Anyone doing the One Hour Game Jam today... 1 hour from now?

3 hours in tonight! That makes 12 hours total now.

I've only got about 2.5 hours left to add new stuff and then need to switch focus to wrapping it up adding stat bar and so forth and then throw it up on GameJolt.I keep changing the enemy colors. I think I do it more out of a desire to look at something different. I tend to continually run the game I am working on... write some code. test. write a bit more. test. So I am running this thing and playtesting dozens of times per hour.

 

1.5 hours in already today. 13.5 total. I'm pushing to wrap this up soon and progress is definitely faster after I stopped maintaining both a BASIC and C version of the game. Now I work only in the BASIC version.

BASIC is kind of verbose but it is such a rapid development environment. Kind of the ideal really although C is very BASIC-like IMO. It is also the one that has the export option to web (in addition to desktop & mobile). The C/C++ version is desktop and mobile only I am pretty sure. So that made the decision for me. And I don't care what I am developing in as long as it is logical and easy to work with.

So progress is good however, I won't be able to work on it again until later tonight. About to get out of the house for a few hours then I have a batch of game narrative to proof read for a developer. Want to get that done and feedback back to him. Just figured I'd help him out because I really want him to wrap that game up and release it!

Anyway... I decided instead of waiting til the 15 hour mark to start adding in the stat bar, wave control/game states, etc I should start on that now.

This session the first thing I did was finish off the behavior of the mini enemies (which in code are referred to as... minis). This is the standard way I develop. In one dev session I will add something in and the next session I fine-tune it and add something new in.

The next thing I added was the status bar at the top and I implemented scoring. I wanted to have a little visual fx every time the score increased and went with a dead easy scale & color fx. I notice I do have a tiny bug in that scoring when it flips to 1000. That will be the first thing I address in the next dev session before moving on to Lives and then implementing program states.

Of course, I am still learning. I think I have most of the basic 3D api down now. And this session I got into the Text objects. Pretty cool stuff really and make it dead easy to overlay text.

I gotta say I am really having fun with game dev again. Reminds me of the good ole days.

 

Next 1 hour jam starting soon!

 

I need to get back to my jam template at some point. And then I will try the 1 hour jam again or at least pick some from the list and do it unofficially to help identify weaknesses in my jam template.

Crazy really. It's taken me 2 weeks to put 13.5 hours on this game so far. Actually today is day #15. But that is a lot for me. 5 hours or less per week is ideal I think.

Anyway good luck man! Look forward to checking it out later.

 

@GarBenjamin

Looking forward to having a go..

 

Looking forward to wrapping it up. I'll be back home within the next 30 minutes and if the proofreading goes smoothly (no idea how much is there to go through haven't looked at the doc yet) I should be able to start working on the game in about 90 minutes from now.

 

Wow! I just now finished that work and sent back the updated document. Need a brain break from the computer so I don't know if I will get anything done on my game tonight. Didn't expect it to take so long but going over hundreds of lines of text takes a while.

Ah well there is always tomorrow. And I might still get in 45 minutes later.

 

Looks pretty fun!

 

Hopefully a bit more engaging than the classic Space Invaders. My enjoyment in game dev comes mainly from the gameplay / interaction side. I find a lot of fun in looking at the classic games that provide a very solid albeit very simplistic core game loop and thinking how to use that as a foundation and make a game that is a little more interesting.

The best thing is this can be done in so many different ways I think a person could literally make Space Invaders inspired games for years and each one would be relatively unique.

Anyway I got another hour in this morning and am about to start another dev session. Focusing on wrapping it up at this point. I'll fine-tune the stuff that is in but probably won't have time to add anything new. Which is a shame because it is that part that is most interesting and makes the biggest difference in making an inspired game "ours".

EDIT: Ha ha! Like I said... I will now be starting on another game dev session. Had just got started when company showed up. Ah a hobbyist game dev's life. Always looking for time to be able to work on a game.

 

I got back to it and made some great progress. Took a break for a while then dove back in again to finish it off. Well to finish it up for release.

BUT... @ShadowK I ended up at about 17.75 hours so almost an hour over yours. I blame it on the damn sound fx. I was moving through them fast as I could but still had to listen to so many to find sounds that were somewhat close to what I had in my mind.

Anyway... I am uploading it now. A desktop version for Windows (that I will send link to you and Frosted) and an HTML5 version that is my on website. I am not gonna bother putting it up on GameJolt tonight. Burnt out at this point. Rushing so damn fast kind of fries a person. lol

EDIT: Alright I sent a pm with the link to the Desktop version. For some reason the HTML5 version isn't working on my website. I'll have to remember how to sort that out. Forgot and right now my brain is too fried to think anymore about it.

