createev.games

Yin and Yang in search of Harmony - Lessons learned

2021-02-25T09:51:11+00:00

Hi all,

I found that a practice of self reflecting after project is completed is very fulfilling. That’s why i wrote this short summary of lessons learnt during recent Brackeys game jam.

As a result of that one week i finished my second ever game - Yin and Yang in search of Harmony (Play here).

TL; DR

Spending time to make sure all elements are in harmony (pun intended) pays off big time. Visual aesthetic, theme, topic, gameplay, effects, music and sound - all play vital role to create a feel of the game.

What went well:

Significant time was spent just to find a gameplay and fun elements. Most of Sunday was about messing around with different ideas until this game mechanics was found - to move characters with one set of controls.
Significant time was spent to work on visuals, colors, characters, finish elements (even if you barely notice any work behind it because of its simplicity - but it is the point actually).
Significant time was spent on story (even you do not see or read it). I wanted a complete story and it did not click for many days. Literally wrote a script (several drafts actually). But when it had clicked after many trials - the path literally became clear and since then i had a guiding element for all aspects - music (do you hear loss and hope there?), visuals, animations, etc.
Significant time was spent on main menu and on making it feel right and in harmony with overall game concept.
Using source control! My Macbook pro battery ceased to operate on Thursday in the middle of me doing Menu - i had to switch to another computer only loosing about 1 hour of work (still painful though). Use source control!)
Spending time between jams to learn the craft / elements of the craft - i spent 2 weeks learning Adobe Illustrator(mostly) and Photoshop, doing all possible tutorials and messing around with Adobe->Unity workflow. I wrote last time that i installed inkscape and gimp for the first ever(!) time 1 day before jam deadline - and it did not work well of course. this time i at least managed to create my simple elements for my simple game and choose colors wisely too.
Being consistently brutal on scope and my abilities (i wrote about it here in my postmortem from previous game (https://createev.itch.io/greedy-honeypot-in-rock/devlog/219130/greedy-honeypot-in-rock-postmortem). Unfortunately i did not manage to try many new things i hoped but important to note that it was intentional: gameplay, fun and overall feel were put to priority.
Using my existing strength - music. It turned out pretty well especially knowing i composed and recorded it during last 2 hours before submission deadline.

What went not so well:

Time! It was a crazy week on my day job and in my family - i spend 0 minutes on Tuesday, Wednesday and Friday and only couple of hours overall on Monday/Thursday (and had to redo my menu because of macbook’s battery…). By only keeping north star and brutal prioritization game was brought to life in a complete way.
Motivation. I also was kind of demotivated at the stage when gameplay was found but overall story and concept were not yet (end of Sunday to around Saturday morning). Did not feel the potential in the game with 2 little cubes jumping on platforms to reach finish cubes (which looked like formula 1 chess-textured finish line at that time => far from final aesthetics). For example i decided to work on Menu on Thursday out of desperation - cause i had no idea what to do in the game itself. It actually helped in overall concept and story cause menu is kind of cover page for the game.
Level design - it is science and art and it is hard! So hard that i was avoiding this work for the whole week. Levels were created very quickly and i had until very end a card in my Trello board to go through and make them progressive and more interesting - it turned out i had no time for it (or i made it this way that i had no time))).
Gameplay and variety - it is a pity that i could not manage to find time and motivation to try all different design elements in levels and gameplay - maybe next time it would a good idea to spent more time on trying many different elements before going to production (it actually worked better for my previous game - Greedy Honeypot in Rock - where i tried much more different ideas and mechanics than what ended up in the simple game).
Story telling - also mention it here cause it was not easy at all. I have a feeling that working to master this element is a crucial step to learn game design.

New game development skills i tried for the first time in this Game Jam:

Overall game aesthetics and design - it was real fun at the end to make a complete experience and big important learning for me.
Adobe Illustrator - my first (very simple) vector graphics in the game.
Choosing colors wisely - no, this are not just black and white colors). #1D1D1D and #EEEEEE if you are curious))
Level design - i can not claim i succeeded - but i never did it before
Main menu UI and level selection
Animations events
Crunching - unfortunately i had to do weekend crunch - an experience for me

Lessons learned:

Creative process is hard - you need to show up every day even if there is no motivation, and focus on most important thing (in my case it was a story which when was ready clicked and cleared the path for final crunch).
Story and overarching concept is important - it is much more pleasant to look and experience game as a whole if all elements are in sync. And it also hides some flaws and even bugs)
Use your existing skills and strengths - in my case it is music, programming and project management skills (to make sure this lazy game developer (me) finishes right work on time)))
Find unique fun and gameplay element (even tiny) first and expand on it - using story to explain why it is so, or gameplay elements, and everything else.
Do not afraid to learn new skills, learn the craft - you can’t imagine how proud i am of using my art(!) in the game. even so simple as it is.
Use source control! )

And finally (I should not say this of course and/or recommend) - crunch if needed, but finish the game.

Thank you all for your support and I hope you find my reflections and thoughts valuable for you and maybe you pick something for your own gamedev journey.

Of course i will appreciate if you check my game and provide feedback and rate it too Yin and Yang in search of Harmony.

All the best! Andrey “Createev”

Greedy Honeypot in Rock - Postmortem

2021-02-04T09:50:11+00:00

Hi all! Following advice from Noa’s video 29 game jam tips i would like to share my experience of participating in the first ever jam of mine - Blackhtornprod #3.

Executive) summary / TL;DR

I released a game! It is the first ever finished game of mine, thanks to Noa and all of you!

