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Game Dev - Game Jam Failed
3 years ago
Another day, another failed project.
To give a quick summary of events. The crocotile jam had a two week time limit. It took four days for me to decide to enter, think of the idea, etc. I also had other commitments. DnD, walking the dog, etc. My idea was a simple horror FPS since the theme was “Halloween”. I assumed I was good to go because 7 day FPS is a thing.
The game would be a FPS set in train maintenance tunnels where the player would be attacked by crude repurposed technology like roombas with blades, or humans crudely mixed with tech like cameras and power tools.
With two days left, I still have to do the AI, logic, levels, sounds, and enemy models and animations. I’m calling this a failed project, and it’s changed my opinion on game jams.
After missing the deadline so much, I came to the conclusion that 7 day FPS games are either-
-made by teams
-made in 8-16 hour a day crunch
-made with stock assets and code
-that I’m slow and rubbish
-a mix of the above
Personally, I’m leaning towards teams or stock assets.
Trying to learn new software and techniques is a no-go. There’s simply no time to wrestle with basic tasks. Spending an hour looking up basic enemy AI behaviour is an hour you don’t have. If you already know this stuff then it’s easy to do as you just type it in, which takes minutes. Same goes for polished assets.
I once heard that a person can manage three hours a day of focused concentration before burnout and productivity drops. Eg. You can keep reading, but you won’t absorb the information. I’d also heard that making games fatigued leads to easily preventable mistakes so it’s best to take breaks. So maybe powering through it, perhaps by saving grunt work or boiler plate code for low productivity hours would be the way to do it.
So for a game like Psycho Logy, going back I can see how they used a few generic panels and buttons, with only the gun and single enemy being modelled.
For a game like Anger Foot I have to believe either a team worked on it, or they knew the pipeline inside out and could focus on putting things together, because it's hard to believe something that polished could be made in 7 days.
I’d like to end this post with some variant of “I can finish this game in two weeks, if there’s interest.” but I don’t know if I can. My attempts at character modelling always failed, and animation and sound editing are largely unknown to me.
To give a quick summary of events. The crocotile jam had a two week time limit. It took four days for me to decide to enter, think of the idea, etc. I also had other commitments. DnD, walking the dog, etc. My idea was a simple horror FPS since the theme was “Halloween”. I assumed I was good to go because 7 day FPS is a thing.
The game would be a FPS set in train maintenance tunnels where the player would be attacked by crude repurposed technology like roombas with blades, or humans crudely mixed with tech like cameras and power tools.
With two days left, I still have to do the AI, logic, levels, sounds, and enemy models and animations. I’m calling this a failed project, and it’s changed my opinion on game jams.
After missing the deadline so much, I came to the conclusion that 7 day FPS games are either-
-made by teams
-made in 8-16 hour a day crunch
-made with stock assets and code
-that I’m slow and rubbish
-a mix of the above
Personally, I’m leaning towards teams or stock assets.
Trying to learn new software and techniques is a no-go. There’s simply no time to wrestle with basic tasks. Spending an hour looking up basic enemy AI behaviour is an hour you don’t have. If you already know this stuff then it’s easy to do as you just type it in, which takes minutes. Same goes for polished assets.
I once heard that a person can manage three hours a day of focused concentration before burnout and productivity drops. Eg. You can keep reading, but you won’t absorb the information. I’d also heard that making games fatigued leads to easily preventable mistakes so it’s best to take breaks. So maybe powering through it, perhaps by saving grunt work or boiler plate code for low productivity hours would be the way to do it.
So for a game like Psycho Logy, going back I can see how they used a few generic panels and buttons, with only the gun and single enemy being modelled.
For a game like Anger Foot I have to believe either a team worked on it, or they knew the pipeline inside out and could focus on putting things together, because it's hard to believe something that polished could be made in 7 days.
I’d like to end this post with some variant of “I can finish this game in two weeks, if there’s interest.” but I don’t know if I can. My attempts at character modelling always failed, and animation and sound editing are largely unknown to me.
I've been trying to get rid of procrastination myself. Listened to interesting podcasts on the matter, but no expert on it.