this is the projects first status update after the jam ended (and probably the last one ever), and as you see it’s not on the games own itch page because the game didn’t get its own itch page.

that’s because i made a few prototypes of the basic gameplay, and testing all of them proved that the finished game would be boring.

if you followed me for the Surreal Memes arcade game, please unfollow me because i cannot finish that game because i found out that it’s boring. the games that i will make in the future will not be themed after Surreal Memes.

this tiny demo uses the control scheme from the original flash game, which i realized could be simplified:

• it’s easier to press the Up (or down) arrow key to talk to signs instead of Z, and when i go to a sign it should have not just the white outline but also the Up (or down) arrow symbol so that i know which button to press to talk with the sign
• the ground pound could be done by pressing the Down arrow — instead of the dive, which could be done by pressing the Up arrow once after jumping
• this leaves only F.L.U.D.D. assigned to a Non-arrow key, which could be the Space bar

the original control scheme can — at least while playtesting — still be an option, call it the “Classic” preset. but i think for many players this simplified control scheme (or a variation of it, if you find improvements through playtesting) could make the game much more fun for many players including me.

Thanks. My Linux didn’t recognize it automatically because of missing permissions, and because the filename didn’t end with .x86_64 this caused me the user to not recognize this file as an executable either.

If the filename ended in .x86_64 i would’ve tried to open it as an executable, and then i would’ve gotten the error message about missing permissions, and then i would’ve changed the permissions with the help of looking up Linux change permissions on the Internet Search Engine.

you should update the export so that the executable is actually named upstream.x86_64 instead of just Upstream.

I made the player movement in 3D, and the behaviour of the obstacles in the game (i’m being vague so that i won’t spoil the game before it’s made).

I originally wanted to use 3D models since i couldn’t come up with a way to make custom visuals that blend in with the Surreal Memes Clip Art, but then i came up with a way to make my custom visuals blend in with the Surreal Memes Clip Art, so i will make the game a 2D game as originally planned. Hooray!

i downloaded the game for Linux, but i don’t know how to start the game since i can’t find the filetype. please update the export to show the filetype.

update: very fun game. the web version works without flaws.

i now made some 3D models for the Jam game (photo):

i realized that i have only 1 tomorrow left to make the game if i want to submit it to the jam, because schoolwork — and the breaks that i needed because of the exhaustion that it caused — took so much time from developing the game that, no matter how much progress i make now, it will never be enough to make a good game before the jam ends.

i feel that i made the right decision by placing my health and my school grades as more important than making a game for this jam.

the game design document that i have written because i learned it from Jade the Kobold’s event seems so cool that i definitely want to make this game, even if i can finish it only finished after the jam ended. also, the other events will be helpful too.

i didn’t get to make a game, but i came mainly for the events, and i definitely felt like i have learned more about how to make a game in Godot, and that we have celebrated Godot’s community because i watched some of the events with the livechat still being live. Thank you very much.

Any Devlogs of Progress that i make after the jam ends will be on the game’s own Itch page instead of continuing this thread, so follow me if you want to see my Surreal Memes inspired arcade game unfold.

I made the rest of the sprites, and i colored them:

i realized that Pixel Art is deceptive in its simplicity: since it’s a simpler medium, i expected the images to be simpler to design. yes, it’s easy to get started making a pixel art; but it is much harder to adjust the pixel ort, and to make new sprites based on the visual requirements that are set by the first few sprites.

i immediately thought back to the last time i worked on the visuals for my current non-jam game: that game is supposed to be stylised like a 2D cartoon, so of course i started by making 2D vector art. but i found it too hard to keep everything from looking Too flat, so i switched to 3D modelling and since then my time was much easier. that game is still stylized like a 2D cartoon thanks to using unshaded materials and an outline effect, but now it’s much easier to make these stylized visuals.

so i realized that i need to use another medium — an easy-to-edit medium — for my jam game. after a break, i will choose between Clip Art (the way that actual Surreal Memes are made) or 3D modeling.

Despite schoolwork, i managed to make progress for my jam game.

• Days 1 & 2: watched a lot of Surreal Memes videos as inspiration (because when i heard the GoGodotJam3 themes i remembered that Surreal Meme videos used both themes alot)
• Days 2 & 3: i wrote the Game Design Document (thanks to Jade the Kobold for this speech) in Notes App (it also has doodles so i can imagine how the game is going to look like). my goal was to write a simple game that uses the themes of both GoGodotJams (but is biased to show off Evolution rather than Too Much Power), which i did. i will not show this game design document since uploading it is too complex for the limited time of this Jam.
• Day 4: i made the initial greyscale versions of the character sprites (photo):

as you can see, this game is inspired from Surreal Memes. even if i don’t finish this game before the jam ends, i might still want to finish it since (the design document proves that) it seems very cool (even without the Surreal Memes theme because the gameplay concept is solid). this is something that didn’t happen in any previous game jam i joined (which is both GoGodotJams).

now picked is the theme. unsticked should be this post. (the theme is Evolution)

Surreal Memes themed game

I was busy so i could not play the game as soon as i would’ve liked, but now that i have time to play the game:

I could not play the game because there’s no 64-Bit version (only 32-Bit). While 64-Bit Windows can run 32-Bit Windows programs, 64-Bit Linux cannot run 32-Bit Linux programs.