What I will do is get the heck out of the house for a bit. When I come back I will my video for it and upload and at least that will show where it ended up.

 

Almost forgot to do the video.

The sound quality sucks in it because I forgot how I used to record the sound for the videos. Seems like I recorded internally or something. This time I just recorded from the mic picking up the sounds coming out of my laptop speakers.

Anyway...

 

@GarBenjamin I shall check it out later today..

 

Alright. I enjoy it. I didn't get as much stuff in it as I would have liked (wanted some power ups and a couple more enemies with distinct behaviors) but that's the way it goes when working within the time constraint. I focused most of my time iterating on the gameplay and feel trying to maximize the experience using the little I have in there.

I really enjoyed the project but am glad it is done. This is the most time I've poured into game dev in a given week in quite a while. Especially this weekend. I had 9 hours in total over about 2 weeks then put another 9 hours in from Friday through today to get it done with.

I don't know how people do the Ludum Dare and pour in like 30 hours in one weekend. Don't see how they have time to do anything else or even get out of the house the entire weekend. I'd go crazy I think.

 

I think you succeeded - I like the camera angle, abstract/weird graphics and it has plenty of juice. I haven't always found your art incredibly cohesive but I like what you did there.

 

Haha, that's the thing. They don't. Most devs enjoy long stretches behind the computer, you seem to be the exception .

 

I used to spend so much time doing game dev. Too much time. It was not only a passion but really I think it was an obsession. So I strive for balance now. It is not only the time spent on game dev but time spend checking out other games, experimenting with graphics etc and then watching YT videos and such.

It can get to the point where all a person does is get up and get on the computer stay there nearly every waking moment. I just don't think it is healthy. Get outside get some fresh air, do some exercise, go out to eat, etc.

 

Sure, it can get very unhealthy. But I was replying in the context of participating in a jam like LD. If I'd decide to do one again, I'd probably clear my calendar for the weekend and lock myself away from the rest of the world. But that's just for that special case, a one time thing (at least for a while). There's a difference between obsessing all day every day and going all out for a special event.

 

I have thought about doing the same. Part of me really wants to but anymore I know come Monday morning back to work I'd feel like I had wasted the entire weekend on the computer and now I am back to my workweek of all day on the computer.

When I retire it will be very different. Then I will probably do a game jam all weekend because it won't matter if I burn up all of that time. It won't be so precious as now because come Monday morning I can say alright now I am in weekend mode.

Also will be able to easily spend 4 to 6 hours on game dev per weekday because that won't even fill up all of the time I currently spend on the computer for work. For me it really comes down to my job I think. If my job was physically oriented up moving around and preferably outside quite often then sitting down and being on computer for hours after work would be more of a balance. Although there are still other things that deserve attention & time more it would be a better balance.

Like right now I am very tempted to get on the laptop and start doing some development. Get that game working in the web browser and work on my jam template but I make myself wait. First thing I am doing right after I hit Post Reply is grabbing a cold Monster from the fridge and heading over to the park to walk a couple of miles. Then I'll have earned maybe 30 mins on the laptop. Then I'll mow the lawn and that will earn me another 30 minutes. Actually probably 2 hours because I am off work today.

 

I've heard multiple retired people complain they still don't have enough time for everything because the last few years before retirement they start putting of things as "I'll do that once I'm retired", and so they start out with a huge backlog of things they wanna do.

For what it's worth, a rather common advice to aspiring artists is never to take on S***ty art jobs to get by in the beginning, because after slaving away at photo-retouching or similar tasks for 8 hours, they usually can't sit down and put another 4 hours of digital painting or drawing practice in in the evening, so non-computer and non-art jobs are recommended for them.

 

Well my job is actually very good as far as jobs go. In fact, I actually work from my home. But still after working on this stuff (designing & programming) all day as soon as I am off work the first thing I want to do is get away from the computer and get outside.

I've heard many more people complain they are bored after they retire and it is not that uncommon for them to even go back to work for their previous company part-time or doing contract work. I've never understood it. I've always had so much more that I wanted to do than I had time available to do it in.

 

Okay, I finally figured out what the deal was with the web build.

I guess it is something that is only on my website. The particular timing method I was using (Timer()) performs a system call I guess to a high resolution timer. That doesn't seem to be supported on my website server.

I tell you this fancy stuff just can never rely on it. lol So I replaced my timing code that calculates the Frame Time Scale (what everyone here calls DeltaTime) to use simple Milliseconds (which thankfully does work). I also improved the timing code in the process for example if it identifies an excessive amount of time left in a frame it goes to sleep for several milliseconds which should take load off the CPU. Works very well and might as well do it because on my machine the game runs well over 400 frames per second if left wide open. Not bad at all for a 3D game written in BASIC.

