Am quite happy with the weekend’s efforts.  I’ve been doing 48hour game jams fairly regularly over the last few years, but this was my first attempt going solo.  Up till now, a huge part of the jam workflow has involved lots of bouncing ideas off others – yknow, teamwork, communication, that kind of stuff.  It was tempting to collaborate again for this one, but figured it was time to step up. Everyone else was playing Planetside anyway.

THEME REVEALED

And I was all groan.  I know we’re all hipster indie wankers and yes obviously we all love cubes and stark Eno-esque soundscapes and empty blank canvases –  but was honestly disappointed that something a little more exciting didn’t come up.  It’s already been pointed out here a thousand times already, – we’ve only got 48 hours.  Less if you want to sneak in a quick round of your favourite MMO.  It’s gonna be minimalistic anyway.

The theme was revealed, I leaned back in my chair and sighed. Profoundly.  Then went and took a shower, soak up some steam and decide if this was something I wanted to spend my weekend on.  I almost walked away.  Almost had a regular weekend.

So I spent about four hours just sitting around trying to think minimalism.  What do I do? Cube Rotator: the game?   Circle clicker?  Line drawer?  Screen Shaker?

I think I was taking the theme too literally.  I was getting frustrated that minimalism is a design choice, an aesthetic – not something to base your game on.  After a few hours following that rabbit hole I read someone’s twitter post – sorry, I didn’t catch the name.  It said: MINIMALISM DOESN’T SUCK. YOU’RE PROBABLY TAKING IT TOO LITERALLY.

Man, you’re right. I was.

That got me thinking – take something – anything, and just do a minimalistic presentation of it.  What’s huge? What’s epic?  What’s something you love?

SPACE, obviously.

Man, I frigging love space.  And space battles. Who doesn’t?

And strategy games.

Oh man, SPACE!

…and minimalism.

 

THE GOOD

Once I was over the initial brainfreeze, this game started coming together really quickly.  I had a good idea of what I could expect to do in a weekend, so managed to come up with something right on scope, I think.  And timewise, it was about right – the game became playable and (slightly) enjoyable about halfway into the Sunday, leaving the rest to add sound and tinker around with bugs.

And I think the game’s got a certain charm.  I’m thinking about adding to it over the next few weeks, add a few extras that should make it faster, more fun, better.  That’s what it’s all about right?

 

THE BAD

At about midnight on the Saturday, I got caught up in this bit of C# that just wasn’t working.  I spent about an hour and a half just trying permutations of what I already had there.  Normally when this happens I go for a walk, clear my head, watch a movie and come back to it fresh.  But no time man, no time!  I figured I’d spent enough time on doing this with code, I’m using unity damnit, and have learned with Unity that if you’re spending more than half an hour trying to write a script, then you’ve probably missed a checkbox somewhere.  Just drag and drop it my friend.  So that’s what I did. I spent about ten minutes doing some fairly tedious and labour-intensive drag-and-dropping (if you must know, I was manually linking each grid space to its neighbours by selecting each neighboour and dragging them into the centre square’s Neighbour List. This requires very tedious clicking of the padlock button on and off).  The really funny thing is, I think this was all the break I needed – literally as I dragged the last lot in, it dawned on my where my code was wrong.  Oh, how I laughed.  It was kind of this awful,  wretched, demented chuckle that really very few experiences in life other than latenight dev can dredge up.  Anyway, it was done. I had dragged, and I had dropped. The great labour was done.

 

WHAT HAVE I LEARNED

So the two big hangups I had on this project were kind of thematically related.

I had a lot of inertia dealing with a jam theme I found uninspiring, and I probably spent too long on one fairly simple code problem. In hindsight, both those timespans could’ve been used much better doing something else.  I think I need to be able to detect when I’m in a loop and exit out much sooner.  Step back, look at what I’m doing, and know that there is another way.

That probably applies to a lot of things in life.

Cool huh?

Also, how good is space?

Anyway, that’s my rant.  Check out my game, and I’ll try to check out yours.

It’s this one