Hi and welcome back! We got a little more progress, unfortunately it's a lot of stuff that doesn't have much to show, but I'm gonna show it anyways!
Schedule Update
It took a lot of thinking, but I believe I finally put together a list of every single task I have left for this game! The store, menus, main game art, the wizard, everything! All sorted and organized in the order I think it should be completed in.
I'm hoping this new system will be better than the old one. The old one being, "complete your tasks within the guessed time limit! And if you can't, guess you're just SOL. NEXT ASSIGNMENT!". All that did is leave a bunch of old incomplete assignments in my wake. Now, I have something a little different. With this new system, I can track how long it takes to do things!
I'm hoping this new system will be better than the old one. The old one being, "complete your tasks within the guessed time limit! And if you can't, guess you're just SOL. NEXT ASSIGNMENT!". All that did is leave a bunch of old incomplete assignments in my wake. Now, I have something a little different. With this new system, I can track how long it takes to do things!
In this new system I write down how long I think it would take to complete an assignment, and next to it it's actual complete time! Doing this, I will get a more accurate estimation of how long it takes to complete my assignments. And not only that, but also how many more hours left before the game is entirely done (spoilers, it's a lot)! But in order to build this, I needed to learn something new, and that was...
How to code in google sheets! Yeah I learned how to code in a spreadsheet system! It sounds super interesting doesn't it? But none the less, it's really helpful! And that's because now I can track my progress and know how much longer before everything is done! Plus it gives me an exact accuracy counter to tell me how accurate my hourly estimations are! Very helpful.
Failed Animatic
This one kind of sucks, but I'll share it anyways. I've been wanting to make a trailer for the game, but not just another trailer like everyone else's. I wanted this trailer to be silly and have things like live action stuff! But, I may be biting off more than I can chew... at least for this game! I've learned so many new things making this game, and unfortunately it shows within how long it's taking to complete this thing.
I made the script, and the storyboard, but as I was making the animatic I realized how many more things I needed to learn if I wanted this trailer to be good. Things like cinematography, lighting, and post production would take me a lot of time to study in order to make a trailer I'd be happy with.
Not only that, but the jokes I wanted to tell weren't coming out right. Maybe they were funnier in my head, or maybe I wasn't showing them right. But it just felt off, specially with needing to cut a bunch of them out. So I've been told, "you need to keep your trailers short. If you don't people won't watch them through to the end." and I was finding I couldn't fit all the jokes I wanted to tell within the short time limit of around 1.5 minutes! So because of that, I just don't think the current idea could work.
Don't think that means I won't be making a trailer though! It just means it probably won't have live action cinegraphic shots with fancy lighting, post processing effects, and A+ comedy gold. I'll save a future project to learn that stuff. For now, I'm probably just going to make something more simple but still effective in what I want to show about the game.
I made the script, and the storyboard, but as I was making the animatic I realized how many more things I needed to learn if I wanted this trailer to be good. Things like cinematography, lighting, and post production would take me a lot of time to study in order to make a trailer I'd be happy with.
Not only that, but the jokes I wanted to tell weren't coming out right. Maybe they were funnier in my head, or maybe I wasn't showing them right. But it just felt off, specially with needing to cut a bunch of them out. So I've been told, "you need to keep your trailers short. If you don't people won't watch them through to the end." and I was finding I couldn't fit all the jokes I wanted to tell within the short time limit of around 1.5 minutes! So because of that, I just don't think the current idea could work.
Don't think that means I won't be making a trailer though! It just means it probably won't have live action cinegraphic shots with fancy lighting, post processing effects, and A+ comedy gold. I'll save a future project to learn that stuff. For now, I'm probably just going to make something more simple but still effective in what I want to show about the game.
Updating Environment tile system (unfinished)
Throughout the entire process of making the game, there has been one part, one part that has melted my brain more than any other part. And that would be the endless room generation and tile system! Saving rooms made in one game maker file, exporting a file from it, and bringing that new file into a different game maker file and having it work has been a crazy tough challenge for me! But a while ago I finished it... or so I though. Turns out the system I wrote isn't good enough and needs to be better if I want the game running at the right FPS on the phone! So lets get back into the brain melting challenge to see if we can fix it!
