TL;DR; Second compo and there's still so much more to learn! Also takeaways at the bottom!

So this is my second Compo and I've learned SOOO much this time around! My first one was a few years ago and I made the unfortunate mistake of trying to do everything myself; I was going to make a game using Java cause that's what I knew. Since then I've tried to be a little more serious about Unity and learning and and it's paid off!

Prior to this Compo I was start two Unity projects. One that didn't get far at all (just the camera moving down a hallway) and another, that I'm going to return to now, that I managed to get some basic character movement and multiplayer in place! The second game is one I want to make for my YouTube community so it's definately one to come back to!

Anywho in this Compo I knew time management would be a BIG issue because 1. I had been sick all week and still was, 2. I have a 3 year old and an 11 month old who is weaning and teething, and 3. My wife and kids JUST got sick Thursday and it got full blown Friday afternoon. Knowing that I knew I couldn't spend NEARLY as much time as I did the first time trying to come up with an idea. I figured that first night 1 hour to brainstorm and the rest of the night to get started, Saturday for mechanics and coding and whatnot, Sunday for Sprite and Title work (I forgot about sound and music till Saturday night around midnight O_O)

I knew I needed to keep the scope small and thought I had with my first game idea (it never got a name so i'm just gonna call it FGI in this post). I had it down and I was excited about it and got started coding maybe 1 hour and 15 minutes into the Compo.

After taking time to put the kiddos to sleep and all that I spent some time coding and got some prefabs set and all that. Spent Saturday trying to help my wife with the kids and trying to keep myself healthy....oh and trying to stay away because the night before when I was ready for bed my 11 mo old decided it was time to get up and stay up till 4 am.

Saturday I was up and at em at 9 and started my Gravitational Pull mechanic. When I finally finished it by 3 pm I knew I wouldn't be able to bring FGI into reality because I had to somehow perfectly Instantiate objects to represent a solar system and push them just right to keep them in orbit. Time to adjust with what I have and make something of it. I spent the rest of Saturday ironing out bugs, refining my Gravity mechanic, and refactoring code.

Sunday I wasn't able to get started till 2 pm (the Compo was ending at 8 PM so I knew I had to rush). My cold/flu/sick hit again full force so I was forced to stay in bed till later :( Anyway I was able to re-use some title stuff I had from and old project and knew I would spend a lot of time working on the music and sound (cause I never done that before). My hopes were it might go well and I could revist my mechanics to add some randomization, and "end state", and other important stuff.

That didn't happen...but I had SOMETHING to show for it this time around and it was ALMOST an entire game! I had a great back story and idea and am going to make sure I commit to finishing this game the way it was meant to be before I move on!

TL;DR;

Takeaways

• Really think SMALL SCOPE and be prepared to adjust along the way. Don't throw away what you have just because something won't fit...make what you have work with a new idea!
• The internet is REALLY good at helping with things and if you take time to really understand things and don't just fast-forward through the teaching videos you can really do good!
• Test, test, test, test, test!
• Be sure you save an hour before submission time to ensure that your build works as it does in the Editor. I ran into a weird but where my gamescript was running even though it was in the editor...it was weird
• MOST IMPORTANT TAKEAWAY! Don't let YOU get in the way of accomplishing your dream and doing something! It's going to be hard to learn it but when you do it feels SO GREAT! There were so many moments I thought, "I'm never going to figure this out and i'm going to waste so much time and not have anything to show for again." Eventually i'd find the answer and things just fell into place!
• Keep coding outside of these jams! Each time I step into a project or try to tackle a new aspect of game developing I never encountered I learn new things and then think back to past struggles and realize I could have done them better!

Best of luck to all of you in the Compo and still grinding out the Jam! Can't wait till I get another opportunity to enter the Compo! I'm hoping to have a few games under my belt by then ;)

"Go for your dreams and do what you love" -Me