Game Jam Archive

Fishing Jam, Continued

Posted May 22, 2013 By Andrew Bradley

Ok, so not exactly daily updates, but here we go.

Some progress is happening in my Fishing Jam game. This is, as previously stated, a fun project, and a good reminder to me of the value of the game jam from a development perspective.

For me, the game jam is always a learning experience, and a valuable one. Previous to this, the only finished projects I’d done were in Lua using LOVE2d, which is a fine framework. But I’ve decided I want to step up my game, and after investigating a large number of options, went with what I found to be the most flexible and useful: Unity3d. This will probably come as a surprise to nobody, as Unity has long had a reputation for flexibility and accessibility. However, it meant learning what in my mind is a more “real” programming language, as Unity scripting is in JavaScript or C#, and I decided to learn C#. I’ve been playing around with Unity for a few months, but the process of this jam is forcing me to really solve problems in C# and is making me a better programmer. There are few thrills like solving a problem in an elegant way, or on your first try, at least for me.

Anyway, on to the game. Sharketype (working title) will probably first be released as a web game, sometime after this week. I am hoping to polish it into a releasable iOS/Android project (especially now that those licenses are free! Thanks Unity) down the line.

You play a shark swimming around an infinite ocean and eating fish. So far, the shark swims, the coral reefs spawn fish which cluster in schools, and everything’s purplish.

See how purplish?

See how purplish?

Moving forward, I hope to make the terrain pac-man like so you can swim forever. I think my ocean floor is big enough where that won’t get boring. Some polish on the reefs, and the hope that they can organically expand. Also the shark doesn’t currently actually EAT the fish, he can just swim near them and give them a menacing glance.

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Fishing Jam, Part 1

Posted May 19, 2013 By Andrew Bradley

I’m not fantastic about updating. Maybe this week.

Anyway, thanks to the Twitter, I found out about this game jam. The 1st ever fishing game jam, and it’s this week, so hey, why not.

The rules are loose, and using the term “rules” gives them even more strength than they really have, because this is the best kind of game jam — they’ve thrown out an appropriately vague theme, given an approximate time to work with, and said Go! So here I’ll go.

I played around Blender a little bit (Warning: Non-artist art ahead), and have created my main character and have him working in Unity here.

All this machine does is swim, and eat, and make little sharks. And that's all.

All this machine does is swim, and eat, and make little sharks. And that’s all.

Next up I’ll be attempting to make the ocean generate randomly each time you play. I have some ideas for that. And most of the game play worked out. This should be a fun week, if I really have time to do it. If I do, I’ll keep things up-to-date here, because what’s the point of a game jam if I don’t?

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