Game Jam 2018 Day 3

The game jam is finished, it went well, but it took me a long time to get the games published, sorry.

The girls finished their Armour of God game (click image to see full sized).

Daniel built a similar platformer game, but themed on a Shepherd looking for his lost Sheep.

And my Bible Smuggling game:

You can find the games to play on itch.io

• Armour of Game
• The Lost Sheepies
• Bible Smuggler

All games are web playable, and most are playable on mobile (I think).

Enjoy,
Mark

Game Jam 2018 Day 1

So, it seems that my last post was a year ago, when we did a game jam in July.
I have been doing a lot of stuff at work (which I cannot share, but it is A M A Z I N G). A few game jams, including this one: https://playingfield.cc/gallery/

But the main reason for writing was to talk about this years kids jam.
Again its 3 days, using Construct 2. As a new inspiration I was talking to a lady in church and she was asking about Christian Computer games, and I thought "Why not?" so that was the topic for this years game jam.

The girls are on a platformer around collecting the Armour of God. Its only the basics for now, but it coming on.

Daniel is also on a platformer, this one about a shepherd looking for lost , but he seems to have got the graphics coming along nicely.

I'm working on a stealth game based upon bible smuggling. Its early days and the AI is pitiful, but I should be able to get it better.

So Day 1 complete. We started late, so thats only 8 hours work. I'm personally finding Construct 2 to be quite clumsy, but thats what happens when you switch tools.
Not a bad days work.

Three Day GameJam: Day 3

The game jam is over (just about). Carmen is still struggling to get the last bits of the girls game ready.  There were a lot of last minute changes: mainly art, and deciding to put the menu in and so on. So they are running late.
Mid morning Daniel hit the max 100 event limit on Construct 2-Free Edition, but it turned out he had been copy-pasting a lot of events everywhere, so when he went back and tidied up his code it was only 80 events.
Myself as the Game Jam veteran (I think its about 5 jams), had art and sound finished by lunchtime, then finished off the with menu and final game balancing. Which I must say actually went very well.

Results, Noon

Lots of art changes in the platformer which was undergoing a total change in direction as the girls argued on a new name

The battle animals gained a name 'Save The Forest' and became fully 2 player.

Space Battler actually has proper graphics and now looks like a real game (if a little hectic)

Results, End of Day

The girls decided to rename their game Shadows of 'Deceipt' and Carmen wrote a massive storyline for it (because she's Carmen)

Save the Forest added a sound and music and a title screen

Space Battler now has a menu with difficulty levels and the game starts slow but gets hard quickly, thanks to the Danger Rating (tm) system.

Conclusion

It has a fun 3 days. Will post feedback from the kids later.

The games are up on Itch.io (which turned out to be really easy to do) and you can play them.

• https://markgossage.itch.io/shadowsdeceit
• https://markgossage.itch.io/savetheforest
• https://markgossage.itch.io/spacebattler

Next time, it might be only 2 days, and we might consider inviting some friends, but that's probably not for a while yet.

Three Day GameJam: Day 2

Day 2

All told, day 2 was just dull. I lot of time was spent on getting the art ready, but not much progress was done otherwise. Daniel and I spend a lot of time working on our tech issues, which seem to take most of the day.

We also forgot the midday screen captures, so there is only the end of day results.

Results, end of day

Lost Treasures 2 now has a good chunk of art, and the worlds largest score.

Battle Animals now has proper images and a bit of animation

Space Battler still has no real graphics (on purpose), but now has 5 different ship types

All that remains is to wait for Day 3...

Three Day GameJam: Day 1

Its summer holidays, what can I do to keep the kids busy?

This time, I'm trying something new, a Game Jam.

The basic rules are: Build a game with Construct 2 working 9-5 Wednesday, Thursday, Friday.

Day One is now complete, here is the progress so far. I deliberately kept the kids focused on gameplay not wasting time working on artwork. So they look rubbish, but you can see the gameplay.

There are 3 games being worked on:

• Margaret is working on Lost Treasures 2 (the original was build 5 years ago). Its a simple platformer which allows her to work quickly.
• Daniel is working on a game like battlecats. He spent most of the day getting basic battle mechanics to work
• I am working on a space themed lane war game. I'm discovering a lot of flexibility in construct-2 as I'm trying to build something more complex than ever before.

Results, Midday

Lost Treasures 2, platformer with spikes and re-spawns

Battle Animals, battle with knockback

Space battler, just a ship flying and shooting at targets when the get within range.

Results, End of Day

By end of day 1 most groups have the core mechanics working:

Lost Treasures 2: Pickups, Enemies and lots of levels (not shown)

Daniels game: auto spawn of enemies, ghosts on death, base health and money. A lot done.

Space Battler: Both sides spawn and shoot. Health bars for both teams, and an ugly yellow explosion when ships collide.

So Day 1 is over, good work done by all, lets see what happens on Day 2