Been a long time since I did a game jam by myself, so it's been a lot of fun getting back into it! I was visiting my brother over the weekend when I remembered that this jam was this week. We had plans all through Sunday and then Monday I had to drive back home so I didn't get to actually start working on my game until Monday night, but on the drive I came up with a concept I was pretty happy with, inspired by navigating all the potholes on the roads in Michigan. Writing this Wednesday afternoon, but hoping to keep it updated throughout the rest of the week.
In Doug's Auto Repair, you play as Doug, an old, scummy, lazy mechanic, struggling to make ends meet. Word has gotten out around town that you're not the most trustworthy mechanic, often grossly overcharging customers for simple fixes. It's looking like you're not going to have enough money to pay rent this month, and might have to close down the shop for good. So you decide to take matters into your own hands and drum up business the old fashioned way: take a jackhammer to the road and make gnarly potholes so people get flat tires outside your shop and need your business.
As I was driving I came up with a few different ideas on how the game could scale in difficulty and how to make it balanced, and I think I've got a pretty good idea of how to handle it, it's just going to be a question of whether I can finish by Sunday.
Monday 2/17
Got home from Lansing around 6:30 and sat down right away to work on some art for the game. I used to play Roller Coaster Tycoon religiously as a kid, and of course that means I spent lots of time making coasters that crashed into walls or bottomed out into lakes and watched the people in my park disappear. I wanted to capture that same kind of chaotic energy in this game, so I used that isometric pixel art style as a basis for the art of this game. Turns out it's pretty easy to draw things proportionally and in perspective when you have a grid lining everything out! I also think the hundreds, if not thousands of hours my brother and I spent staring at low-res isometric objects in those games gave me an innate sense of how things should be proportioned in that style, so I'm very happy with how the art is looking.
I worked on this basically all night Monday and a few more hours on Tuesday, definitely taking a bit chunk of my time but I think it was worth it!
Tuesday 2/18
I work full time so I got home around 7 because I had a dinner with a client, but once I got back I finished up the background, and then made some assets for cars that would go across the road and the player character. I got sprite sheets for a regular car that I'm planning on just color swapping to add variety between the different cars.
I also have sprites for an ambulance: if you get hit by a car, an ambulance will come pick you up and drive you to the hospital, but that'll take some time away from you so you won't be able to get any customers during that time, and depending on the balance of the game, might also cost money for medical bills.
If a police officer catches you making potholes in the road, they'll arrest you and you'll go to jail for a day or two, also taking up time you could be spending making more potholes.
The animations for the player look really dopey if you zoom in really far on them, so I'm going to keep the camera pretty zoomed out. I got basic isometric movement working and an animation system where the player will use the correct run cycle based on its direction and swap to the idle pose if he's idle.
I'm really liking the way these assets are coming together! Still have a few more to make, like the potholes themselves, a tow truck that will come out of your shop and pick up really damaged cars, and a construction team that will fix potholes.
Wednesday 2/19
Writing this at work right now (shhh) but this morning before I left I got the jackhammer animation working, the player just moves up and down really fast on the jackhammer sprite. My main goal tonight is to start getting some of the code done, like the AI on the cars to make them navigate the roads, depth sorting the sprites for the isometric tiles, and maybe start the pothole logic. Also hoping to get the last of the assets completed so I can focus 100% on programming for the next couple days.
Ended up working late into the evening Wednesday and I'm definitely feeling it this morning. Got almost all of the rest of the in-game assets created, figured out the isometric depth sorting, and started work on the car AI.
I figured out some really nice curves for the cars to follow as they turn around corners and have a nice structure in place where I can add some more complex details like having cars swerve out of the way of potholes (hopefully). Had a funny moment while I was testing U-turns wayy too late at night:
https://twitter.com/b0turi/status/1230424611050999815
Still don't have too much else to show in terms of dev work, but I'm hopeful that tonight I'll be able to get a lot of that done tonight and have some cool stuff to show Friday so I can spend Saturday doing more touch up and polish work
Thursday 2/20
Feeling very groggy typing this out but hoping to nail down a lot of mechanics tonight so I can spend Friday tweaking for balance and scaling difficulty. Top of the list is generating/fixing potholes, then more general car AI fixes. Need to add collisions between buildings, cars, and the player as well, but it seems like my isometric system is actually pretty intuitive to do logic with after doing way too much setup to get it like that, so that's nice at least! Cautiously optimistic that I can get a core gameplay loop working by tonight.
Thanks for reading! I'm cautiously optimistic that I'll be able to pull this together, I hope you get a chance to play it when it's done!