AdventureJam Journal

[purplehuman]

03/20/2015 (GMT +02:00)

Hello,

15 days later, adventurejam starts. It's a game jam where you try to develop an adventure game in 14 days. You're allowed to write the story, make some concept art and sketch some music, but all the development should be in the jam period. Participants are allowed to use any engine, library or framework they want. Although there are already some free adventure game engines out there, I want to develop the game with pure LÖVE (I know...). This means I will need to develop the game engine too.

I decided to share my progress here. And if I can make something, I'll share it here too. You will see my progress day by day, and witness my epic failure or success.

Wish me luck.

Update: I was posting the updates in this post, but when I realized it'd be one huge post, I decided to post the entries for every day separately. See my replies for the posts.

[davisdude]

Luck!

[purplehuman]

Luck!

Thanks! I'll need it.

[undef]

Good luck!

[purplehuman]

Good luck!

Thanks! I hope I can do it.

[purplehuman]

Day 1: 03/20/2015

I'm struggling with ideas. I have some visual ideas, some of them are interesting, but I don't have a story idea yet. I want something simple, something that feels like a short story.

To make the engine simpler, I have to sacrifice some gameplay elements. For example, I may forgo dialogs all together in a simpler way than Machinarium, or I may make a dialog based game without inventory. If I didn't have to write the engine itself, I'd include both of them of course, but it'd be huge undertaking in this situation.

Once I've written some experimental interactive fiction pieces. They were very simple, super short stories in the vein of flash fiction stories. Some people loved them, and one person even included them in the engine's newsletter, other people hated them. There were no inbetweens. It's a gamble. The trick is making a very short story, but making it feel interactive, I guess. But I'm not sure.

I have some ideas for this kind of a story, but they don't feel like a game yet. I have to develop these ideas more.

Update: I have a nice story idea now, at least I think so, and it could feature humor. The problem is making it into a game. It will be real challenge. And I may have to make a bigger engine than I thought. Sigh.

Update 2: Wow, I'm really excited now. I like this story, and after some thinking I realized it's not too hard to make into a game. I need to make sure puzzles are not too hard though, I want players to easily see the end. I will post the idea when I'm sure enough. I see no harm in sharing the idea before the jam, because I'll already share the game. It will be an open source game.

And if I can't finish this game in the jam period, I'll try to finish it afterwards, because I like the story very much.

[purplehuman]

Day 2: 03/21/2015

Alright, I lost the original Day 2 post during some cut-and-paste operation. Here's more or less the same thing.

I have an idea for a story. At first I wasn't very sure if this idea would make a good game, but after giving it some thought, I realized that it can be a good game. I feel excited, because I like the idea and it's something I can work on. It has humor potential, but I'm not sure if I can handle it very well.

You'll be playing an uncle trying to win his niece's heart, but it's not that easy. Because the niece doesn't like you or anything. I won't give away the ending till the last minute, but I'll say that I may be gambling with this finale. But if I won't gamble in a game jami where will I?

I decided to make it really 2D like a side-scrolling game to make the engine smaller. I won't have time for writing complex pathfinding algorithms. I will use cut-out animation technique for the characters. I will use a program I developed myself for the animation. It's called purpleowl, you can find it on my github account. Just see the link in my signature. I won't use or make fancy fonts, because it would take time. I plan to include two music tracks. One is enough, but I want a different track for the finale. I might make one for the intro too.

I'm planning to draw some concept art to be sure it would look good enough, and to start writing the story. It may take several rewrites to get it right, so I'm glad I have time.

[purplehuman]

Day 5: 03/24/2015

On Day 3, I made a small game for MiniLD58, and got very sick afterwards. I spent Day 4 only thinking about the overall story.

The more I think about it, the more I get scared. I'm not sure if I can pull this off as I want. I like the story, I like every aspect of it, I just don't know if I can make whatever in my mind. I need to write it down like a screenplay maybe, to see if it works.

But today I'm still sick. I'll go on working tomorrow I think. If I can work today, I'll update this post.

Update: Most of my worries aren't about the story. Actually this story works in a short game better. But I'm afraid that I don't know if I can finish a working game in the end. It's unfortunate that I can't write the engine now, to see how much time it takes.

I'm generally fast with game development. If I approach it like a prototype, instead of trying to make a modular, re-usable engine, I might make the game in time. That's something I can't know for sure before trying though.

Update 2: After giving some thought, it became a more heartbreaking story than I initially imagined. I still like the ending, which is still a gamble, but I think this story might be better in this manner.

I only have one complex puzzle yet, which is not very hard. It consists of two puzzles, but easily solvable. If I can find another one like this puzzle, it might suffice. The story is very short, and making it longer would weaken the ending I think. Because... Well, I won't tell why, but trust me, the shorter the better.

This story is something I was thinking for an animated short movie some time ago. It can work in a game, or not. We'll see.

[norubal]

Good luck to you! I'm expecting further progress...

[purplehuman]

Good luck to you! I'm expecting further progress...

Thank you very much!