Terra Tower - Day 0 (aka, I'm in) 2

innomin • 4 years ago on Climate Change Jam 

I'm in for this jam! Using Godot again, Photoshop for art, PxTone for music, and probably bfxr for sound.

I also want to do a daily blog post that covers everything I'm working on and my process, to participate in the community here more and add some content to the front page, so this is my first one of those. Here's some music that should get everyone in the mood for a climate change jam, and hopefully get everyone to read this whole post…

I haven't had the best luck with longer jams, mostly because it feels like so much extra time that I don't scope properly, so this time around I'm going to change up my standard practice. I've planned out my tasks for every day of the jam in advance, and I'm scoping for 4-5 days instead of the full seven. This should give me time to fix bugs, polish, and get those sound effects and music tracks done for once. Here's my starting plan in case anyone else is interested:

  1. core gameplay design and code, balancing growth powers and fruit times
  2. art (sally, g-mo, vine leaf, veggies, building bg, water, menu, cards, portraits)
  3. animations (vine growth, fruits, water FBF, mouths) and screen transitions
  4. code polish and transitions, tutorial, save and load highscores
  5. code extra
  6. music and sfx
  7. art and anim extra (sally gardening/win/loss anims? shaded art pass?)
  8. project extra (remove 3d lighting profile from export, record final gifs, etc)

The design I want to do is inspired by Pieces of Cake and Starseed Pilgrim, it'll be turn based and use randomized edge connectivity but other than that I'll be designing as I go. Basically, hand of cards, they have different growth behaviors, and possibly can only attach to the level on the randomized sides that have arrows. Good harvests add cards to your deck, so there's an element of endless play, but I might have an ending as well for highscore purposes. P1 Select had a cool score averaging mechanic that works better with a finite game experience, if you haven't played that (free!) game yet you are really missing out.

One of the big things I also want to try out in this jam is the 2D animation system in Godot, particularly with Polygon2D rigs and Skeletons. Maybe even mess around with dynamic polygonal water effects… The plan is to basically get the gameplay done first, and then try these systems as early as possible, to make sure they are useable in gamejam time constraints. If I'm struggling by the end of day 3, I have the time to revert to other animation styles, and a full "extra" day reserved for it.

And speaking of the extra days, they're basically my time cutoffs for different aspects of the jam. Code must be done by day 5, art should be done by day 3 but can be polished up to day 7. The art extra day would be a paintover of existing assets only, so I just have to reimport everything and it will work in-game without changes. If things are going particularly well, though, I might add more content for the transition scenes and actions, since everything else will be done by that point.

Day eight is only for things that are non-essential, and will be bumped up if I'm working much faster than expected. Since I plan to blog post every day, I'll have WIPs I can use for project pages, and everything else would just improve the size and speed of the export. Nice to have, but not required.

Okay, day 0 tasks are basically to set up an empty project, grocery shop, do laundry, etc. I'm starting my jam tomorrow when I wake up, so the day 1 post will be later that day, when I have some work to show. Good luck everyone! And if anyone else wants to do daily blog posts with me, I'll be happy to read how other people do their jams.

Comments (2)

Wan
 • 4 years ago • 

Great idea to plan stuff ahead, I'm looking forward to your posts :) I knew Starseed Pilgrim but not Pieces of Cake, this seems like a reasonable gameplay genre too.

innomin
  • 4 years ago • 

Whoo, I have a reader! Thanks @Wan, it's good to know people will get something out of this.

Login to comment