Day 7: I made a game in 7 days

So final day is here! I was hopping to make some other small changes to the game but I don't wanna risk not delivering in case a game breaking bug appears so here it is finally I introduce you too

Action Average Joe

I hope you guys enjoy it. I was planning to have a windows specific compilation with Haxe but something went wrong with the compiler. So here you can play the flash version and open it with your favourite browser/flash player:

http://www.mediafire.com/download/40d4q75hrtwel4i/ActionAverageJoe.swf

Please let me know during the day if you have any troubles running the game. I hope to find out why the compiler won't let me compile to windows during the day so you can have a more decent version of it.

Please let me know your comments about it!

Day 6: Almost done!

Man day six already! Everything happened so fast, today I used most of the day on finishing up the game graphics I needed for the game to be in a deliver state, then I took care of the sounds and the music and finally I was able to work a little on some small menus to navigate the game so you don't jump right into it, nothing fancy.

Well there's not much to be said at this point, the game works very well.. it's got a few minor optimization issues but they don't affect affect the gameplay so I think it can be delivered with them.

Last screenshot before tomorrow's release!

I'm excited to get your opinions on the game.

Day 5: Drawing all day

So.. I got most of the graphics done today! I still suck at drawing but I think I'm pretty comfortable with the result. Today's work involved some coding but it was just some minor adjustments to control the animations so it's not that much. That being said I'll just leave some random screenshots I took while working today. Hope you guys like it.

Yes I know I suck at drawing but let's see how this goes!

Day 4: I built a lego house

No really I did.. well it's actually just the level that's made of tiny lego-like pieces.

Today was.. a busy day so I really didn't get much work done, but I'm happy with what I did, despite some few more nasty trick I had to make today the code seems to be working very smoothly at a constant rate of 58fps with a few drops to 40 here and there but nothing too serious.

I finally have some tangible changes to show! Check it out

The platforms are not ugly red rectangles anymore! Now they're ugly lego platforms! I really wanted to get done those damn platforms today because as you will discover in time they're not just pretty visuals, one of the game mechanics depended on the platforms working nicely and smoothly (which they do now).

So yeah.. to be honest this day I didn't worked that much on the game but I'm happy I could get at least that done. Now tomorrow the plan is to keep working on the graphics and maybe start to find some sounds! If nothing goes wrong I think I'll be able to deliver with no problems.

Oh in case any of you are wondering, and if you need it I'm using Piskel for my pixel art, why am I doing Pixel art? well as I said before I suck at drawing so it's easier for me to edit some small images pixel by pixel than actually draw the stuff, I'm not saying my pixel art is good, it's just.. the best I can do given my abilities.


Well that's it for today! Good luck to all my fellow developers once again! See ya tomorrow.

Day 3: Yes it backfired!

So day three already! We're almost halfway through the competition and goddamn it the decision I took of jump right into the code did backfire on me. As I said yesterday I wanted to use this day to finish up the game mechanics into a state of almost everything done, so I could concentrate on making the graphics and finding good sounds.

I think I owe you guys an explanation on my game. First here's another screenshot of the game:

Yes, that's my work from today, I know it looks almost exactly the same(plus some debugging windows HaxeFlixel provides) but I swear! I got work done today!.

My game's basic premise as I said on the first post was to keep on that fantasy of becoming someone or something else. So the main character(the blue square) who at first it was supposed to be a kid but now it's a toy as well can take upon different modules/powers/costumes that change his way to attack the enemies and sometimes even simplify his way to move across the screen (it's actually just one costume that does that but I don't wanna spoil the fun before you get to play it). The objective is to protect the little pink square down there(other toys) from the enemies and kill as many of those damn green squares as you can. Pretty simple!

Alright so the thing is, Haxe being an object oriented language and me loving object oriented programming I created something like this for the basic game structure.

