Global Game Jam - SquishFits (January 2015)
A new year a new game jam. I started off, as I have in the past, not particularly enthused about finding a team, and instead happy to just get on with it. As it happens however, the place where I set up was an area that Abertay staff had meant for their guests from FuturLab. However I was then asked if I'd like to work with them, as they were in need of people. Together with the two of them, an artist with whom I had worked on a number of other games with, an animator from Dundee's other University and a 3rd year CGT student, we planned what sort of game to make. I found that it was only myself and the artist I've worked with who had participated in a game jam before. The other artist hadn't ever worked on a game before. Needless to say I was confident...
We ran through various ideas based on the theme "What do we do now?". One of the FuturLab designers picked up on the use of "we" and we realised that could steer the direction towards multiplayer. We also felt like the theme encouraged puzzles. We started with ideas circling around the possibility of a player being a wolf in sheep's clothing. IT was an exciting concept but we struggled to settle on a satisfying practical game to develop. So instead we shelved the idea and tried exploring the them again. We still wanted multiplayer and some form of puzzle solving.
What we eventually ended up going with was a game based on the "Hole-in-the-wall" games, where people have to fit through the shapes cut out of an on-coming wall. The spin was that it's 4 people trying to fit through holes, as different shapes. We considered various different shapes but ended up settling on tetriminos, the O, L, Z and T pieces. What can I say, Pajitnov had the slotting shapes down.
The way that the blocks are controlled presented challenges very similar to the Jump Jam game that I worked on. I got an early build of the game to help give the others an idea of what kind of feelings that would be good to try to mimic from the game when playing together. The other coder was very excited for his first game jam but it because clear very quickly that he was going to be a liability. He kept trying to second guess everything I did and said, which was pretty irritating when I was trying to help him out. I delegated the task of making walls spawn, knowing it wasn't a particularly challenging task but it unfortunately took him the rest of the Friday night and the best part of Saturday. Meanwhile I was working on the player controller, coming against the same problems I had with the other game, such as determining when you can jump, and trying to allow you to jump off other players. I was pleased that I improved on the previous controls, now players didn't fly off at times and also the jump looked less floaty. At the request of one of the designers I also added in the ability to stay in the air a little longer when holding the jump button. Further controls were implemented, to be able to spin 90 degrees and increase the strafe speed. It got to a point where it was surprisingly fun just to jump around the small space with 3 others with no actual objective. However eventually we needed an objective. After trying and failing multiple times to explain what I considered to be a simple problem to the other coder, he eventually had to go grab another coder to help him implement the spawn system in the manner that he was insistent on. He left home early and I decided to just crack on with as much as I could and managed to get a build that was at least representative of the game we had discussed. Playing it 4 player was really satisfying. As well as working on the character controller, I tried to set up a pipeline for getting new walls into the build. It's undoubtedly not the most efficient manner that we could have taken, but it started with one of the artists creating the model for a wall and for a designer to then take the model and add the correct scripts and objects that I had created to be combined into a Unity prefab which could then be exported into a Unity package. This process worked for the most part and we ended up with 15 levels. Unfortunately, some of the level designs relied on jumping off other players and there was a bug remaining which made it such that sometimes you cannot jump off a player. As such we had to trim out these walls for the submission build. We found however that the demo was still more than fun enough. As with the Jump Jam, I added features supplied by the artists to give the shapes characters. This time I had eyes which blink, spacing these eyes I felt gave them character. I then make it so that you could make them blink, based on a timer which is randomly offset so the blocks don't blink creepily in parallel. I then went further and made it so that they will blink in reaction to another player landing on them. It's a small tweak - I love little details like that in games - but I was surprised by just how many people appeared to pick up on it.
I also added simple UI to the game which helped let the player know the amount of lives left (As well as implementing the lives functionality)
Come submission time, I tried to get an additional feature in (once I had thoroughly backed up the working build!) but was frustratingly unable to in time. We had plenty of people come play our game and everyone really enjoyed it. The sound effects provided through FuturLab really added to the game; players not making it into their respective holes would be comically "thwacked" off towards the camera.
All together, I found working with the FurturLab guys a pleasure, they were very open to discussion about the ideas and concepts that they came up with but their ideas were usually on par regardless! But I'm fortunate in that they also are so enthused by the project that they would like to take it to Sony in the hopes of being able to bring it to consoles and include me in the process, which would be fantastic.