I FAILED SO MANY TIMES!!! Each time I went into it, I had a new idea. "This time we use surfaces! This time we have everything created beforehand! This time we create and delete things in groups!" each one a failure. None of these systems were better than the original one I created. And starting a new version was jumping back into that mind melting problem. So if it turns out the original is the best one, instead of throwing out the entire thing to start from scratch, let's just try tweaking it a bit. And from that I came up with a new system! From what I can tell too, it looks like this version is actually working! But it isn't done quite yet. I should have it done soon enough though.
I FAILED SO MANY TIMES!!! Each time I went into it, I had a new idea. "This time we use surfaces! This time we have everything created beforehand! This time we create and delete things in groups!" each one a failure. None of these systems were better than the original one I created. And starting a new version was jumping back into that mind melting problem. So if it turns out the original is the best one, instead of throwing out the entire thing to start from scratch, let's just try tweaking it a bit. And from that I came up with a new system! From what I can tell too, it looks like this version is actually working! But it isn't done quite yet. I should have it done soon enough though.
Terra's last animation
This update is kind of quick, but still super important. Based on my work list, this is the final animation needed for Terra! As far as I can tell, all of her animations are done!
This is the animation that plays if the wizard gets away, but you ARE able to "Save The Hero". I actually completed this in a fair amount of time, and I think it still looks good!
All that's left now is sounds, effects, and a few blips and bloops here and there.
Ludum Dare (Extra)
A big chunk of my month went to making a small little game. Because it was over a week of stuff, I thought it was worth bringing up here, at the very least to explain where my time went.
So as you may remember from the last ludum dare, the idea is to make an entire playable game within 2-3 days (3 days for me). And you can choose to go it alone, or with a team. All my past game jam games I started with the plan of going alone. But this time I thought I'd try something different and get a team of people together! And overall, it was an interesting experience I don't regret giving up over a week for.
So here's the team, Latch, Garvash, and myself. Latch was the programmer, Garvash the artist, and me the.. um.. extra/everything else guy. As the game was in the process of being made, I kind of organically became the leader... which would be to all of our detriment as I believe.
As the ludum dare went along, we came up with our idea, made plans and mile stones, and eventually had a playable game at the end! Latch, our programmer, did a great job making sure everything moved and worked as it was suppose to. Garvash is an awesome artist and he made lots of really nice looking art. And I... lead the team down the wrong path.
At first it sounded like a good idea "do what's needed (MVP), then add the cool stuff afterwards!" but in the end we just barely got the MVP stuff. And as we were making it, we realized that was going to be the case, so we even changed the game to make sure what we did have worked, which means we cut out an important part that made the game unique and special. Because of that, the game felt short, bland, and easily forgotten. Not because our programmer didn't make things work right, and not because are artist's art wasn't good enough, but because of my lack of leadership experience and skill. It's frustrating to think about, but I'll just chalk it up to, experience I needed to learn.
So with that said, feel free to take a look at what I'm talking about! You can play it right now in your browser if you want (thanks to Latch)! I think it's a good learning experience for both myself and for others wanting to make games too. Try to see if you can feel where the problems are and how you may fix it if assigned to!
Wrap up
So overall I made more progress, and work with others to make a game. It was a good month, and I plan for next month to be even better! I'm going to keep working on bugs in the game before I continue forward, otherwise I might be adding more work for myself in the future! If things pan out the way I hope, I should be able to get all the current bugs fixed before the end of next month? But we'll see.
Thanks for sticking around with me so far. I'll have more progress to show next month! But, if you don't want to wait, feel free to say hi some time! I'm usually streaming my progress of the game on my twitch page: https://www.twitch.tv/joltjab or feel free to say hi to all the awesome people in our community in discord: https://discord.gg/SZf4wFj otherwise I'll be seeing you again in a month's time! Have a good day!
Thanks for sticking around with me so far. I'll have more progress to show next month! But, if you don't want to wait, feel free to say hi some time! I'm usually streaming my progress of the game on my twitch page: https://www.twitch.tv/joltjab or feel free to say hi to all the awesome people in our community in discord: https://discord.gg/SZf4wFj otherwise I'll be seeing you again in a month's time! Have a good day!