GMC Jam Discussion The Thirsty 33rd GMC Jam - Discussion Topic

TehPilot

Member
Phew! This is probably the closest deadline I've cut for a GMC Jam. Time for some well-earned sleep.

You can view project start date / use time under the main game options in GM:S2.

Here are my numbers:
 

Relic

Member
About 29 hours. That extra day added about 5 hours I would not have had.

As always, I look at the screenshots, gifs and even the written ideas of you fine folks and I always leave thinking I don't stand a chance of doing well in the rankings. Got to try some new things out though like using a grid made from the state of the environment to inform movement of AI.

I look forward to playing all of these real soon. Well done to everyone who submitted a thing!
 

Bentley

Member
Can someone test my dropbox link. I'd really appreciate it. I'm worried my link doesn't work. Let me know plzzz
 

HayManMarc

Member
Just a hair late, but got my game in. It's unfinished, as usual, but I'm fine with it considering I only have about 8-10 hours into it.

Good luck to everyone! Can't wait to start playing games and reading and writing reviews!!!
 

Bentley

Member
I am off to sleep. I set my alarm for 1 AM so I could finish. I finished literally in the last seconds. Thanks Jam hosts, Alice and GameDevDan for replying so quick when I was panicking and thanks SamSam, Relic, and OrSquadstra.

I can't wait to play everyone's games.

Pic cuz I forgot to post it with my game link. It's a body-less mage (over a gem, idk why) b/c I can't draw haha.
upload_2019-5-27_5-50-43.png
 
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NightFrost

Member
I'm curious, how much time did you guys spend on your games?
Says 1 day 4 hours for me, but that's not the whole truth as I left the IDE open while doing other stuff, then sat in for a little while to test some ideas, and was then off again. Taking off about six hours might be the actual time spent coding. A single feature that took the most time was the push/ride code, since I adapted it to include a third type, items, which get pushed differently. So when a horizontally moving lift pushes the player, who is then pushed into an item (a box), all three will move. But when the lift pushes a box into another box, they won't move and the box pushed by the lift gets destroyed instead. The push code is recursive, with each moving object that gets moved into another calling for push code for the next, until the cascade has been resolved. It's been pretty interesting, since the last time I really took a big look at platformer code was back when I was still using GMS1.4.
 

lazertrax

Member
I've had so much fun making TOGGLD this weekend. I wasted the entire first day coding an Idea that I ended up scrapping because I didn't feel it was unique enough.

Can't wait to try out all the awesome games I see this jam and I hope you guys enjoy playing TOGGLD just as much as I enjoyed making it.

You can check it out here
 

Toque

Member
My game entry. Simple little game to drag cats to their correct box. I'm happy with it. Always more you want to do to thicken it up a little. Happy to just get an entry.

 

Ax209

Member
messed up my game (was after the deadline anyway) but if anyone wants to play it anyway, here's the fixed version.

link
 

The M

Member
While I'm pretty happy with my entry overall it was just such a shame that I couldn't get enough time to add the boss I wanted. So I added it to the post-jam version instead! :D

Here's a download link if anyone is interested.
 
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Micah_DS

Member
Wow, 41 games? Awesome! That exceeded my expectations, since it was more quiet than usual on here and Discord. Perhaps everyone was just too focused on working on their games to post all that much.

So far I've only played a few minutes of TIMER, as it was the first game the Jam Player threw at me, but I gotta run to work now. :( I can't wait to really get into these games!
 

lazertrax

Member
I'm curious, how much time did you guys spend on your games?
I've spent a little over a day implementing another idea of a precision platformer, but then I felt like I wanted to make something simpler so I scrapped the project and started working on the idea for TOGGLD
Project Stats.PNG
 

woodsmoke

Member
While I'm pretty happy with my entry overall it was just such a shame that I couldn't get enough time to add the boss I wanted. So I added it to the post-jam version instead! :D

Here's a download link if anyone is interested.
Same here. I added death screen-shake and a nice sunset colour palette. The gray gamejam version is solid though.
 

