Posted February 07, 2023 by PsychoSeel
#jam
Jams always felt like a chaotic fun process to me until it ends, then I would get struck by the extreme exhaustion and I'd have to recover for a while. But not this one, for the first time I felt like I was in control for the entire jam and I feel like this is the first jam that's worth looking back and analyzing what's went wrong and right.
Before I start talking about the jam process, I want to say that it felt like jam started 2 days early for me. I'm currently working on a small solo project and as the jam date drew closer, I started to organize and improve my library. I mainly worked on a UI module for the 2 days(which I didn't used in the jam) and I noticed that my camera system had a fundamental error (which might explain why I hated doing camera stuff, I hope) and fixed. Looking back, I thought I was getting prepared for the jam but I guess my library was ready anyways. I thought that I was going to burnout before jam starts, but that didn't happen and I still feel pretty good with the exception of physical exhaustion.
When I first heard about the jam theme(roots), first think that popped up in head was a huge tree, defending itself from hostile creatures, while getting stronger as it roots deeper into the ground. I usually fail at creating interesting gameplay and an enjoyable core loop, and I thought that I would focus on that aspect this time. I shared my idea with ShySeel and she agreed almost immediately, which was kind of weird.
Finding which tile to root next and giving up on pathfinding
I started with rooting mechanics right after I'm done with tiling ground, since I though this was going to be the most important mechanic. I implemented pathfinding immediately, just to find out that there is no way I can check what's ahead 32px of the root tile with pathfinding functions or even if there is a way, I felt like it was going to complicate things more than it needs to. After I completely give up on pathfinding, I felt like it was time for cheesy methods.
In this game, players need to choose which tile the roots should be moving towards by clicking on ground tiles. It wasn't case at first, but I added a queue to these tiles as I was experimenting with pathfinding. I eventually came up with a method to move towards roots target:
And it was done! In the end, it might be the simplest mechanic in the game yet it took the most time. Anyway in summary, my first day was spent on the initial setup, warming up and creating this method to find roots way through the ground. This concluded the first 6 hours of the jam and I went to sleep.
Day 2: Enemies, allies, growing the tree, decorating the tree
I haven't planned much for the day 1(I thought it would be spent mostly on figuring things out, which happened quite fast), but I had plans for day 2; adding characters and figuring out what's things are going to work above ground. I'm used to how characters work, but growing the tree scared me, but it wasn't hard in the end. Main issue was figuring out how all the assets with tons of variation are going to be put on these procedurally growing world. Both tree and ground are continuously expanding, even though you might not see ground expanding if you don't play for several minutes. It would be possible to play this game forever if it was properly optimized, but even I had to present the game in low fps because I didn't connect my laptop to charger(and I forgot to change power options). I didn't plan to make things generate forever, but this method felt easier and flexible to expand the project however we wanted. Though it wasn't the case for ShySeel, which is something I learned at the end of day 2. Even though I think that game is a success as a jam game in visual aspect, it was a confusing situation for her since I kept mentioning the limitations that comes from the initial design of the said mechanics.
In day 2, I spend lots of time figuring out how am I going to add all the variations of branches, 2 different tree bodies and their transition, adding variety to middle ground tiles, and different variations of rooted tiles.
Since I started making games with an open world rpg, I always aimed to make modular systems, which really paid of this jam considering how ShySeel kept dumping me new assets that I needed to add on a dynamic world that was continuously expanding. These method were quite cheesy, but I had lots of room for spaghetti since everything up to that point was pretty organized and functioning. I concluded the day 2 after I'm finished everything I aimed, though I was hoping that I would have time to focus on gameplay after I'm done with these, but it was positive outcome nevertheless.
Last day
was spent on importing more assets, refining the procedural placement of tiles/branches, timing of enemy spawn, growth speed of tree and branches, growth speed of root, adding SFX's, music and ambiance, more decoration, importing main menu assets and making it look good.
And this concludes the jam. In the end, this was most relaxed and enjoyable jam experience for me. I slept around 12 hours in this jam, fortunately our conditions in this jam site was great at I was pretty comfortable. While 6 hours sleep per day felt lacking(even though I sleep 7 hours at home), it didn't felt like a huge impact on my performance. Instead I felt urge to play some games to release some pressure, though I choose to socialize instead. Since my first jam, socializing with other people who's interested in game development is the main motivator for me, along with creating a game.
This is my first postmortem, I hope it was a enjoyable and someone can learn something from my experiences. I'd like to make this a habit for future jams. Thanks for reading!
Hey, this is Shyseel and this is also my first postmortem post about my 7th game jam! I felt like i had extra room for creativity for this jam since PsychoMale didn't seem to have anything set in stone. i have to say i had a few goals in my head about the visuals but aside from that, i went along with doing just what i liked. This is how Gnomes vs Omnions were born!
First day i set up the basic tileset and i think it's a bit dull but i like the pastels overall. I had a few problems with the composition later on, with the tree just going upwards in the middle of the screen and nothing much going on visually on both sides. This made me notice how much i lack in the basic skills of the general design of the game screen and "how things should look like"
I also had a problem with assets not turning up as i thought in the actual game vs how i drew them on Aseprite. I had a lot of assets made on day two, such as 32 different variations of branches which ended up taking time and not really putting much into the game. And it took a lot of time for PsychoMale too, so is was a bad decision overall.
That being said i pretty much got everything done on time! the end of day 2 and day 3 was dedicated to finishing up animations, doing UI, Main Menu, death screen, some decorations and lacking assets overall. I even made a quick cursor and game icon this time! I'm very grateful to PsychoMale for trying to add all the assets i drew for the game and even coding a use for them (such as branches growing as tree grows)
I was being experimental with the main menu, i wanted to make something cute and goofy! Even though it didn't fit what PsychoMale had in mind, he went along with it and even my idea with onions fighting flying garden gnomes for some reason XD This was very freeing for me, as i got to draw whatever i wanted and have fun with it!
The jam site was the most comfortable i had! It was very cozy and we even got to have quiet sleeping rooms with sleeping mats and bags. I got to sleep over 14 hours i believe :> The food wasn't the best ever, but we had a mini-kitchen and fresh brewed coffee! Oh, i have to say a food thief that does along with the fridge >.> It was very chill overall and i got to learn a lot from this jam!