Author: contquest

Undergraduate studying Game Development

My First Game Jam: Winter 2020

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Whoops, four months later and I’ve only now posted the completed project. Apologies for the lateness but here is my official post about my My First Game Jam: Winter 2020 submission.

I think for my first game I’ve done a rather good job. Of course for two weeks time I could have had more features and quirks in the game but my excuse would be that balancing time for the game jam and going to classes and doing academic work is rather difficult. Despite so I do have a rather complete game. Complete being that it is a endless shooter game, no levels and no other features except the primary game.

Frosty Space

Frosty Space is a simple space shooter with frosty elements. There are 3 enemies, the asteroids, the Hunters, and the Dark Frost. The Dark Frost is only summoned when a certain threshold is crossed. The asteroids are linear enemies that only move downwards and can be destroyed with the player’s projectile or collision. The Hunters are mid-tier enemies that shoot and move downwards. They cannot be destroyed on collision, only with the player’s bullets. The Dark Frosts are boss-level enemies, they follow the player and shoot at them within a certain distance. They have high amount of health thus are more difficult to destroy.

This is my first game but I’m very happy it’s executable at the very least. There is also a downloadable version, in case you wanted to play it in a higher resolution/quality.

Credits

  • SFX created in as3sfxr
  • Menu Music: Pale Light by Hirokazu Akiyama
  • Game Music: “I’m going home for the time being” by Tamu (TAM)
  • Font: Team 401 by imagex

Logistics:

  • Hours spent in asset creation: 3-4

Pixel art is rather easy if you have a limited space and time. Much rather I had already planned making the art more simple to focus more on coding and building the game.

  • Hours spent on scripting and coding: 8-10

I will say that I am more of an amateur coder than anything. And I still think I am. Coding is not my forte as much as learning new language is not my forte. Of course any skill takes practice but as a visual learner I find it difficult to memorize the 1s and 0s. Nevertheless I do think feel that I am able to read code and know what it does.

  • Hours spent on level design and building the executable: 7-8

My biggest time consumer was definitely building the executable. Now scripting did take the most time but I worked on the scripts piece by piece between days. Building the final game took 5 straight hours from 3 am to 8 am of the day the jam ends. I spent the whole night finishing the scripts and building the level to finally spend the my early morning just building the thing. The problem was the aspect ratio. I had much trouble making the game look right. One version made the game window too small. Another enlarged my game so the camera was capturing 3/4 of my player sprite and no room for anything else. During the last ones I finally got the window to fit the desktop resolution but I had to change my sprites’ sizes around. Needless to say, at 8 am on Saturday morning, I was very thankful that game jam ends on a weekend and not a weekday because I laid in bed for the entire afternoon, too relieved to sleep but too tired to move.

One game with my name on it is finally out there but I probably need way more to really be a qualified game developer huh?

On to the next!

My First Game Jam #1

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Progress Post: Day 1-3

I finally decided to do some work and make some games. And that first step is done by participating in a game jam, more specifically “My First Game Jam” hosted by J and lysander (itch page)

I’ve actually been meaning to create a game for a while; but, of course, like most I lacked the motivation. But new year, new decade, first game jam. Let’s hope I make it. Of course, some of the problems I expect to face are time management, motivation, and the obvious game bugs and issues. I am a beginner at this, even though I’m currently studying game development. No means am I a professional game creator (yet).

About the game I want to develop, it’ll be a pixel space shooter. That’s all I have planned for now to minimize my scope as much as possible. But if I have time, I’d like to add some plot (as a writer, it’s an itch to write) and make a ability/upgrade system.

Anyways, let’s move on to the progress I have made.

For the 1st day, I focused on setting up and creating sprites.
And I know it’s foolish to focus on art so early on but I’m a visual person. This is probably going to happen often throughout the project. The only excuse I have is that most of the sprites are, at least, still in a draft phase. The most sprites I created are (from left to right): the player, obstacles, a “boss” character, and basic enemies.

I also spent some time animating a simple idle animation for the player character.

2nd day of work is mainly on scripting the character controller. I wanted the player to move via the mouse. Or more simply, the mouse (cursor) is the player. I also worked on basic shooting and some particle systems for effect. Makes things more pretty, don’t you think?

Day 3 is a weekday, thus less time to work for me. I’m already hoping for the weekend to come faster. But I still got some work done. I went ahead and worked a bit on the boss script. Not much, just a simple follow and retreat.

But I noticed a problem, that being the boss movements are very stutter-y. I assume that’s due to the player being the mouse and the input rate would be faster than keyboard. Not to mention that these are pixels so I’m working in a decimal space. Most of the sprites are less than 1 unit in length and width.

I don’t think the movement of the boss is meant to stutter

My plan is to switch the player controller to keyboard inputs and see if that resolves the stuttering.
My next steps are to add enemies and shooting for both the boss and the basic enemies.

So far I think this is good progress, if anything I should a base game down. Whether I’ll have an actual game with a menu and beginning-to-end (levels) is the question.

Introduction Post

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Gamer and Game Developer both Professionally and Personally

Hello, my name is Zoe and I usually go by Conquest or Contquest online. A little about myself is that I am a college student majoring in Game Development. I hope to graduate soon and join the industry as a writer or somewhere related in that field. I would not say I am the best at any fields of game development in particular but they are all skills I have been practicing in both school and outside of class time. Writing has always been a passion of mine, so I’d like to say that’s the area I’d excel in.

Some trivia about myself:

  • I am more of an intermediate gamer. I like playing games casually but I can also spend a whole weekend trying to finish a game. I have a lot of mobile games (some left unplayed) and I have a large unplayed game library that is not mobile games.
  • I like story-driven games with heavy focus on characters. Some of my favorites: are the Ace Attorney trilogy, Mass Effect trilogy, Dragon Age series, Fire Emblem series (Awakening, Fates, and Three Houses), Danganronpa series, Undertale, Stardew Valley, and Transistor.
  • As a writer, I have a lot of stories left in “work-in-progress”, none have been formally published (yet).

The reason why I started a blog is to see my progress and display to the world as an effort to both put a name out there and for personal record of my improvement. Of course, this blog, as indicated, is more for personal use. Meaning these are project are not related to school work or work done for a professional institute. The work here can be used in portfolio when I apply for a career but most of the work here is done with a personal goal in mind. That goal can range from practicing a skill or wanting to translate an idea to a more physical plane. Thus this blog is more of a hobbyist blog rather than a professional portfolio or development blog that you’d see from someone actually working in the industry.