GMC Jam Discussion The Zesty GMC Jam 37 Discussion Topic

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Feather Dreams

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yeah I would like the answers at some point. It seems madness to just walk away from the game without finishing it.
I mentioned the explanation to the whole thing in this topic awhile ago, but here it is again:
the letter E is illegal. Aside from one quote from the player character themselves while they are being arrested, none of the text in the entire game uses a single E. The opening report, Boris's dialogue, and the ending text are all completely devoid of any instances of the letter E. The game ends on a quote from the novel A Void, which was similarly written without a single instance of that letter.

The game will accept just about anything as long as it doesn't meet one of the following criteria. (The game does point out what criteria caused your answer to fail.):
  1. (Unlawful): The answer breaks the above law.
  2. (Too short): The answer has one or fewer non-punctuation characters
  3. (Spamming): The answer is detected as being gibberish.
  4. (Vulgar): The answer is one of a bank of swear words)
  5. (Uncooperative): The answer is "No" or some variation of it.
  6. (Copy of prior chat): The player already gave the same answer to another question.
I must confess to being somewhat disheartened at reviewers dismissed the interpretation as broken when it wouldn't accept some 'obvious' answers, but I recognize that the game could have done a better job of conveying that there was a very specific reason these answers were being discarded.

"Do you look forward to walking out of prison?" : "I do." "Bah." "I don't know."
"What do you call your dad?" : "John." "Papa." "Dad." "Pops."
(Elephant picture) "What is this?": "Mammoth" "Animal" "A bird" "Your mom"

Again, the game will accept just about any insane answer, as long as it doesn't contain a E or breaks one of the above rules. It was never about what you say. It was always about How you say it.
 
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HayManMarc

Member
8 more games played and reviewed. 24 left to go. My daughter has been helping me, hope you don't mind.

I've been fighting a toothache over the last week or so, then my face blew up like a balloon 5 days ago. Started antibiotics then, and today I had the bad tooth extracted. So I've been sucking on gauze and eating ramen noodles today. But, by god, I got 8 games played and reviewed. (Could've done more, but we're watching Chuck, so TV time cut in.)

Pretty cool games in this bunch. Even the not-so-great games at least show potential. Great work all around!
 
Why window size is important(and why you should enable fullscreen switching):
Example from @MiketheScrivener 's jam game:
screenshot.png

The "Enter to continue" message is cutoff. If any other important information is displayed there, it's not likely I'll be able to see it clear enough to know what it says!
 

Chaser

Member
@Siolfor the Jackal, agreed, full screen should be switchable whenever possible, not just because some monitor resolutions can varied in size, but for me i need to get to other apps on my PC and i cant always do that with some games without shutting them down, even by accident. bloody annoying when you half way through a game. the windows key doesn't always work. I'm not just talking about this jam, but jams in general, i just think its something devs should bare in mind when doing. Full screen can be great by in some instances but it can be a a hindrance also. :)
 

ghandpivot

Member
My playthroughs are done, finished with an almost 2 hour video that is being processed by youtube at the moment. It's for:
ZendSeeker & JeanBombeur & Salut_cest_valoche, iChunkiMunki, Feathers Dreams, deepfry3, Kasityokerho, Bart, HayManMarc, Grizzlius Maximus, Team Zoom, AJTheApple, Sirham, Braydee Johnson, KPJ, Team Kaboom, IRON Games, Sheep Wink, Relic & Zacharyandrews, Kantros, Cloaked Games & Joseph Elllis & FAZIL, Pinkuchu, in order of appearance.

I'll vote later!
 

Mercerenies

Member
All of my playthroughs and votes are completed now as well. If the developer of the one game I didn't play would like to DM me a non-installer version, feel free to anytime before the end of the voting period (I looked for one in this topic but didn't see it).
 

Toque

Member
I mentioned the explanation to the whole thing in this topic awhile ago, but here it is again:
the letter E is illegal. Aside from one quote from the player character themselves while they are being arrested, none of the text in the entire game uses a single E. The opening report, Boris's dialogue, and the ending text are all completely devoid of any instances of the letter E. The game ends on a quote from the novel A Void, which was similarly written without a single instance of that letter.

