Anyone doing the One Hour Game Jam today... 1 hour from now?

That sounds awesome to me and I am sure many others here are looking forward to playing the game as well!

And yes I completely get it. Certainly put in another 4 to 6 hours on it and then throw out a demo. I think everyone here has enough brains to keep the dev time in mind when we check it out. At least I would certainly hope so. A person would have to be quite ignorant to expect the same scope and level of fine-tuning & polish from an 8 to 10 hour game that would be in a 8 to 10 month game IMO.

Also completely agree on what you said about it. I think that is what I enjoy about tiny game projects. It keeps you moving along working on everything. You don't gain nearly as much experience on any one thing this way but you do gain overall experience on EVERYTHING that goes into making a game from concept to release and that is very important. And you do still get the expert subject matter experience as well it is just that it will come over time and many many different completed games (or at least demos).

Basically it is just another way to approach things. Besides all of that it is just fun.

 

Good luck man! I put in an hour on my game project earlier. And just got the video up before visiting these forums. Now I am shutting this dang thing down and getting outside. Awesome weather here today and I don't want to miss out on that.

Looking forward to seeing what you come up with this time around.

 

@GarBenjamin hey dude - just wanted to mention something about the colors on your last video: they're really good!

Makes even a simple demo like that look sharp, the fun animations also add a nice flair.

 

Thanks. I think color is very important. Up til this year I was spending so much time wrestling with other stuff (mainly just Unity) I didn't spend much time or thought on the visuals. But I used to at least put some some focus on it. And now that I am doing game dev pretty much the way I used to I find that I am just spending a little more thought & time on such things. I think simply because I am having fun and I feel like I have the time to spare since everything else is so easy.

Speaking of fun... I just got back from being out & about. Actually took a mini road trip to a flea market about an hour from here. I go over there a few times each summer and this was the first time this year. Of course, they have all kinds of interesting stuff and some vendors leave and others take their place. But there are also the ones that are always there.

Today's finds...


6 PS2 games and 1 NES game. I was surprised but I don't think I have that Midway Arcade Treasures in my PS2 collection. If I do well I now have a spare. Also I never knew they made Defender of the Crown for the PS2!! I played that long ago on the C64 and Amiga.

Anyway... thanks for the kind words man I appreciate it.

 

Well over the one hour again more like 2 hours, 30 minutes... https://arowx.itch.io/bad-town



The plan is to sleep on it then try and improve it a bit tomorrow, any and all feedback welcome.

 

Looks awesome man! 2.5 hours... I'd say that is damn good to get this very basic playable game.

Focusing on playability here...

• Make the turning a little slower... it is kind of disorienting due to the view I think.
• Throw a crosshair out in front of the player a ways to show where they are aiming
• Set up enemy spawners and only spawn the enemies there... perhaps the four corners (and start the player in the middle of the area) OR even inside the buildings. Or whatever / wherever you come up with. The thing I am suggesting is to eliminate the enemies spawning right next to the player.
• Ammo limit. And ammo is occasionally dropped by an enemy when killed

Overall this is a very solid start. I notice the game is tagged as LD38. Didn't even know that was going on this weekend. You've got plenty of time to make this a very good contender!

 

Thanks for the great feedback.

I don't like the quick control system I used, maybe it should be twin stick or mouse look and keyboard move?

I'll see what I can do.

LD38 was in April but I think these 1 hour game jams are great training for a 48 hour game jam as long as you use incremental development or it would give you time to build up more levels.

 

Why did you tag it LD38 or did someone else do that?

 

@ShadowK how is your 8 to 12 hour jam project coming along?

Getting close to a playable release?

I put in another hour on the 3D Invaders game this morning. Then spent 2 hours making videos (had to remake one of them 4 times!). This making video logs of the progress is getting ridiculous but I thought it might be interesting to see it develop.

I also made a video showing the current source code for the project. Which I don't think I mentioned but actually I am building this in two separate projects at the same time. The AGK BASIC version and a C++ version using the AGK library. Although I am basically only using C instead of C++. I just update one or the other versions and then quickly replicate the updates over to the other version testing as I go. They map to each other very well and like I've said many times I develop more or less the same exact way no matter what I am using so that helps a lot too when it comes to porting code.

