itch.io

Thanks. The post processing shader is doing must of the heavy lifting.

As for the build size, there are multiple factors contributing there. I used to do the seasonal gamejams hosted by Epic Jams, where builds under 100mb were their own subcategory. I learnt lots of optimization tricks from there. These tricks include ticking options in the project packaging page such as ‘Create compressed cooked packages”, “Cook only maps”, “Share Material Shader Code” and “Shared Material Native Libraries”. Then setting up a list of maps (or scenes if you prefer that terminology) to include in the build, under the “List of maps to include in a packaged build”. And similarly setting up a list of “Directories to never cook” under the homonymous category, to make sure unwanted large assets find their way in the build. I also use “Directories to never cook” to blacklist engine directories that I know aren’t used in my project. Directories such as “/Engine/Tutorial”, “/Engine/VREditor”, “/Engine/EditorLandscapeResources” and “/Engine/EngineSky”. In theory none of those directories should affect build size regardless, but I did notice my build size got lower regardless when I explicitly blacklisted them. Likewise, I go through the Plugins options menu and disable anything I don’t use. VR plugins, that used to be enabled by default in UE4, are probably the worst offenders. Not only they take up a bunch of space in your build, they are really annoying if you launch a non VR game on a PC with SteamVR installed. I believe the cable component and CharacterAI plugins are also relatively large. Nowhere near as bad as the VR plugins, but I’d disable them if they’re not being used. Finally, I do use Unreal 4.26. This version allows me export Windows games as 32 bit executables rather than 64 bit ones. The 32 bit export shaves some megabytes off the build. The downside with 32 bit builds is that the game can only use up to 4gbs of RAM that way. But realistically speaking, 99.9% of gamejam games will never need even half of that. And a 32 bit executable makes what I make playable on very old machines too. And if I ever need to make a 64 bit build, I can just do that in UE4.26 too. These are also the reasons I’m not touching UE5. As a solo dev only interested in stylized games, all the crap introduced with 5 is completely useless to me. On top of that, benchmarks posted by other UE devs on social media clearly demonstrate that, even with Lumen and Nanite disabled, taking an UE4 template project and upgrading it to UE5, only results in reduced framerates. I don’t have the resources to compete with games chasing cutting edge graphics, so I gotta play to my strengths. And I prefer an engine like UE4.26, that allows me to make games that run at better framerates and work on older machines too.

Thanks! Appreciated it.

It’s just the two, yes. I got ill on the penultimate day of the jam, so I submitted what I had and left the game unfinished. Cheers.

Thank you very much for playing my game! And thank you for your feedback :D

Since you asked about the "stomp". The first week of the jam I was making this game with the idea that it would be a local multiplayer party game.  Up to 4 players, need to use tetris-like sand shapes to build a path upwards toward the lifeguard chair. First to reach the chair is the winner. You can still see remnants of this original design in elements such as the camera, which was originally designed to be very far away to allow multiple players to follow their character. Like in the final entry you played, you could destroy the sand shapes you built by hovering on them with the cursor, and press the sand shape spawn button to erase them instead.  Each sand shape is made of individual cubes. The stomp mechanic destroys nearby cubes, regardless of the ownership of the sand shapes they are a part of. So the purpose of the stomp, was to give players a tool to mess up with each other's plans, without being neither as precise nor as powerful as the erase functionality they have over their own shapes. After about 1 week into the jam, I realized a local multiplayer only party game would be an ill fit for this jam, since I participated in previous jams and I remembered Rook Rules and Rheia streamed the entries on their own. I could've still made the original design work by adding bot AI for the other players. I'm not an expert about enemy AI, but with the limited experience I have with it, I expect that writing behaviors for a game like this one may have been quite challenging for me. So I ultimately decided instead to make it into a single player game with linear levels. As it is right now, the stomp no longer serves any purpose. I had some ideas for levels with preexisting sand barriers you would need to stomp through to progress. Or pre existing shapes you would need to stomp out to collect the sand to build your own. But these ideas never made it into this version of the game. I did consider removing the stomp entirely from this version, but it was already quite polished and I think felt quite cool to use, so I just decided to leave it in.

The game actually does have per-level restrictions on sand. Each level has a pre-defined and limited amount of shapes you can spawn in a specific order. Normally, the game is intended to display a crosshair at the current position of the sand spawner. With a little digit counter for the remaining sand shapes you can spawn for that level. And when you erase shapes, you regain those specific shapes in the specific order they were erased in. However, in the build I submitted for the jam the crosshair seems to break after the first time it's displayed. I only found out about this bug during Rook's stream. I have since investigate the issue, and it should be fixed in the post jam patch I'll release once the jam's rating period is over.

Thanks again!