Anyway... @frosted this might work better for you since the timing code is much improved this should provide a near identical experience to what I have here (and what is intended).

Same for you @ShadowK ... of course it won't be quite as smooth since this is HTML5.

You can play it on my website here.

Just keep in mind I am pretty sure the HTML5 stuff only seems to work reliably in Firefox web browser.

Also I'd recommend closing all other browser tabs / windows if playing in browser. Not just this game but any web game. I've had times when I was playing games on GameJolt and then a wave of slowness came (actually looked like game had locked up for 2 seconds). lol

And the Unity website seems to really put a strain on browsers for some odd reason.

I might throw it up on GameJolt later today. Not sure. I am almost thinking of continuing on this from time to time and building it out with more enemies, more levels, power ups and so forth and then releasing it for about $2.95

 

Didn't really notice any difference from the other version, which I didn't have a problem with other than sucking at space invaders apparently

Still can't get to level 3.

 

@GarBenjamin

Cool stuff, so do you want some feedback on it? How do you want the feedback? Personally I find it pointless when someone treats me like a special cupcake so they won't hurt my feelings. As long as it's constructive, precise and factual they can knock themselves out as it's usually beneficial.

Also I must suck as bad as @frosted, I can't get to level 3 either ..

 

@frosted and @ShadowK it is very challenging. I had planned to get in at least two powerups... one for a light shield (absorb one hit) and the other for a very short term boost in firepower. But I just didn't have time. I probably should have just boosted the player's fire rate a little bit and that would make a big difference.

@ShadowK sure you can give feedback as long as you keep in mind this was made for a fixed time project and not the end all be all project same as yours. lol

Anyway sure give me your impression!

 

As a Dark Souls player I feel obliged to tell you two to "git gud!".

The sound on these kinds of games tends to be super loud, I was trying to listen to an audiobook while playing, but I couldn't, because I couldn't crank up the audio of the book loud enough and the game had no volume slider. Maybe I have an unusual setup, but many of these kinds of webgl games seem to be waaaaay too loud to me.
I would have preferred roughly 2 seconds longer delay after the game starts till the enemies start shooting or till I lose invincibility. Just to get my bearings and not die instantly like I did on first try.
I found it really hard to see the bullets because they look so similar to the explosion effects. That got me killed multiple times.
The best strategy seemed to be to laserfocus on a narrow and tall area above your avatar and prioritize bullet avoidance. I mostly just held space all the time and patrolled left/right accross the screen while focussing on evading bullets. In terms of gameplay choices I find that rather boring, but apparently it got me further than frosted's and ShadowK's strategy.
You can have 3 bullets max on screen it seems. If that's a deliberate mechanic, it would need to be better communicated in my opinion, otherwise it feels like a bug. I don't really like it, because it nerfs your offensive power towards the end and drags out the last phase of the battle.
And, slightly conflicting with the last remark, I didn't feel like "not shooting" was ever a good choice. I was trying to eat some icecream while playing and was a bit frustrated that I need two hands to play when factually one hand should have been enough since I only make decisions for one hand. So I'd either go for always on autofire, or make firing or not firing a more important choice. Fun fact, I used to put a heavy battery on the fire key for Raptor. I think the iOS port has fire always on - a sensible choice in my opinion.

If I had to make a space invaders clone from scratch I think I would try to make it a rythm based game where shooting occurs automatically based on the rythm with some double-time parts that double firing frequency, switch to a healthbar system instead of lives, and put some good guys among the ranks of the bad guys, that "shoot" health boosts and powerups towards you, so that you need to make more deliberate choices on where to position yourself, because the good/bad spectrum of places to be in gets more nuanced while at the same time raising the tollerance for minor mistakes like catching an enemy bullet. It would also add more nuance to "how well" you won a stage, when there is an additional percentage of surviving friendlies left after you killed all the baddies. You know what I mean?

 

I'll tell you guys one thing... after this demo jam project I am even more amazed at the people doing the 1 hour game jam. But... I think we all spent a good amount of time on both the gameplay and trying to do some polish. Things there is no way they can be doing with 1 hour.

Honestly I think you @ShadowK, @Arowx and I have all done a ton of game dev in our lives and I doubt any of us could consistently complete anything but the barest ass thing in 1 hour. Truly would need to go with rectangles and cubes etc and once we did a very basic texture or even just use color.... that's it... never touch that again and get on to the next thing.

