I've done a bunch of jams over the past year or so, and what I've learned is that repetition is your best takeaway from every game you make, good or bad. You make a game, you learn a bunch of stuff to get it to work, and you forget 80% of it. Then you make another game, and you're able to do a bit more because you still have that 20% in your pocket to build on. So you learn more, forget most of it, repeat. But each time you're starting from a better and better place, and get to spend more time on more interesting mechanics, ideas, etc. And feedback from the community can boost you even further!
Never be upset you made a bad game. Be proud you made a game.
My game isn't really in a playable state, but I submitted anyway. I'm proud of what I learned since I tried something completely different than I've done in the past this time.
I may continue this game but completely rebuild it so the code's not so jumbled. Since I have more of a direction on what the final thing may look like, I can switch to making individual systems with events rather than everything making calls to everything else.
Well I've never made such a bad game either, but at the same time I've never made such a good game, too. So that's for the riddle π
I learned a lot though, it was quite different from just following tutorials. I didn't really reach the game state I was aiming for, but at least it's playable. Wasted so much time on shaders, only to just give up on them in the end. That thing is hard.
This time I saw the info about the jam in advance of it starting, so I was able to start making some assets before the jam started, under the impression it would give me a bit more time to make the game.
However I bit off more than I could chew with this one, between work, a larger scope of complexity and a couple things I wanted to experiment with, the last few days have a been a crunch to pull it together and get it in a playable(?) state.
Some bits are clunky, some ideas to round out the experience got dropped, 1 or 2 elements might not work (not game breaking as far as I know), and I haven't had the time to test the ending. But it is a game, it plays and the experiments worked out, althiugh they could be further refined.
So not a failure, but not a total success either.
That lesson is one I've already learned. The scope was pretty broad, but not overly excessive, but when the complexity is added, and then my day job being busier than expected as well, it all ate into the time I thought I would have, 1 or 2 days, I barely had time to focus on it, and 1 day I was pretty much burnt out. The lost time meant 1 or 2 planned ideas got dropped and I lost the time I thought I would have to focus on refinement.
The most complex parts, the dialogue and music system, were all pretty much built piece by piece from the ground up in a single pass, only minor tweaks were needed to get all the components working together. Because of the lost time outside of my control though, the other elements of the project were rushed.
On the overall scope of the project, while I've seen a lot of projects in jams with stories sacrifice gameplay for story, I wanted to try and find a balance between the 2, I wanted story, but also a game that you actually play, not just read.
I failed on the balance front, this time, but with it being my first attempt on building a story with a dialogue system, and a dialogue system itself, I'm mostly happy with the result.
despite saying on Friday that no new features would be added, I was still adding stuff at 9pm last night rather than testing and tuning (which is what i should have done) and then made a complete mess of the submission by not selecting the game I'd been working on :D . All sorted now, happy enough with result and had a lot of fun making it and that's all that really matters. Well done all.
Honestly, Iβm not even sure how my game turned out (o_ _)οΎ
I had a bigger story in mind, but I wasnβt really able to fully land it in such a short time. It ended up being more of a vertical slice focused on the core mechanic and atmosphere instead of the full experience I imagined.
Still learned a lot though, especially about scope and how hard it is to balance gameplay, story, atmosphere, bugs, audio, modelling, everything within a jam deadline.
Never give up! Never surrender! If you're making something decent in a short span, you'll always feel the crunch. Saving the last day to deal with compiling errors and uploading is always a good idea. (Still only had 10 min to spare) Oh, and watch out for scope creep! It's okay to cut some functions if you have to.
