Day 1, 12 noon

Ok so far so good. 12 Noon on day one, and I got approximately 1 metric crap-ton of pixelling done. In case you haven't seen my twitch streams so far, I'm trying to make a platform game with some MegaMan style robot sprites. I wanted this to be an action platformer, but with some dialog in between the levels. So as it stands, I got the robot standing, crouching, running, and jumping, and getting hit. He also has secondary animations for running and standing while aiming his weapon. The idea is he's unarmed when he's in the friendly areas, and armed when he's going through the factory, where there's going to be hazards. I also got some pieces made for the INTERROGATOR, a robot that greets the player when you first start the game, and he's going to shake you down and scan you to make sure you're a robot. (You are.) He looks kind of like one of the robots from Portal, and he's got a retina that opens and closes, and a laser scanner for scanning the player's retina. I tried to put him into Spine, and I was going to animate his parts separately using skeleton animation, but stuf wasn't working right, and I found out the hard way that even though I used an additive blend mode on the laser in Spine, Gamemaker happily drew the laser just like every other part. So I'm going to have to implement the interrogator the hard way. Not a problem, but I had to switch gears and get on the robot, since he's the hero and main attraction. I'm going to take a pause for the cause, and get some steps in, and jump back in this afternoon and get these robot sprites into GMS.

Day 1, 6PM

I got the Interrogator behavior just the way I want it. I had to make him into a object that draws his additional sprites depending on what's going on. I had originally intended all this to be rigged up in Spine, but it didn't work out. However, he's ready for his closeup.

I got the Robot player sprite into an object, and he can stand, crouch, run left and right, and jump, with nice controls that work either from the keyboard or a dual analog controller. Next, I need to get him interacting with tiles, and I have a special technique I use for pixel perfect tile collisions that is lightning fast and very efficient. Once this is out of the way, it's onto hazards, and having him die and respawn. This is the heart of the gameplay.

You can see both the interrogator and the robot working in my twitch channel.

All in all, I'd say today was a success. I want to say I'm calling it a day, but I'm going to keep pushing. I may put in an 18 hour shift. A record for me during a Jam.

Day 1. End of Day

So I'm calling it a day. Got the robot falling on tiles, and running up angled tiles.

Day 2, 12 Noon

This morning was all doing tiles. I did collision tiles, and scenery tiles. I did tiles out the yin yang. I'm pretty much covered for tiles, but it would be nice to make some decoration tiles if I have time.I got the robot tile collision refined some more, as I found some bugs with how he touches tiles when he's in the air, versus while he's running, etc. Always something.

Day 2, 7:30PM

I got the robot shooting his weapon, and I got the title screen working. I am starting to think I bit off WAY MORE THAN I COULD CHEW. What else is new though, right? So you know how Megaman can't crouch and fire? Well my robot can! You know how Megaman can't fire at an angle? My robot can. Fire straight up? My robot can. Why in the name of Zeus's BUTTHOLE did I make the robot shoot in every direction?? God help me. I'd better get on enemies tomorrow and see to it that he needs to crouch for some, shoot diagonally to kill some, shoot up to kill some, and so on. I'm giving this game everything I got!!! I just hope I can pull this off.

Day 3, 12 Noon

At this point, I got the dialog and NPC system working, got doors that change levels, got more sprites made, and most importantly, I got the player to take damage, get killed, and reset the level. Next up I need to do the boss fight. This is getting crazy, yo!!!

Day 3, 4:45 PM

I now have a boss fight against the INTERROGATOR. He shoots a laser at you. It's friggin' amaze-balls! I'd love to stop here, but the game does not have a start, middle, and end yet. There's still so far to go! I have a few sound effects in the game. I spent way too much time finding the right player shoot sound, and the metal 'tink' sound when you hit bad guys, but these two sounds are the most important in the game, so I had to make them just perfect. The player shot is a combination of a real gun and a synthesized laser sound. The metal hit sound is a heavily processed sound of a iron target being hit at long range from a rifle. It's soooo satisfying to hear it hit the enemies... I need more sounds, and also a way to set a spawn position when entering levels, so I can have checkpoints. I also need an ending. And a beginning. SO MUCH LEFT TO DO!!!!

Day 3, 11:45

I've been up for 16 hours today, putting some love and focus on this jam entry. I recorded some voice-overs today for the INTERROGATOR, and scripted out the opening sequence. It's all about the delivery... Tomorrow is the last full day. My game is going to finish strong!!!

Day 4, 12 Noon

Ok, I finally finished writing the npc dialog and making all the npcs and portraits for the dialog exchanges, and got those tested out. Man, my dialog reader is very finicky. I'm going to spank it's bottom when this Jam is over. Anyhow, I also got the end credits and title screen stuff done. Lots more sounds added. The rest of the day will be adding more enemies and traps, building levels, and tying the boss fight to the end credits. I'm going all the way!!!

Day 4, 1:31AM

The game is complete. I worked my butt off on this one!! Next Jam I'm seriously considering going in on a team. Doing pixels and writing code during the same Jam is straight up insanity. There were several ideas I wanted to do, but just ran out of time, but I managed to get a few different enemies and hazards implemented. I'm really happy with it. I hope you have as much fun playing it as I did making it!!!