overall: procrastinated a bit too much and took a bit too much time to get into the infamous ZONE but overall not too bad for the first day! my teammate @happy did a good job at spriting the hell outta ...hell. which froze over.

here's a little gif https://static.jam.vg/raw/5af/81/z/15a3e.gif

we're done! woo! etc. time to go to bed, hardships were had but at least the game got finished and it's playable

https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/42/$102225

hi, im julia, programmer and 1/3 of the dev team for STYLISH AEROPLANE DRESS ’EM UP and i’m here to write a bit about our game and what kind of experience this jam was for me (and what i learned). here’s a gif showcasing some cool gameplay:

even though we’d done 4 jams over the years already, (as always) this one proved to be just about as challenging as the first one. you’re always making a wholly new game after all! one thing that did make this one a bit easier than previous jams was that i finally allowed myself to write some base code before the jam, for things that are simple but tedious and time-consuming to implement (like an options menu) that every game would end up needing anyway. this was definitely a good thing and i’m very glad that i finally managed to put aside my pride as a programmer for the sake of practicality. some true character development.

when the theme was announced we had a list of vague ideas but the only one that really became a concrete game plan was “you control an unstable plane and you have to constantly replace your parts”. however, when i started to work on the game i wasn’t really feeling it until i was doing some early playtesting and the way you could drag parts onto your plane freely reminded me of the way you’d equip your pokemon with accessories for contests in the ds pokemon games and i added a couple of silly cosmetic parts because of this, just because it’d be funny.

it was then the specific experience of playing a shmup while being able to drag sunglasses and a cute bow onto my character in the middle of combat that finally made this game click for me and i was a lot more excited about working on it from that point onward! this is how we ended up with the whole shoot’em up/dressup game hybrid theme.

this freeform part placement system was also, however, what cost me the most time during development (as interesting things tend to do). whenever i thought i’d figured out how to make it work, some new issues would crop up and i never really managed to get the system working completely before the deadline (as people have pointed out in their very correct feedback).

this thing may be funny but it probably shouldn't be possible:

while being able to put guns facing in any direction anywhere is incredibly cool, it also obviously opens up many more ways for things to go wrong, and a 3-day jam just isn’t a lot of time to account for all these things! if i’d sat down and thought about the scope i should be aiming for beforehand instead of hacking away with all the vigor of an overcaffeinated 21-year old, the game probably would’ve been a little better. planning is important!!

but now: please check out our game which still ended up being pretty cool and fun! (and if you already have: thank you!!)

-> https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/49/stylish-aeroplane-dress-em-up/ <-