Trijam 120 is the second game jam and second Trijam I've joined so far. In this devlog I would like to note some general thoughts about my project and what I want to get out of entering Trijam and other game jams in general.

Part of this post is some musing that might not be too interesting if you're just a stranger wandering in from one of my games or from the Trijam page (or if you're not at a similar level of game dev to me, I suppose). If you're here directly from my Trijam entry, you may want to simply read the "This Project" segment.

This Project

I completed this project in around 6 hours. Of course this isn't enough time to create a fully polished game and some flaws are just to be expected, but I would like to provide some self criticism as well as describe what I've learned.

I knew this project may take longer than the expected time of 3 hours. Although I far exceeded the Trijam goal, I'm not really too disappointed in that. With Montana's Worst Folfer, I really tried to make the project within 3 hours. The reason it was 4 hours instead had a lot to do with problems that arised in the testing phase, not time working on assets. It felt good to complete a project in such a short time, but the project doesn't really look or sound too unique. I felt like the only thing to take pride in with this game was creating the mechanics. In Trijam 120, I wanted to create something that looked and/or sounded a bit more appealing and a bit more personally mine. This also was motivated by how I want to develop my skills, but I will discuss this in the next section.

Description

So, basic project description: This is an automatically side scrolling 2D runner. You jump (W) and crouch (S) to pick up coffees and avoid enemies. Every coffee you pick up adjusts a player speed variable. 0.15 is base speed, 1 is full speed, the player speed variable is something like (coffees/50 + 0.15).  The game ends when you hit an enemy. The player is running through a short level that repeats when the player overlaps an invisible box at the end of the level. Every time the player hits this box, all coffees and enemies currently in the level are deleted and a new set (5-20 coffees, 3 enemies) is spawned.

Issues

I think there are two main issues in this project that I'm not too happy about despite the limitations.

Level Length

The first is that I feel like the "level" is a bit too short. I chose to repeat a short level instead of making a long level (or levels) because I didn't want to guess at how long the player would be able to stay in the game and I didn't want to set a "win" condition of completing the level. Items (enemies, coffees) only spawn in the middle of the level, so the beginning and end of the level feel empty. I realized a bit too late JUST how often the player will reach this empty area. Once the player becomes a bit faster, a few jumps are all that's needed to completely clear the enemies and coffees. It's a good thing the player isn't in any way graded or scored on their time spent in the game, because that would be a really easy way to completely take advantage of the system. I wish I'd reviewed this earlier on in the game instead of simply being happy that the mechanic worked. The breaks in between these levels is visually unappealing and makes a lot of the game feel like waiting time.

What could I have done better to fix this, besides just simply extending how big the level is? Well, I think I could have hypothetically just extended where the coffees could spawn. At the beginning of the level, I think it would be unfair to spawn enemies that appear right in front of the player, but it might not have been a problem to spawn coffees that the player accidentally runs into. At the end of the level, why does it matter if coffees or enemies suddenly pop out of existence? The player is moving forward automatically with no ability to change their direction left or right, so it's not like the player can pick up any items behind them anyway. I think in a game like this, I should have put game function over looks in this regard.
The other thing I could have done is make items automatically disappear behind the player regardless of where they currently are in the level. A trigger box could exist behind the player that destroys all enemies and coffees without incrementing the counter or causing a game over. If I had done this, I could spawn items closer to the end of the level without it looking weird when the player position is reset.

Implementing Visual Assets

The other issue is with the sprite art and asset sizes as a whole. If you look at the art on the project page itself, you see how big the character is in relation to the coffee and the enemies. The coffee is a bit too big to be realistic, but I don't think that's much of a problem on its own. What IS a problem is how these items go into the game. The character sprite has a bigger scale than the other sprites. Some of the smaller details on the other sprites get lost, which is frustrating because I actually like the sprite art. I also just think the sprite art is a little bit too small in the game in general. It almost doesn't look like sprite art, just low quality assets.
I think the main issue here is that I simply didn't plan ahead. When deciding sprite sizes, I should have not only compared the sprites to each other (which is what I did), but I should have also compared this to how they would look next to each other specifically in the game. I could have made VERY simple sketches of the sprites at first to make sure I had the sizes correct, then put those in the game and made sure they all had the same scale value. I also think I may have benefitted from making smaller sprites in general. The coffee and enemies are 100x100, and the skater is 300x300. I think it would have been better to make smaller sprites and scale them up a bit more to really get that retro sprite art look I was going for.

Misc.

