26/08/2021 - Jam Day 1
14:30 UTC+2
A good afternoon! Here we are again for another GMC Jam!
The theme is MYTHOLOGIES, which simply couldn't be better in my opinion.
It's August, the time of the year of Spielcomm. So that's what I'll make for this jam: a new Spielcomm game.
I had already been thinking of some first ideas, keeping in mind the theme (which I didn't expect).
So I'm going to do some brainstorming to see how I can come up with something that uses the theme in a good way.
Off we go!
18:15 UTC+2
I did a bit of everything in the past couple of hours.
First I tried to find make some epic background music in LMMS, followed by some research on Cologne's Roman past. Roman mythology seems to be the way to go for me.
I also quickly coded a mail inbox with some messages and modeled a basic room.
So I did a lot, but aside from that, there's not really an idea yet.
The room you'll start out in after turning off your computer
Time for a break now...
19:30 UTC+2
I read up a bit on Roman mythology and I can't come up with a sensible way to integrate what I read into a game. Should I add a single deity, multiple? Should they all influence gameplay? I can probably get quite a bit done but I still only have 4 days.
I think I'm going to try to come up with my own mythology
Or I could choose the 4 gods that relate to the 4 elements:
Mars - Fire
Jupiter - Wind
Mercurius - Water
Venus - Earth
Perhaps it's best to stick to my original idea: battle hordes of mercenaries in an arena to then win the hand of the emperor's daughter. That was the idea that was taking shape in my mind before the theme turned out to be mythologies.
After that I can add deities and some 'mythical' influences.
Yeah, I'll do that. Gameplay comes first!
0:30 UTC+2
Turns out I did some more modeling.
I've been working on the area in which the Spielcomm games (eh, "battles") will take place: the Arena.
This took more time than I expected it would, but this is absolutely necessary decoration.
I did the textures with GIMP though currently it clearly shows that they're not seamless. I might have to do something about that.
The arena where the battles will take place
As you can see, Spielcomm wasn't always this gamer-friendly
27/08/2021 - Jam Day 2
15:30 UTC+2
A good - late - afternoon! While I continued working on the game early this morning I haven't got a lot done today, mainly due to "life things".
I did get some basic knight characters done. They'll welcome you at the entrance and will be the enemies that you fight inside the arena.
I really need to start coding all the basic things now and make sure that you can fight these guys.
I'm going to export their body parts separately and link different physics shapes to each of them.
The pike that they're holding will be attached using a prismatic joint so they generate a bit of forward thrust when hitting.
And that is going to be the basis for the gameplay! I do think something good can come out of that.
21:45 UTC+2
I really haven't got anything done today, aside from a couple of additions to the world model.
Time to add some basic gameplay things.
00:00 UTC+2
After the start of a tiny experiment with Box2D I'm ending the work. I didn't get a lot done.
The topdown representation of a knight using 3 instances:
the helmet, the pike and the shield
Tomorrow I'm continuing with this. I want to get some nice gameplay out of this.
28/08/2021 - Jam Day 3
11:45 UTC+2
A good morning! (perhaps "noon" is more appropriate
)
The weather is beautiful outside. That means it's time to sit outside behind the computer and do game dev!
Next up is adding some convincing gameplay mechanics to the knights.
As mentioned before I want to use Box2D joints for this. A thrust using the pike.
The knights should also have some armor. Ideally, I'll add those using a weld joint so that they can
break.
The third thing I want to add is an attack where a knight rotates his head and then chases you at a high speed.
When all that works I'm going to see if I can add some mythical/"godly" interventions.
All nice ideas but best thing to do first is to get started!
13:15 UTC+2
Very basic knight movement using Box2D is more or less working now: walk, pike thrust, spin attack (my favorite one!)
The knight enemy is essentially "mechanical" with all those fixtures and joints connecting the parts
15:00 UTC+2
I finally added some of the necessary boilerplate code: camera, player movement using physics, basic shader with diffuse lighting, ...