I'm at 6 and 1/2 hours now.

Seeing your screenshots kind of reminds me of that game @Billy4184 was making. I'll have to check his wip thread and see where he's at on it.

Anyway... looking forward to checking out your space game @ShadowK

 

Looking good .. Pfff, I got sidetracked on an "interesting problem" as neg would say with my main project.. I picked it up again tonight and geez I don't do things by half measures. I put together an actual music track instead of the stock midi stuff, I added a mega laser / clamped it's use (so you can't spam it to win)..

I've added variable enemy strengths, started balancing out stats, added a life / shield system and I created a spawn / clamp system for the other enemies and I've set up the skybox to rotate to give the actual feel of movement.. Plus much, much more..

Next on the list is to create the new enemies and bosses, it should be near enough plug and play by this point (after I've made them.. I'm 7 and a half hours in.

 

Awesome. It's interesting how much just adding a stats bar can do. Takes "a scene" and immediately paints it as "a game".

You're making great progress considering basically you've put in about 1 full-time workday! Multiple enemies and bosses sounds very interesting. Didn't even think it would have bosses at all.

 

@neginfinity

This is probably the biggest issue game devs have. If you can try to ignore 'the more interesting problem' you got more chance of finishing.

Either way I think a one hour /4 hour show is a great way to flex you creative muscles and get stuff done. Perhaps maybe not 1 hour as I think it's too little time.

 

I won't believe it till I see video at least. The idea of @ShadowK working on actual gamestuff and not just screenshots is almost impossible to believe

 

A gauntlet thrown down so hard I could feel the shake on the other side of the globe.

On an unrelated note, I think there would be merit to a fake-screenshot contest. "Pretend you've made a great game in one screenshot".

 

This is hysterical -- and honestly a really useful skill if anyone wants to work on early marketing.

 

If I can think of something that doesn't take long to make I might try it, but it's questionable if I can think of something simple enough. If it isn't real, at the very least it should look like it could be. Maybe I'll finally give untextured lowpoly a shot. That might be the quickest style I could make.

 

LOL! Well don't hold back let us know what you really think. ha ha

Surely you don't believe the man just took a screenshot of a scene and drew the stat bar on top of it? lol I think we'll see a playable demo coming by the end of this weekend! Hopefully... because that is 4th of July weekend and I'll have more free time to mess around checking out games.

 

I'm sure he really did it, I'm just poking fun. @ShadowK and I are buds. At least... I think we are

 

I figured you were just giving him a hard time. It was quite funny though.

 

Exactly 1 hour. Just a screenshot, it's not playable.

 

Looks cool BUT you forgot the most important thing... without the hud it is just a screenshot of a scene or some random art. Add the HUD to complete your game.

 

@frosted

Yeah, I'm getting a bit ahead of myself now I need to wrap this up.. Decided I'm going to sharply cut it off at 16 hours (full game jam weekend).. I wanted an R-type indoor sorta thing, so started doing enviro's etc.

I'm 11 hours in, I just want to get this done now so I'll finish it in the next 5 hours.. None stop.!

 

Only if a form of gamestate is requiring a HUD. I'm not the biggest HUD fan in general. The original gameconcept idea that I had before making this, is a horror survival game set in hell, where you need to avoid death from demons and falling into deep chasms, with the twist that you have to hold a button to see anything, but at the same time the overwhelming swarm of demons will also move towards you. You need to balance taking a peek (which temporarily activates all the enemies) and moving semi blindly through a maze of death. Now aside the problem this might just not be fun, there is a huge problem that it's impossible to communicate that concept in 1 unaltered screenshot. And finding something that cann be communicated in 1 image would be the whole point. For now I just wanted to see what I could do in the hell theme in exactly 1 hour.

 

Well then just make a 3 frame gif. First frame shows Title screen... 2nd frame shows the Start / Play button highlighted and 3rd frame shows the game scene. Then you have a game.

 

Damn! Man this looks sharp. I am thinking if you can knock out games at this quality level (assuming it plays as good as it looks!) this quickly why mess around with Witcher 3 targets?

You could be "the man" for shmups on Steam and GOG. Even if you only made like $15k to $20k per game you'd be knocking them out once per month and every new game would be easier building on the last.

