Part 2: Game Jam - finishing jam prototype for Halloween exhibition (10/13/2023 -10/22/2023)
Editor's Note:
Welcome to part 2! We have established the core framework of the game, but need to design and develop the minigames and put a little polish into the presentation values.
And build the installation for exhibition!
Editor's Note:
The challenges and impacts of working after work are setting in. I enjoy these timestamps, and it would be interesting to follow along in the commit history to see what work was being committed around the time of certain messages in this chat.
7:48 PM
trying to think of the easiest minigames lol(edited)
7:49 PM
I could make one where you just have to turn the brightness up or something
From a programming perspective, photo hunt and 3d maze might be easiest… but a lot of art stuff. Might be able to do a simple game stolen from like a game and watch collection. Idk
7:51 PM
I’m planning on arting Simon slays and doing one more mini game this weekend, but not sure what.
7:52 PM
Also if you aren’t feeling up to it, hiding something in the archive footage like you were talking is a solid idea.
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Editor's Note:
This is another idea I was excited about but passed on initially because of the scope complexity and our tight timeline. And again, another idea we were able to revisit once Mack joined the team for GDC / Day of the Devs! 👇 (Also, note that these "video unavailable" messages just mean they can't play embedded. You can still click the "Watch on Youtube" link to see them.)
I want more remote functionality so that's a good one.
Editor's Note:
Here I finally connect the dots about using the camera and doing a photo hunt / Where's Waldo type concept, which turns into the "pan and scan" minigame, another fan favorite, and a really easy one to make from a code / art perspective.
I looked into AR stuff, it basically can't do cool things in an unpredictable environment w/out iphone or android.
8:49 PM
So I think I am going to put lots of little distraction things in the texture and you will control panning and zoom and have to find the right thing, where's waldo style.
could be you just have to navigate and keep a room full of one of the shapes and find the number, I like the idea of the NES movement you mentioned before David
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10:10 PM
I'm done for today, need to rest up
Editor's Note:
Thinking about the UI for the pan and scan minigame. I wanted to use some unusual buttons on this old remote, these fit the bill. We were operating under a mindset that figuring out the controls themselves was part of the puzzle, but watching people struggle at in-person events was enough to make us really spell things out (literally in the TV guide). I also ended up supporting volume up and down for this (in addition to these weird + and - R L buttons) just to make it as foolproof as possible.
if you could make them white just like the white versions of the suits
1:14 PM
that would be perfect
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Editor's Note:
One tricky thing here we discovered was that, since this game used the camera, if the game was set up in front of a light background, the symbols were very hard to see. We ended up making the one you are supposed to find red and added contrasting outlines to them all. Then at GDC we had a red floor which was challenging but still went ok.
yeah maybe, I think that's a good idea, feel weird about it because of the current real news , but maybe I can visually make it less "awful"
Editor's Note:
Unfortunately, we started making a game about hostages just before October 7. So we tried to avoid the word "hostage" (using "victim" instead) and make other considerations to avoid tasteless connections to current events as possible. I have a friend making a game about sniper murders. I generally have a pretty high tolerance for art, but this one almost creeped me out. I suppose it's because I'm more scared of a random sniper murderer than Jason or Freddy, because a random sniper murderer seems more terrifyingly plausible. I think they did some interesting things to make their sniper game more fantastical and they have the player also play as a detective stopping the killer. I'm excited to try it and see how it feels. Our game doesn't have much of a supernatural component, but it has a silly aesthetic and a premise that, for me as an artist, is outlandish enough to feel OK publishing. As you will read, I had some reservations about setting the game in Chicago (or any real city) vs a fictional place, but ultimately I think choosing a Chicago as the setting helped establish a midwestern 80s and 90s aesthetic.
I feel like there is going to have be some discovery by the player about controls. But since the control is novel, people are going to be more willing to explore imo.