And it was all good in my head.. until I had to deal with everything that makes my game work, things like: the collisions, references and cross references, bullets hitting enemies but not walls, keeping a count of every enemy that you killed.. all those tiny details that I generally plan ahead during the design phase(which I skipped on day one). So long story short.. I messed up! and I had to apply some nasty tricks to make it work.Like global variables and pointers that shouldn't be there and redundant method calls...and oh god the performance issues!

So what's the plan now? Well the issue it's not whether it works, but rather the way it works. I love the game as it is now form the player perspective, but from the developer perspective, it's a god damn mess. So tomorrow I'm gonna have to expend some of the time I had planned for game graphics on a little cleaning up of the code or otherwise I won't be able to fix future bugs that might appear or even add some extra characteristics.

So that's it for today! End of day three.. we're closer to the deadline minute!

Day 2: Coding like crazy

So day two started and I got up early to work on my code before the school, at the beginning of the day I had some serious issues regarding whether I wanted to keep working on this idea or if I should  expend yet another day trying to get my ideas together, mostly because even though I like the game idea and mechanics I feel they don't quite express what I was trying to express and what's more during the development tests I found it to be very similar to other similar games.

But at the end of the day.. I have to deliver! That's my commitment for this jam, no matter what, I will deliver the game in time.

So fast forward to the end of the day I really feel like I did some meaningful advances to the game logic today. Down here I post a screenshot of the current game state.

I know I know 'What the hell man? those are just boxes!". The game's got no graphics and no sound. But that's the plan! I'm a software developer, a programer, so what I'm doing here is basically make the whole game the exact way it's supposed to work(those squares are actually the hitboxes) and when it's done I'll expend the rest of the time working on the graphics and sounds, maybe some menus and random bugs.

I feel pretty happy about how the game feels now, and even tough I didn't do any kind of design(I normally do at least a few diagrams to guide me out and think before hand) I think my past experience with object oriented programming has helped me a lot to keep to code fairly organized and functional.

Oh I almost forgot, in case you're wondering I'm using HaxeFlixel, it's an amazing game engine build on top of an equally amazing programming language. I've worked on Java, C++, Game Maker and javascript. And believe me, when it comes to game development HaxeFlixel it's the best lenguaje I've found.

I'd really like to develop further on a lot of things, issues I've come across, details that worry me that I'll have to solve sooner or later.. but I'll leave it there for now.

My plans for tomorrow are to finish the game mechanics entirely so I can focus on creating some good game graphics(I suck at drawing so.. let's see how it goes).

Day 1: Let's make a game in a week!

So the competition started today (yesterday actually since it's 12:11 am right now) and what a day. I couldn't think of an idea for hours! I visited toy stores and played around with the toys and couldn't get a single idea out of it.

The thing is I wanted to capture the feeling of joy that kids experience while using a toy... or even the essence of the toy BUT... toys have no purpose other than bring fun, unlike games(even board games) toys have no objective, no winning or losing condition, no game mechanics.. it's just about having fun. So how do you capture that?

So there I was.. walking around repeating "Toys are alive!" to my self over and over again for hours... and yet no idea. My mind went around on crazy ideas from the toys being mad because kids play games(that makes no sense at all in my humble opinion) to creepy toys chasing you around.

Then at about 7pm it finally came to my mind, the idea I'm sticking with. While I was wearing a silly hat and talking like Rick Grimmes(mostly from exhaustion I guess) I thought "Hey wait a second, why am I talking like Rick Grimmes?.. I guess that's an effect from toys.. they make you feel like someone else.. they help you act out your childish fantasies right? they motivate creativity and imagination!"

Losing no time! I went to my drawing board and began to make some crazy designs about the game mechanics, and I had some good ones.. but the kind of good one's that require a weeks of working. So I'm sticking around with something like an infinite beat them up(I'll explain more of that in the next few days.

Finally at the end of this day I began working on some of the basic game code that I know I'll be needing. As a software developer I'm all against coding before having the complete design of what'll be.. but having losing all that time trying to get an idea I felt like I needed to get some of that time back before the end of day one. Let's hope my decision doesn't backfire later on development!