Adds: - controller input - better map table - some asset changes - bug fixes

Changelog: - changed hitbox of shockwave when pushing the minotaur away - changed hitbox of inactive flares

Play our game here: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/49/a-gift-in-good-faith

(this post was duplicated due to a bug in the website with drafts, please ignore)

A Gift in Good Faith is now built using GameMaker's YYC compiler, which should help alleviate troubles with antivirus blocking.

Changelog: - no

Play our game here: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/49/a-gift-in-good-faith

A Gift in Good Faith was our first game to really implement AI, so it was my first experience making it. In this post, I’ll walk you through how the AI for the Minotaur in the game works.

GameMaker Studio 2 has built-in pathfinding, so that aspect was sorted already. However, the way it works is a little strange: GameMaker has assets called “paths”, which are lines from point A to point B with various turns on the way. The built-in pathfinding outputted a single path to use. Unfortunately, this wouldn’t work if I wanted to have the Minotaur constantly follow the player, as since each path started and stopped individually, it would quickly fall out-of-date once the player moved.

The solution to this problem seemed simple; I could just recalculate the Minotaur’s path every frame so it always tracked the player’s current position. However, this created a strange effect in the movement - see if you can spot it:

It’s very distracting and looks off. The solution wasn’t too difficult, though. To explain it, I’ll first have to explain how the map is parsed by the Minotaur.

GameMaker doesn’t automatically let you pathfind around tiles; it makes you input “cells” first, which are points on a grid. I decided that my cells would be 2x2 tiles wide, as it feels much less cramped when playing.

These cells could be automatically created, but only for objects. This posed a problem, as I was using tiles for this game. My solution was to automatically generate instances based on the tiles:

The opaque tiles are cells the Minotaur has decided are walls (so ones with any amount of tiles), and the transparent ones are marked as “safe”. The latter was necessary to implement for the solution to the strange movement.

By the way, cells not filled with wall tiles being seen as walls by the Minotaur can lead to fun moments like this:

Anyway, the solution to the strange movement was to only recalculate the Minotaur’s path when the player steps on a new “safe” cell. The Minotaur would then pathfind to the center of that cell, ensuring it doesn’t try to move off its grid. This eliminated the movement bugs.

Next up was to add the flares, which work fairly simply. If a flare is on the ground, the Minotaur will pathfind to it instead of the player, and wait there for 10 seconds. The game also has support for multiple flares, as originally, you were going to have multiple. This came in handy for the player’s other main ability.

Pushing the minotaur away (or the "shockwave", as it was called internally) actually uses the flare code. When used, it places an invisible flare a few tiles behind the Minotaur, causing it to pathfind to it. This “flare” only lasts 3 seconds, and is not collectable upon being dropped. Reusing this code rapidly sped up development, and was responsible for this mechanic being in the game at all.

That’s my breakdown of A Gift in Good Faith’s AI! The Minotaur, being the first complex enemy AI I’ve had to code, was a new experience for me, and it's been very interesting to learn how this side of game development works.

I hope you enjoyed the post, and if you haven’t already, you can play the game here: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/49/a-gift-in-good-faith

Thanks for reading! :)

Changelog: - fixed map not showing correct gem placements

Play our game here: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/49/a-gift-in-good-faith

Last day!

Rating is about to come to a close, so make sure you rate as many games as you can!

If you haven't already rated our game, A Gift in Good Faith, you can find it here: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/49/a-gift-in-good-faith

If you are in need of ratings, put your game in the comments! I'll try to get to as many as possible :)

Blog posts (if you missed them)

AI breakdown: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/49/a-gift-in-good-faith/a-gift-in-good-faith-minotaur-ai-breakdown

Level design breakdown: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/49/a-gift-in-good-faith/a-gift-in-good-faith-level-design-breakdown

Soundtrack: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/49/a-gift-in-good-faith/a-gift-in-good-faith-official-ost-video

Thank you!

Thanks for all the great feedback! It's been really helpful :)

I hope everyone had a great jam!

If you're super close to 20 ratings but haven't quite made it yet, put your game in the comments! I'll try to get to as many as I can before the end of the voting period :)

If you want to try my game too, it's this one: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/49/a-gift-in-good-faith

Thanks for all the great feedback so far!

One hour left of rating! I've been trying to rate a bunch of games to finish the jam off, and I hope everyone else does the same!

If you want to check our game out, you can find it here: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/49/a-gift-in-good-faith

Our game, A Gift In Good Faith, is about escaping a Minotaur while inside a labyrinth, delivering gifts to maintain an unstable alliance. If you haven't already tried it, you can rate it here: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/49/a-gift-in-good-faith

Thanks for all the ratings and feedback this jam! It's greatly appreciated and has been really helpful :)

See you in LD50!