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David
Love it, but worried ppl might not get the difference between channel and the other arrow buttons
are you using those arrows (R/L) inputs for something? I guess I just don't understand what inputs are being used and what needs to be shown, do I just need to make it more clear that the arrow buttons belong to that R/L on the remote? And we will assume channel and volume will not be in the UI?
and what is the font you want to use for the other cases (which could be multiple fonts really, depending on what you want to do / case by case)(edited)
I think that's best for TV UI, so volume, channel switching, I was using it as the Killer message too in the UI - let me see what other font I was using for the original broadcast, I can add that
we could do this for the victim counter channel - found some 80s news footage
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Editor's Note:
I am really into the idea of naming the NPCs and reminding the player of these names later. It just seems like a cheap way to instantly have people care more. As I mentioned in the chat earlier, the games like X-Com where they have permadeath on named NPCs are a fun inspiration. But I hate how the penalties for them dying in X-Com are so tied to "gamey" concepts like stats and leveling up. If everyone reloads when someone dies, or NPC death is devastating to player progression, it becomes annoying and not interesting. In Channel: Death, it's almost fun when the NPCs die, like in a horror movie, and I think names are a huge part of that. If a player is frustrated or put in certain gameplay scenarios, they might make choices that intentionally kill an NPC. We ultimately ended up using NPC names as an answer to one of the overarching puzzle quiz questions. (more later) 👇
I guess that makes sense too because otherwise like what you are doing is invalid and things probably need to reset, right?
Editor's Note:
Ultimately, we kept the same passcode after an NPC died, because losing that progress would have been too frustrating. But we still changed the channel back to the "killing floor" to make the player watch the NPC die, because the kill was dramatic and visually interesting and we wanted players to feel some sort of stakes (guilt!).
I feel like thats easiest, and we aint got much time for hard ;P
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Editor's Note:
Once we expanded the game beyond four minigames for GDC / Day of the Devs, we no longer locked each minigame to a particular suit. It's randomly assigned when a passcode is issued.
@Ian I pushed a Channel World Space Canvas prefab that can be put at 0,0,0 and I think is scaled ok for our safe zone to match the visible area. It includes the suit icon. I think we will want to make it look cooler eventually but this is good for testing.
@Ian I pushed a Channel World Space Canvas prefab that can be put at 0,0,0 and I think is scaled ok for our safe zone to match the visible area. It includes the suit icon. I think we will want to make it look cooler eventually but this is good for testing.
I just am thinking of how they say names to memorialize people. I think it gives us an opportunity to show the dumb names more. But it's not required and not sure if it will work well in practice
Editor's Note:
We were too close to the deadline for me to have time to implement the tile-based movement, solve the complexities introduced by having 5 minigames (more than the suits - though we did solve this ultimately for GDC) and finish the other parts of the game. 👇
If I have time, I will set up the turn based movement. Then I guess we would have to change the UI / password to be 5 symbols, or we would need to dynamically pick four of the 5 each time a victim dies.
12:12 PM
I agree, we would want the space to be very small
12:13 PM
I think we should put this on hold until we get the overall game more done.
12:13 PM
Also, @Mike, do you think you could make a quick and dirty 11x17 poster?
Editor's Note:
Here's where we came up with the title. I guess the pressure of the time limit just led to me proposing something. But I'm happy with it! I mean the game is about channels and death...
12:14 PM
Are you guys ok with the title "Channel: Death" or do we have better ideas?
@Ian Just played endless runner, nice Love the eyeballs
1:13 PM
I will say that it was pretty hard for me, but my space bar switch on my keyboard is evidently kind of shitty so that exacerbated the challenge. I wonder if there will be any latency on the remote. Have you tried it with that input?
1:14 PM
Also, when should I try to collect the remote receiver computer thingy?
1:15 PM
Anyway, nice work, this is going to be fun
Editor's Note:
We continuously had to make things easier after watching real players. Tale as old as time.
Haven’t tried it on the remote yet, we got a couple knobs that we can turn if we need to make easier.
1:28 PM
I was thinking I could drop it off tonight or tomorrow. I’m at micro center right now grabbing a longer cord, then I’m going to hit a thrift stop real quick to see if they have any boxes.
1:30 PM
There are a couple thing we will have to go over to get the new remote working, I figure if I drop it off I can show ya how to set it up too.
Ian
I was thinking I could drop it off tonight or tomorrow. I’m at micro center right now grabbing a longer cord, then I’m going to hit a thrift stop real quick to see if they have any boxes.
I'll be at my office where the event is going to be most of the day (and night). I have a 3PM - 4PM meeting (virtual) but feel free to come by whenever is convenient.(edited)
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1:35 PM
Hope you get lucky and find something cool haha
1:36 PM
Wish I knew a good store to recommend but really not sure
I'll be at my office where the event is going to be most of the day (and night). I have a 3PM - 4PM meeting (virtual) but feel free to come by whenever is convenient. (edited)
@Ian sorry for the panick lol. the bug was definitely in the new code. I think I failed to switch back to main once I moved my new code to a branch. Things seem to be working smoothly, easy to use system great work
8:28 PM
I need to make it so that you can't hold down channel change. That behavior works differently on keyboard. And I'll have to playtest all the minigames w/ remote some to figure out difficulty. But shouldn't be a big deal. Almost there!
