Introduction to Who I am

I've always had a passion for game development, and I recently took the steps to start the path of game development as a career choice. I enjoy sitting down and taking the time to create something that I'm proud of, and something that others can enjoy.

While I love being creative, I cannot say that I am creative, hence why I'm heavily basing this game around the optional theme of Cold.
This is technically the first ever game I (hopefully) build and make public, as I've only done past experiments of both 3D and 2D. This also is my first ever experimentation with the Unity 2D format, as I am more familiar with the 3D format. This is also my first game jam, so I'm hoping for good results. 

Now, I must admit, my audio creation skills aren't quite there yet, and my general art skills are lacking, let alone my pixel art skills. They're subpar at best. However, I am confident in my ability to code, but with the downside of that being that I am more familiar with Java 8, and C# development on Unity is new to me. I know basic C# for Unity but I am confident enough to say it's enough for this game.

(Also this was a last minute decision on my part so I'm joining late...)

Now to the game,

"Warm, Welcome, Home." Follows the story of a widowed man out for the week, who is unfortunately aware of the horrible blizzard that will soon impact his household. Now while he is out, you, the player have control over his home. With just a measly three actions a day, you can change the outcome of the entire household, up until he returns home on Sunday at midnight. With the storm predicted to be a devastating 6 feet of snow, and a mix of heavy hail, will you be cold and leave his house in a state of dismay for your enjoyment? Or will you prepare him for the impending storm...

Tools

I'm using Unity 2019 for my game, unfortunately free version as I'm too unsure about my current future to decide if this is something I wish to invest in (as much as I wish it was). Trello for planning for myself as I don't have the best capability to remember things. Finally, Photoshop for graphics, and obviously visual studio for C# coding. I am always down to answer any questions on the game so feel free to ask.

I will be posting, as the title implies, my Devlog here each day I finish work on the game. Hopefully I remember each change I make.

(My) Day one.

It's been a wild, emotional filled day. Had a small selection of ideas I had planned out a bit more than others, and after deciding upon this one I made this, meaning I have to be confident in it now aha.

I spent most of today planning, with about an hour spent on some graphics work (it's pretty bad) which I would showcase, but Itch.io is currently having some issues relating to uploading images. Will try again tomorrow. Else wise, I added code to the energy meter, specifically two methods, one to check if the change is too big or too small than the array, and the other to change the sprite using the array. Not much progress today, didn't have much time to work in general. Hopefully tomorrow is more productive.

EDIT: 

I need a name for the main man. Any suggestions?

Day one... point five...?

Images on Itch.io are working today, and you may be wondering why I made this a second post instead of just editing the original post.

Long story short, I saved over the preview from yesterday so I'm showcasing what I've currently progressed so far on today.

I've been working on mostly code, more detail in a later devlog today. Most specifically what I'm sharing right now is the outdoors and window. I've made light around the border of the window and added an outside, with an animation still in the works. Here's the current's game scene (So far).

Sorry it looks so crude, art isn't my forte.

The green bar in the top left is the energy for the day.

I was thinking, instead of having this one static scene, what if I allow the ability to pan over to the right side to show a kitchen in the home?

Maybe I'm getting too ambitious...

Really cool concept!! Love it!! <3

Day two...

Got a nice reminder of my horrible procrastination that I was born with. Spent a good chunk of the day slacking. I'd say sorry but in the end it only affects me and the game really.

Instead of a blue box for a window, I got an actual outdoors in with some lighting effects to make it seem as if light is coming into the room. Innovative, I know. There's also snow cycles but unfortunately they aren't completely ready yet. Expect them tomorrow!

Got a title screen up for the game and I find it suiting enough to be permanent, so unless I have time in the future to polish the game up a lot, it's here to stay!

I removed the weird chunk out of the window in place for some vines/vegetation growing. 

Biggest change:
I decided to take a new approach on the game's camera, so instead of being able to see the entire room with a black box for the out of bounds areas, the game is now locked inside the screen area (Code still needs work for that) and the camera follows the mouse, with a noticeable delay, and a light that follows with. More to come soon.