Thanks everyone for rating our game and leaving such great feedback! Means a lot to us :)

We tried to repay the favour by rating as many as possible, we managed to rate >130 games!

Been a great jam, see you next year!

I want to start rating more games than I have been, so if there's anyone in need of ratings just leave your game in the comments---I'll play anything sent.

(Any ratings on my team's game, Careless Couriers, would be greatly appreciated as well :slight_smile:)

Careless Couriers now supports Linux! If you haven't tried it yet, you can find the game here. It's about delivering packages... on a skateboard. Just an average day for an employee of Careless Couriers Co.

I want to rate a final big batch of games before the end of the ratings. If anyone is in need of ratings (so if you don't already have a lot of them, especially if you're still below 20), leave your game in the comments. Just like last time I did this, I'll play every game posted. I'll be starting in the morning since it's quite late for me right now.

My game is Careless Couriers if you feel so inclined to try it, but no pressure---we already have plenty of ratings.

Locals are trying to make it to the depths of your haunted castle, and it's up to you to scare them off!

(You can find a video of these minigames in action here - there's no way to upload videos on this site directly, unfortunately.)

Scares on Schedule is a frantic high-score game where you play spooky minigames to scare away visitors to your haunted castle and stop them from making their way into the dungeon deep below. How long can you hold them off?

(Post your high scores in the comments! I'm excited to see how well people do.)

Play the game here: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/57/scares-on-schedule

Scares on Schedule has been updated to fix a few bugs and improve the quality of the HTML5 export. The initial version of the game had surprisingly few bugs for a jam build, but I wanted to make sure players had the best experience possible!

Many balance changes have been recommended in the game's comments, and a post-jam update is planned to take those into consideration (along with some new assets and more polish), but those more substantive changes will have to wait until after the rating period.

Play/rate the game: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/57/scares-on-schedule

The game is also now available on itch.io, which has a nicer web version: https://berry-games.itch.io/scares

A large post-jam update is now available for Scares on Schedule, taking all the feedback we recieved over the rating period into account. The game's difficulty has been fine-tuned to ramp up more slowly, hopefully making the game less frustrating. We've also done a bunch of extra polish across the game to make it the best it can be, and attempted to better teach the game's mechanics to the player.

We hope this update will provide a great experience for new players, and encourage previous players to give it another try! We have tried our hardest to make the game feel both fair and rewarding.

🎮 You can play or download the game here: https://berry-games.itch.io/scares

Changes

Balance

• Villagers now only require 1-2 minigames each at the start of a run. Spawn rate increases now additionally increase the amount of minigames each villager requires, so once the maximum difficulty is reached, they will always require three minigames each like in the original version of the game.
• There is now a visual alert when new villagers spawn off-screen, and a new visual + audio alert when an off-screen villager is nearing the staircase.
• The melody minigame now has only 5 notes. The hitbox for ringing each bell has been widened slightly, and the same bell can now be rung repeatedly without waiting for the animation to finish each time.
• In the candles minigame, the candles' hitboxes are larger, and the timer has been extended by 1 second.
• The matching minigame now has only 4 cards. To improve visibility, the cards now have higher contrast, and the matching pair of cards will always draw above the others to make tracking them easier.
• The BOO! minigame now has a more lenient timing window. It also resets faster, so the overall minigame takes less time to finish.
• Upward acceleration when hovering objects in the hover minigame has been increased, and the timer has been shortened by 1 second.

Polish

• Thunder sounds have been added to the title screen, and the backdrop has been replaced with a more detailed version.
• All minigames now use the horror sting sound to indicate success.
• A new sound effect has been added to signal when tutorial / difficulty up messages appear.
• A new application icon has been added.

Fixes

• The behavior of scares interrupting other scares has been fixed to work as originally intended (environmental scares interrupt each other, and minigame scares interrupt all scares).
• Villagers can no longer become scared without animating, and can no longer continue walking after their final required minigame is completed.
• Minigame success and failure sounds can no longer play multiple times in a single minigame.
• The "(NEW BEST!)" text no longer suddenly disappears when the camera begins scrolling backwards at the end of a run.

Our game's finally starting to come together! It's a murder mystery seen through camera feeds, where you need to gather enough evidence to build a case before the night ends. Most of the important parts are in place now, but there's still plenty to do before the deadline.

On Ivy Boulevard is a murder mystery seen through camera feeds. A dastardly murder plot is unfolding in a lone apartment building - it's up to you to gather enough evidence to build a case before the night ends. Can you unravel the intrigue of this foggy street?

https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/59/on-ivy-boulevard