Play Panda
Kenneth the Killer Panda: The Quest for Cheese's itch.io pageRate this Panda
In order to rate this submission you must be logged into itch.io and have submitted your own entry. Anyone with an account can leave a comment.
Godot Version
4.7.2
Theme Interpretation
Kenneth must smell the cheese spray to find it, with his patented "NASAR" golden compass tracker...
Source
https://codeberg.org/MichaelMacha/Kenneth-the-Killer-Panda-and-The-Quest-for-Cheese
Discord Username(s)
Michael Macha, just me
GWJ Participation Level
7 maybe? I use them to quiz myself on game architecture.
Team Size
1
Generative AI Disclosure
I confirm that this jam entry does not contain any AI-generated content
Leave a comment
Log in with itch.io to leave a comment.
Comments
Going from the description, the game had a lot of effort put into level generation and the like, but to me it felt like the core mechanics needed to be fleshed out first. For instance, the game is a straightforward "get to the end without getting caught", except the enemies don't actually do anything to you.
You got me there! They were meant to; but two things I really wanted to learn with this jam were Nethack-like level generation, and tensor-accelerated influence maps. Turned out that took a while to really grasp, and I ran out of time. If I update it in the future, I'll definitely add some hazards and actual risk.
Still, thanks for playing!
I'm an artist, not a developer. But it seems to me you're focusing on the wrong issues. What difference does it make what a panda’s fur looks like if it’s hard to control? It would be better if it were made of just 5 polygons, but didn’t stick to the walls, and when you move the mouse down, the camera followed it down too instead of up, and so on. Listen, my advice is not to spread yourself too much. Yes, there are a lot of tools right now, and it’s great that you like to experiment and learn new things. But you can’t be a pro at everything. And you can create awesome games even with minimal resources.
Anyway, thanks for the entry
The level is procedurally generated with BVH, and the influence map (plainly visible) is done with processor SIMD instructions so it runs in an instant. Every model is hand-made, as is the art. My "tools" were Blender, Godot, and Krita. I was a solo developer here. I have been working in software for more than thirty years.
I'm very sorry you're having trouble controlling the panda, but this is the first complaint I've gotten from anyone. As to the lack of orientability with the camera, this is actually standard for the majority of games I play (pilot stick), but perhaps in the future I'll add an option to swap it for you.
There are no resource packs in this other than the audio, which came from Ovani sound in the last hour or so. Fur is from the MIT-licensed So Fluffy extension, which uses shell fur shaders and a distinct node to wrap a mesh in them.