It also looks like I managed to invert the y coordinate again... I'm not going to fix it. I'll simply drop those instances outside of the room. Problem fixed (for now).
I still have an issue with the export of the normals, something that happened in the previous GMC jam, too.
Blender has three different normals: the vertex, loop (or edge) and face/polygon normal.
They're all different and somehow I haven't been able to get a correct value exported for the loop normals.
I'm meeting up with a friend this afternoon and it'll probably be late.
So that means I can only continue working on this tomorrow.
I'm not too sure how far I'll get this time. We'll have to see.
Here's a screenshot of the room in GameMaker. I probably won't do textures again, no time for those. I'll fix that will a couple of different colored walls.
29/08/2021 - Jam Day 4
11:00 UTC+2
As expected it got a bit late last night. I'm currently waiting for my train back home and I can probably continue work on the game in about an hour.
Looking at what I have right now and realizing I'm not in great shape for any moderately difficult coding today I'm thinking of a plan B.
17:30 UTC+2
I'm finally making a bit of progress!
The room you start in is now more or less done and the arena room/world has been imported as well.
I still have a serious issue with the normals, though... They make everything look absolutely terrible.
I'm going to continue with the gameplay though. In less than 24 hours there has to be a playable game!
18:15 UTC+2
And now there also some progress with the gameplay. The knight is moving around!
The first Spielcomm knight "in full swing"
22:30 UTC+2
I added the physics masks and copied a couple of scripts from the Amaze Me jam project that I worked on.
(They're that couple of scripts to import the physics masks that I export from Blender for most of the jams)
So that made things quite a bit easier, though I should rewrite the scripts a bit later to make them a bit more user friendly.
I'd like to add those 3D "physics" at one point as well. How convenient would that be?!
Anyway, with that this jam entry now has fairly realistic physics without any effort (thank you once again, Box2D!)
I also added a basic battle controller that creates the knights. They don't do much at the moment than go wild, basically.
I created quite a bit of music for this game, too. Today I made two "themes" in LMMS:
A soothing/mystical background loop that plays before the battle starts and a pretty decent battle music.
And lastly I added a short story to the title screen. It may be a bit dumb, but I think it works.
So in the end I did get quite a bit of work done today! (I'd consider this my first actual jam day of this jam)
I'm a bit surprised that I managed to find a bit of motivation to work on this.
Tomorrow I'll continue. It'll be interesting to see what I can still do in those last hours before the deadline!
The knights in the arena, I'd love to have an emperor on stage and a cheering crowd, too
01:30 UTC+2
I just couldn't resist adding some more...
I improved various tiny things, and also... There is now a mythical creature!
The inspiration would be the Wise One from Golden Sun I guess.
This character isn't all that benevolent, though, quite the contrary.
He'll act as the godlike creature that is summoned by the Emperor and it are his knights that you'll fight.
Now I'm done for today!
30/08/2021 - Jam Day 5
(or should it be 4, hmm?)
09:30 UTC+2
A good morning!
I'm getting some improvised breakfast and then I'm continuing work on this.
Still a bit more than 4 hours left!
On the list,
among others, are (in order of priority):
* Knight: state machine, chase player, ...
* Player: weapon, some kind of attack(s), ...
* Game controller: create knights, move the deity around, unexpected events, ...
* Emperor summoning the creature
* ...
This is too much to finish. But hey, I'm off now to work on this!
11:45 UTC+2
I got a lot done.
I expect this to be in a somewhat playable state by the time the jam deadline is there.
The god now moves around the arena, knights come after you using their spin attack,
the emperor has been added, itch project page has been created, README.txt is ready, ...
Time to equip the player with a sword and/or other things.
Right now it's a matter of getting that basic gameplay loop up and running.
And test play and polish as much as I can until the jam deadline.
I'm already very happy with what I've been able to add in the last 24 hours!
14:00 UTC+2
Barely on time! The game zip is up. And I'm finishing the devlog here.
No more time for other things. Though quite a few things did get added in these last hours.
I really didn't make enough time for this one.
I hope you'll enjoy this short entry nonetheless!