The game will accept just about anything as long as it doesn't meet one of the following criteria. (The game does point out what criteria caused your answer to fail.):
  1. (Unlawful): The answer breaks the above law.
  2. (Too short): The answer has one or fewer non-punctuation characters
  3. (Spamming): The answer is detected as being gibberish.
  4. (Vulgar): The answer is one of a bank of swear words)
  5. (Uncooperative): The answer is "No" or some variation of it.
  6. (Copy of prior chat): The player already gave the same answer to another question.
I must confess to being somewhat disheartened at reviewers dismissed the interpretation as broken when it wouldn't accept some 'obvious' answers, but I recognize that the game could have done a better job of conveying that there was a very specific reason these answers were being discarded.

"Do you look forward to walking out of prison?" : "I do." "Bah." "I don't know."
"What do you call your dad?" : "John." "Papa." "Dad." "Pops."
(Elephant picture) "What is this?": "Mammoth" "Animal" "A bird" "Your mom"

Again, the game will accept just about any insane answer, as long as it doesn't contain a E or breaks one of the above rules. It was never about what you say. It was always about How you say it.

I understood the game wasn’t broken. I spent some time with it and was curious how it worked and your thought process and wanted to complete it.


I think if your game generated some interest and discussion that’s a win.
 
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ghandpivot

Member
The thing about playing through 50 games is that it's super difficult to go into a game expecting it to have more layers than what meets the eye, as the previous 20 games seemed similarly deep but ended just being random. I had several games where I was uncertain how much that actually went on behind the scenes, and my own game struggles with the same issue. People go into the game, put 4 knives in the box and then quit, having had the satisfaction of clicking on everything you can interact with but without really having played the game.
This is one of the challenges of a jam though. If you cannot convey to the player that there is more than meets the eye, then you've failed to present your project properly. Your game could very well work way better outside of the jam where the players might expect more coming in. I for one learnt a lot from this and will think twice on how to do complex yet accessible games in the future.
 
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Feather Dreams

Guest
Yeah, that's the lesson I learned from the jam. I went a bit too hard on a concept piece and failed to consider how that would come off.

Heh, live and learn. ^^

I had a blast with this still, and I'm looking forward to doing more jams when time allows.
 
People go into the game, put 4 knives in the box and then quit, having had the satisfaction of clicking on everything you can interact with but without really having played the game.
I have a feeling I didn't understand your game and I'm sorry. The thing is I can't do anything anymore since every time I start your game, it shows me the scoreboard but doesn't allow me to anything anymore
 

Bart

WiseBart
Cheers! Too bad you got stuck, you'd made it through most of the game. Ghandpivot's video review is a great walkthrough if you're interested. My guess is that you got stumped when the doors didn't open. You can force one open by hitting the circular thingy with the ion grenades.

My original plan for that boss was to have it collapse and block the exit with its corpse, forcing you to take another path back and making you go through another sector. That got cut because of time constraints.
Ah, nice. I didn't know what to use those ion grenades for.
I played the game again and defeated the final boss.
After that I'm not too sure:
Does the game end with a game over? Or is there something I didn't complete properly?
 

ghandpivot

Member
I have a feeling I didn't understand your game and I'm sorry. The thing is I can't do anything anymore since every time I start your game, it shows me the scoreboard but doesn't allow me to anything anymore
That's totally fine, I don't mind. The game would have needed more methods of slowing you down, for example I think it's too easy to put in knives. I looked into shaming or similar mechanics but it all became too morbid.
You cannot replay the game (unless you start fiddling with the local files). That's because
I only wanted one highscore for each player. Anyone who hit the cat will be removed from the highscore list by the end of the jam.
 

Toque

Member
That's totally fine, I don't mind. The game would have needed more methods of slowing you down, for example I think it's too easy to put in knives. I looked into shaming or similar mechanics but it all became too morbid.
You cannot replay the game (unless you start fiddling with the local files). That's because
I only wanted one highscore for each player. Anyone who hit the cat will be removed from the highscore list by the end of the jam.
I was curious too if I replayed if I could kill the cat. I actually wanted to kill the cat to see what happened. I like cats.

the game is a clever play on the theme. But I started to think is the cat alive or dead or is it both.........
 

The M

Member
@Bart There are two endings. The "good" ending requires exploring a bit and opening a few doors. Defeating the last boss pair gives you the "bad" ending where the ship crashes.
 

Toque

Member
A real nice mix of games. Enjoyed testing. Or is it that there is just lots of games and feels more diverse??

some cool stuff. This was a fun jam. Good effort on every game.
 

