This Tutorial will focus on being a working outline for planning a schedule and workload of a 14 days long game jam.

This is based on my experience during the N.E.S. game jam, June 2024.

NA refers to my schedule, Not Active work day. These days I am still thinking and communicating about the game, or waiting for feedback from our team programmer about the current build of the game in engine.

Start June 3rd , End June 16th.

Days worked, hours, and music I listened to while working.

Music is included for an understanding of the work environment during  the creative process. Each person will have their own unique work zone environment preferences.

June 3rd. 6 hours non consecutively. Music  pop hits of the 60s, 70s, and 80s.

On the first day I spent time thinking about and drawing each game asset that would be needed for the game. I drew the controls and decided on the best use of each button for the game-play. Previously, the game-play style and genre had already been decided.

I also sketched out the design of the space ships in more detail on paper. I created the graphics / sprites in Photoshop CS6 (2012) and Microsoft Paint Ver.1607. I then emailed the art assets, 1st group, to the team's programmer.

June 4th. NA

June 5th. NA

June 6th. 3 hours. music NA

On this day I researched the planet Mars and learned about it's two moons. The names of the moons aptly fit the designs of the main aliens.

I started story-boarding the scenes of the key story moments, after thinking about them and defining them as simply as possible. I also designed the template for the title screen and menus. 

I calculated the area of the text box in the frame, in pixels, in MS Paint. *this will have an impact in the future* and created the Story scenes for the game intro. I emailed the 2nd group of art assets.

June 7th. 8 hours non consecutively. Music "The best of Bond... James Bond"

I was asked to define each of the details of the game-play moments by the team's programmer. This is vital to clearly communicate.

The Who, What, When, Where, Why, and most importantly How; of the game design. This is the purpose of a Game Design Document.

Some specific elements I defined are as follows: The goal of the players is to..., How the players earn and save their scores, How the players lose score, What the players can and can not do during game-play, What happens to result in a Game Over, and What happens if the players ships are destroyed. Thinking about this in terms of a Frequently Asked Questions and Instruction Booklet will help a lot.

This lead to the creation of a printable game booklet for our game (first draft), based on booklets I have in my older game's cases/boxes.

I also emailed the 3rd group of art assets to our team's programmer.

See if you can find a game dev document online for each of your favorite games. Such information may be pieced together from Developer Blogs, Interviews, Concept Art of books, and Player's Guides. Additionally, a lot can be learned from reading the Patch Notes of a game.

June 8th. NA

June 9th. NA (watched Xbox Games Showcase)

June 10th. Thinking about the placement of the Wing-man and player's ships, and giving that decision to the programmer.

June 11th. 5 hours non consecutively. Music "Star Wars The Empire Strikes Back". "The Drifters All-time Greatest Hits" .

(4 days until publication goal)

This day was spent double checking all previous work and asking our team's programmer if there is anything missing of the art assets, needed for a full game-loop build in the game engine.

*future impact* I discovered that the vertical size of all the story scene images and title screen were incorrect and I spent time correcting them to the game jam rules. I updated and edited the game instruction booklet, cleaned up anti-aliasing in story images due to file type compression. 

Title screen design updated by our programmer.

June 12th. 2 and a half hours. Music "Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within"

Audio was created by our team's composer.

New winged Alien animations completed, Space ship Dive images cleaned up, New game-play mechanic discussed and approved with newly created animations. Refined Title Screen design and created animations of it.

June 13th. 4 hours non consecutively. Music "The Very Best of Beach Boys Summer".

Updated and refined Title Screen again, yes it is very important. Main Alien animations created, Ship Dive animations created, Sun damage solar flare animations. Credits Screen and Tools Used screen created.

June 14th. Refined and updated the printable game booklet pages. Gave feedback on design idea from our programmer of the aliens spawning in waves against the players. I thought of and sent an outline of the wave times in seconds. I listened to a ticking clock's second hand and imagined the game being played.

June.15th. NA ( publication goal date missed)

June 16th. video call meeting and screen share to refine the game-play by adjusting the timers in the game engine. last minute game instruction booklet updates. Successful attempt of implementing co-op play and an HTML5 build of the game.

Sol Defender: Zero Day game compiled and submitted by team programmer a.k.a. "Solace Owl" at 11:52 p.m. 7 hours and 8 minutes before deadline.