 

I frankly find the concept of "1 hour gamejams" rather ridiculous. I think I couldn't even think a game worth a d4mn through in 1 hour. Pretty much every game I ever cared about took months or years to make and more often than not was done by multiple people. Striving for "fast" is nice and all, but I think "good" is more important, and "efficient" is what really should guide most of the choices (as the dev of "Gunpoint" explains it in his GDC talk).

 

you could do a barebones physics game in an hour if you can use standard assets.

 

I'm trying to get my head back into "the ole days". I do remember using certain languages an entire game could be made with a couple hundreds of lines of code.

Now I am not talking about the games written in Assembler but simple remake examples of such games in AMOS, Blitz and similar languages for example. I think this represents the heart of the mindset needed for things like the 1HGJ which really is just an exercise in rapid prototyping IMO.

And this is one thing I do like about the 1HGJ @Martin_H is that it forces a person to not jack around with graphics, sounds and music... presentation concerns... and instead focus exclusively on game design & gameplay implementation.

For me I think I'm realizing that as much focus as I have put into streamlining game dev and becoming as efficient as possible I am still spending way too much time on certain things. Because of a flaw in the way I am approaching the projects.

A 1HGJ (or any other very short-term development) should result in a working prototype. Nothing more. Nothing less. And I think it could be done but a person needs to really understand how to stay focused on the important things and make the shift to the right mindset that is needed.

There is a lot of value in it I think... for example here is a mobile game someone made and could this "as is" be done in 1 hour from scratch? I would say there is absolutely no way. All of the time (and much more) would be spent just on the graphics.

Yet in reality here is what that game is...

We are so bombarded with presentation overload I think it almost is a lost art to be able to break games down into their fundamental parts and focus on the actual game. By that I mean what is happening in the game... what the player is doing... what the point is. And present it in its most rudimentary form while still capturing the fun... the essence of the game so to speak.

I think any one of us should be able to make the game in the 2nd video in 1 hour. If presentation still takes too long then use rectangles or cubes. That's how the 1HGJ and all rapid prototyping need to be approached I think.

Another example (made for PS3 and mobile)

Again I think anyone of us would look at it and think no way it can be done in 1 hour.

But simply changing the presentation makes a huge difference... here is the original

I don't know if that could truly be done in 1 hour but I think using colored rectangles it may well be possible.

Again all I am saying here is these are examples of what a person would be building in 1 hour (or two hours whatever) is the actual game. The same game. Minus the presentation polish. And that is the whole point of these game jams I think. To test out game ideas. If a game is fun with no polish at all and the most basic of basic presentation then it is a keeper and more time can be spent on it. Basically just think of these tiny jams as prototyping game ideas.

I could have got my power ups in and maybe even another enemy if I hadn't spent time building the particle system and tweaking it. Surely didn't need to make the FX on the score indicator. Sound FX could have been just recordings of me speaking "pew pew pew", "BOOM", etc or even just left out. But instead I wasted time tweaking colors, "perfecting" the particle system, adding a bit of other juice, etc. It was foolish really. I could have made more game to the game.

On a side note it is interesting the number of games I see released these days that are remakes even if just HD versions of games from 30+ years ago. But I suppose for many people they are completely new games first time they ever played them.

Anyway all of this rambling to say I am getting there I think. Presentation I already knew was a huge time-sink that needed to be ditched. Beyond that I think it is a matter of truly doing everything as simple as possibly can be done. Hard-coding, building look-up tables and such in code that can be used to "fake" things instead of actually creating algorithms and such to really do them. This kind of thing.

 

@GarBenjamin

Yes, you should of made a AAA game in 17 hours .. Constructive criticism from people with experience is somewhat rare, embrace it .. Don't get me wrong, I've had amazing feedback from gamer beta groups before.. They just struggle to say why or they might miss methodology.

I played the WebGL version, seemed smooth and solid to me.. Movement etc. seemed very well polished, the NPC's reacted well, collisions worked fine.. I mean there's nothing really wrong with it, although it's basic and this goes back to the question I asked you before.

I understand you prefer a more "code centric" approach, from the looks of things I can tell you're a very experienced programmer.. Your code definatley looks far better than anything I pass through .. Even though I understand you were maintaining a secondary codebase you should of been able to get through it much faster.

I personally think the reason is you can be somewhat like me (a little bit rigid and inflexible going by some of your other threads). If I didn't like the way engine X did something I'd move to a more difficult (or should I say less efficient?) solution, it felt more comfortable as I'd spent years with QT / C++ / GL / SDL etc. Is AGK actually more efficient? Especially as you seem to be on quite a bit of a time constraint? The artwork and sound is somewhat basic so I don't believe that's the bit holding you back.

I don't mean this in any way as insult, it's just that (for some reason) I'm pretty sure if you put your mind to it and embraced Unity for what it actually is there is zero reason you couldn't do the same in six to eight hours (or even less). Unless the whole point is you're not looking for efficiency and you enjoy doing things this way, then all of this is irrelevant..

