-bit impact-shaped sound and you convert it to 8-bit, the trail off on the impact's tail will hold for a different length of time and the noise will likely come up at the end, sounding kind of like static white(or other colored) noise.
This explanation is lacking a bit, sorry, but my advice is generally to leave sounds at their default quality (be it 16-bit or 8-bit). You'll probably ruin your 16-bit sounds too much if you lower them to 8-bit, and raising 8-bit to 16-bit makes no sense, because your 'dynamic' information won't increase because it isn't there to begin with (though I'm not entirely sure it wouldn't help in this case, as I haven't read up enough or tested this to know for sure, so feel free to try if you want).

-- BIT RATE --
As you begin lowering the bit rate, you'll first begin to hear a tinny sort of sound (roughly 128 and below, in my experience). If you go extremely low (roughly 64 and below, again, in my experience), it starts to become like muffled computery R2-D2-like beeps.
In extreme cases, I'd expect a bitrate of 64 for SFX would be all you could really get away with, but it'd probably really kill most sounds, well, unless they already sounded terrible. Who knows, in unique situations, it could add character to sounds too - never rule anything out, and if you got time, do some experimenting. 96 has proven pretty safe for me for SFX, but 128 is definitely safe for keeping SFX intact.
For music, 128 is surprisingly okay, though I wouldn't go any lower than that, and I'd say don't go higher than 192. For this jam, I went 128 on the music, btw.

TL;DR:
Don't worry about it and just focus on the two main tips I gave before all this stuff, if you want to cut your audio file sizes down.

(I guess I should post this in some kind of audio topic or something, but I wasn't expecting to go into it this much..)

EXTRA FRIENDLY TL;DR TIPS FOR SMALLER AUDIO FILES
• Converting stereo to mono cuts the size in half.
• Avoid uncompressed audio for music. (uncompress on load is fine though)

 

I dont know nothing about audio very well in game making so all this knowledge is new to me. Ill be more conscious on that. Thanks everyone.

 

As there aren't that many entries I do believe I should be able to do thorough reviews of each one. My Christmas break includes some of the voting time, so I should have tons of time to pull it off.

If I can't make a finished jam game, I can make up for it with finished reviews. But I'm not reserving a spot, just in case. I will post when I have finished all of them.

@Misu I am coming for Best Reviewer.

 

Go ahead. I am not aiming for Best of anything really. You are free to take the title if you want. After the last jam I participated, I rather just forget about all that nonsense and just enjoy this jam at my own comfortable pace. Which means Im gonna be doing a very abbreviated voting routine this time.

No more elaboration and critical constructive reviews. Ill be just pointing out the pros and cons very short and separately. That is pretty much it. Oh and maybe a small montage of me playing every single one of them (if I have the time)

 

I am teasing of course. It is really about helping out the community.

 

Just as a reference, here's my high score:

(so if you can beat this, you're officially better than me at my own game)

(this was done with the 3rd version, which should be the one included in the jam zip)

Fire randomly either disappears or grows to an adjacent cell like pumpkins, skulls fall down whenever there's nothing below them, stars moves sideways or upwards (twice as likely to move upwards) and ghosts move in a random direction. Zombies move to the right until they can't move to the right anymore, then turn around and move to the left. (They're facing the direction they're marching).

The game is hard, but it was much more hard originally... even getting 10 lines was a major achievement x3 Most of my jam polish time was spent figuring out ways to make the game easier. The main tweaks is making tetrominoes much more common than other types (skull and ghost shapes are now on a timer, showing up at least 13 blocks apart - originally every piece was equally likely) and on top of that, making square and long blocks twice as likely as other tetrominoes (since the addition of 13 more block types than in Tetris made them really rare, and they're the most useful). I've also toned down the speed blocks act a ton from how they were originally, when they moved around like once per 3 seconds... it was so chaotic it was basically unplayable. The ability to save a block for later was more or less necessary for an unlucky block not being an RNG-induced run killer.

What surprised me the most was how fun the game actually is... it's like the addictiveness of tetris mixed with playing a Kaizo game and being surprised by all the troll obstacles popping up to kill you in unexpected ways. It definitely wouldn't have been so good without the more long-form jam giving me time to reflect and tweak stuff.

 

Thanks for giving it a go on another computer! I was a bit worried that the laptops would ruin the effect like they always do when working with window manipulation. Is your laptop resolution particularly low? Or does it have a zoom higer than x1.00?

Point and click is definitely an interesting choice, seeing how our rooms could take 4-10 hours to draw and code while they might take as little as 10 seconds to solve. It's a project that needed more than one person to pull off for sure.

