Learn you a game jam Day One (Learn you a game edition)

Monster Knight (Learn you a game edition)

 The following is a blog that was made although the game jam. It is thoughts, mixed with planning mixed with what I did.

Days

Beginning Days

    When I was a young kid, there was a family computer. It ran on DOS. I would go to my uncles  house, and see a cousin use Q-basic to make games for fun on their computer. I would also use their computer to work on RPG maker. RPG maker would not run on my computer at home. 

    The want to code did not come around until about 7 years ago when I did a hello world project. The the slow journey began, as by now I finally had RPG maker but it was not doing what I wanted it to do. I could have maybe tried to learn RPG maker, but it keep making me want to learn more, and go beyond that. I also tried to make a Pen and paper game in Microsoft Excel. It worked very well for a while but even that I outgrew the functionality.

    I searched for years for "How do you get into coding" and a lot just came to dead ends. Finally. I found Captain coder. I then started to dig deeper into solutions. I started working on a tutorial on a coin collection game with GDscipt. I also faced issues with the code. I then tried unity, with C# and I ran into the issue again "Where to start"

    The learn you a game jam came up. This is an opportunity to push myself, try and make a game. Learn, and maybe because of this there will be more resources come out to help others find where to start, even if not from this jam but from more people learning, that can then make better resources for teaching others. 

    It is now  about 4 hours away from the Jam, the choices are narrowed down to 5 choices in themes, and im ready to start, its just waiting for the theme, and deciding where I want to go. Do I go back to unity with C#? Do I give RPG maker another try? GDscipt with Gadot? Unreal with C++? Python with pygame? so many options. I have decided to wait until the jam starts, then plop down, and just do something. 

That's where I am at now. A few hours away from the game jam starting. This is where it begins.

Day 1

The theme is: You are the monster

The thing I'm going to attempt to start of building my game, and learning is:

My goal: to build a simple game to submit, and maybe fool around with a few different things.

My story is about: A king/knight who gets turned into a monster/demon by a evil wizard, and he has to battle his way back into the castle.

Maybe a side scroller in unity, and or a choose your own adventure in twine.

Today is going to be a short day because I work.

Today I started the process to create the blog, just to do something productive, despite work.

Day 2

Todays goals is to get YouTube set up, and to get a video editor. I want something that is free to use.

Create the character model. 

Open unity, get it set up. 

Check to see if unity is set up to go to 

Did not get the YouTube set up....yet try on day 3

I wanted to make a game that I could submit if all else fails.

What I ended up doing. Fooled around with twine to get it working

watched captain coder

read some documents on twines site https://twinery.org, and joined the discord

Resource:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fp9Sxiv-O-0

I started to learn twine, and I got hooked. Twine was supposed to be a "Make something to put together for the jam, in case I don't get the actual game done" but it has not turned into...this might be what I submit....there is so much to learn, and it is a great fit. I think this was a good fit because this is so good for my skill level...I thought it was so hard at first. It feel like...how am I going to make this just as a thing to put together.

Just being in this jam is WAY advanced for my comfort zone. Never in a million years would I thought I would enter a game jam, I always wanted to make a game.

Day 3

Goal for today. Art start.

Use Aspite to make the images for each character. Including the guards, the 4 characters (or at least one, maybe the demon) The wizard, and the king.

Make a list of: 

what I want to do

Goals

to dos

Start blog pages today or tomorrow day 4

I just worked on sprites all day. IT was a lot of work. I think this was the wrong approach, and I should have just got them from the web. 

So around day 1 or 2 I felt like I wouldn't have the time to make a game and learn, and even though we don't HAVE to make a game, it feels like the learning and making a game, at least at my skill level, and my first jam, and having to work and have other responsibilities are all conflicting. Day 4, should be all about making my story for twine. Get it done, so then I have time to work on the learning part, and blog. I am also forgetting to record stuff.

Day 4

Goals: work on twine. I will need to learn how to have different outcomes. todays focus is going to be purely on twine. Maybe get an editor to make vlogs, and doc. Rework, find YouTube solution for posting....my own website?

I ran into an issue where I put:

$Name: Health Points=$HP  I  Attack Points=$AP  I  Coins=$Coins

in the input the name was coming up o or 0 in the name spot. I realized some code uses capitals and some do not as explained one time by Captain Coder, I tried:

$name: Health Points=$HP  I  Attack Points=$AP  I  Coins=$Coins 

and it worked. The "N" in name was capitalized. I tried that and it fixed the issue.

Twine Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fp9Sxiv-O-0

Day 5

Learned more about Harlow the documents page and videos on creating a choose your own adventure, still very much behind. not meeting any targets. 

https://twinery.org/forum/discussion/2990/remembering-character-creation-options

Day 6

Started getting to ambitious with the story, for the time, and knowledge I had to cut the story down....for now. 

Day 7

Harlow docs: https://twine2.neocities.org/

Turn based system

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DOSay0XHPwQ

Combat system

https://www.reddit.com/r/twinegames/comments/3mq2rs/combat_system_in_harlowe_my_twine_2_guide_3/

Day 8

Figured out how to submit on itch.

Day 9

Made title card

Day 10

Work and finalizing 

What did I learn?

Twine

    I Learned Twine. I had no idea this existed. At first I started with it because of the time crunch, and learning, and getting basics down fast. Twine, for me, for this project, for this game jam was meant to be a "Learn this so I can get something done, so that I can also blog, record the journey, and get something submitted....and that's what it was....but it became so much more. This is something I plan on continuing with going forward, and learning more about it. 

CSS

    Maybe I am late to the party but I finally learned what Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) means. I heard "CSS" all the time, and I learned that it meant Cascading Style Sheets which is 

Combat System in Twine

    Combat system that allows turn based combat in the story. I sound the steps to make the combat system here: 

https://www.reddit.com/r/twinegames/comments/3mq2rs/combat_system_in_harlowe_my_twine_2_guide_3/

Embedding

    I took my game jam learning even further, I found a way to embed it on my website. So that people who visit my website can play the game. I plan on taking this even further.