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A jam submission

Potion AcademyView game page

Rhythm game were you grab potions.
Submitted by Jeanlee — 4 hours, 42 minutes before the deadline
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Potion Academy's itch.io page

Results

CriteriaRankScore*Raw Score
Audio#103.7534.333
Overall#183.5604.111
Originality#193.6574.222
Gameplay#213.2723.778
Visuals#223.3683.889

Ranked from 9 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.

What was the most challenging part of making your entry?
The timing of notes, reading and writing charts.

What was the most fun part?
The challenge of not sleeping for 26 hours while watching what I create come to life.

Anything else to add? (important controls, assets used, special mentions, etc)
I wanted to add more mechanics to the game but I will keep on working on it after the Jam. Used music made by Emma Essex and SFX Juhani Junkala.

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Comments

Submitted

neat I the music is really good  and catchy. I look forward to improved versions of the game and congrats on your first game jam.

HostSubmitted(+1)

That was fantastic! Such a fun idea using the the two sticks to control the hands. It would be nice to get some feedback when you collect the potions like a "great" or "bad" when you miss them. With more work on this I could definitely see it expanded into a full rhythm game. Great job!

Developer(+1)

Thanks for your feedback! I wasn't expecting this much of encouraging comments on my first Game Jam. 

It is true what you say, having that feed back is great for letting you know how you performed on a rhythm game. I was going to add that feed back by following Code Monkey's Damage popup text. But I started to get many errors with it and I didn't even know why.

I got scared that trying to fix that issue I wouldn't be able to upload the game on time since I had other things to fix, so I scraped that part to meet deadline.

I will try my best to work on this game outside of the Game Jam to expand this into a full rhythm game since I always wanted to make one. 

I appreciate a lot the support. Thank you!

Submitted(+1)

Such a cool game! The DDR style was unique and challenging. :)

Developer(+1)

Thank you for playing it!

I always wanted to make a rhythm game for 14 years and wanted to try it out. I never got a unique idea for it until I started brain storming for the Game Jam. I used to play DDR a lot when I was in highschool, but I never got to reach high levels of gameplay like other people did. But I still enjoyed them to the fullest.


Its awesome to me that you found my game cool! I will continue working on the game outside of Game Jam, so I hope that when I get to release it, you can enjoy it more!

Thank you for your feed back and trying out my game!

Submitted(+1)

Yeah, I played a LOT of DDR in college. It was always on beginner mode but that didn't matter. I had so much fun.  <3  May I ask how you got the potions to spawn to the beat? I've dabbled with making a simple DDR type game myself and manually putting cues to the beat is EXTREMELY precise and time-consuming. I'm glad to hear you'll keep working on it! You have an excellent prototype to work with. :)

Developer(+1)

Thats the point of it all, to enjoy those moments. 

For the potions going to the beat what I did was I made an object class that contains 3 values: BeatTime, Angle, IsLeft.

Since I had no time to create a polished chart system i had to come up with another way.

I added a bool called IsEditMode that I could change on the inspector.

That bool decides 2 things:


if true, it will not spawn the potions and it will record your movements.

Each time I press one of the shoulder buttons, it is added to an array called List<Note> Potions; it parses in the hand that was pressed(IsLeft), its current (Angle) and in the (BeatTime) that it was pressed.

Once I see that I reached the end of the song, then I press X to parse that array to a Json file contained on the Resources Folder.

So basically I moved the hands around and pressed to the rhythm to record where I wanted to spawn the potions.


if false, it will spawn the potions.

At start of song, it plays the BeatsOnCurrentTime with an offset of 4 beats so it has that moment of breather so you don't get the notes on the moment that you enter the room.

The one that gave me a headache was recording those notes, because it was supposed to be 3 songs, but I messed up badly. I accidentally overwrote the first and third song, I didn't notice that I was recording on the first chart so after like 10 minutes of editing, I decided to check what I recorded, the first and third songs where overlapping together.... I was close to deadline so I sadly had to scrap the other 2 and just stayed with the second song which is the one that you can play. 


