Indie game storeFree gamesFun gamesHorror games
Game developmentAssetsComics
SalesBundles
Jobs
Tags

[Devlog] A Deal Of Change

A topic by Glassir created Jul 16, 2020 Views: 277 Replies: 11
Viewing posts 1 to 7
(+1)

Hey! Dev logs seemed really fun  so i thought i make one as well.

Im just starting out with game development (no seriously, this is my first day) and this is my first ever game jam particpation. From what i saw  people are really supportive to one another and are bringing up really awsome ideas for games and it just drived me to stop procrastinating and give it a shot!

So, the general idea for my game is cashier work in a semi-futeristic earth where the currencies of the world are currently changing. Cash is almost out of the everyday use and now people pay even the smallest of change in credit, stock shares, cryptocurrency and even real estate on mars. Youre job is to make sure the money moves properly from & to the costumers properly and, when needed,  changing it to the other diffrent kindes of currencies which will be a  bit difficult. 

A really good example of what im trying to make is a sort of a "papers please"  type of game, althoue im not planning the game to be in that big of a scope, at least not until after the game jam is over  since i will have more time to build and polish the game. 

Im planning on making at least 3 levels with small cutscenes in between (which will be just text bubbels for now), a quick tutorial, a starting menu and mostly trying to make the game mechanics actually fun and not annoying for new players trying the game out. 

Feel free to give feedback! Most of my worries now are mostly that im planning too much in a small amount of time so if there are more expirienced game devs i would love to hear what are the main things i should focus on for now and if i should cutdown some ideas for now.


#Day 1 (16/7/2020) - 

I spent most of my first day getting familiar with the game jam community. I discovered itch.io recently and i dont use discord that much so it took me some time getting familiar with everything. I spent probably about 2-4 hours looking at other people progress and seeing other people advice on how to approach the first project. After that i spent about an hour and half trying to think of a way to make work at a cash register more fun and immersive then just opperating a caculator. And while i may overthought the idea of the game it did give me some good points and direcrions to where i want the game to go, even if its not a 100% established concept. 

I spent the rest of the day trying to learn the godot game engine and i hope that i will have some screenshots to share by tommorow. 

Submitted(+1)

Welcome, and good luck! Your game idea is intriguing, I worked as a cashier and it was kind of satisfying to get really efficient at certain tasks. Maybe your game could reward efficiency in some way too, that would certainly fit with the Papers, Please sort of theme :)

Thankes a lot!  The game could really benefit from an effiency system and it would really  help to get players into that flow state im trying to make. I would defintly  try to include a system like that! Thankes again :)

Host (1 edit)

aww i'm glad you've had some time to get situated and familiar with the community! if you ever decide to try more game projects in the future it'll definitely be useful to join discord servers and poke around itch if you ever want to ask questions or get to know small dev communities. this sounds like a really interesting idea and i'm really curious to see how the mechanics will play out. i'm wishing you luck with the jam!

(+1)

Thankes J! i am planning to make a few more games after this one so i will defenitly use youre advice :) 

(2 edits)

# Day 2-4

Not much to update aboute the game at this point. I mosty spent the last few days to understand how the godot engin works. It's a pretty easy game engine in comparison to other game engines from what i heard  people suggest but it still took me a bit of time to really understand how it all work.

 If you (the reader of this post ) someone who wants to learn godot i suggest you to start learning form "GDquest" begginer  coding tutorials on youtube before starting to learn the step by step document that godot provides. He explains the ideas of coding in a way that is more begginer freindly then the step by step document which seems to be for people starting to use the godot engine but do have coding expirience. Other youtubers i suggest you to watch are "heart beast ", "game from scratch" and "kids can code" which all cover most if not all of  the mechanics you will want to implement in youre game. 

I did manage to achive  a few "small" steps in the game . It may not seem like much but it took me some time to think of an engaging way to move my very vague idea to an idea that i will be able to implement and  the mechanics of the game  actualy fits into. 

I hope i will be able to make a somewhat playable game in the next three days so i you will be able to play a bit and give feed back :)

At the same time it will probably take me more time then i will expect so i shouldent promise somthing yet :p

(+1)

# Day 5

Started to work on my game.

I started implementing the UI elemnts of the game today and  while i  would like to be faster with what i can do im still pretty happy with what i am able to implement.



For a more proffesional looking post ill write what i been able to implement:

- A main menu:


The buttons while looking pretty cool are mostly place holders for now. I had a bit of problems with the coding so i decided to remove the placeholder scenes it had (which probably wasent the best idea)  and decided that i will create the scenes i need and then i will reconnect the buttons to them.

- Made a pause buttton that still needs some testing

-Made transition animation which i havent checked yet 

- Made a timer for the game

Will try  to make some of the GUI elements tommorow and try to have these buttons send you to places. And no i dont mean teleporting.

BTW  somthing that is not yet on the menu is the credits scene, for people who made the assets i downloaded, which i also will add. If you are wandering which type of font i am using, it will be  the one right here:https://www.1001fonts.com/good-times-font.html#comments which was made by Raymond Larabi. 


Have a good day/night folks! Hope to update you on progress soon.

Host

awesome thanks for sharing the font!! a lot of jammers ask us what fonts to use so it's always nice when people share those resources. this menu is looking great--i can't wait to see more!

no problem! happy i could help :)

Hey everyone! 

#Day 6-8

I couldn't really work on my game in the last few days so there isn't really progress to tell about.

I did managed to make the pause button and transition button between scenes to work  but i also tried to add some uneccesary features. 

im gonna try to rush with the time im left to see if i can make somthing playable at least so wish me luck! 

If i will not make it in time i still am planning on finishing the game if anyone is interested :)

Submitted

Absolutely still interested! How far did you get? I'm sure I'm not the only one who would love to see what you have so far :)

(+1)

Thankes A LOT!!! It really means a lot to me to see somone excited for my game :) 

For now there isn't much progress made since the last post but i am working on the game itself. I am trying to make a small playable version which hopfully i will publish in a week or 2 and i could get some feedback to work with. 

Thankes for the motivational boost! :D