GMC Jam Discussion The Frozen GMC Jam 43

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Gizmo199

Member
My reviews are up. Great job everyone on the games!!!
Thanks so much! Yeah I really hate that bug! lol. If anyone is interested in playing it without that pesky bug I have uploaded a post-jam fixed version with a few added things in there! I might expand it even more later but for now its just what the jam entry was supposed to be (non bugged with some extra buttons and flair. :p )

Here is a link to the itch io page! :D
 

Mightyjor

Member
@Pixel-Team Thanks for playing the game and the feedback!

There is NO README file, and it needs one.
This was certainly an oversight on my part. I made a tutorial screen that shows up when you click the big “?” Button, but you’re not the first person who missed it entirely. It would have been just as easy to include that in the read me, so that’s what I’ll do next time :)

[
Another problem I'm seeing here is the fact that the game says that AI opponent play is coming soon, and this is a Game Jam, which means this message only serves to infuriate the player by telling them how good the game was SUPPOSED to be. My advice would be to always assume that the player is expecting a single player experience even if a multiplayer experience is also a feature, and always provide instructions, either on screen, or in a README file.
This one I 100% agree with, but as a new dad I ran out of time to get the AI functioning properly while taking care of a new crawling munchkin! I didn’t expect many people to be able to play the multiplayer, but I actually have some big plans for this game down the road so I figured it was good to submit on the off-chance that I’d get some player feedback on gameplay, which I don’t think anyone in the jam has managed to do yet unfortunately. The AI sadly got finished just after the submissions closed, so it is fully playable now for single player!
 

Evanski

Raccoon Lord
Forum Staff
Moderator
Starship Elemental by Pixellated Hammered Raccoon
I got so excited when this game booted up. Looks like a really good arcade game, but it doesn't play like one. These sidescrolling arcade shooters are supposed to absolutely eat your quarters, not beat the game the first time anyone plays it. You get 3 hits per life from what I can tell, I never actually died, and then your ship also heals it self so you can get hit infinite times in 1 game, and it gives you a screen clearing bomb every 10 seconds.

End boss needs some phases or enemies added to it, maybe a visual que as to how much damage you have done, like broken armour or something.

Music was really great and I appreciate it a lot that it was made during the jam, a lot of people overlook that.
Thank you for your review!

We wanted the game to be too easy rather then too hard,
as it would seem more people are able to play, and see the whole game rather then it be to hard and people quit the game

We also figured people saying it was to easy was better then people saying it was to hard

This is also due to the wave system I created on spot for the jam (I hate it) We plan on making an advanced and reworked one for a postjam version

As for the boss,
we wanted him to call enemy re-enforcements but we decided to not do that for two reasons
the major being the clunky and touchy wave system
the latter being time and boss ai he already likes spamming the Lasor, so I thought infinite enemies was going to be an issue

We also wanted the enemies and boss, to explode gibs when taking damage (for the boss) and dying (for enemies)

@kburkhart84 did an fantastic job on the music, you can find the full OST here if you'd like

We hope you enjoyed the game none the less!
 

GameDevDan

Former Jam Host
Moderator
GMC Elder
Plunder Dungeons by GameDevDan
Wow! I love little turn-based games like this! My only wish was that I wouldn't run into so many enemies. I assume its randomized, but I got nearly all of my good cards wiped out as soon as I got them (like the silver bar which did like 12 damage or something) because It was the only one I had left. I think having the 'fist' card available at all times would be something I would have liked. That way towards the beginning I could stock up on good cards and get further in the game. But that's just my opinion! :p Overall it was a blast to play! Very easy to understand! :) Great work!! :D
IIRC I made it so on each run room 1 has 4 enemies, room 2 has 6, room 3 has 8 and every room thereafter has 10 (but I don't have the project in front of me right now to confirm and I coded that bit very hastily!) - yeah having the default "fist" card 100% of the time is definitely something I should've done (as others have pointed out) instead of my current solution which was to give you the default only when you ran out of all the others... thanks for playing anyway, glad you enjoyed it!

