Just saw this coming up yesterday, I've got a free weekend, so why not!

New site is fancy, hope I'm doing stuff right.

Im in! LD 46, Looking like im using GM2, plus sfxr, paint.net, maaaybe krita and Aseprite

Im in! LD 46, Looking like im using GM2, plus sfxr, paint.net, maaaybe krita and Aseprite

(Lets try this again...)

This time I'm writing this right after the compo, so I dont forget anything, that was a pain last time.

Anyway, here goes-

Theme/Ideas

The theme was Unstable, which ended up being pretty interesting. I had a few ideas, but they all ended up revolving around the idea of an "unstable network" of either electricity or data. I toyed with a few things like a card game (thought it'd be an interesting challenge), or something with a "unstable power" in more of a fantasy sense. But I've also been thinking a lot about hacking minigames recently, and had some ideas for something that might be a bit more interesting, but also realistic.

That's not what I ended up making.

Granted there is one major concept I took from it that I ended up using, which is having a connection between the physical world and the digital one. A lot of things had to be trimmed due to time and honestly just me ramping up to Game Maker again (one year I'll do a warm up...).

(My sketchboard for this Jam)

Development

It's always so fun to come back to game development again. I'm in software professionally now, so it's entertaining to start finding ways to solve problems with "real software things" and not brute force my way through with like 80 objects and timers. And man did I have to dredge up some buried knowledge because I had the brilliant idea to do a simple node and branch section as the core of the game...

Stress testing! Both the application and myself!

I spent most of Saturday in the weeds of this traversal algorithm, which I really still dont trust. Had a bug related to variable scoping that ate probably three hours. But, it now uses both a breadth first search, and a depth first search (both of which I needed to look up, having not used them in probably 4 years). I didn't actually start on the node interaction, aka the game part till sunday afternoon.

Game Maker is a double edged sword for me. On one hand, it's very easy to use, even after all this time just picking it back up. On the other, I have to turn off certain parts of my brain regarding code syntax. I use two different methods to access my lists, for instance. And there's a bunch of lines that are about 3x the length of the window... But it's also cool to see how expansive it has become, and the new (and improved) features over time. If I had time to sit down and plan out and learn everything, I'm confident it would be amazing.

Takeaways

Few things I'm gonna take away from this Jam:

• Game dev is fun! It's been really great to get back into development and see something come together over time. I'm already thinking about ways to improve my submission.
• Math is important! I did a ton of math I haven't had to use in forever trying to get this thing working.
• I want to try some other engines! I'm stuck with the ingrained knowledge of GMS, but feel held back by some of the syntax of GML. Might look into something that feels a bit more like my comfort languages lol.

All in all, always a fun time! And looking forward to playing a ton of interesting games!