The Global game jam submission can be found here.
We ran through various ideas based on the theme "What do we do now?". One of the FuturLab designers picked up on the use of "we" and we realised that could steer the direction towards multiplayer. We also felt like the theme encouraged puzzles. We started with ideas circling around the possibility of a player being a wolf in sheep's clothing. IT was an exciting concept but we struggled to settle on a satisfying practical game to develop. So instead we shelved the idea and tried exploring the them again. We still wanted multiplayer and some form of puzzle solving.
What we eventually ended up going with was a game based on the "Hole-in-the-wall" games, where people have to fit through the shapes cut out of an on-coming wall. The spin was that it's 4 people trying to fit through holes, as different shapes. We considered various different shapes but ended up settling on tetriminos, the O, L, Z and T pieces. What can I say, Pajitnov had the slotting shapes down.
The way that the blocks are controlled presented challenges very similar to the Jump Jam game that I worked on. I got an early build of the game to help give the others an idea of what kind of feelings that would be good to try to mimic from the game when playing together. The other coder was very excited for his first game jam but it because clear very quickly that he was going to be a liability. He kept trying to second guess everything I did and said, which was pretty irritating when I was trying to help him out. I delegated the task of making walls spawn, knowing it wasn't a particularly challenging task but it unfortunately took him the rest of the Friday night and the best part of Saturday. Meanwhile I was working on the player controller, coming against the same problems I had with the other game, such as determining when you can jump, and trying to allow you to jump off other players. I was pleased that I improved on the previous controls, now players didn't fly off at times and also the jump looked less floaty. At the request of one of the designers I also added in the ability to stay in the air a little longer when holding the jump button. Further controls were implemented, to be able to spin 90 degrees and increase the strafe speed. It got to a point where it was surprisingly fun just to jump around the small space with 3 others with no actual objective. However eventually we needed an objective. After trying and failing multiple times to explain what I considered to be a simple problem to the other coder, he eventually had to go grab another coder to help him implement the spawn system in the manner that he was insistent on. He left home early and I decided to just crack on with as much as I could and managed to get a build that was at least representative of the game we had discussed. Playing it 4 player was really satisfying. As well as working on the character controller, I tried to set up a pipeline for getting new walls into the build. It's undoubtedly not the most efficient manner that we could have taken, but it started with one of the artists creating the model for a wall and for a designer to then take the model and add the correct scripts and objects that I had created to be combined into a Unity prefab which could then be exported into a Unity package. This process worked for the most part and we ended up with 15 levels. Unfortunately, some of the level designs relied on jumping off other players and there was a bug remaining which made it such that sometimes you cannot jump off a player. As such we had to trim out these walls for the submission build. We found however that the demo was still more than fun enough. As with the Jump Jam, I added features supplied by the artists to give the shapes characters. This time I had eyes which blink, spacing these eyes I felt gave them character. I then make it so that you could make them blink, based on a timer which is randomly offset so the blocks don't blink creepily in parallel. I then went further and made it so that they will blink in reaction to another player landing on them. It's a small tweak - I love little details like that in games - but I was surprised by just how many people appeared to pick up on it.
I also added simple UI to the game which helped let the player know the amount of lives left (As well as implementing the lives functionality)
Come submission time, I tried to get an additional feature in (once I had thoroughly backed up the working build!) but was frustratingly unable to in time. We had plenty of people come play our game and everyone really enjoyed it. The sound effects provided through FuturLab really added to the game; players not making it into their respective holes would be comically "thwacked" off towards the camera.
All together, I found working with the FurturLab guys a pleasure, they were very open to discussion about the ideas and concepts that they came up with but their ideas were usually on par regardless! But I'm fortunate in that they also are so enthused by the project that they would like to take it to Sony in the hopes of being able to bring it to consoles and include me in the process, which would be fantastic.
The Global game jam submission can be found here.
What Did I Actually Do?
I took part in the 48 hour Global Game Jam. Working with a team of 2 designers, 2 artists and another coder. I did the majority of the code development as well as lending my opinions on the game's design as we developed the concept throughout the jam. As the person with the most experience developing in jams, I also helped keep the game on track, trying to keep our aims achievable within the time. We ended up with another 4 player which manages to put smiles on peoples faces. For me, it's a spiritual successor to the Jump Jam game, with a similar feeling but fortunately much improved.