Plunder Dungeons by GameDevDan
Really enjoyable game, I honestly played this for over an hour with my daughter. And I think it says a lot about the game design that even a 4 year old could figure it out. The wearable armour/skins were really cool and add a lot to the game. I found myself finding new abilities or enemies every single run. Best roguelike jam game I've played and I refused to stop until I demolished the highscore.
Aww that's neat - I did want to make this game easy to pick up and play with very few instructions (which is lucky because I ran out of time to include any...) and I'm glad that it paid off! Thanks for playing (both of you! :) )
 

Bart

WiseBart
Meanwhile I finally found the culprit for that breaking bug that I guess many of you have been experiencing:
So to answer @EvanSki's question from the livestream (at 04:01:30): it is there to cause that breaking bug, of course 😅
I managed to fix it but it's still unclear to me why exactly it occurs (it seems to be related to the cleaning up of the gear joint that connects it to a moving platform).

Here is a patched version with that annoying bug fixed: Earlington Manor Patched
The mouse sensitivity has also been turned down in this version and you can now go sleep in the bed but other than that there are no significant changes or additions (yet).

Nice 3D! Great physics! Is this using Box2D as well!?
Yup, it's all Box2D! Forces, torques and joints 😀
(you can press 1 to view (part of) the physics debug to get an idea of what's happening)

Work is currently being done on a post-jam version with more levels, 3D models, particle effects, sound effects, ... added. It feels like I made a substantial breakthrough here with the use of Box2D in 3D so we're going to get the most out of it and play with it a bit more!
 

Sk8dududu

Member
We hope you enjoyed the game none the less!
No, I really did enjoy the game though. Despite my criticism it was still the second best game Imo.
You're right about the difficulty though, easier and more people can beat it while testing to see the whole game is definitely better than rage quits. Very well done. Reminds of me of my first arcade cabinet game, Galaxian. The robot space bugs are a classic.
 

Gizmo199

Member
Thanks for the review @sylvain_l ! I am sorry about your experience! Yes, a big part of the game it is based on includes the 'puzzle' element of solving how to defeat the boss. I did, however, post a guide for each boss here if you would like to know how to defeat them! :) I do admit the stone boss is a bit more difficult to figure out. Part of what would have helped would have been puzzle 'dungeons' leading up to the bosses so that you can learn how to use the different skills in unique ways to defeat the bosses, but unfortunately, I ran out of time, and my main goal was just to mostly focus on the boss mechanics. This is great input moving forward though! :D
I was worried the whole jam I was making the bosses too difficult to beat, but actually, I made the puzzles to figure out how to beat them non-intuitive and that is on me! I will learn from this and find ways to make my ideas more clear in the future! :)

I hope you would consider giving it another try with the help of the guide, but I can completely understand the level of frustration it might have brought on, and thank you for the time you have already dedicated to playing it in the first place!! :D

eta: Also you might get a crash with the phoenix boss should you decide to give it a try. Considering you have already played and ranked it, I might encourage you to try out the post-jam version here with the bug fix. Again, thank you so much for taking time to play! :)
 

The M

Member
...The fact that I play first give me a clear advantage ?!
Yes, and that is why you always get to start. ;)
To be fair, if I were to add a two-player mode to this (or heck, if you want to make a physical version) then you'd probably be playing two rounds and add up the score between them so that both players get to start first.

Oh, and there is a new version available with the remaining two decks finished (the download link in the games topic should take you there). Some people pointed out that the cards are confusingly worded which I apologize for. I will take a look at them and see if I can't make some adjustments for future versions. # was meant to represent "A token you control", my original idea was to replace the character with an icon, but that got pushed aside for more urgent features (and sleep). :)
 
I'm enjoying the reactions from people who have noticed the music in our game Voidling. It was a monstrous effort, more than I've probably done before in such a short time. Writing the main compositions then figuring out how to adapt those into vastly different element styles was a big challenge, especially since I mostly only write metal compositions.
Fun fact, the "Hu! Ah!" choir parts in the Earth element-related tracks are like 20 different recordings of my voice. That was fun to do as well.