HayManMarc

Member
And here I am, getting into reviewing again. My only victim so far was @HayManMarc, but there are more to come; beware!
(not today, though, because it's getting late and Jam kept me busy enough overall ^^')

The voting post is here!
Holy wowzers! I got the first review -- THANKS, ALICE! :)
Just to respond to the review...
  • The Font -- At first, I started using a font called "Bitwise", but I didn't like the numbers (I think), so I went with my old standby "computerfont". I believe both can be found at Dafont.com. I noticed the X looked like a K or an H, but I was in the last minutes of the jam and just had to go with it and hope people could figure it out. (stupid deadlines!)
  • Disabler Blast -- No time to balance the game. (stupid deadlines!) After submitting what I had, I playtested the game for a bit. I was naughty and fixed the omission of the 5th level with a re-upload a few minutes later. While playtesting, I did notice that the recharge of the Disabler Blast made the game a bit too easy, once you get used to using it.
  • Exit Door -- I agree, it looks too much like the walls. That is a good suggestion, making it look more like a background object, and I will probably use the darker orange for it's color to do so, if I continue working on this.
  • The Music -- is from our old standby Kevin McLeod. The first song that played during the how-to intro is:

    "Furious Freak" Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
    Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 License
    http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/

    The in-game song is:

    "Ropocolypse 2" Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
    Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 License
    http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/

    I spent probably a whole 5 minutes finding and deciding on these songs since it was done in the last minutes of the jam. (stupid deadlines!)
  • Sound FX and Credits -- I found the sound FX from freesound.org (where else? lol). Again, a mad rush in the last few minutes to find anything so I wouldn't have a silent game. (stupid deadlines!)

    pneumatic_door.wav -- https://freesound.org/people/primeval_polypod/sounds/156509/
    b2_bliblop.wav -- https://freesound.org/people/JarAxe/sounds/172690/

    All the rest of the junk was made by yours truly, me. :) Glad you enjoyed it, even tho it didn't have an ending. (stupid deadlines!)

  • Time for this Jam -- I worked a full time job for every day of the jam except Saturday. I started with a couple hours on the second day, getting the character sprite made (and a few others) and getting movement going. On Saturday, my band played two (holy crap, yes, two) gigs that day. One from noon-2, and the other from 8-10pm. I was able to fit some game jamming in between the music jamming for a couple hours. haha! But most of the meat of the game was made by pulling an all-nighter after work Sunday night from 10pm to 5am in the last hours of the jam. Luckily I have today and tomorrow off to recuperate!

    Stupid deadlines!

Edit:
THANKS!!! ...to Dan and Alice for hosting another great jam! Also, without that extra (fourth) day, there would have been no game from me.

Now, I need to download this ZIP thing and start reviewing, before I run into another stupid deadline. Lol

EDIT2:
Oh, for anyone interested, you can FULLSCREEN my game using ALT + ENTER. I wasn't able to include that information in the game. (I bet you know why. lol)
 
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Relic

Member
Look forward to reviewing these games, giving you all warm and cool feedback - please take the cool feedback as an opportunity to see things from another person's perspective - perception is reality.

I am going to avoid all other member's reviews until I have done my own and the end date has been reached - I wondered whether I was being influenced by reading how others viewed some games before I had a chance to see it first hand.
 

HayManMarc

Member
I am going to avoid all other member's reviews until I have done my own and the end date has been reached - I wondered whether I was being influenced by reading how others viewed some games before I had a chance to see it first hand.
That's usually how I do it. Good way to combat spoilers, too.
 

var

Member
I'm curious, how much time did you guys spend on your games?

~70 hours of trying to work on it, with many breaks here and there. Probably around 50 hours of real work.

Though I feel like half the effort I put in was in the final 10 hours alone.
 

The M

Member
Probably around 12 hours in my case. I usually spend some 30-40 hours on my entries so for me it's really low :)
 
T

TinyGamesLab

Guest
I spent about 30-40 hours on the game, including coding the game and creating the art/assets (I also started 1 day late).

The biggest issue I had is that I had a newborn on my arms/lap, so I did about 95% of everything single handed. I had to use a lot of copy/paste to speed things up and there was a lot of typos along the way. Harder than coding single handed was creating the assets thy is way. I found out I rely a lot on hotkeys and have no idea how to do some operations otherwise, lol...

Look forward to reviewing these games, giving you all warm and cool feedback - please take the cool feedback as an opportunity to see things from another person's perspective - perception is reality.
That's what I like the most about Game Jams! People often see things you are completely blind to see yourself!!! Solid critique can make wonders to your game and game developing skills!
I used a lot of the advice I got from my last jam on this one!
 
