The Jam: Day 2

The second day of the Game Jam started out mundane and, to be honest, a bit disappointing, but it ended up being extremely productive, and a lot of fun.

Scott and I arrived ahead of schedule at 9:45 to find the office totally barren. We stole wifi from a nearby office and posted yesterday’s blog.

At around 10:00 Sam came by and let us in, and we got started working almost immediately.

Despite Sam’s experience with Game Maker being limited to a few hours the night before, he was able to pick it up quickly and by noon he had a character running around a scrolling background shooting blame at women.

My XNA game naturally got started a bit slower, but by noon I had a green square running around a tiled background laying down tile icons.

Meanwhile, Scott cranked out graphics for both of the games. It took him no time at all to get a grassy background made for the Game Maker game and I had some mockup tiles within minutes. As a programmer it can not be understated how awesome it is to turn around and suddenly have the assets you need without having to do them yourself.

As we sat there working, we all had our ears on alert for someone to show up at the door. There was a knock at around 11:00, but it was just the mailman. Surely the people that came the day before would be back today. But no. We left for lunch happy with our progress but disappointed that it was still just us.

“Its too bad there arent enough of us here to actually play my game,” I joked.

When we got back, it was business as usual for a few hours until we heard rustling on the other side of the office door. It was Eric! Because of his night shift job he had ended up sleeping until 2:00. It was awesome to have a sudden increase in numbers, so we found a computer and I put him to work on defining a look for some of the XNA game elements and the HUD.

Over time, Jared and Elonka both arrived as well and provided some much-needed feedback that helped me to understand the nature of my game and got the other game past a hang-up on some confusing logic. The games finally started coming together.

As people began playtesting my game with me I realized that, despite trying to explain it to everyone several times, nobody had actually understood what my game design consisted of. Now that enough elements were in place and they could play it for themselves, people began to “get it”. By the end of the night, the game was far enough along that we had everyone standing around playing 4 player matches and handing the controllers around so everyone could get a try.

There isnt quite enough strategy involved in playing my game yet, but there’s definitely the frantic Bomberman with bros atmosphere that I was hoping would come from a frantic 4-player game.

The Blame Game got to the point where you’re shootin’ blame all over the place at old men and young women. Weapon upgrades are working and all of the elements are in place, so it’s only a matter of tweaking things at this point.

If the event was over today I think everyone would be proud of what we’ve accomplished, but with another day ahead of us things should really be awesome by the time the 24-hour mark is hit.

-Wes

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