I still haven't started playing the games yet, but I'm hearing some good things about them so far.
 
@sylvain_l Big thanks for the silver mate! Really glad you liked it!

@TehPilot just saw your stream dude.. haha ok, so yes technically you are correct in that it is the number of protons that makes the element, but the number of electrons is the same as the number of protons... so I suppose the conceit here is you are balancing or completing the atoms construction. Perhaps I should have 2 stages, building the nucleus first then adding the electrons second... but it made me lol that it was that fact which made you quit out! :D

But anyway a common reaction seems to be: cool concept, feels too random and too hard. I always make my jam games too hard. :D Think I might have a play with this though and release a more refined (easier/better) version. I didn't have the time to really get this where I wanted it to be.
 

Sk8dududu

Member
@GameDevDan Just found the Pitaya Dragon. I am still in awe that I'm finding so many new enemies and items after playing for like 5 hours. lol
Didn't find Tin until just like an hour ago too. You really went all out on the variety.
 

GameDevDan

Former Jam Host
Moderator
GMC Elder
@GameDevDan Just found the Pitaya Dragon. I am still in awe that I'm finding so many new enemies and items after playing for like 5 hours. lol
Didn't find Tin until just like an hour ago too. You really went all out on the variety.
Thanks! Yeah there are 25 enemies (5 in each biome, some of which only appear as you get deeper & deeper into the dungeon) and 51 elements - I thought if it was going to work & be genuinely replayable/fun I'd have to go all out... so I did :D
 

Sk8dududu

Member
Thanks! Yeah there are 25 enemies (5 in each biome, some of which only appear as you get deeper & deeper into the dungeon) and 51 elements - I thought if it was going to work & be genuinely replayable/fun I'd have to go all out... so I did :D
I have a pretty big periodic table element collection. I love that you put so many in. And most of them have effects that are realistic to the real life element. Like a lot of the metals you made meltable, and although carbon isn't a true metal it has a super high melting point so it doesn't have that feature. I haven't found any of my favourite elements yet though. 🥺
 

Pixel-Team

Master of Pixel-Fu
I have a pretty big periodic table element collection. I love that you put so many in. And most of them have effects that are realistic to the real life element. Like a lot of the metals you made meltable, and although carbon isn't a true metal it has a super high melting point so it doesn't have that feature. I haven't found any of my favourite elements yet though. 🥺
Sk8dududu and GameDevDan, sittin in a tree...
 

Evanski

Raccoon Lord
Forum Staff
Moderator
Thanks! Yeah there are 25 enemies (5 in each biome, some of which only appear as you get deeper & deeper into the dungeon) and 51 elements - I thought if it was going to work & be genuinely replayable/fun I'd have to go all out... so I did :D
I have a pretty big periodic table element collection. I love that you put so many in. And most of them have effects that are realistic to the real life element. Like a lot of the metals you made meltable, and although carbon isn't a true metal it has a super high melting point so it doesn't have that feature. I haven't found any of my favourite elements yet though. 🥺
lmao
 

Gizmo199

Member
@Ralucipe thanks so much for the review! As far as the power ups they actually do change your abilities but only in speed. It was kind of a last minute addition so I didn't fully convey that they are actually optional power's. For the fireballs (left click) you can actually just hold left click down and it will auto fire, then when you get the power up it auto fires much faster. The spikes also grow quicker without stopping you to play the animation once you get the power up. And the water power up makes your glides quicker but nearly the same distance for easier spamming. Haha. Thanks so much for the critique and that is a major thing I've learned this jam, conveying the ideas better! :) I actually originally had the spikes to 2x the damage of the fireballs but the combat felt unbalanced having a much more powerful option that don't work on every boss (like the cloud boss) so I just tried to go 1:1 for damage with fireballs & spikes. :) thanks again so much! Sorry about the crash too. I hate that I let that slip in there, but it ain't a proper jam game (for me that is) without some kind of bug or soft lock! Lol.