Thank you for taking the time to play my game. I really appreciate your feedback :D

Great job! I really like how you have redone the visual style of your game. The new looks fits perfectly the 32bit aesthetic, and looks just like something straight out of a PS1. I also like how the newer version of your game feels streamlined in its level design, the spring button is a godsend, and I prefer the lighting in this version much more. I suppose the darker environments in the old version were better for setting up a tense and scary atmosphere. But I think the newer version managed to still feel quite scary to explore, without making me get lost as frequently as I did in the old version. As for possible points of improvement if you want to develop this further. First I have to say that in terms of UI I think I preferred the old version. Specifically, I think the use of the color green and the old font for the text worked better. The white/light grey in the new version is not bad, but to me personally it looked like a downgrade. Another thing I really felt could've used some work was the sound design. Horror games live and die by their sound design. Sound works together with visuals to make the player feel afraid. I really think focusing on sound design would elevating this so much further. I left a rating for your entry. I would love if you would be able to leave one for mine too :D

Hi there. Thank you so much for playing my game! I already checked your Youtube channel but I guess the VOD where you play my game is not on there yet? Definitely let me know when you have it up. I'm looking forward to see somebody play my game.

Btw, you can in fact aim and fire you weapon using the mouse. You just need to hold down left mouse button, the mouse aiming cursor will appear and you'll shooting. I know I did not make it very clear in-game. I did consider having the mouse aiming cursor visible by default. I guess that would make trying out the left mouse button more intuitive. But I thought having the cursor visible would be visual noise if you are shooting with arrows keys, or using a controller and playing with the thumbstick. Maybe I should have made it so the cursor is visible by default and disappears when firing with arrow keys or using  a mouse, rather be invisible by default and only appear when moving the mouse and/or holding the left mouse button?

Anyhow thank you so much for all the feedback, especially about the twitch integration. I made this game for a short competition organized by Twitch. I came up with how I wanted the game to integrate with Twitch almost immediately, but then I waited until the night before the deadline to actually implement twitch integration into the game. And since I myself don't stream on twitch, I wouldn't have been able to test out if it even worked properly. Since I'd need viewers engaging with the pool, which I don't have. So now I'm even more curios to watch your VOD, to see that feature at work.

If you would a theme for inspiration, you can just use a theme generator https://letsmakeagame.net/game-jam-theme-generator/

Thank you! I made this game during the Twitch game jam, so I worked on this for about two weeks.

I absolutely LOVE the concept. The art style looks amazing to me, and I also like the music a lot. I just wish the item you smash around would break, or at least they made some sound when getting thrown around. I feel this game idea has such potential, I really wish the core gameplay of smashing things around packed more of a punch.

Thank you! I rated yours too.

How to play

Thank you so much for trying out my game :D

As for the ending and tutorial signs. I ended up running out of time, so I wasn’t able to finish implementing the pop up text when you walk next to a sign. Same with the final area, I ended up just leaving it like that. Those clouds were actually moving platforms with a placeholder model. I was supposed to swap the model out but I never ended up designing a level section around them, so I left them with the placeholder in :D

Thanks! :D

Thank you very much for checking out my game!

I made a quick description of how to play the game if you still want to know how the game is supposed to work.

Cheers.

Hey there, glad you liked my game :D
Yes and no.  The game you see here was a gamejam project, and as that it is concluded. However, I am currently developing a larger game based on this prototype. 

I accidentally submitted the wrong game. If anyone wants to see the one I actually made for the jam, it's here: https://gmilh.itch.io/running-out-of-space
(Don't feel bad for me, they're both equally bad).

Artstation.com is the industry standard for art portfolios. It also supports embedding 3D models with movement controls to look around the model (as an example: https://www.artstation.com/artwork/aRyqBz click the play button on the second image from the top), cheers.

Unreal Engine

I'd suggest checking out Wine or VirtualBox, they might help running Windows games on OSX to give feedback and increase the odds your own entry might get more visibility as a result.

Wine is a compatibility layer which in theory lets you run Windows application on Unix systems like OSX, Virtual Box is a full fledged virtual machine so you'd run Windows in a window within OSX. Not sure how either would perform with games tho.

Finally, usually some people submit web embedded games you can play regardless of the OS, so maybe you can just give feedback on those, and any OSX native game if there will be any.

Hi there! I was thinking of participating in this jam, I just had a few questions:

1. does this jam allow the use of royalty free/legally obtained visual/audio assets?
   or is it more of a "only own made assets during the jam period" type of jam?
2. am I allowed to submitting my entry to multiple jams? 
   I'm also taking part in the Unexpected Jam running almost concurrently with this one, so I was thinking of working within both time constrains on an entry fitting both jams.
3. will there be a time period following the deadline, where my itch.io page will be locked and I won't able to upload new build until the period ends? 
   (usually a voting period that some itch.io jams have while other do not)

Unreal. Engine. 4!!!

What about sourcing and retargetting animations from Mixamo? Is that allowed or should animations be made during the jam period?

glad you like the concept! the game turned out kinda overscoped, so I kinda threw random blocks into the level at the end (luckily the collectible tiles and checkpoints are placed procedurally at least).