What went well:

First 2.5 days were spent to find addictive fun game loop. Brackeys, Noa and all other gurus were right - you first need to use cubes and polygons but find addictive loop and only AFTER that you enrich it with theme, art etc.
Being brutal on scope and my abilities and skills. Even with me cutting everything which was more than beginner level from the scope - i still had to do many things for the first time: like animations, adding audio and music, editing sprites, creating builds, submitting to itch to name a few) And each of these involved research, trial & error etc.
Using source control - there were times when i moved back to previous versions and/or forked some different ideas. And now it is the source of truth for this Devlog!
Adding my original music and using my non-beginner music skills to make game unique (that’s why it is “In Rock”).
Having fun and involving my kids in the process. Even that some of their help did not make it to final product it was a fun and great creative experience. Some of collaboration you can hear in “N-yah-m” sounds…)
Somehow i managed to squeeze couple of hours on weekdays (besides empty Thursday) by either pushing forward or delegating most of creative and/or time-consuming work from my dayjob. I am still paying it back though… this week is tough…

What went not so well:

You need art, music, sounds, animations, code, prefabs, scenes, and a lot more to complete even the simpliest of all games like the one i created.
And if coding and basic game development in Unity was kind of okeish, image editing and art was complete pain. And not just from aesthetic point of view but from tool usage skills point of view! I spent some time (few months) to learn Unity but zero(0!) hours to even learn GIMP or Inkscape or PS… I literally downloaded those for the first time during game jam…

Below I will describe Final result, process and finish with Lessons learnt in the end.

Final result

I would start from the end - i released a game! yes, it is tiny, little, with clunky graphics and googled art, but it is a completed game with unique experience and addictive game loop.

The game is about one Greedy Honeypot who loves honey and Rock’n’Roll. But is scared to death by bees…) You collect honey and dodge from ever growing army of bees. Nice.)

I am sincerely interested in your feedback and ratings: Greedy Honeypot in Rock

Process

Find FUN game loop:

I guess it was a wise decision to spend both Saturday and Sunday on trying to find a fun game loop. From commit history you can say I quickly went from:

Player movement - of course)
Crystals (then - Honey) to collect and score
Crystal to spawn enemies after they are collected

Then I experimented with different types of enemies:

A box which moves to player, hits when approaching, take away crystal, puts it back on place and attacks again… pretty complex, i know…
A Kamikaze box which moves to player and hits and destroy itself. It was actually the first time i felt there is a fun loop in the prototype. In fact this is what i wrote in commit description: FUN with kamikazes!!! good sign.

From then i still spent rest of Sunday and Monday morning on different experiments:

Returner who just hits, picks up crystal and place it back
Bullets and turrets which appear on crystal place
Carousel appearing on crystal place which rotates and hits on touch
Random direction straightly firing cannon.
And of course back to FUN with Kamikazes

Below is commit history of that stage (newer commits at the top)

Playtesting

At this point I invited my kids (and wife) to do some play testing. Watching how it was going gave my a confidence we are on something addictive and fun. And also provided some (constructive) input)

Theme for game loop

You can see that as soon as i was back to “FUN with kamikazes” I started to think of theme and what real life behaviour this prototype could represent… and voila - next commit was already “Bee and animations”. Unfortunately I can not recall now how Bee-theme came to be but thinking process was: here is prototype, what real life situation could represent it.

Since then actual production started - i was adding sprites and animations, tweaking images and also created UI.

Music and audio

My another hobby is music. In fact coincidentally my band released a new Single right on Friday, Jan 29, the day of game submission)) Not to plug myself but rather to share my creative work in full transparency this page contains links to Apple Music, Spotify etc. for this single: https://band.link/Lypmd

So I had a little rock’n’roll theme in my head during that week and i decided to use it for the game music. And so I went on and recorded the theme using my Fender Stratocaster guitar and Logic Pro X. It was Wednesday, 27th.

Then sounds were recorded, including ZZZ sounds of bees, Nyam sounds (when pot “eats” honey) with my son - it was of course absolute fun to mess with different sound ideas with my 6yo old).

Bug fixes, art and submission

There are zero commits on Thursday - indeed i was totally busy and did nothing besides reading itch.io and unity manuals on how to create builds and submit to itch.io.

And then real pain started…

Icon for the game? i opened GIMP and started to do some awful moves…
Splash screen?
Image manipulation?
Better background?
Smoother edges?

So i found i lack any GIMP skills whatsoever => and they are required even if all your graphics is vector based and/or imported.

I spent whole Friday building, fixing bugs and rebuilding a game. I guess game was submitted at least 7-8 times before i decided it is clean enough to be published. Every time some little bug was found (by me).

Lessons learned

New game development skills I tried for the first time in this Game jam:

There is a tremendous benefit from this game jam for me trying (and applying!!) new skills. To name a few below are areas i never touched before in gamedev:

Animations - never done any of this
Audio and music
Sprite editing, GIMP, Inkscape
Creating builds for different platforms in Unity
Preparing game page in itch.io and submitting a game

Process

Empty calendar before game jam starts. I can not imagine having any success without deliberate focus on making sure there are time blocks every day for this
Find the fun first! I strongly suspect if there was a fun in prototype i would not finish it at all.
Play test early and often - my kids were play testing the game and i gained so much insight just by observing them (and interviewing).

Skills

Even if you work in a team and/or use 3rd party assets and art - you still need some basic skills of image manipulation etc.
So you have to have some basic skills across different areas (that’s why gamedev is hard).
Use your strengths to make game unique - I guess programming and music are what i know best that’s why i plan to use those skills to bigger extent next time to shine through not so great other areas and make games unique.

And, finally, as First Tree maker said: Finish the f…g game!))

Thank you all and i hope you find my thoughts valuable and useful for your gamedev journey.

Of course i will appreciate if you check my tiny little game and provide feedback and rate it too: Greedy Honeypot in Rock.

All the best,
Andrey “Createev”