And also thanks @Toque for reviewing!! Haha. I'm not good at humor, so you will always beat me at that! :D
 
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Micah_DS

Member
@GameDevDan Would you consider adding images of all the player character's armor outfits to your Plunder Dungeons page someplace? As stated in my review, I love them. It bugs me that I'm probably missing some really good ones, since I've still yet to see some of the elements in-game, even after playing for a few hours in total.
 

Poizen

Member
It felt like some of the colors didn't create any geometry: using blue crayons to defend against the meteorites didn't work, for example, but red did.
Yeah, blue and yellow don't have collisions. The idea is that they're water and fire so they're not solid. Maybe it's a little confusing though.
 

Mightyjor

Member
@Micah_DS thank you so much for the thorough and fantastic design feedback! Been really struggling with the UI and I have a few ideas to clean it up, but seeing the lengths you went to to play the game and learn it means a lot.
 

GameDevDan

Former Jam Host
Moderator
GMC Elder
Thanks for the reviews & votes @Siolfor the Jackal , @Micah_DS & @The M <3

Addressing some points again here!

I found (...) I'd get loads of the element that everything is strong against.
That should be the opposite of the case (as The M noticed). The order of the rooms effectively goes "plant > rock > poison > water > fire > back to plant", so in general the element drops are good against things you'll be coming up against in the next room. However, this isn't helpful if you run out of cards in the same room I guess, as all your stuff will deal neutral damage then (plant vs. plant etc.) - and also since type advantage is never actually communicated to the player in game it can be hard to know when you're dealing super effective damage.

You managed to hit one of my pet peeves, being no quit button. Whyyy??
My bad, I just alt + f4 everything when testing and forgot to put in an ESC (although I did only submit 8 mins before the deadline so I wouldn't have gotten chance to do anything much more graceful!)

there were times that the element weakness didn't really make sense
I think this is a two part problem which I will fix in any future version. 1) you're never told when a hit is or isn't super effective, so it can be hard to know what the type match ups are. 2) There is a two-tier element system which I would remove in future versions to make it simpler. In general, enemies are weak to the element's category - denoted by the color of the card background. Water enemies are weak to plants & electricity and so on. BUT, as shown in the guide when you're wearing the armor they have a whole different set of weakness/resistances. E.g. most metal is weak to fire because it melts... but because most of the metals are in the "mineral" category they do double damage to fire when you use them as a weapon... I think in future I'd not give each armor its own individual weakness and resistance and just balance the broader elemental categories better.

I really like how you made everything you wear actually show on the character too. Many of the outfits gave me a smile (...) Would you consider adding images of all the player character's armor outfits to your Plunder Dungeons page someplace?
Thanks :) I will do at some point, but until I get around to that here are the sprites for them all in the same order the elements appear on the guide page (click to enlarge)


I wish there was a way to predict in which direction the exit was
It's always in the last column on the right (which I appreciate is not communicated to the player in-game).

(and predict) and how many enemies/treasures remains on the floor
The light bulb and neon armor both illuminate all squares with treasure chests, hindsight lets you see any square "behind" the player, and foresight shows what's in the square directly ahead of you. I think it would be OP to let the player have any of these abilities all the time - but I could potentially add a power-up to let you see enemies & healing springs too.
 

Gizmo199

Member
Thanks so much @The M , @Micah_DS , and @Siolfor the Jackal for the reviews! Yes, the biggest thing I have learned from this jame by far is better communicating my ideas. Originally I had wanted to have mini dungeons leading to each boss instead of just throwing them out there ( so you could learn the skills needed to beat each one) but due to time constraints I wasn't able to properly introduce the player to most of the concepts needed to beat the bosses, and moving forward should I decide to do another boss game, I might just stick with either 1 boss + more levels OR more bosses + less mechanics.