Honestly, a lot of my problems with this project boil down to not being able to appropriately plan ahead. A more minor problem (in the context of a short game jam) is that the crouch sprite is just the regular sprite but shorter. Why didn't I make a crouched sprite? I just didn't think about it until it was too late. There's no "game over" sound or music, which I probably could have quickly made if I'd thought about it while I was in the "audio development" phase. Looking back, I think it might have been better to create two enemy types, a ground enemy (or stage hazard) and a flying enemy (or stage hazard) to solve some issues I had with enemy spawning. I feel like there's an awkward amount of enemies, but when I tried to add more, the game felt much too difficult. The good and bad about this problem is that I think I'll get better at it as I make more games and projects... I'll go into more detail in the next section.

Highlights

Now, what do I like about this game? Despite the criticisms I've made so far, I'm actually fairly proud of this project. 

I think that what I managed to get done in 6 hours is fairly commendable, at least considering my current skill set. This looks and feels like.. a Game. A real game. Sure, maybe a low budget game, maybe a silly game that you'd play on a Flash game website (RIP Flash☹) and promptly forget about, maybe a game you downloaded off the mobile app store to play once and then delete, but it feels like a real game. With Montana's Worst Folfer, I didn't feel like I was releasing something that anyone would actually want to play, at least not in its current state. I think I could make that game better with some music, better sound design, updated assets, etc... But that's so many things that prevent it from feeling like a finished game. For this project, I created visual assets, audio assets, AND some amount of game mechanics. It feels good to say that I did all of that myself.

Although I criticized it, I like what I did with the scrolling level and generation of assets. Each time the player reenters the level, there's a new arrangement of enemies and coffees. And the game technically goes on forever (or for a very long time), creating a new area every time instead of being stuck in a static level. It's not the most technically impressive of game mechanics, but I was glad I was able to do that. I think what would make the game better next time would be if I made overlapping items (SPECIFICALLY when a pickup and an enemy overlap) disappear or move. Like in this game, I could have simply deleted the coffees that overlapped with enemies so that players wouldn't feel the need to try and pick up "impossible" items.

This part was a bit outside of the game jam time because it was just general skill development, but I learned how to upload an HTML5 project to itch.io. This is exciting because it opens a lot of prospects for the future in terms of uploading game demos or game jam titles in a way that can reach more people. It wasn't actually too hard... Once I downloaded the correct version of UE4 (4.22.3 specifically). I'm a bit upset that they're removing support for HTML5 in newer builds, actually. 

Skill Development

Current Level

I should start with a brief background on me and my skill level. I started game development as an audio person. I've done a lot of music and audio on an academic level. I do art at more of a hobbyist level. I've recently learned a bit about Blender and would like to learn more about sprite art and animation. I don't really have a lot of coding or programming skills. Right now, I'm mostly using the blueprints in Unreal Engine 4. I think this has actually taught me a bit that's applicable to general coding, but I'd still like to learn at least one language eventually. The closest I have right now is a small amount of HTML and CSS skill, but that's not really helpful for a lot of game development.

There's a few "problems" I have that can hinder game development as well. Most specifically, I have a hard time picking an idea and sticking to it. Working on a project isn't a problem, but choosing an idea to start on and actually completing it is a bit more difficult. No big deal, it's a pretty common issue... But I would like to get a bit better at it. This is where game jams help me a bit. If I say I'm going to enter a game jam, there's a bit more external pressure to actually follow through. 

I also just don't know how long a lot of game development will take for me personally. I would like to work on some projects that only take a few months to finish. But I'm not sure how big I should aim. Doing game jams helps me gauge how much time I actually need on projects and gives me a frame of reference of past projects to accurately assess my own skills.

I want to get faster at a lot of pieces of the game development process, which means I need practice. Doing a game jam allows me to practice on a project that I might not be taking that seriously.

I have a hard time picking a good stopping point when I'm done with a project and not expanding it into something totally unmanageable or trying to pick at it until it's "perfect," but game jams force me to finish a game in a shorter time. 

Game jam games aren't as nervewracking to work on as longer games because I don't necessarily need to have a marketable project at the end of the game jam time. It would be nice to make a game that I could hypothetically sell at the end of a jam, but if I make a game that has no marketability and no prospects to be worked on further, that's not a problem. At the same time, though, working on a game jam gives me game ideas that I could hypothetically flesh out into larger projects.

Basically, I'm already decent at audio when I put in the effort, but I need to work on certain types of art and actual development skills. I also need more practice with working on solo game related projects, especially outside of the framework of completing a project for a class.

Current Goals

So, what's the point of me entering game jams right now? It gives me a prompt to make a game with and a time limit. If I enter game jams, I can create finished projects in a relatively short amount of time. It also familiarizes me with having an audience (people are scary, right? or is that just me being your stereotypical nerd... oops.).

None of this is to say that I won't aim for the 3 hour limit on future Trijams if I enter them, just simply that the goal right now is to go faster than I have and to create some more finished projects. But I do think in THIS jam, I should prioritize making a good project over hitting the exact time right now... Especially since time is only one out of six categories.