 

Thanks for the great feedback @Martin_H and @ShadowK

LOL at the terrible time from trying to eat ice cream while playing the game.


@Shadow Well... for me this way of developing is much faster. It is just much better for me. Because I can focus immediately on programming and everything just makes sense. And while some people probably could create the game faster than 18 hours in Unity I can almost guarantee that I am not one of them. I spent a lot of time trying to connect with it and streamline game dev and made some great progress toward that end. But at the end of the day it just doesn't match my preferred way to develop.

A lot of the time-sink this time around was like I said the first nearly 50% of the project I was writing a BASIC version and C version of the game. In addition I was learning the 3D api (as well as other bits of the api). While these things don't add a tremendous amount of time they definitely burn up some time.

Honestly, reflecting on it (kind of a postmortem) a large part of the time was spent on the continual iteration of playtesting and refinement to get everything to feel the way I wanted it to AND on the visuals.

I get the presentation is very simple but I spent quite a chunk of time (iteratively) on the display. I refined the simple texture for the enemies several times. Tweaked the colors of everything dozens if not hundreds of times. lol Heck even searching for and choosing sound FX yesterday wasted probably an hour if not more. Listening to dozens and probably hundreds of sounds to choose the 11 I ended up with. I also checked out a few dozen fonts... testing each one in game before choosing one. This stuff all just adds up man.

That is what I was saying in my earlier post... I can see I am spending way too much time on that stuff.

What I should have done is just went with the most basic audio visuals. Very simple graphics. And also what I used to do years back was just make all sound fx quick n easy myself. Just speech and other vocal sound fx. MUCH FASTER. And is all that is needed for a prototype.

Actually I might do that right now... I will make a copy of the project and make a lean version that represents the way I think I should have approached it.

 

Okay... this is what I think a game jam / prototype should be like. And when I say that I mean I think this is probably what I should have done for this particular game. And is probably what I should do especially when dealing with something like the 1 Hour Game Jam or if I decide to put 8 hours into a Ludum Dare some time.

Not with these exact sounds and graphics. I just mean the gist of it.

@Martin_H I made some changes based on your feedback while I was doing this. The volume should be lower. The player can now have 6 missiles on screen at once which is enough to allow constant firing.

 

Much better! Didn't hurt my ears while playing even though I forgot to turn down my speaker volume, and I got to wave 3 straight away with the added firepower. Feels much more natural and the feeling of being "limited" is gone .

Isn't that to be expected for every game? Or let me phrase it differently: that's how I would approach every game, and that's why every game I could make would take a rather long time, because iteration takes time and I'm not easily satisfied.

I might not agree, but I appreciate you trying to make me understand the appeal. I would argue that just the most simple form of "making interactive things happen on the screen" takes so much time to implement, that there is little left of that hour to think about the design. In my humble opinion if you have only 1 hour for whatever reason, and want to maximize the time spent thinking about the game's design, then don't make the game, and iterate on the idea in your head or on paper, till you run out of time. That's 100% of time spend on gamedesign.
By putting arbitrary timelimits on things you just cull a million potentially interesting concepts that can't be done in 1 hour no matter what. It's like applying a filter that only let's the most basic ideas through and eliminates the possibility to find something unique through iteration on more complex base-ideas. Striving for pure and minimalist designs is perfectly fine, but great minimalist stuff often takes a long journey to get there. E.g. if you take Command and Conquer 1, how much of that design could you cut away till you have the purest essence of an oldschool RTS extracted? There might be an interesting spin on a genre hidden in there, but that'd be a subtractive process that takes a lot of time to get to a minimalist design.

To me that's more like a description of "low hanging fruit". I'd expect the really interesting concepts in unpolished (gamedesign wise, not visually) form to often be quite frustrating, and the things that are instantly fun to be variations on simplistic and generic instant-gratification feedback loops. E.g. Super Meatboy or Super Hexagon in prototype-form I'd imagine to be either quite aggravating or boring, because they live and die on perfectly tuned difficulty and getting you into a flow-state.