Currently I am working on data management since for potion academy I didn't know much of how to save and load data. Had to watch a couple of videos to understand it. The only ones I knew of where player prefs but that is for holding progress, not data that you could include to the files.

Once I finish data management, I will create a proper chart editor that you can add and remove on run time. 

Its true about being extremely precise, it takes a lot of time and retries to get it right.

I tried to make a DDR style on Game Maker when I was 15 and it was based on collision. Honestly it was horrible. Lmao

I learned that its based on Beat time, not collision. So you compare your beat time with the notes beat time, and judge how well you did.

You could see that time inside some LUA files of OpenITG.

WindeuHatesYou has some sick visual effects that challenges you.

I recommend it.

I hope that cleared up a little on how I did it. I will be continuing on developing the prototype and hopefully be able to release it as a full game.

And thank you for your encouragement to keep on working on it. Honestly that makes me happy.

Submitted

Oh wow! That sounds really complex. O_O   I would have no idea how to do that. lol. When I tried making my own DDR game, I wanted it to be really basic and casual. Just tap your finger to the beat. If you look up the song "False God" from Talos Principle, that's the song I was using for my prototype. You'd tap your finger to the piano. 

I do know data management, though. My Brick Breaker game utilizes a simple high score system. It has a save and delete button and when you get a high score, you can type in your name to save that data. If that's the kind of system you want, I can show you the code I used for it.

Submitted(+1)

This is so fun! I love how the cauldron fills up the more potions you grab haha

This game really tests my brain skills and coordination, the music is really good and keeps me pumped up! Even though the movement was pretty sensitive but I really enjoyed flailing the arms around!

Developer(+1)

I am happy that you enjoyed it! I was thinking of coming up with a way to show how much of progress you have done like on osu! and DDR that you have a bar that fills up by how you perform.

I loved flailing the arms around too, even if there were no potions to grab. The coordination was part of the initial idea I got of "mixing" your arms around to collect things while your character climbed a tree. During that brain storm I thought on how about I made it that instead he mixed potions too. So that is how the game transformed.  I was gonna add a moment where you moved the joysticks down to grab the cauldron and mix it left and right to the rhythm, but I didn't get the time to implement it.

I am going to continue working on this outside of the Game Jam since I see that people like you are really enjoying it and that motivated me a lot!

I appreciate a lot for you taking your time to play it! Thank you!

Submitted(+1)

This was a really fun game! I loved swinging my alchemist arms around and collecting potions to the beat!

Despite reading the controls, I completely forgot that you have to press the shoulder buttons to grab the potions, resulting in a measly score of 112 out of 414 X'D

My only critique would be that I would have liked to see a score while I was playing instead of just at the end. It would be excited to track progress as the song plays.

Great job, it was a blast to play!

Developer(+1)

You did very well for starting it out! With practice you could achieve more.

It makes me happy that you had a blast while playing it!  I really appreciate that you took your time for giving me your feedback on it!

I will keep in mind of what you told me and implement it to the game outside of the Game Jam. I bet it gives more satisfaction and motivation to keep playing knowing how well you are doing on current progress.

Thank you for your feed back and for playing the game!

Submitted(+1)

I enjoyed this game. There is a crazy left brain/right brain thing going on, that made it really fun to try and master for me. Great job, I hope you continue to work on the game!

Developer

An interesting look on the left brain/right brain going on while playing it. Cool way to look at it.

I am happy that you enjoyed the game! It motivates me that there are people like you looking forward for this game's development. I will continue working on it after the Game Jam finishes. I am thinking on making a devlog of the game but I am rather scared of starting one since I have never done one before and don't know where to start.

Thank you for taking your time to playing, mastering it and giving me your feed back on the game!

I value it a lot.