@Micah_DS
got to the third boss a few times but was unable to even touch the cloud any of the times, though I could see what I needed to do, I just couldn't do it.
This is a perfect example of me not introducing the player to some of the concepts and just hoping they stumble apon them. The best way to beat the cloud boss is via the lightning strikes (which you can use the spikes on to reflect them back at the cloud and do damage)

one key area that did not offer proper control is the dodge. The dodge will move toward the mouse if you're not pressing a direction, but when pressing a direction, you'll dodge in that direction. I believe a better choice would've been to make it consistent.
So this is an issue I actually was aware of early on, but the one I chose I felt was the best solution based on the time I had (IMO.) When I made it so that dodging only moved towards the mouse, I thought it would cause the player to only be able to dash at a target they were shooting at for example. Like if you were trying to run away and also shoot at the boss, using mouse direction as dashing doesn't make sense. On the flip side, I didn't go with only directional + last direction due to the lack of directional reference with the sprite. I was worried since there are basically only 2 direction animations (left/right), making the player try to remember what direction they were previously moving in would be frustrating, although I do think this would have been the better option ultimately and I 100% agree with you about consistency. This one just boiled down to me overthinking the problem. haha.

Secondly, the mouse movement choice is very odd and 'jumpy', and I believe it makes it harder to control/aim, as opposed to keeping the mouse in position relative to the monitor, not the game world position. It's especially weird if you don't move the mouse for a while, but the camera moves, then you start moving the mouse again and it jumps in a big way. That's pretty wonky. I expect you did this as an attempt to assist with aiming, but there's got to be a better way, because this just didn't work.
So this issue was mainly due to 'mouse_x / mouse_y' not working when rendering the application surface to the GUI. I basically have an entirely separate set of 'aim.x / aim.y' variables that add x/y positions based on the amount of movement the mouse has moved by capturing the mouse internally and calculating the distance each step (sort of how mouse captures work in 3D). I still haven't found a great solution to this issue, as when you are using views in a way that are pixel-perfect but also 'smooth' the mouse_x/y values go out the window. What I probably could have done though, is check for an 'input mode' and if the mode is set to mouse/keyboard, then just draw the cursor to the GUI layer but still use the aim.x/y calculations? Although that method wouldn't fix the 'sitting mouse' problem. But yea, I'm not a fan either, I just honestly haven't found a better way to fix it. lol. Maybe checking the distance between camera x/y and camera xprev/yprev could help? But yeah, sorry about that one. I spent quite a while trying to fix it and that was the best solution I came up with so I just moved on as to not waste to much time on it. haha

@The M
The fire bird confused me a little because I thought I'd died but just respawned. It wasn't until the final boss that I realized that fires didn't actually kill me, which felt a bit odd to be honest (but I guess I'll take it. Despite my best efforts I couldn't get past the rain cloud stage of the boss so if it had a final phase after that I didn't see it. I still really like the game though.
Yeah, I left the fire 'faint' mechanic in originally to teach the water skill in the tutorial (if you just walked through the fire then it wouldn't have taught much I felt). Then I justified it by telling myself 'oh well it can be a "don't hit the flames or it will stop you for a minute giving the bosses time to hit you"' but in retrospect I probably could have just come up with a better way / not made the fire 'faint' you. haha.
 

Evanski

Raccoon Lord
Forum Staff
Moderator
I think your game's greatest offense is that the elements are not only unnecessary for the boss fight, but some of them literally do NOTHING to the boss, and it doesn't seem like the ones that do work even do that much more damage than regular shots do (I didn't notice much difference between plays, anyway). I feel the boss should have been designed around the use of elements. To take it a step further, I think it would've been better yet to design an elemental system where the elements mattered more, even on normal enemies. For e.g., I think it would've been great if certain enemies could only be defeated with certain elements. Of course, the system would need to be a bit different, but I'm just saying, the theme use would have been much stronger then. As it is, the theme use is there, but it doesn't feel very strong.
With the boss, the damage is collision based

so the astroids kind of suck for him, the boss was made not thinking about that one

The lightning protects you from the Lasor attack

Fire and ice, do the most DPS to the boss, as they stay longer and contact the boss the longest



I see what you mean tho, having the element be used more
I also like the idea of having to use the elements to take out certain enemies
definitely going to look into that for a post release
also the ability to actually choose which bomb you want to use from your storage will 100% be added as well, I just could figure that out during the jam time (thats also why they draw weird)

Either way, Thanks for your review!
 
