Posted March 04, 2021 by misterG-gamedev
I liked the theme of this jam but I am also a bit worn out from the last two recent jams (Brackeys and Wowie Jam) one of which was particularly intense as I was creating all of the 2D Art in 72hrs which I have never done. So for this Jam I want to focus a bit more on coding and improving my problem solving coding skills. I don't want to spend more than a few hours on art.
I have two initial ideas:
1) You are planting different flowers to produce honey but the more you plant the more bees are stinging poor Billy. It is a fun Game balancing production and poor Billy's pain level.
2) An idle game where you plant flowers to produce different types of honey which you can sell and unlock.
I am leaning towards idea two as it is a bit more challenging. I liked the last two jams because they made me work on something completely different; so I think going for option 2 allows me to try a new Genre (clicker game? Idle Game?). Something I never understood the fuzz about. Why would someone spend hours clicking buttons to unlock things that make you click the button faster? The whole concept of clicker games is odd to me. So what better time to experiment and learn than a JAM?!
Just as I did for the Brackey's Jam, I want to review at least a few popular clicker games to see where I could provide something new and unique.
04-Mar:
Clicker Game | Why it is considered "good"/"fun" |
AdVenture Capitalist | All about making money; looks actually fairly high quality and polished; a bit overloaded main game screen with 10 progress bars at the same time; |
Almost a Hero | There is actually a speedrun for that game?! What? You have a hero that you can level up, get more heroes fight monsters, get gold... Game looks actually polished and well designed, not low quality There is an ultimate ability |
AFK Arena | Focus on leveling up heros (really high levles to be achieved) Feels more round-based and more emphasis on winning battle as opposed to getting money |
Bitcoin Billionaire | Pixelart syle game, custimize character, low paced game, no battles; as a result more relaxing, opposed to the two above: No speedrun candidate :) |
Plantera | Those bastards - that looks a bit like I imagined my game: You actually have a character that moves around and plants veggis; Like the UI in the bottom, that is more appealing than full-screen or on top or the side, allows player to move; |
Cookies, Inc | Not foscues on battle, but on baking more and more fancy cookies; decent graphics |
Egg, Inc | Get eggs - SURPRISE! Random events that make you play on Different to the other games as you build the environment for the hens and it creates a more deep feeling of customization by the player |
06-Mar:
08-Mar:
10-Mar:
There is no second level, no progression, no novelty to it; but hey - I practiced pixel art (I hate flowers and SLOPES) but happy with the coding :)
Another jam done (well, if that bloody webGL works ONCE IN A LIFE); For the next one, I really want to try and build a UNIQUE mechanic, even if that means I have to read 100 pages of unity documentation, I really want to solve a problem and not follow tutorials for my problems. That would be a big step up :)
Oookay, as always: It took literally 3hrs to try and work out a WebGL build. I had the exact same settings as for the Brackeys Jam, yet the game just never loaded. So I randomly guessed and tried different settings and these settings seem to work:
I changed the auto graphics API to manual and deleted WebGL 1.0 (might be too old and some browers don't support WebGL1?) and also changed the color space to linear.
I ticked "allow unsafe code" because my code is spaghetti code and deadly - so letting that mess run seems logical.
Disabled data caching and disabled the compression format (which was a common forum suggestion - but that trick by itself does nothing).
So, no idea why THAT specific combination of settings works, but let's hope it is the magic formula for all future game jams :D