pmprog
Member
I've indicated I'm dual logging on the TINS site, so yes, I can't reveal anything from the wishlist really.
I've been away for a few days, so not much progress (other than some thoughts on gameplay); and yes, it's going to have a Super Crate Box style of gameplay to it, just winter themed 😃 and you've got to protect the presents from the goblins.
Got just a week left, and not sure how finished I'll get, hopefully I can at least get the player in the level so you can pickup, drop and throw presents and snowballs.
I've ditched the modified assets, just to prevent any issues; and reworked my own. You can now enter the "game", but not do anything yet.
Am moving away from the wish-list in terms of gameplay for something that fits the style a bit more
Not overly thrilled with the snow falling, but that can be tweaked later, but here's the opening sequence
I grabbed some usable assets from itch, and modified them to give a christmas theme, but you won't see them until I get into the gameplay. The wish list gave me something which I think I'm capable of doing, so I won't reveal too much about that yet.
I kind of regret entering this jam, considering the amount of work I've got on, but you know what they say... if you don't try...
On desktop, I love using a library called Allegro, and they have their own game jam community called TINS; and along came the KrampusHack, which is a secret santa game jam thing. I thought it might be pretty interesting to join in...
Each participant submits a "wish list", and at the start of the jam, you are presented with one of the other participants wish-list. None of it is "required", but it is encouraged to try and fit the brief. The one I've got has some bits I think I'm capable of, and within the limits of the GBA too...
But wait... why am I annoying the GBA community with an Allegro jam... Well, Allegro is preferred, but not required, and whilst I am using Allegro, my game engine builds for both desktop and the GBA! So you'll all be getting a little Christmas game at the end of December, start of January.
Dev logs are encouraged on TINS, so I thought I'd kind of double-key and give you all the exciting news of my production too...
I'm pmprog, short for Polymath Programming, you'll probably find my name around, sometimes spelt differently too, but that's a story I'll leave for another day :)
I started on a Commodore 64 learning BASIC, mostly to load games at the start, then to make some simple applications and games. I shifted up to an Amiga 600, but never really found my feet programming for it. I remember playing a bit with AMOS though. But I really started to cut my teeth on my dad's 386 using QBasic. Interestingly though, I moved to learning x86 Assembly language, as I couldn't wrap my head around C at the time.
As time progressed, Visual Basic 3 came out, so I moved up to that for writing applications, I'd pretty much stopped trying to make games, until a few years down the line when I discovered the likes of SDL 1.2 and Allegro 4, where I then put some effort into learning C (and C++).
My day is consumed mostly at work coding a business platform in C#, and my hobby development tends to result in me writing thousands of game framework/engines without actually producing a game out of any of them.
Growing up, I had a Gameboy and later a Gameboy Colour, but always liked the idea of a GBA, so when I discovered the GBAJam 2021, I figured, why not? Tigermoth never got properly finished, or polished. To be honest, I don't really play bullet hell games, so it was all shots in the dark. Still, it was something that was "playable", which is far more than I'd accomplished with most of my other projects.
Watching Shallan50k's stream one night, he was doing Doc Cosmos for the GBC, and talk in the chat about Luma, a charity stream puzzle game for the C64. I asked if I could port it to the GBA, which he was happy for me to do, and put me in touch with the publisher... I now have a shiny box with a GBA cart of a game I've made (well, ported...). Feels good, though I can imagine it'd be better if it was a game I'd designed. Still... I donated all my proceeds from the game to a foodbank charity, in line with Shallan's original construction of the game.
I tried to get registered for Switch development, but was rejected. Maybe due to no previous commercial release (Luma hadn't been released at that point), or maybe because I didn't really have a plan for what I wanted to make on the Switch... I doubt either helped.
I started trying to build a GBA Game Maker tool, which has generally stalled, mostly because of my frustrations with modern technology, and my prodominant move over to Linux. As my preferred GUI toolkit is WinForms with dotNET, which doesn't work under Linux. WPF/Avalonia/MAUI rub me up the wrong way; and I switched between those Qt/C++ a couple of times. The constant jumping between certainly isn't helping either.
I think the main reason I rarely finish a game project is basically everything other than programming. My art skills are woefully lacking; and my musicality is worse. I know people tend to pull in other assets as placeholders, I don't really like doing that, for some reason.
I have an idea for a couple of brand new games (might prototype on PC first, as should be quicker), and also considering if I can get permission to port an old C64 game to the GBA (though need to try and prototype it a bit first)... The GBA Maker isn't out the window completely yet either, and maybe I'll use that as a basis to build my next GBA game. We'll see.