@Siolfor the Jackal
"****ing amazing" I know 😎.... nice work indeed dude!! You've got more patience... or luck... than most it seems! Thanks for the vote, glad you liked it, even if it's not perfect.

@Micah_DS thanks for the detailed review, all your criticisms are totally fair I think, just came down to not enough time really.
 

Pixel-Team

Master of Pixel-Fu
Thanks everyone for your thoughtful comments and reviews.
I would have liked maybe a tad bit more time, maybe a laser charging animations worth of time
I agree entirely, and We'll get a little laser charging bit added in the Post Jam version so you know exactly when that laser will shoot. I was in a rush, and hoped the sound would be sufficient, but it definitely needs a graphic to let you know the beam is coming...
in the moments leading up to the boss fight there is wave after wave of the same enemy - could have been mixed up a bit. The score, visible at the top, doesn't seem to end up being used for anything? I was hoping for online highscores but I realise that's a lot of effort in the jam timeframe especially if you don't have a web developer on your team!
Yeah, we were trying to get a bigger variety of wave patterns, which would have softened the blow of having less enemy types, and we put the burden of making these on @EvanSki, who worked his ass off nonstop. We're going to have a cleaner wave system that will produce a better "flow" of enemy spawning in a Post Jam Version. The high score table is on our wishlist. We're looking at our options, but no guarantees yet, mainly because we have both Standalone and Opera GX versions playing now, and these will have to be handled according to platform.
End boss needs some phases or enemies added to it, maybe a visual que as to how much damage you have done, like broken armour or something.
Yeah, there was so much I wanted to do with this guy, and it was the second to last day we got him hooked up and working at all. I'm going to be adding some more attacks to this fight, and we did talk about having him summon backup enemies that could spawn smartbombs in between his attacks. I also want to put a red tint on him when he's about to die. I'll see what I can do. These are all great ideas!
The boss fight could use a lot of work. Only being vulnerable for such a short time meant there was a lot of down time. And as soon as you take out the gun, the boss is almost instantly dead. I think changing the vulnerability period and adding some other behaviours could have made this an amazing boss fight.
The balance on his health before and after the tail destruction was a decision made due to the fact that we only had either laser or a single bullet hell pattern that played. So because of this, we gave him almost ho health once the tail was destroyed. Once we beef up this fight, we'll look into giving him less health on the tail, and more aggressive behaviors once his tail is destroyed, including flying at the player, to be more consistent with classic arcade shoot em ups. This was my first use of Spine with Gamemaker, and I learned a lot, but also we barely made it work on time. I'm all in on improving this boss's behavior. (Fun Fact: The boss was going to have wasp legs hanging off the sides of its torso, but with the tail pointing at the player, it look like a big schlong, so we took them out.)
I think your game's greatest offense is that the elements are not only unnecessary for the boss fight, but some of them literally do NOTHING to the boss,
Yeah, this was due to us running out of time, and to @EvanSki's credit, he did get certain smartbombs harming the boss, but we will definitely address this issue soon.
Unfortunately, it grew repetitive well before the boss came in
Totally agree, and the lack of patterns and enemies was definitely something we were pushing for, but took a backseat to getting a finished game loop.

I forgot who else said (maybe it was @TehPilot ) that the ship should indicate when it's invincible by either being transparent or flashing on and off from frame to frame, and we'll get that addressed as well.

Again thanks to all who took the time to play and point out the things you liked and didn't like, (and for the votes! ;)). Starship Elemental will return in some form or another, and we will address everyone's issues, as they are also our issues!! Cheers!
 