I do, but why would I prototype anything that isn't "weird and risky"? Those baby catching games for example, all I see there is a test of dexterity with no choices to be made and way too little granularity in how well you did. Imho that's an objectively bad game concept and I don't need to waste an hour to find out it would bore me. I would be more engaged by a test of skill that measures my reaction time in miliseconds for pressing a button after a light turns green. I've actually seen such a test, participated, tried to get quicker, send it to a friend, compared results, compared results to online score stats etc.. That simple test of reaction time imho already is a better competitive high-skill-ceiling game with granular feedback than this babies catching thing.
I would apply prototyping to ideas that aren't similar to existing (retro) games. If you take any spin on a proven retro game classic, that can be made fun with enough iteration I believe. That's not a question that needs answering imho.
Ideas like "a first person shooter where you only can walk backwards" (idea stolen from beginner's guide), that's weird and risky. It might have merit to it, or it might be a really bad idea, it warrants prototyping to find that out. Or the "Stanley Parable", that's unique and original stuff that needs to be experienced to see if it's any good, because it hasn't been done before.
With any conventional shoot/kill kind of game concept, I think it's just a matter of tweaking design-parameters and feedback till it's an at least ok-ish game.

If you want to prioritize time spent on gamedesign that's great (in fact most gamedevs should do that)! But you don't need arbitraty time limits for that (or at least theoretically you shouldn't). Just spend more time on gamedesign, period. Whether you cut back on art and sound or not doesn't really matter, unless you can't overcome the problem of always getting burnt out on projects after xx hours. In that case just leave out sound entirely and you've already saved a ton of time, use your old games as a base to start from if it saves time, and copy a minimalist art style that suits you (like e.g. only 2D lowres pixelart with only 3 colors: black, white, red).

Just my 2 cents of course. I'm not making tons of games, so what do I know... ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

 

@Martin_H Wow that was a lot. lol

I get what you are saying. I really do. You seem to be looking at it solely from the perspective of proper game design for releasing into the market. Or at least that is what I am getting out of your posts.

Previous I probably shouldn't have said I think game jams ultimately come down to prototyping. I do believe that is a big part of it at least for a lot of people. And indeed many games have their origins in game jams.

It's more than that. It's also an opportunity to exercise all of the skills that go into making a game from start to finish. As @ShadowK had mentioned previously about what he got out of doing this.

A huge focus of all game jams is to complete something. Complete is a loose thing meaning playable or at least somewhat playable in this context.

The idea is simply that a person who has completed 100 games is likely to be a much better developer than they were when they had only completed 1 or 2 games... or even no games. It's like software development in general. A person can spend all of their time doing the database work. Designing tables, stored procedures and so forth. But if they made a complete app from start to finish doing the design, the GUI, the business logic and the backend that makes them a much more well-rounded developer.

They pick up experience so they can much better relate to the full scope of a game and can better understand and communicate with others even teams because they will have a much better understanding of what those people are doing and the kind of challenges present in each area.

The time constraint is critical. Because without it so many people would never complete anything. It is that time constraint that makes people kick it in gear and actually do something. And not focus forever on just one aspect.

It is also a test of skill and a way to improve skills. To become more efficient and that will pay off when tackling bigger games.

I do think 1 hour is extremely tiny and I don't see how anything but the most basic of ideas could be done in that time. BUT... I do think there is value in that because it is kind of like mining. Maybe the first 5 1-hour games are not good. Maybe the 6th (or 12th or 50th) is something very unique and good. Something that maybe only came about due to working within the constraints of the game jam.

Anyway... I do think it is important for game devs to be completing games... taking them to a fully playable state. It could be done in 1 month instead of 1 hour.

 

I didn't go for simple graphics (really) and I made a proper audio track in a DAW written by hand.. Which ultimatley had a knock on via gameplay, I never managed to get the boss finished.. Although it would of been a 5 minute job to just have wave after wave after wave, issue with that is it is beyond dull at this point. There's a ridiculous amount of games out there like that, y'never know I could release the full thing and it could be a serious money maker for a fluke reason unknown to logic but it still wouldn't change the fact it's been done too many times over too long.

That's the issue I have with short game jams, can I make a game in an hour? Yes, can I make a game in two days? Certainly, will it be as dull as dish water? Most likely, I don't believe you can organically create a proper concept for something as complex as games in the space of a game jam, not today and graphics are an integral part of games even if it's to do nothing more than get the point across.

I see the point of them, refresh skills, potentially learn new ways of doing things, speed up your own development, hell just having a bit of fun as "proper" development can be stressful. It's a nice reminder of why you did it in the first place..

Although it seems Jam's are mainly based on iteration speed, which was a query I wanted to know. Within an engine I'd almost forgetten, in a genre I'd never really do, how quickly could I put it together? Am I in many cases dawdling within my own project? When is it perfectionism vs. realism? What is good enough?

Finally it all really depends on what you're doing it for? If the plan is commercial release (or a large public release) then you either hire people or move quicker. If it's just for fun, of course it doesn't matter..

 

That's the biggest reason of all... just to have some fun.

I know I have a different view than you guys which is fine because we're all different people with different likes and dislikes.