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Mercerenies

Member
var said:
Greenshield the Brave by Mercerenies:
I move so slow
I know this is just your first impression, but I wanted to respond to it anyway. If you play through the area to the right of the starting area, shortly after you get the jump upgrade, you get the dash upgrade, which lets you move twice as fast.

Also,


EDIT: Oh right. And importantly, how long I spent on my second entry.
 
Just A small note on my game "Switch Glitch" ( If anyone is still reading this. ) I made a mistake with my level select. Apparently some people are having trouble getting into level one. Either Click on the right edge of the button or Just Select level 2. All you need to know is you are bot G3M3C and the voice is Primus. Hope that helps if anyone is interested.
 

Mercerenies

Member
All of my reviews have officially been posted, and my rankings submitted.

You just caught me, @Silas the Dev, before I turned my computer back off. Unfortunately, even that advice is not working. I can't click level 2 or get into level 1 even clicking around the edges. Sorry. I don't know why it's being so difficult for everyone, and I know how much that can hurt, but I can't play it.
 

sp202

Member
@Mercerenies Thanks for reviewing Lightbulb, I'm curious to know whether the game crashed before the lightbulb was stolen or after. I've experienced that crash too but mysteriously it only happens once every few runs.

@woodsmoke Thank you for the review, if the game is bugging out where you can't continue upon launching (no dialogue being played) press R and it will reset the game.
 

Mercerenies

Member
@Mercerenies Thanks for reviewing Lightbulb, I'm curious to know whether the game crashed before the lightbulb was stolen or after. I've experienced that crash too but mysteriously it only happens once every few runs.
Interesting. I just ran your game again and I can't get it to happen again now, so I suppose it really is a bizarre intermittent thing.
 

TehPilot

Member
Hey guys - had a couple of people report back to me on some pain points in my levels. (I guess that's what happens when I try puzzle design on a lack of sleep...)

So if you're super stuck or want to avoid getting softlocked I've put some hints in the below spoiler. I'll release a build that addresses these things later.

If you drop into the either the bottom left or middle left room with the green switch set the wrong way, you'll be unable to exit the rooms. You should avoid dropping through the green wall/floor in the top left room until both binary puzzles are solved and the firewall is turned off.

You can jump over the invisible wall at the start of the level from the right platform.

Once you drop into the seemingly inescapable pit, check your desktop for a new program. You can use WASD to move the second character visible only from that window.

The number which is obscured by the wire reads 8.

For everyone who's played and rated so far, thanks for playing! Apologies for the above.
 

Relic

Member
I really liked seeing videos of reviewers playing games previous jams. Not sure if anyone else is this time around, but I am giving it a go. This will be at the expense of written comments though, as that will take more time than I have to give. Will just give a commentary as thoughts come to me during about a 5-10 min play session.
 
B

Baukereg

Guest
Wow, great job on the reviews so far! I've only had time to play two games so far, but I'll definitely have a go at all games this weekend.
 
L

Lt. Farfetch'd

Guest
@HayManMarc cheers for the review, good to know feelings were evoked. :) Overall It’s just an interactive story, not a game, so no hard feelings at all if anybody rated it super low on ‘gameplay’ or the like.
Regarding theme, I certainly would hope we’d used it somehow, seeing as I came up with it!
I made the call not to go with electricity or machinery, because I figured there’d be a lot of it throughout the jam. So here was the reasoning:

the game starts with your life support being switched off, and you die (off, literally).
Then you’re reincarnated as a bird (on), but inevitably the bird is killed (off), and our character is no closer to peace.
The frog comes next (on) and history repeats, this time at the jaws of a croc (off). Finally, the character is reborn as a plant (on). At the end, he muses that the cycle was all for this. The idea is that your life resets (off and on) until you find your place - until it works for you.
I loved the story, and tried my best to do the idea justice, but would have liked to tell it more meaningfully. Perhaps it’s not even a story well suited to a game format, who knows. :p
 
O

orSQUADstra

Guest
Okay I'll have to point out something for my game TIMER, on the first level you'll have to shoot the rope to drop the box to the ground, the player can't interact with it. I realize now that it's not obvious, so I'm just getting this little info out here.

Also @Mercerenies this should mostly answer your question in your review
 

HayManMarc

Member
Regarding theme, I certainly would hope we’d used it somehow, seeing as I came up with it!
That's what I was thinking. I thought it really strange you would ignore the theme since you were this jam's "Theme Master".

Now that I've read your explanation, I see where and how it is being used. I will adjust my review soon.
 
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