Alice

Darts addict
Forum Staff
Moderator
@ghandpivot Regarding the ranking in your game:
I feel it would be even more effective if those who got the cat killed have their scores multiplied by -1 rather than just erased. This means that those who were trying to be careful but just didn't get as lucky wouldn't be punished as much as those who just stuffed all the knives in.
 

Cameron

Member
@ghandpivot Regarding the ranking in your game:
I feel it would be even more effective if those who got the cat killed have their scores multiplied by -1 rather than just erased. This means that those who were trying to be careful but just didn't get as lucky wouldn't be punished as much as those who just stuffed all the knives in.
I agree with this. I actually didn't put any knives in because I didn't want to hurt the cat lol
 

ghandpivot

Member
I feel it would be even more effective if those who got the cat killed have their scores multiplied by -1 rather than just erased. This means that those who were trying to be careful but just didn't get as lucky wouldn't be punished as much as those who just stuffed all the knives in.
I like that, will do 😋
 
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VinylFly

Guest
@Feather Dreams
I knew there was something going on behind the scenes in 'Arbitrary' in terms of the logic, but I never considered how deep it went! After seeing your post about the rules of how things functioned, I feel foolish I couldn't decipher it. I felt like I was paying attention, but I missed the clues.

It's funny, because my strategy was to always answer the picture related questions with what I thought was the obvious answer, even though it was always unlawful. It somehow had a reverse psychology type effect on me. Even though it was telling me 'unlawful', I thought that maybe the game was trying to fool me. I thought, 'yea right Guard, I know it's an elephant, and you can't break me!' I totally blew it, haha!

But that's why I think your game worked; even if some players don't grasp the deeper layers at play (myself included), it still created a sense that your answers had weight, and trying to figure out the logic behind it was part of the fun (even though I was way off with my assumptions. I just couldn't not call the elephant an elephant. I was stubborn).

But knowing what I know now about the systems at play, I just had to chime in and tell you how blown away I am at the level of thought that went into those systems. It really is a superb game and concept.

Replaying 'Arbitrary' will be a real treat now that I know what's what, but know that even on my first playthrough, it had me engrossed from start to finish. Even if I missed much of what I should have noticed while playing, the game rocked.
 
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Feather Dreams

Guest
@Feather Dreams
I knew there was something going on behind the scenes in 'Arbitrary' in terms of the logic, but I never considered how deep it went! After seeing your post about the rules of how things functioned, I feel foolish I couldn't decipher it. I felt like I was paying attention, but I missed the clues.

It's funny, because my strategy was to always answer the picture related questions with what I thought was the obvious answer, even though it was always unlawful. It somehow had a reverse psychology type effect on me. Even though it was telling me 'unlawful', I thought that maybe the game was trying to fool me. I thought, 'yea right Guard, I know it's an elephant, and you can't break me!' I totally blew it, haha!

But that's why I think your game worked; even if some players don't grasp the deeper layers at play (myself included), it still created a sense that your answers had weight, and trying to figure out the logic behind it was part of the fun (even though I was way off with my assumptions. I just couldn't not call the elephant an elephant. I was stubborn).

But knowing what I know now about the systems at play, I just had to chime in and tell you how blown away I am at the level of thought that went into those systems. It really is a superb game and concept.

Replaying 'Arbitrary' will be a real treat now that I know what's what, but know that even on my first playthrough, it had me engrossed from start to finish. Even if I missed much of what I should have noticed while playing, the game rocked.
Thanks! That means a lot! I'll probably keep trying more 'concept' pieces like that. Hopefully I'll manage to make it clearer next time. (Not having to
avoid using "E"s in the entire text
should help with that.)
 

Bart

WiseBart
A great thanks to everyone who reviewed and gave feedback on my game so far!

After reading the reviews I noticed quite a few of you didn't get past the first room.
There's a hint in the game's post which is referred to in the readme file but apparently that one doesn't show up in the jam player (I accidentally called it "notes.txt" this time 🙄).
But... I now also realize I should've stated more clearly that you can dash by double tapping the left or right arrow key.
Dash by double tapping the right arrow key to jump to the "glitch in the fabric":

Zesty marmalade, hooray! Each room having a unique trick was neat, though I don't quite understand the "glitch in fabric" one; I just managed to dash over the pit.
Were you actually able to make the jump directly to the other side without landing on that little block I placed there?