For me a game inspired by Space Invaders represents a sand box / lab plenty big enough for me to explore. The challenge... interesting part (at least for me) is how to work within and around that sandbox and make something more interesting, something a little unique and so forth. I think there is a lot of potential there that has rarely been explored.

Oh we've seen countless outright clones of most games but very few innovate in any ways outside of presentation. So... these tiny games such as a Space Invaders or Asteroids or a scrolling shmup are great labs.

Like right now I feel like I came out of this little experiment we did with a solid game. Very basic but very solid foundation. It's already beyond the game that it inspired it but it is not beyond what we have seen that time and there is so much more that needs to be explored. And this is what I enjoy about game dev.

It's true we've seen countless clones of these games... I've seen many of basically every game. And in time there will be countless examples of any kind of game. So I don't think taking such a general all encompassing view of it is good for us.

It's good I think to be able to look inside of these games that we've seen dozens or even hundreds of times and figure out how to innovate. What did all of the other designers / devs miss that we can find / see? How can we go beyond what anyone else has done? This kind of thinking can be applied as well to Pac-Man and Space Invaders as it can to large games.

Just my two cents there guys. I'll probably continue to tinker with this over time and explore some things. I always see a lot of potential and now I have the base grunt work done so can focus more on the cool stuff. Not just the normal adding power-ups but things like making an RPG Invaders game. Heck one would actually build a simple space strategy game and these are the battle scenes. There are lots of things game devs could do but they just rarely do.

 

Wow! I decided to do some searching and see if I could find anything along the lines of what I described earlier. Found an interesting game released just 3 months ago based on Missile Command.

Missile Cards Turn-based Card Game

This is a perfect example. On a side note it reminds me a lot of a game created in AMOS on the Amiga. Not that I ever saw a game exactly like this but the way it looks and feels in the video reminds me of some AMOS games.

Found a review on PC Gamer here.

He developed the game over 6 months. Found the Dev's log here.

Some things he mentions in his dev log...

For me, the whole point of Missile Cards was to create something small, fast, fun, and polished in a very limited timeframe.

Every aspect of Missile Cards as a whole has been designed to keep a tight reign on scope creep, make something small and polished, then hit the finish line and get it out there as quickly as possible.

This is meant to minimize risk, but it also lets me sell the game for a reasonable price tag of $5 — and it increases the chances that the game will become profitable faster, given the short dev cycle and limited (RE: nonexistent) budget

I found that very interesting because it matches my own view on this stuff. Since I am not yet actually doing it it was great to find someone who is.

Although in my thinking the time he invested was too great. I'd be looking at something like 6 to 8 weeks max to do this game. I think if he had done that he'd be in a much stronger position for it to hit a profit. 6 months is huge amount of time for an extremely niche game like this IMO.

Now I wonder if maybe there really is an RPG version of Space Invaders out there. Might do some more digging.

 

Oh hey, thanks for sharing! I'm the dev who made Missile Cards. Some interesting asides: my original plan was to code and launch this in 3 months vs 6, but I had to wait a month to get through Steam greenlight (thankfully now RIP), and the do some additional beta testing to tune and improve before launch. Also, while the core prototype came together quickly, the code and systems for card games like this can get EXCEEDINGLY complex in a hurry. I burned through a good extra month just doing bugfixes and weaving in the final tuning and systems ahead of the launch. I've learned that even with small projects, which I'm a BIG proponent of, everything that seems like it wont take very long typically taxes a LOT longer than you expect.

The Steam version didn't sell well (card games in general are not a hot selling genre, from what I can tell from my own research/experiences and from talking to other devs who've made them), so that's a useful bit of insight I wanted to test. Knew that going in, but wanted to use Steam's backend to facilitate rapid updates and beta testing/patch fixes to get some initial sales momentum, uncover any "in-the-wild" bugs not encountered by my betas, and also just get it on Steam first. If you do a iOS -> Steam launch, that audience freaks out and breaks out their pitchforks and torches over cries of "crappy port." So that was a consideration, even though I knew there's a stronger audience (and marketing opportunities) for unique card games on mobile -- that marketplace is also a tough nut to crack.

The iOS launch (last week) has been going really well so far (on a small scale, considering its my second commercial solo project). Positive reviews on most mobile sites + a US feature, I managed to sell about 3,560 copies in week one. Not amazing by larger standards, but it's a good start. I need 8000 iOS sales to break even.

This game wasn't developed in Unity (I used GameMaker Studio), but I *have* been tinkering with Unity and am working on getting a feel for it on some other projects.

Sorry to just pop-in here, but noticed the backlink on my site and figured I'd check it out. I love connecting with other dev folks and talking shop, so cheers and have a good one!