ShadowViper 1: A Hero Rises
ShadowViper 2: The Clone Wars
ShadowViper 3: Wrath of Gar

umm sorry that last one slipped in there but you see what I mean.

 

Well... I really wanted to do some work on one of my projects... I thought... but when I sat down to do that I discovered I had no desire.

So I thought I'd drop back in here and see if @Arowx had any update ready.

Guess I need a break for a day or two.

Am I the only one who gets this burn-out or do the rest of you just feel like doing nothing every few days... particularly after work if you are in software dev for a career?

I think it came from spending about 3 and 1/2 hours on game dev this past weekend and then another 4 hours or so making the videos. Kind of burned me out. Of course, I am sure that once I win the lottery and am not doing software dev all day I won't feel like "ah... I've had enough of that for a while".

 

I think I can say I share such sentiments with you to some degree.

I literally spend most of my waking hours in front of my computer, doing my work as a software developer during weekdays. As I can't normally work on my game project until weekends, I'm always eagerly waiting for the Friday night to come, while I'm lurking on the forum or imagining all the interesting things I can try with my project until then.

But when I actually finish all my works on a Friday night, I tend to be too exhausted to do anything related to programming at all. So it normally takes at least half a day to convince myself to open up my IDE to see where I left last week.

Ever since I started this game project of mine, I had hardly any leisure on weekends with little time left to actually play video games, watching movies, and etc.

I'm not complaining though, because I actually enjoy working on my hobby project very much. But I can't help but thinking that I might be a bit too old to sustain that kind of a lifestyle for long, and even though I'm making a good progress I don't think I'll be able to finish it anytime soon.

So, I kind of envy those of you who are already working as a full time game developer, or have sufficient time (and skills - I don't think I can make anything worth playing in an hour) to participate in such kind of a fun project from time to time.

 

I'm not concerned whether or not it looks like a game. I'm doing this as sort of a learning exercise. If you see a screenshot on steam, it is implied that it is a game. Having it look like a game is a non-issue in my opinion. Having a concept that is visible in 1 static screenshot is an issue. This seems to be a make-or-break factor for many indie releases. I need something that can be looked at for 2 seconds and be understood well enough to generate interest. So far I clearly haven't achieved this.

http://www.gamasutra.com/blogs/JonS...ne_Bites_the_Dust_Dynasty_Feud_Postmortem.php

I'm looking for the 1 screenshot version of "you have to be able to sell your game on a single tweet."

I'm absolutely sure that's normal. Most of us aren't machines that crank out dev progress non-stop. I'm certainly not.

 

@frosted

Code (CSharp):

1. Vector 3 frosted = new Vector3.Kissmybum (none.x, middlefinger.y, none.z)

*Cough* I don't think us two should joke in public..!

@GarBenjamin

I finished it last night then got sidetracked again of something else, I'll chuck it up on dropbox for ya.. If anyone else wants a go let me know. The only thing I wasn't able to get done was the boss, but the rest is complete.. 17 hours all in and an hour of that was spent sorting out one of Unity's "quirks", for some reason with a capsule collider it wasn't triggering particle collisions.? Worked fine with a convex collider, so I just strapped a convex cube to the ship.. Problem solved ..

Again Warning: The game contains flashing images, anyone with Epilepsy SHOULD NOT PLAY IT!..! This herein is an acknowledgment that I have a disclaimer for everything (ever), that could ever be or not be in regards to this game.. By playing you accept said disclaimer / waiver.

Ok, one other thing to note is there's no loading screen.. So when you press the "any key" it might just sit there for a bit, don't worry it ain't crashed it's just getting warmed up.. (used car sales man or what )..

Yup forgot about controls

W,A,S,D for movement, hold the left mouse down for the boring old "standard" laser and the right mouse button down for the "MEGA BLASTER".!! Huwaaa!!

If you crash or want to replay press space (it does tell you but meh).! Escape to quit of course.

Rest is up to ye.!

 

*letsyouknow*

Afaik particle collisions work by using a voxel data structure to store collision results and re-use them. Doesn't really make sense for a capsule collider to not work with that. Maybe it's a bug that should be reported?

 

Hah! That's the spirit!