Here's a gif showcasing the extent of work that has mostly been done today

Feel free to ask any questions!

ohhh i love how this looks esp w the camera interaction! also it's great that you've outlined the possible actions and separated them by complexity. i'm really interested in this game overall! good luck with the rest of the jam!

Day Three

I spent 9 hours trying to create a live linux usb only to end up getting a malware, having to manually remove it and then deciding to update to Win10. Nothing got done.

TL:DR We don’t talk about day 3

DAY FOUR

DAY FIVE AND SIX

These days are also being logged into the same post as I spent a majority of my work time these days on the same problems and functions... and I got sick :l 


Whats new:

Email system to show story elements and introduce gameplay elements easily, completely optional.

Temperature gauge to indicate how the player is doing, lower values for if they're doing a bad job at renovating the house, higher for as implied, a better job at renovating.

And uh... that's it.

These took me a lot of timer to work out small kinks as I'm pushing hard to get the main elements of the game as perfect as can be.

My little cold the past day and today have put a huge stress on me too, I feel so drowsy!

Hopefully I get a lot done faster and better these coming four days.

Sorry for the short log!

Thanks for reading.

DAY SEVEN AND EIGHT!

I still have a lot more to do, and I'm putting a lot of personal health issues out of the way for this game... Jeez.

I have so many plans I want to do, but I'm realizing I need to cut down.

I haven't decided what to cut yet. Once I finish the system of the computer, and I implement all the objectives I wish to have in the first section of the house, I'll then decide if I should include stuff like the kitchen section, more interactables, animations, and so on.

For the next day, I'm going to focus on getting all the room one interactables I have planned, and setting up the day system and correlating the outside world with the days.

On the final day, I plan on doing as many SFXs as I can and doing any polish I can get out with whatever time I have left.
I'd love to provide a video or a gif of my progress, but there's so much and my computer can't handle high quality video recording. I apologize.

I’ll go over all the changes in tomorrow’s devlog.

I'm working hard to get this to be ready for the deadline, and I'll keep ya'll updated. I plan on having individual posts for these next two days,

In the end, I've learned a lot of new information, and my skills all around have heavily improved, and I am already looking forward to participating in more game jams!

Just for a bit of self-reflection right now, I wasted a lot of the early dates trying to figure out basic Unity functions, those of which I know by heart by now, and I spent a lot of time polishing tiny things, when I wasn't focused on the bigger picture.

I've been logging some tips for myself when it comes to Game Jam participation and steps to take, with my biggest one being

DON'T BE OVER AMBITIOUS.

I set a lot of plans for this game and it sucks that I know I can't reach all of them before this game's deadline.

So I decided, as I stated before to cut down on some elements so the game has at least some polish and good play ability for the deadline, and after that I will go in and spend some time here and there updating the game to reach the plans I wanted.

Now, I want to make it clear that I cannot promise those updates. I do want to do them, but I also wish to move onto another project/game jam, to explore more skills and see how creative I can be with the Unity software.

It's been a blast so far and I look forward to these two days, whether they be successful or filled with horrible procrastination.

Thanks for reading.

An Announcement.

After some rough thinking, I've decided that I will not be submitting this game for the game jam. In fact, I won't be submitting anything for the game jam.

As much fun as this has been, I realized that I was under-prepared for this and used my time unwisely, ultimately leading to this decision.

I appreciate the support from everyone here!

If you're interested, the main reason I've decided to opt out is due to some personal conflicts.

I've got a lot going on that I need to work for, and study for the coming weeks, and I cannot dedicate much more time to the game to get it to a state I'm proud enough to present.

It's been a blast! However, I'm going to stick to less ambitious ideas haha!

If you're interested in this game, I'll return to it every now and then and continue work on it to get it to a finished state that I'm proud of.

Thanks again everyone!

~Barbedpilot