I was sad I couldn't drink the zesty juice and get some funny all-knowing ending.
I actually had the idea to add this so you could go back and see what your companion sees.
Unfortunately it didn't get added because of a lack of time.
There's a castle floating in the sky somewhere, though :D
 

Toque

Member
A great thanks to everyone who reviewed and gave feedback on my game so far!

After reading the reviews I noticed quite a few of you didn't get past the first room.
There's a hint in the game's post which is referred to in the readme file but apparently that one doesn't show up in the jam player (I accidentally called it "notes.txt" this time 🙄).
But... I now also realize I should've stated more clearly that you can dash by double tapping the left or right arrow key.
Dash by double tapping the right arrow key to jump to the "glitch in the fabric":


Were you actually able to make the jump directly to the other side without landing on that little block I placed there?


I actually had the idea to add this so you could go back and see what your companion sees.
Unfortunately it didn't get added because of a lack of time.
There's a castle floating in the sky somewhere, though :D
have to try again. In my mind I thought I was missing something. I knew Bart is the master.

........

OK playing it again now........ I just cant do it. Oh wait. I did it. A tough obstacle early in the game. A risky design decision. "A glitch in the fabric" Really didnt help much. Trying it again. Cant get it.
Sorry I gave it an honest go.
 
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@Bart I finally finished your game! Thanks for the tips!

For the other 2 games I haven't finished, just give me some tips and I promise to finish your games!

@Toque I got it by double tapping the directions for a dash and starting as far from the cliff to gain as much momentum
 

Toque

Member
@Bart I finally finished your game! Thanks for the tips!

For the other 2 games I haven't finished, just give me some tips and I promise to finish your games!

@Toque I got it by double tapping the directions for a dash and starting as far from the cliff to gain as much momentum

yeah I’m not a strong gamer. So don’t let my skills set the bar. I don’t think ghandpivot made it over in his video either. ???? But have to read the other views andI bet more figured things out. My bad. Some people thrive on these controls. It does fit the theme though with the little character. Hey I feel bad when there is all this great stuff that I can’t see because I’m terrible at these things.
 

Mercerenies

Member
Oh wow, that is quite an impressive task. I'd like to see mine (Growing Up) too, if that's not a problem. PM will be fine in my case.
 
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Feather Dreams

Guest
That's so cool! Thank you for taking the time to go through all of them like that!
 

Alice

Darts addict
Forum Staff
Moderator
Ahahahaha, there are so many amazing tributes to Jam entries this time, aren't there? First the Greenwyvern's picture, and now Chaser's review cards...
I really hope you all will keep it up for the future Jams

because that's the first time in ages I didn't get my entry in before the ZIP was compiled and now I'm really miffed that I'm missing out.
 
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Liptonpee

Guest
Hi thread, I'm the artist and animator for System Purge.
I made an account today and figured I'd share some of the concept art I made while working on our game since we never got the chance to really share any of it beforehand.
(spoilering for blood)
c1.pngc3.pngc2.png

I've been seeing a lot of praise for our game being full of polished content, and there are actually more than a few assets that weren't even used, including several character animations and sprites for a boss fight. We actually didn't get to work on the first day of the jam because I thought that I was going to be busy that weekend, so I think if we had that extra day there could have been even more in the final cut of the entry.
 

Micah_DS

Member
Any Zelda fans?
Trackpads are by far the worst way to try and play a piano.

I'm a huge Zelda fan, so I loved this.

On that note, the BGM in Know Dungeon has a slight reference to Zelda. Not just the Zelda-like secret noise, but the part following it was also inspired by the ALttP Dark World Dungeon music. It's only similar in small ways though, so I wasn't sure if anyone would catch the reference.

Actually, I haven't seen anyone mention the Wilhelm scream reference either. It's not a big deal, except, in hindsight, the Wilhelm scream can sound far worse than intended :oops:, it definitely wasn't supposed to be morbid @ghandpivot (referring to your playthrough. Thanks for doing that, btw! Great feedback). I made some terrible assumptions over that one, as if people's mind would be where my mind was. I gotta be careful with that in the future.
 