When I originally made Tree Invaders, all in this jam, I made a really bad accessibility decision:

Since I assumed that everyone playing the web version is on Desktop because I assumed that every mobile player would download the Android app, I have removed the Pause button from the Web version and replaced it with just a line of text that says “[2nd Mouse Button] (Un-)Pause”.

As it turns out, this is not good for players on the Apple iPhone, since they can’t download the Android app, so they’re stuck with the web version, which means that they can’t Pause because there’s no on-screen Pause button in the web version.

Even though this jam has ended a long time ago, and even the sequel jam has ended almost a month ago, and i don’t really care about this game anymore, i will still be fixing this issue that i found recently. I will be fixing it by making the Actual pause button appear on-screen in the web version, just as it does in the Android app.

Expect this new version to be released on tomorrow the 2021-12-26.

Update: Released!

Today on the 2021-12-25, I released this patch.

It deletes the script that removes the on-screen pause button when the game is played on anything except the Android app. This means that this version of the game has the on-screen pause button reguardless of the platform.

However, on the game page I decided to apply this update only to the web version (where it’s necessary for touchscreen accessibility), which means that the Desktop versions (where there is no touchscreen) will still have the on-screen pause button removed.

You can download the Godot project of not only this accessibility patch but also still the original version.

I have already spelled it as GGJ in

• the URLs of my GoGJ 1—2 games (ggj-tree-invaders, ggj2-super-runner)
• the Android package name for Super Runner (ggj2.sosasees.super_runner)
• GoGJ1 and GoGJ2 community posts

It’s very impractical to go back and correct the spelling, because:

• changing the URLs will break all links to them, and
• i have made enough GoGJ community posts for it to be tedious to change every instance, also i don’t think these were any ambiguous because of the context.

But now i know how to spell GoGJ in the future. Thanks very much to Adrian for correcting this, and to Adrian & John for answering my original question.

When GoGodotJam 3 comes, i will want to prepare an empty project with some basic generic metadata, such as

• a GoGJ3-themed Splash Screen
• the game name ‘gogj3’
• the Export templates
• the most important and most time-consuming part: the Licenses that i’ll need to open-source my project

but i will not make any gameplay or visuals or sounds before the theme reveal (generic means ‘not specific’, after all).

if i do this, ¿will my project count as a legitimate GoGJ3 project because i didn’t start making the actual game before the jam, or will it be removed because the file manager shows i have created/changed project files before the jam?

Thank you for the tip. Now i could complete the game.

i gave 4 stars instead of 5 for ‘Artistic’ because there’s no sounds. otherwise this is one of the entries i enjoyed most.

this game is unfair because in it i have to react quickly while being unable to see, and that with typing words (even if they’re short) instead of the usual button-presses.

but good news, the concept of typing commands to control the game can be made into a much better unique game if in that game the player knows much better what to do. maybe it could even be this exact game if you make the player able to see much more.

it’s not much, but now future games can spin this concept in different ways to create more different games.

Next time you should make the wording for the rule more clear, because

Only submissions for this jam are allowed

sounds a lot like

The lifespan of an onion is determined by how long it lives

: one could think

¡Of Course only submissions for this jam are allowed; otherwise it wouldn’t be a submission for this Jam!

in the same way that they would think

¡Of Course the lifespan of an onion is determined by how long it lives; otherwise it wouldn’t be the lifespan of an Onion!

. much better is something like

Submissions must be just for this jam and not for other jams

.

Done. ✅

i personally focused on rating games just in the ‘Submissions in need of ratings’ list. i can’t rate much since there’s so many games but so few time, so i decided to rate just the games that need ratings the most.