Micah_DS

Member
@TehPilot I always appreciate your live stream playthroughs (though I never catch them live, sadly).
My game was M4N4PUNK, the first game you played. I wanted to respond to some of the comments you made while playing it:
  • Yes, there is coyote time.
    I allowed the player to fall during the coyote time so the player would be able to see themselves start to fall, and that would serve as feedback for them to know they have reached the edge and should jump ASAP, at which point there should (hopefully) still be some coyote time left for them to jump, counting as the first jump.
    IIRC, I settled on a 12 frame window. For 2D platformers, my coyote time is usually just a few frames, but in this case, it seemed I needed a lot more, due to the fact that it's first-person, and the moment you leave a platform is not as immediately apparent as it is with a 2D platformer.

  • There isn't a jump buffer, but
    I used keyboard_check for the jump input instead of keyboard_check_pressed, so it would check every frame the button was held as opposed to only the frame you press it, meaning you can press the jump button early and it will still work as long as you're still pressing the button the moment you land. It isn't as good as a jump buffer, but this seemed to work well enough. I usually spend more time on the jump code, but this was a compromise, due to the time crunch.

  • The heating element actually does glow when it gets hot enough.
    You forgot to turn the glow shader back on, so it didn't glow. This oversight is understandable, since the glow shader is fairly subtle and the neon flashing effect is achieved with texture animation, not the glow shader.

  • Your comment on the mouse sensitivity is much appreciated.
    This was my first time implementing mouse sensitivity. With your comments and the comments of others, I now have a much better idea on where to set the default and what kind of scale I should give for mouse sensitivity.

You should try using a non linear scale for the mouse sensitivity. At zero the mouse doesn't move at all, then at 1% it's already too fast for me. Kind of like how audio scales don't usually have like 50% volume at 50% scale.
The mouse sensitivity is bonkers: it's a little too high on the default level and at max it's just ridiculous :D
This information is super appreciated. I had no idea what a good default would be and what scale and range to give. Thanks to your feedback and others, I can do it much better next time. Thank you!
And yes, the lowest setting is literally zero, making for no mouse movement at all. I messed that simple thing up because I was rushing like a madman at that point. 😅

Interesting how keeping the symbol overheated kept my FIRE rate increase.
I'm glad you noticed that. It was part of a bigger plan:
The idea was to heat it up to max heat then focus on fighting off waves of enemies with your improved fire power and rate of fire. And when it reaches maximum temperature, the cooldown slows so the player would have time to focus on fighting enemies without having to constantly be alternating between shooting the element and the enemies. I also tried to make it easy to heat the element back up quickly if you catch its cooldown early enough, which would allow a player to maintain a sort of momentum. Of course, no enemies are in the jam version, so I never got to see if this would work out as I think it would, but in any case, that's the reason behind the element increasing fire rate and staying hot for a long time at max temp.

BTW, I have a post-jam version of M4N4Punk planned, and I'm very excited to get on that, but before I do, I have some Christmas-related projects I'm crunching on, and I also need to prioritize my jam prize as well.
 
@Alice
Thanks for the review, it hits the nail on the head for me.
"making an 18-electron atom sounds like a massive chore. Molecules mode is more interesting, and I sort of wish there was more focus there." I totally agree, with those and your other comments about the physics. Not enough time / time management on this one to get it where I really wanted it.
"It has both the most original and the most dedicated use of theme" Thanks, I thought it might have been a little too on the nose for the theme.

p.s. you are very much excused for not completing it... I haven't! :D :D

@Poizen
Big thanks for the bronze mate, really impressed you got to Sulfur!
 
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Alice

Darts addict
Forum Staff
Moderator
A friendly reminder that today is the final day of voting!
If you still have a few games left to play, better wrap them up soon. ^^

Around this time tomorrow (a few hours earlier, probably), I'll close the voting topic, then post the results soon afterwards.
Stay tuned!
 

Evanski

Raccoon Lord
Forum Staff
Moderator
I couldn't get out of the pause menu. While it said press Anykey or the Start key not a single key seemed to work to return to the game.
Except for Escape, which did seem to work.
Oh s***t
Yeah...That was my bad,
forgot about press Anykey
but yes gamepad start and keyboard esc open and close the pause menu

Hope that wasnt too annoying 😅

Thanks for your review!
 

