Enjoy a chess game without waiting for your turn! Have been working on it for about six hours, implemented piece movements and a simple random ai.

For those who didn't catch my previous post, Action Chess is a chess game without turns :)

So after a good sleep, I finally figured out what the Action Chess was missing! A cooldown! Added one-second cooldown to each piece and suddenly the game became much more challenging and strategic! Even with current not so smart ai it fun to play! So I can finally proceed to the polishing step!

I begin to create art for the real time chess game. For the first time I created art assets myself! I am very proud :D I think I deserved a break :)

Finally I submitted Action Chess to itch.io! It was the first time I made art for a game and I am satisfied with the results. Try it yourself:

https://antonsem.itch.io/action-chess

It took a while, but I managed to go through all of the themes!

One thing I didn't understand though is why I saw some of the themes multiple times? Like 5 or 10 times. Write down if you know the reason, I'm very curious.

Oh, and the other day I posted the following pole on twitter:

So I want to ask you guys as well. Let me know!

Seems like a good theme for a puzzle game. Tetris is the first thing that comes to mind. But I'm not sure about a puzzle, I would like to do something more action-y.

Not super happy with my idea but couldn't think of anything better (except for battle royale Tetris puzzle in space with floating islands crumbling apart). So here is what I come up with; an old-school fps with a couple of enemies who only have melee attacks. Levels are tile based. Some of the tiles are destructible and some are not. You cannot kill enemies, only stun them. The purpose is to collect some parts from tiles to repair the portal in the middle of the level. The catch is every time you stun an enemy a new tile spawns. Every time you destroy a tile two other tile spawns. So if you are trigger-happy or not careful, you will run out of space very fast.

Yeah, the basic functionality is done. There are only few things left. Like UI, sound effects, music, visuals and actual decent level design. Also I hope to include few more mechanics like upgrades and perhaps some light Metroidvania elements (this is an indie game developed in 2018, of course it needs metroidvania elements! Shut up!). Oh the positive side, I did a level editor (kind of, it reads images).

I think I made a decent progress. As I mentioned in a previous post, the "minimum viable product"'s base is there. Mechanics, kind of a level editor, couple of levels, level changing system, menu system, UI and some sound effects are done. Sadly I remembered too late that for the compo, I have to do them as well (I downloaded them from freesfx.co.uk) so may be I'll switch to jam instead. After some sleep I will proceed with levels (including tutorials), may be couple of upgrades and finally the art. Not sure if I will have time left for art but even now, I'm not hating how the game looks and feels. The sound effects really sets the mood nicely.

I'm not super happy with the game I created this time. It is and old-scool-maze-like FPS.

Basically what you have to do is to collect all of the energy cells in the level and find the exit. There are some destructible tiles which do hide some of the cells. The catch is if you brake one tile, three spawns in its place. Also there are some enemies which you cannot kill but only stun. Stunning them, however spawns more tiles. So if you are not careful, you will run out of space quickly. The only challenging level is the last one though.

So here are the things which I don't like. The game heavily relies on the sound effects and there is no accessibility option. The levels are not challenging enough and do not utilize the mechanics well. No graphics. Shooting could be much better.

What do you think? Is there a potential? How can I improve it? All feedback is appreciated :)

Itch: https://antonsem.itch.io/system-corruption LD: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/42/$101141

I wasn't super happy with this game, people seem to like it (or just trying to be polite, idk). One thing that everyone seems to agree on is that the main mechanic of navigating through the maze with the help of sounds is quite interesting. While I like it, I regret that I wasn't fast enough to implement an alternative accessibility option. And some low-res textures would be nice as well. Would you like to try it out? I'm very interested in the feedback!

https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/42/system-corruption

Oh and also, I do this thing where I tweet about the games I play: https://twitter.com/game0wer/status/1029464753444401152

Send me a link to your game and I will try as well!

This time I will try to learn Godot and create a very small game using it. These are my suggestions:

Recently, I begin to write a blog about simple Unity Tips&Tricks. I believe these tricks can speed up your development process so check it out:

https://www.anton.website/blog/

I will write a couple more blog posts before the LDJam begins.

Hi everyone! I've been writing a blog for unity tips. In the last entry, I described resource management and pooling pattern I've been using for a while. Let me know if I did something wrong or if there are any optimizations I could do.

Here is the blog post: https://www.anton.website/resource-manager-and-object-pooling/ And here is the whole project: https://github.com/antonsem/ExtraTools/

Hope it helps someone :)

So the most important part of my game is done: the visual of the starting area! (Shutout to Kenney The Asset Jesus for the awesome assets)

Not sure if I can complete the game since I'm at a conference and have a flight tomorrow at 6 am, but I will try :)

Implemented the basic movement and interactions!

Implemented the basics of J-RPG style combat. I hope it was the longest part, and I can begin to create content soon...

I have a vague idea about my game. So it's like %80 percent, right? Also, I did some pathfinding. And by that I mean I implemented the A* project. Only a few minor things remain. Like designing the gameplay, building the level, progression, UI, tutorials, music, and sound. If I have some extra time I would love to replace the Kenney assets with my own awesome programmer art!

For those who didn't get the point of this very obvious and self-explanatory gif: you have to protect your holy thingy from evil cats!

A game jam is not the best time to think about fancy systems and clean solutions. But you can prepare in advance!

There are certain things almost every game needs. For example a UI system. Most likely than not you will have one in your game. But how to organize it? How to navigate through different panels quickly and cleanly? A while ago I wrote a blog about this, check it out over here: https://www.anton.website/ui-manager

This particular UI Manager solution requires you to wire up some game objects in the inspector window. But what if you forget to assign a field? Coloring unassigned field will make it much easier: https://www.anton.website/colored-inspector-fields

Well, that is great and all, but now you have a console full of debug messages. And if you like me, then that "Clear" always button seems too far away. No worries though, you can clear the console with a shortcut from your keyboard! Check this out: https://www.anton.website/unity-console-clear-shortcut/

Another useful pattern to keep in mind is the object pooling: https://www.anton.website/ui-manager. Keep in mind though, this particular implementation will load all referenced objects to memory as soon as the ResourceManager is referenced. So it is not suitable for huge objects (use addressables for that). But it should work great for an average jam game.

Do you need a generic pop-up window? Maybe you want to implement a tutorial, or show a quick tip? Check out the pop-up window tutorial: https://www.anton.website/pop-up-window. With some modifications, it can even function as a dialog system!

Speaking of dialogs, if you want to localize your game here is a simple localization system I wrote: https://github.com/antonsem/Localization. If you are curious about how I got there, here are the blogs I'm discussing it: https://www.anton.website/a-simple-localization-system/ https://www.anton.website/upgrading-the-localization-system/

Since it is a game jam, you will have plenty of magic numbers and constants. And most likely you will use them multiple times in the code. Hunting for such constants in case you need to change one can be a nightmare! So save yourself some time (and sanity points) by nicely organizing them: https://www.anton.website/quick-tip-for-constants

There are a couple more blogs, but I'm running out of space here! I hope you will find some of these tips useful! Let me know if you have any questions or feedback!

Well, everything actually went as planned. Which means much better than expected! Basic gameplay is done. Here is the plan for tomorrow:

1. Polish (obviously)
2. Color blind mode would be nice
3. A tutorial (pretty sure this won't make the cut)
4. Sounds
5. Menu
6. Difficulty curve

Here is the itch page if you want to try it out: https://antonsem.itch.io/dashfight You will find instructions below the game :)