¿does a submission to multiple game jams automatically count as “not a submission for this jam”? because i found another one, genocide that is submitted to 4 game jams:

• Themed Horror Game Jam #3
• Yogscast Game Jam 2021
• Go Godot Jam 2 (this one)
• Game Off 2021

you can learn from your mistakes for the future.

according to the jam rules, you cannot change uploadings (compared to how they were during the jam) while it’s voting time.

this means that you can’t add the ZIP version now, but you can in 2 hours because voting time is about to end.

reply when you have uploaded the ZIP version for Linux. on Linux a ZIP version is even more important than on Windows, because when ‘unrar’ isn’t in the package manager (like in Debian, the Linux variant that i use), it’s Much harder to find and install than WinRAR on Windows.

at a certain point in the game, instead of going to the next level i go to an earlier level but unable to progress because i can’t collect the fuel.

i hope this gets fixed in a later version of the game.

the balancing is way off because

i’m supposed to protect the blue energy source in the middle and as a reward for shooting the red enemies i can collect more energy but i already waste more energy with a single shot than i can ever get back from collecting the energy.

this means that, because the enemies take 3 hits, i have to spend ~6 energy units to defeat the enemy, but i only get back ~1. according to these numbers, i am guaranteed to lose 5 energy units per enemy, which makes the inevitable demise happn before the game could really start.

¿what about making the shots subtract 1 unit and the collectable energy add 4—6 units? the game would be much better because I’d feel like i could delay the Game Over much longer when i practice. and then you only need to add a Score system, and then your basic Arcade Game would be complete.

the interaction between going near the computer and the door opening, and the wind, are hard to spot.

i hope you make these visuals more clear in the final game and avoid more unclear imagery like this, even if it looks less beautiful, because in games playability is always more important than beauty.

most people (including me) will not install a new program just to unpack your game that you uploaded in RAR format, because there’s 100 more games that they can already unpackage because they’re in the ZIP format, which can be unpackaged in any OS without having to install anything.

an alternate format like 7Z or RAR or TAR or TAR.GZ or TAR.BZ2 should not be the only way to download your game, but a bonus so that people who already have the right program can download the game faster than the standard ZIP version.

i cannot get fast enough to go past the first ‘cracked blocks’.

i looked through all the houses but the game didn’t really seem to end yet. i have no idea how to progress further.

the “(press enter to continue…)” at the beginning made me think that [Enter] would be the “interact” button for the rest of the game. i had to check the game description to see that it’s actually [F]/[C]/[E] (which are actually better “intreact” buttons, but still not as god as [Space]).

also, the inventory eventually gets so big that it covers up the entire top-left corner of the screen. you should make it transparent when walking near it.

and the “Sprint” button is an unneeded addition. you need to run that fast During The Entire Game, so you should just go that fast without having to press anything.

i rotate left with [Left Arrow] or [A]. i rotate right with [Right Arrow] or [D]. i pause with [L] or [C].

how can i destroy the asteroids?

nice game that i could maybe play for a while.

it would be nice to have the option to see the battery count During the game, and to have a practice mode for playing without the time limit, and to align the UI using anchors so that in fullscreen mode the cursor stays in the middle, and to have better lighting that makes it easier to tell the shape of the level.

then i would Definitely want to play this game.

i like the simple visuals and distinct theme.

‘Artistic’ gets 4 starts from me instead of 5 only because the gradient background in the menus makes the menu visuals not exactly match the game visuals and because you used pure grey instead of a subtly-colored grey.

it’s really challenging even without the drop timer because the tower gets really shaky really fast which makes aiming really hard.

on top of that, adding a time limit after which i cannot not drop the box is extreme.

maybe there should be a gamemode without the drop timer, for practice.

i can do nothing after talking to Cohost. seems like most of the game hasn’t been made yet. congratulations on the part that you have made.

the mockups that you put in the screenshots section look promising. when the game is finished it could be outstanding and different from all other games.

the black drones are scary when they get close because then they make the Bass-Boosted sound effect from Ear Rape Memes.

in general, the sounds are really loud. you should turn down your volume before playing.

i don’t know what my objective is (i just assume that for the game jam you’ve only completed the core game and you’ll add the objective later).

this is a impressive game unlike anything i’ve played before, you should get around to adding the objective.

most people (including me) will not install a new program just to unpack your game that you uploaded in RAR format, because there’s 100 more games that they can already unpackage because they’re in the ZIP format, which can be unpackaged in any OS without having to install anything.

an alternate format like 7Z or RAR or TAR or TAR.GZ or TAR.BZ2 should not be the only way to download your game, but a bonus so that people who already have the right program can download the game faster than the standard ZIP version.

this game is boring because the player tank moves too slow and it’s even worse when energy is being depleted. and when i have to move rocks out of my game, the game slows to a crawl.

by making the tank faster and removing the rocks, you could make this game a good simple maze game that still stands out because the creepy music and dim lights make for a good atmosphere.

but oh wait: the search lights – you don’t need to use them because you can see everything by turning up the monitor brightness all the way, which you need to do anyways to see anything at all. i recommend making the regular light as bright as the searchlight, but making it cone-shaped and in front of your tank so that you still need to use the searchlight if you want to see Everything around you.

and to fix the problem that i can cheese the game by turning up my monitor brightness, i recommend using color correction to make the very dark parts of the image pitch-black so that, no matter how bright my monitor is, i still can’t see them.