I've not had time to even glance at the game but I'll make that highscore look like a joke when I get to it or die trying

 

Ah, something as simple as knowing zombies move only horizontally helps a lot. The game is ridiculously hard if you don't know the patterns, maybe would be nice inclcuding that in the jam entry page.

Also: Ghoooooooostriiiis

 

Wow, I never managed to score a ghostris. I did manage a highscore of 39k though so there's that. I think tetris + kaizo mario is a pretty spot on description.

Edit: never mind, it was 36200 so I've still some way to go.

 

@trg601 hey, thanks for the positive review, man! Yes, you and three other people who played it beforehand had trouble with the jumping. In fact, the jump mechanics used to be twice as annoying (in early versions, you couldn't change direction in midair, which I've discovered is an objectively bad mechanic unless you're making a fighting game). It probably would have been better if you could jump higher. Honestly, I'm impressed that you beat it. XD I made it way too difficult at times, but that's what the Spectre is for, I guess. Lol.

 

Spoiler: Spoiler

Hold the door open with the cheese.

 

Oh god yeah, lack of control while jumping can be very annoying. I think looking back at it there was a kind of groove you had to get into, but it did get easier. I think maybe something like jump through platforms might have made it a bit less anger provoking.


Also, unrelated but I was wondering a bit about the rating system. I was thinking of only rating my top 10 or top half, but I realize that the rest won't get any score increases then, which seems kinda unfair. Is it possible for me to have ties? I still want to give points but I don't want to choose exactly which games are farther down the second half than others because that seems kinda arbitrary

 

Ooo, jump through platforms. I didn't think of that. That's a good idea!

 

Don’t stress too much about the lower half. Since the points assigned is 1/(rank+1) the points dwindle significantly as you go down the list. As @GameDevDan has said in the past (I think!), it’s the entries that consistently sit in the top 3 of reviews that shine a little brighter but otherwise we shouldn’t worry too much whether a game is 15th or 20th. I usually just focus on getting games into brackets of quality at the lower ranks. Unfinished/unplayable games last, janky games and/or games not tied to theme above them, then solid entries not quite making the top 10. Finish off with careful deliberation of top 10.

Tl;dr
1st place gets 0.42 more points than 11th place. While 11th place only gets 0.036 more points than 20th place. Don’t worry about the lower half.

 

Er, is there any way to play The M's game (The House) if your screen resolution is like like 13XXx768. It just goes off my display :/

 

Glad you like my game. And I have to agree, the game does feel like it could use more content and things to brighten the entertainment; I even noticed it myself during the livestreams Ive done. Of course this is only a 4 day jam so I cant really promise to put so much things in short time.
However, if you manage to get around the larger waves above 12 and so, things go crazy and youll see funny random objects get spawn. I guess I could have make them spawn sooner for better expectations for the users

 

Heh, seems like people kinda like what little I managed to get done. Makes me wish even more that I had actually finished. Maybe I'll put some more time into that project another day, but probably not.

 

Spoiler

Use the cheese wedge on the middle floor door to keep it from closing. The code should be apparent.

By the way, you can press 'page up' in the starting room to debug your way to the cheese part. Please don't touch the knife if you do because the game was not meant to handle that.

 

I've decided that next jam I definitely want to team up with someone again, but I want to do all the audio instead of programming.

I spent just under 2 hours total on the music for Lab 23, and the sounds were atrocious because I had so little time. Usually I'd make my own entirely from scratch, and I'd be faster at making music as well, but the programming took too much of my time and energy, so I wasn't able to really put out the good stuff. I still had fun though! And I've wanted to collaborate with HayManMarc for a while, cuz he's a cool guy. So that was neat.

On another note, I plan to play the games and vote this weekend. Hopefully I can do video playthroughs with some more gusto this time. I was way too low energy when playing games last jam.

Electroman is screaming:

 

Thanks! I think it partly comes down to luck. The Nocturne and Count Spookula have the most "human" AI (moderate risk, rerolling low numbers and ghosts) & I had to re-battle both several times in testing - but the other characters are purposely flawed in one way or another. It describes each enemy's strategy in the menu and Madame Ghoulie's is to almost always try and get a spooky flush (hence why she loses all the time! ). What she actually does in the code is basically: If I have 3 or more ghosts already, reroll numbers. If I have fewer than 3 ghosts, reroll ghosts, zeroes and ones.

Thanks Dadio! Re: theme - it was a super broad theme so I just went with a sort of character/graphical approach rather than a mechanical approach to using it.