-Nathan Meunier

 

@thenathanmeunier hey thanks for the "in person" update and as far as using GMS for it and posting here I personally see nothing wrong with that at all. We're all game dev hobbyists, Indies or AAA no matter what we are using.

Probably nobody will come at you with pitchforks. I personally don't even use Unity anymore but I still participate here because of habit as well as some of these Unity fanatics I see as "friends".

Definitely understand what you are saying about even what appear to be tiny projects usually end up with a lot more to them once you get stuck into the development.

Best of luck on the game! I generally don't play card games but am very tempted to buy the Steam version (I don't play mobile games) just because this is such a unique game and it looks like you've done an awesome job on it.

 

Welcome aboard, I hope you'll stick around! This is a nice forum, even if you don't actually use Unity.

I've read a few articles on your blog and I appreciate you also sharing the less uplifting aspects of indie-dev-life openly. Very interesting read! Being a freelancer myself I can relate to quite a few things there.
I don't play digital card games myself, but Missile Cards looks like an original and well polished game, something to be proud of. Well done! I've sent the link to a friend who is more into that genre, and it turns out he already owns a copy on iOS .

Only being off by 100% is still a way better estimate than many can do! Considering how polished the result looks I'd still see that as "quick".

In another thread I actually guessed something like that was happening for another game. Good to hear I'm not just paranoid and this is actually a thing.

After reading some of your blog articles I've got a few questions. First, considering the low return on your steam marketing efforts, do you think that marketing a steam release is a waste of time? Or that it is more like buying a ticket to the lottery to have a shot at winning, where on the other hand without marketing you can be certain to not sell many copies?
Second, are you familiar with "the paradox of choice" and do you think that limitations set early on during development have helped you to reach a higher level of personal satisfaction with your game?
And third, regarding this part:

That had my mind proper boggled, such a d1ckmove. My sympathies! Considering that it seems like hostilities towards devs from various parties aren't going to go away any time soon, does it get any easier over time to deal with stuff like that? I'm only doing gamedev as a hobby right now, but stuff like this is one factor I'm taking into account regarding the option to do gamedev more professionally.

 

@thenathanmeunier The AAA dev mocking you (saw that on Twitter) was bad... on them. Just another person with the elitist viewpoint that all games should be near AAA in size and production qualities is what I took away from it.

People like that I can't help but wonder why they even bother being involved at all in the Indie scene. If all those folks want or all they think should be made is just more big high budget games that to me is the same as saying they really don't even support Indie dev on the whole at all.

There are a lot of gamers out there who have bought and enjoyed tiny games tiny production efforts who would certainly disagree that.... no... not all gamers want just another & another & another Witcher, COD (yes extreme examples to illustrate the point) or whatever only made by a company / team with a different name than "the norm". What point would there be in it? lol I think some of these folks might possibly have their views skewed heavily based on their own involvement in AAA productions. I can understand how that could happen.

 

The irony is sometimes the mini games within a "AAA" game is better than the actual full game itself.. It's happend on more than one occasion.. Plus we discussed this one quite a few times, just because it is AAA it doesn't necessarily mean it's good.

I like large flashy games as much as the next person, although bar W3 one of the best games I've played in quite a few years is Pillars of Eternity..

@Martin_H

I can kind of understand why mobile ports might not fit within the PC market, not a good enough excuse to lay into someone though.. Also I agree, literally it's the number 1 reason I'm not actually that bothered about releasing something even if I ever get a major project finished.

 

@ShadowK Oh yeah I think that is just a personal preference completely logical to like huge games, flashy cinema like games and graphically stunning "next gen visuals" games.

Nothing wrong with that at all. But when a person believes that just because he doesn't personally like small games, tiny games, tiny or no budget productions, etc they should not be made for desktop that is just wrong.

On one hand I can see what he is thinking... reading between the lines... it is an elitist view of "only the very best of the best developers... the ones with the largest teams, the most money, the most skills, the most time (full-time) should be making games." which I think at least some people here would agree with (again probably based a lot on if they have some AAA background).

On the other hand I look at it like who are these people to judge and condemn such things. Let people make what they want to make. Not everyone has the skills to make fantastic art so let them make games that look like Hotline Miami, Bit Blaster XL, etc. Not everyone has a lot of time or a big team so let them make games of a size like Bit Blaster XL, ORCs, etc.

Don't try to push everyone to make the greatest graphics ever, the biggest games ever and so on. If he or others want to do that... if that is what is important to them then sure they should do it. But they seem to be missing the point if everyone was doing that 90% of the uniqueness would be gone... most games would start to look and sound and even play more and more alike. What value is in there in that? Diversity is a great thing. A necessary thing for a healthy market.