I definitely hope to have time to work on some post jam content later on :D

 very glad you like it xD can’t take credit for the rocket tho, pretty much ripped the idea from rayman 2 :p

Thanks for trying my game!
There is actually a small dot on the head of the enemy head when you locked on them, unfortunately it's hard to see because of the lighting.
As explained in the full game page, I was trying to build a combat system based on tight TIMING of your actions, like the Souls games have.

I really think the concept behind the puzzles in the first 2 rooms is great and takes full advantage of being a VR game.
The final room felt more like an escape room, which is not necessarily bad and I see you had to fit more of the multi use tool theme in there, but I really wish I could see more puzzle rooms like the first 2.
I love the graphics a lot too! If I had to give what I think could be a point of improvement, it felt  a bit too busy with bright colours to me personally, and I wish the interactible objects would pop out a bit more, since at first I was struggling to tell at a glance what I was supposed to pick up and move around, and what was just static set dressing.
Overall an amazing job!

Thanks a lot!
I checked out your game too it's very clever, I also have a Vive so I can't say much about compatibility on different platforms, but I'm also leaving some feedback in your comment sections over there.

Thanks for playing our build, glad you liked our environment!
I checked out and left a rating for your game too, really spooky environment <3

Let me know how it goes with the other build :D

Oculus Rift fix: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1cbIxNhzBzrnF_pLC0BTNRZUCK9IklE3w/view
We noticed the build we submitted presents a bug on certain headsets such as Oculus Rift, this link is to an identical build with a bug fix.

It's okay, I'm really bad with optimisation xD
Thanks for giving it a shot anyways :P

It's okay, as user Handy Corpse pointed out as well below in the comment section I've made use of an asset pack I bought for characters and environment, and in compliance with the jam's rule 'All assets  are allowed - as long as you have a license to use it' all other visual and audio assets are sourced: particle effects and post processing shaders are from packs, audio has been sourced from various sources, animations are from Mixamo.com.

Thank you very much for the feedback, I'll definitely expand on the AI if I come back to this project.
As for the blending between characters and environment, I do agree but there is no much I can do to address that feedback I'm afraid, as I am no visual artist and you pointed out I did not make the assets in the first place.

I do disagree however with the feedback about the theme not being present, enemies spawn out of dimensional 'holes' coming out of the ground, and the whole narrative of the game revolves around fighting the invaders coming out of these holes.
I do think it can be unclear how they are there if the player gets to an enemy after their spawn effect is vanished, and I only realised when I was making the video for the game's page that it would be 100x times more clear those are holes if I rotated the round hole to be facing the camera view instead of laying on the ground, like you see in that video.

Thanks!

I worked on the project by myself for a about half the week; I wish I could have spent more time on it and consider trying to make low poly assets myself, but sadly I was busy for most of the work days.
As other people pointed out the art assets, level, and some of the vfx were from an asset packs I own, since the rules do encourage to use such resources and I am not a visual artist.

What really helped me speeding up the implementation of certain mechanics was having previous experience and therefore a good know how in developing those type of game mechanics; I usually tend to look at my own previous code, and use it as a reference to develop a better and more robust implementation of the same feature, while avoiding the road bumps encountered when first trying to prototype a type of game mechanic I never worked on before.

Thanks! I definitely will keep on :D

Fun behind the scene fact,  I literally implemented the arrow during the last hour of the jam, basically I realised that my AI could wander off into tiny corners of that map, I had no time to improve the AI, so I just tried adding a compass, the upload for the new build actually finished post deadline, but luckily I could submit anyways since it had started before the deadline xD
I'll definitely polish it up once voting period is over.

Thanks! Although  I got the assets from an asset pack I bought, I'm no artist and I worked don this jam alone xD

Also yeah, unfortunately the second type of enemies (floating little ones) do not register when destroyed, so the game gets stuck on the first wave with them.
I hope I'll find some time to make a patch for that now that the voting period is ending.

Thanks, I'm glad you like it!

As you pointed out unfortunately the level is not completable

I underestimated how challenging and time consuming level building and set dressing were going to be, even had to restart when I realised the asset packs I planned to use were unfit for this type of gameplay, and swapped to a landscape tool instead which was also not ideal.

So by the end as I had to scrap several planned gameplay elements I had no time to code anymore, and I forgot to rework that section with the moving platform RIP xD

Looking forward to the new update! Keep up the good work :P

Definitely one of the most original interpretations of the theme I've seen yet, and as a narrative oriented experience I enjoyed it quite a lot, and I appreciate the replayability value.
I liked the general humour and meta jokes in particular, the writing was very good all throughout, the audio comportment the game relies on is impeccable and the person voicing the narrator did a very good job, and together with the writing really helped making the personality of the narrating character come across.
I've found the art direction quite pleasant looking and consistent, and the set dressing for the level to be quite well done.

If I'd have to point out flaws in this product:
- I'll probably criticise how the main mechanic feels "weird" as I'd find myself holding left click while moving my mouse over a word several times before it would finally be absorbed,
- and I had a couple of audio glitches: once the narrator kept repeating a line about flowers in loop until I reached the next location, and when I restarted the game from the end screen the narrator kept playing his end game audio while also playing the game start audio at the same time.