Bart

WiseBart
Hope that wasnt too annoying
I did restart the game once and only then discovered that Escape works to go back. I guess I could've just realized the same key that takes you to the pause menu brings you back to the game (an insight that came a bit too late 😄)
 

The M

Member
A couple of random things:
* The background music immediately sounded familiar from one of your previous jam games (Hårs, had to look that up for a moment)
* One pawn of the opponent moved out of the board and got destroyed. That came across as a bit odd, though I guess that's how it was intended?
* The green element can be selected as an opponent but it doesn't seem to do that much (it's a much easier opponent)
* The explanation on the cards is a bit on the small side (for me at least). An option to toggle between fullscreen/windowed would've been nice for that.
* Yup, the music's the same. I generally try to pick something different but I really didn't have the time this time around.
* Your pawns are supposed to be able to move out on the opponent's side of the board and scores 5 points per token in the stack. It's one of three ways to score high (the other being controlling a lot of tiles and controlling the tower tiles).
* I actually saw this bug recently when going through the code when making the post-jam version. Funny to see that someone found it. :D
* This one's my bad. I thought you could switch to fullscreen by default and never tested it, but apparently GMS2 disables fullscreen swapping by default.
 

Mercerenies

Member
So I have been working on a silly project and am ready to share the questionable fruits of my labor. I've trained a machine learning algorithm on the names of previous Jam entries and correlated them with the eventual rank they got in that Jam. I've trained it with the data from every official GMC Jam starting from the very first, excluding the Demake and Warm-up Jams (@GameDevDan's website was a huge help in getting the data for this, so thank you!). And now I've run it on the entries this time to see what places it thinks our games are going to get.

According to a machine learning algorithm given only the names of the Jam games, which was written by someone who doesn't know how machine learning works, these are the results from the GMC Jam 43. (This is just for fun; do not take these results seriously)

1. Klik Da Elements
2. M4N4PUNK
3. Santa Must Save Christmas
4. Brightest Crayons
5. Crush2
6. Atomic Jam
7. Merge Awaremon
8. Starship Elemental
9. Hydrogen Dance
10. Forgodden
11. Squaredude and Circlegirl
12. Breacher Bob
13. Voidling
14. ElementalStation
15. The End
16. Earlington Manor
17. Stack
 

Evanski

Raccoon Lord
Forum Staff
Moderator
According to a machine learning algorithm given only the names of the Jam games, which was written by someone who doesn't know how machine learning works, these are the results from the GMC Jam 43. (This is just for fun; do not take these results seriously)
Well at least its 8th not last
 

Nocturne

Friendly Tyrant
Forum Staff
Admin
So I have been working on a silly project and am ready to share the questionable fruits of my labor. I've trained a machine learning algorithm on the names of previous Jam entries and correlated them with the eventual rank they got in that Jam. I've trained it with the data from every official GMC Jam starting from the very first, excluding the Demake and Warm-up Jams (@GameDevDan's website was a huge help in getting the data for this, so thank you!). And now I've run it on the entries this time to see what places it thinks our games are going to get.

According to a machine learning algorithm given only the names of the Jam games, which was written by someone who doesn't know how machine learning works, these are the results from the GMC Jam 43. (This is just for fun; do not take these results seriously)

1. Klik Da Elements
1640168218221.png
 

Bearman_18

Fruit Stand Deadbeat
1. Klik Da Elements
2. M4N4PUNK
3. Santa Must Save Christmas
4. Brightest Crayons
5. Crush2
6. Atomic Jam
7. Merge Awaremon
8. Starship Elemental
9. Hydrogen Dance
10. Forgodden
11. Squaredude and Circlegirl
12. Breacher Bob
13. Voidling
14. ElementalStation
15. The End
16. Earlington Manor
17. Stack
The fact that I was only one rank away from where a machine learning algorithm guessed I would place based on the title alone is a little distressing.
Almost as distressing as the fact that it also guessed "Klik Da Elements" would get first place.
 
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