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Shaffs!'s itch.io pageResults
| Criteria | Rank | Score* | Raw Score |
| Audio | #232 | 2.236 | 2.500 |
| Gameplay | #240 | 2.348 | 2.625 |
| Overall | #281 | 2.236 | 2.500 |
| Visuals | #300 | 1.901 | 2.125 |
| Authenticity (use of resolution restriction) | #308 | 2.460 | 2.750 |
Ranked from 8 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.
Did you work in a team?
Solo project.
Was the resolution a challenge?
Definitely. I was tweaking the pixel perfect camera and swapping out images and fonts for static 64x64 pixel alternatives until the end.
What did you learn?
A bunch. I've added a development notes section the overall game description if you are interested.
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Comments
The lighting and particles don't meet the 64x64 rule, shame as it has the makings of something good :(
I've wondered about this quite a bit. From the perspective of an old school, 8 color game, I would totally agree. My resolution for the camera is 64x64, so technically anything that I can fit into that space is within the dimensional requirement. And by that I mean that I would think that the smallest unit would be a single pixel, relative to that 64x64 camera resolution. It probably doesn't work out like that in practice.
Alas, I am not certain. And I am certain that I am not trying to argue, just expressing a question I have aloud.
And, thank you for thinking it has the makings of something good. Thankfully, the mortal coil of a game doesn't end with the jam.
Fair points but look at the sword on your opening screen and the tiniest particles as they disappear, they're made from many more pixels then one of the 'blocks' making up the left-hand wall (which represent units in your 64x64 grid). I think a lot of submissions have suffered from the same problem: the rendering seems to be beyond the programmer's control. Modern game engines sometimes make things harder than they should be, usually, and ironically, when aiming for simplicity. It's one of the reasons I've eschewed them and gone back to making simple pixel games with no cameras, canvases, shaders or lighting...beyond what I can create myself from raw pixels.
Anyway, back to your game, which I skipped over in view of the foregoing. How do I swing the sword? I'm suffering a rapid demise which prevents me from exploring further!
P.S. In your write up you mention Aseprite but there's a free fork of this, LibreSprite, at https://libresprite.github.io/#!/ which is rather excellent.
I was thinking about your original post, my reply and such. I was wondering about the rendering of the camera and such. Despite the rendering being set to a particular size, there is still the problem of the overall upscaling to a viewport that makes the display usable in any fashion. It seems that most entries set the display canvas to be something like 512x512. I went with that. That leads to the rendering engine to scale from 64 to 512. In that, the integrity of the single pixel will certainly be lost.
I was wondering about changing the unit pixel size to be something larger (say 10) so you can maintain an overall logical pixel size of 64. Given a 10x10 display pixels to be a single logical pixel, you could render the game at 640x640 with a single unit being an even chunk of that canvas. The author would then be entirely in control w/o the rendering engine needing to scale at all. Reading your last reply, this is where you have ended up yourself, it seems.
Anyhow, it is interesting to ponder.
P.S., swing the sword with a left-mouse click (which I see I totally omitted from the controls section).
LibreSprite - I'll check it out. I was also thinking to fork and compile Aseprite. I didn't mind supporting them, though. It is a pretty nice tool.
I like that you listed the controls, and you gave me a nice little scratch space / play area to get used to controlling the game. You are ahead of most games just by doing that one thing.
I wasn't able to figure out how to use the weapon. It seemed like I was supposed to fight a snake, or I would have to gather that those pixels coming out of my body meant blood. I tried to fight him, and I just bled out and died.
good job getting this done by yourself! I really like the atmosphere of the caves (dungeons?) along with the audio.
Your game comes in far above the 64x64 pixel requirement. I know that there's not a LOT of time left, but you may have time to fix that before deadline!
Thanks for that. I went back through to configure the camera and swap out some stuff that I certainly count as questionable. I've tried to add somewhat detailed notes in the approach I took to arrive at where I did. Those are on the game's page. This was a good learning arc for me.