Pretty good mate! Is it possible to survive the spinning things? I can't imagine that's possible to get through.

The music was really catchy. The collisions needed a bit of work.

 

Stuck at work right now but looking forward to checking it out on lunch break here in oh about 3.75 hours.

In the meantime if you don't mind can you add support for Arrow keys movement and X for normal weapon and C for special weapon?

 

Working on a few things at the moment, considering moving to cryptocurrency mining as a more efficient way to earn money than game development... Will report back with updates.

 

Imho you're a few years too late to the party unless you live somewhere where electricity is incredibly cheap. I've recently read an article where they did the numbers on it, and it just wasn't worth it. Don't have the link anymore though, probably was an article in German and taking our local prices into account. So it wouldn't be of much use for you anyway.
You could try writing your own automated bot for online daytrading x]. Probably even riskier than cryptocurrency mining.

 

Ethereum + Solar Panels!

 

First time I heard of it. Had to do a quick search.

Game dev angle... might be excellent concept for a sim game on Steam. You can also award trading cards when players hit certain milestones. Could actually work out very well.

 

Pff, pretty good.. Talk about damning with faint praise . Two work days buddy, that's all (I'm actually really curious how long it would take in UE)..! Sup with the collisions out of curiosity?

Yes you can get through the spinny things, you need to hold back when the ship thingy arrives and make sure you have 200 left in your wep charge. You can't get them all so you have to select the best path and take them out in a specific order.. R-Type games were renowned for being rather difficult..

Not that I'd ususally make the first level this hard, I won't be working on it again so thought I'd at least make it somewhat challenging.

@GarBenjamin

I'm out and about but you should be able to change key settings on startup, it was all based on the input manager anyway so "fire1" vertical / horiz etc. probably wrong here but I thought WASD was by default also mapped to arrow keys? I think you'd just need to change fire1 / fire 2 ..

 

@ShadowK Excellent for 17 hours. I played it several times. On my last attempt I blew up the first spinner and was destroyed soon after. Learning experience... the first spinner is not the one to destroy. I know you can "ride" between the arms of that first one because I tried that on my second attempt. So yeah I think it is doable just takes a bit of thought.

I expected the game would look shiny and it does. That second weapon looks damn cool. You can kind of feel the power of it. Great job on that.

It's a shame you don't plan on continuing with it but I completely get it was just a throw-away experiment because I do the same kind of thing. And people will say you should finish that! ha ha

Well done man.

 

@ShadowK oh if you did want feedback on gameplay parts... my top feedback is to add more feedback. A flash and sound when player ship is damages and likewise when enemies are damaged. Just these two updates would bring it all to life a lot more.

A tiny chance of a powerup for shield recharge when an enemy is destroyed would be nice.

 

@GarBenjamin

Thanks, appreciate it.. Yeah glad I did it, the fact you played it more than once means it wasn't a complete failure.. I enjoyed doing this as a one off and it's nice to know in a crunch I can pull it all together.. One of the issues of having no deadlines is you can meander a little too much.. Again biggest time sinks were art (especially the music), probably accounted for half of the entire development.

I could of course improved a lot of stuff, multiple levels / optimisations (like pool managers etc.), particle damage hits (with collisions) for the player, upgrades, new enemies, special weps, collectables and polish.

Next up is a one week semi-openworld survival game (demo / test thingy) (after a break, working on two projects is tiring and I think I wasted an hour doing dumb stuff because I was tired). It's taken years to fully understand what I want out of a project and how it shapes with limitations of engines (without of course majorly re-factoring or lots or re-work / tools additions).. Whilst I'm putting together the complete concept of the main game I really want to make sure once and for all I'm 1000% happy with the toolsets / engines I have at my disposal..

I've had two failed projects in Unity so far, one of them got finished in UE.. Although I'm back developing in Unity again (moth to a flame )

I kept frittering dependant on the flavour of the week, but this time around I am ACTUALLY doing stuff and lots of it with a solid concept..

 

That's a fun way to go and basically what I do. Reason I start on this project and that project and leave them "as is" so often is generally I am just demoing exploring concepts whether it is game oriented or testing a different way to structure the code or whatever.