8:28 PM
Also gotta figure out how to block input to real TV lol(edited)
8:32 PM
ok I found a small piece of cardboard that at least proves it can be blocked. will look for cooler solution later.
added Breaking News, added a long and a short version, not sure what you needed
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Editor's Note:
Part of the game jam was creating a movie style poster. I really wanted to participate! 😅 But of course Mike knocked it out of the park and then we were able to use the visual concepts for other promotional materials.
Mike
added Breaking News, added a long and a short version, not sure what you needed
Yeah I'm not sure either but we can change the text pretty easily
Editor's Note:
The final push! The jam submission was due at 11:59PM. I stayed up late trying to implement the UI scrolling text, blood, and other finishing touches. Here is our final flurry of changes, hampered by day jobs.
Yeah, I got a fix but I might have missed submitting it before I started running chores. Issues with the collider for the kill floor splatter, but I basically just moved all the physics objects in the endless jumper to a different layer.
Then I'm going to put in and ending, at least for what we submit to the reviewers.
2:38 PM
I think I'm going to make it so that after a certain number of people are saved, the killer will put himself on the machine and you can choose if you want to save them.
I got an hour or two for stuff any time tonight if ya need help on anything, with the audio finished I'm feeling pretty wrapped on the Endless Jumper and Simon Slays unless something comes up/ they need tweaks.(edited)
If we don't have time for it - I feel like just starting them on the News description is fine and don't start the killing till they flip off of it the first time(edited)
Editor's Note:
From this point until the day of the event (10/20/23) we got our print materials and installation set up for the show (testing the remote and TV finally 😅).
I think in retrospect the volume minigame, while neat, needs more replay value
10:40 AM
I think the others work with replay
10:40 AM
The other problem is that I like hearing the weird commercials
10:41 AM
so even if I had like random commercials for replay value, it would still be kind of boring, or at least more boring than if you got to hear them. Maybe the better solution for a longer term project would be adding more minigames so that they are random each time.(edited)
Editor's Note:
👆 This is essentially what we did for the next round of festivals. But the in retrospect, I'm not sure it made sense for a concept where many attendees are stopping by once over the course of an event. If you only play once, who cares about replay value? This does seem like it would make the game more interesting for smaller groups or streamers, but I think you would need even more (like a Wario Ware amount) minigames to make this work.
Also, to elaborate on this, the difficulty I'm worried about (at least before we test on remote) is: how long does it take to solve these puzzles?
10:42 AM
I think I give the player 5 minutes rn, but I think that's tough
10:42 AM
like if you fail deep into one of the minigames you're screwed
10:43 AM
you're almost certainly screwed on your first victim, but I think thats OK / good so you see the kill and understand more of the game
10:44 AM
I also set it to spawn the killer after 3 victims have gone through. So we're talking about maybe 15 - 20 minutes to beat the game. That seems like a long time haha.
10:44 AM
For the event, we can make the killer not show up (to end the game) for a long time. Like 3 hours worth of victims I guess.
Yeah my guess is that 5 mins might be too short, especially for the event? The jumper game takes 1 min to complete if perfected, and simon says could def take just as long.
yeah that seems fine to me, although I think they win states oy my games are getting reset on the NewVictim event, so they wouldn't stay "completed" even though the password didnt change
@Ian is there a way to slow down how fast we read input from the remote?
12:11 AM
As in, slow down how fast it repeats the input if we are holding a button down. Right now, on simon says, I basically cannot press the input just once.
another thing I overlooked is I'm going to have to add inputs for every number and then set up reactions to inputs that will enter text into the input fields
Okay, just exposed "wait Time Since last" on the message listerner. That is how long it ignores inputs (it reset if it gets a repeat input). Increase that incrementally until you no longer have the hold buttons issue.
12:19 AM
I guess different computers have different repeat rates on the controller
idk, I'm a couple old styles in right now so not 100% about stuff. I can come by tomorrow and try to troubleshoot in person though if that would be helpful.
Hey @Ian hope your trip was fun! Just to give you an update, people liked the game. Someone from bit bash went to our show and then invited us to show the game at bit bash the next day, which we did and was cool. Lot's of good feedback. I think it would be cool to put a little polish into the game and then try to submit to ctrl.alt.gdc.(edited)
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, but maybe I can visually make it less "awful"
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