Gizmo199

Member
@deepfry3 thanks for the review! As far as the AI funny enough there isn't much in regards to pathfinding. Basically I duplicated the players code and set up in the begin step event to trigger a 'key_jump' or 'key_shield' variable and used a ton of if statements and then just reset all of the key press variables to 0 In the end step. It pretty much just checks if there's is ground below it / the player and jumps accordingly and if the player is off of the map it just sets a destination x to the center of the room. If food is near and its health is above a certain percentage then it just uses a 'key_grab'. It was actually probably one of the easier ai I have ever set up just because instead of programming any kind of pathfinding I just used the kind of logic someone actually pressing buttons might go through (using tons of checks) and making the key variables true. Forgot to put checks for if it's stuck in say a hole that the only way to get out is to jump. Thanks again! :D
 

Alice

Darts addict
Forum Staff
Moderator
We actually didn't get to work on the first day of the jam because I thought that I was going to be busy that weekend, so I think if we had that extra day there could have been even more in the final cut of the entry.
Any chance you all will spend this extra day and bring it to completion? I'd really like to see and play what the ending was supposed to be like, instead of this game cut short. ^^'
 

Alice

Darts addict
Forum Staff
Moderator
Gaaah, @Relic, could you please explain what happens at the end of your entry? I already collected all items (I even got all orbs, because I'm such a collector) but
I got softlocked in the bottom-right section of the dark room after collecting the Sacred Vessel and Noble Crown, but without Veil of Elegance
and I really don't feel like replaying the entire game to find out. Though I'm sorta disappointed - if I'm not mistaken about the part of the ending I didn't get - that the ending wasn't
the robot revealing it was all ploy to get the alien to collect the trash. That would mark one of few instances where the AI just wants to dispose of garbage and that garbage isn't humans for a change.

Also, your game is way too prone to restarts. Apparently once the player gets defeated, there's no automatic nor manual way to restart the level, so basically you have to start over. I wanted to try the easy jam version, but it didn't feel significantly different compared to regular version (both in terms of moving around and how difficult it is to take down enemies).

Where I can find the basic background music specifically? I take that it's taken from freesound.org (if credits don't deceive me), but there's a lot to search around there.
 

Poizen

Member
Phew. It took me many days but my reviews are done. It's too bad the Jam player doesn't export the Theme/Concept/Presentation/Story scores of each game. I kinda assumed it would. Well, no big.

Two things about my game:
- It can crash. I did play through it many times but I never encountered the bug before the jam had ended. Could've been an easy fix.
- The story is a bit flimsy, yeah. "You want to leave, the cat knows how to do it, you have to extract the information from him" was the idea. The secret is that the cat can pick the lock with his claw (which of course is not apparent at all). I had a more elaborate dialogue planned but then I simplified it to save time. Anyway, the most important part is blasting stuff with the laser beam!
 
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Liptonpee

Guest
Any chance you all will spend this extra day and bring it to completion? I'd really like to see and play what the ending was supposed to be like, instead of this game cut short. ^^'
We've actually considered finishing the game completely and putting it on steam or itchio, but ultimately it's up to the programmer (who's already working on a big game project). Finding time for it is hard because he's either working on that or being distracted by me and greenwyvern every night with games/movies lol
I'm sure we'll do it eventually though, we've been told to quite a lot
 

Poizen

Member
Just saw these now because I didn't read through other reviews before finishing my own.

Love the hyper beam. I razed the whole entire level >:) I wished there was more to do but love the mechanic! I'm intruiged how you programmed such.
I love the mechanic too if I do say so myself! I made a DLL that uses two open source libraries. Basically it takes two shapes/polygons, subtracts one from the other (using Clipper), and then returns a list of triangles (using Poly2tri). Then those triangles are used as physics fixtures.

there's never any reason *not* to blast away every wall possible, which just makes me feel like it'd be simpler to make them disappear. I feel like this could be fixed by putting in checkpoints and making puzzles where you can accidentally shoot out too much!
That is a very good point. And I did consider a checkpoint system, but that would've been a significant amount of work so due to time constraints I had to figure something else out. Namely, you can't get stuck but you can fall down to the bottom and then you have to shoot your way out. :p
 

ghandpivot

Member
But I don't see my name on the highscore list so I don't get what the logic is there, or if it's a bug, or if my score was "adjusted".
Wow, cheers!
I don't know about your score since I don't know your chosen name. The highscore table in-game is sadly saturated as there are so many 4s that you won't show up even if you put 4 into the box. The full highscores can be seen here https://gmscoreboard.com/The-Box-of-Schrodinger

The hidden variable is more related to the outcome of your stabbing and has not been adjusted for anyone so far.
 
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