I think it will be not only a lot of fun but also very productive for you to do the 40-hour survival game and test Unity play around and find the best way forward. Can only be helpful plus we (I guess?) get another demo to try out.

I'm over my burnout today. Guess I just needed a day off yesterday. Tonight I'll put 45 minutes or so in.

 

Afaik solar panels are too expensive, at least they used to be. I think someone who installed them on his roof told me it takes years till you get ROI on them from just the electricity savings. Was some years ago, so maybe the tech got cheaper. If you actually go for it, let us know and show us some photos of your installation.
I did a quick google search and in a forum thread on solar mining it was recommended to just sell the solar energy directly because the profit margin is higher. Upfront cost still seems to be high.

If you really believe in cryptocurrency, why don't you just buy as much as you can and wait for the price to rise and then sell them? Seems like a lot less work to me.

 

The most offensive thing about that is the space between Vector and 3.

 

I'm at 7.5 hours now.

Now that the foundation (the grunts of the enemy force) are complete I can move on to the other things.

Maybe I will set a time limit on it such as 12 hours or 17 hours like @ShadowK which means I need to stop adding new gameplay stuff & visual tweaks around the 14.5 to 15 hour market and switch focus to wrapping it up.

Anyway... I guess I won't bother posting vids on it here anymore until it is done or there is something worth seeing. At least now I am at the point where I can start working on the "good stuff".

 

@GarBenjamin

I did have a look at that video, your game looks great but I did notice the amount of effort going into it seems a little off. It looks on first glance you could do the same in Unity w/ around 250 (or less) lines of code and less hours invested.

Can't say I scanned over every single line to check exactly what you're doing, just wondering if this is somehow by design or have I missed something?

 

I could do what I have in less code for sure. It's kind of odd I guess but every time I make anything even all of these tiny games I approach it thinking of it being something much larger. Really it could be much further along than it is but I've spent probably 2.5 to 3.5 hours of the 7.5 hours just on visual stuff so far to find how I wanted it to look starting from white cubes in the very beginning.

But it all takes times. It's not just "doing it" but then iterating on it so it all feels right. It probably can't be seen from the video but it all has a very good feel to it. For most of my tiny game projects I develop in a very iterative manner kind of letting the game unfold naturally rather than planning it all out up front. Right now I have a pretty good idea what I will be doing over the next couple of dev sessions. After the next dev session I will know what I will be doing over the next couple of sessions after that and so on.

But yeah absolutely if I started right now and set out to make exactly what I have at this point it would surely only take a couple of hours max. It is always so much easier when you have a clear target of exactly what you're making. I just find this to be a fun way to develop. Basically just prototyping my way along. It makes it interesting because even I don't know exactly where it will end up.

I've got a solid foundation and the next 7 hours or so will be focused on adding more to it. So it should start shaping up into something more fairly fast.

 

@ShadowK Also keep in mind I am building two versions of the game at the same time. I am creating it in a BASIC style language and also in a Visual C++ version. Of course, it doesn't double the time but it means everything I implement I am implementing in one or the other and then converting the code to port it to the other version.

Thinking about it... it might be better to just make this for myself and after I can make a very tiny game example to show others how to go from BASIC to C/C++. Could even be 2D and maybe do it in BASIC, C and a C++ oop version and release the source for those three.

Then I could now ditch one of these solutions and do the rest of development without the bit of overhead from porting code.

 

Update to Retribution...


https://arowx.itch.io/bad-town

 

Great work man!

Ha ha! That's quite the music. Was surprised by that but fits it extremely well.

Seems like a much better play experience now and overall the whole thing has a very good western vibe to it.That font on the title RETRIBUTION is very nice.

There are a hell of a lot of bullets flying around after a while.

 

I got in another 1.5 hours... 9 hours now. Basically as a game it all looks more or less the same on the outside but great progress has been made on the inside. Waves are defined as "maps" now and I have two waves (levels) formations defined and tested. All code has been updated to be frame-rate independent.

4-day weekend coming up so I will definitely get this done. In fact I think tonight I will put in 2 to 3 hours on it while watching Ancient Aliens or a Blade or Matrix movie.

Will add a new enemy type tonight. Of course when I say new I mean behavior mainly. I'm thinking they will still be cubes and use the same texture but colors and behavior will make them very different.