Edward is in the SKG 2026 community game jam!
DAY ZERO
The theme has not been announced. The jam has not started yet. Edward is preparing.
I'm trying to make this page as easy and fast to update as possible. I'll be adding commentary and pictures to it during the game jam. Most likely they'll come out at night, after development for that day has finished.
Here's a picture from Place Cats. Might remove later.
DAY ONE
I awake surprisingly before 8:00 AM. The computer calls to me.
It's going to take a lot of thinking to make sense of this one.
"High Score Chasers"... Not very comforting.
The work I had to do initiated as I computered there at about 8:00 am. Trying to think of how to use this
theme without dishonouring myself was a pain in the ass, but I realized that time spent pacing over it could
easily be used to work on my font. I wrote out the however many letters and symbols and then did some tests
to make sure I could render it right. I did in fact rig a pretty strange graphical system this time.
Lots of code areas started and then tapered off, and my willpower was not helping my focus. I had to concede that this is not like how I was last time, I didn't have that same powerful drive. More than two hours passed, and I was starting to not feel like I wanted to be here.
At least I seem to have written the right time step.
This is what I came up with after spending an annoying amount of time on framework stuff and proper handling of being in full screen.
DAY TWO
Stumblings.
Finally, we have a leading character.
Welcome to the game...
The Last Compact Disk
That is indeed what it's about. I want to make regular levels, a vitality-bolstering system, and a randomly generated wilderness place where you can work for resources but you can only attempt it once per level.
The gameplay loop has been started, tested, and "refined", but it still feels a bit weird. I'll have to make an actual level and see how it looks.
For your reference, you can move left or right, bounce upward every 1.6 or so seconds, and use the down key to apply a rotational force to the CD. This last one comes at a cost. If you use it too much, you'll run out of quick spins. The idea is that you should use them sparingly, and if you run out, you might have a chance to go to the wilderness and gather some more of them.
There's currently a basic game reset in this debug room, but it's not complete and I still need to deal with damage-taking, death animations, and enemy behaviours.
Update as of 5:33 PM. I have given the CD you control a damage aura, which only comes out when you're spinning fast enough. Excellent! For a game about an intelligent CD this makes a lot of sense. This will be how you defeat the vulnerable enemies.
An older image from Day 2.
DAY THREE
This day was going pretty well. Up to some point.
I ran into trouble with the 2D background tile renderer, specifically the part that says where the
repetitions upward stop continuing as of 1 PM. This water is supposed to scroll with the camera one-to-one and not randomly cut out during executions
of certain Y values.
I'm feeling the fear, too. Worries that I won't be fast enough. And I'll be so sad if I have to abandon the Wilderlands in the end. I'll be horrified if I have to abandon parts of the game's quality that I think are essential.
Anyway, those boxes will give you items when they break. I'm intending to make it so that breaking every box in a level all in one go will make that level "more complete". Some kind of totem will be had. It doesn't matter how far away from them you are when they break, you'll automatically get the loot if they either move too fast or touch you once. This behaviour has yet to be coded. Amounts are randomly selected upon world load, however the numbers of items are significantly affected by what symbol a box has. Even though I'll probably just be mixing the markings around randy-bandy when I'm drawing the maps. And at least I can draw maps! Earlier on this morning the fucking mapmaker I wrote had polygons that broke. I had to spend like 30 minutes just editing THAT. And I already did heaps of updates to my mapping tool two days before the jam started. I thought that was enough...
It is 2:03 PM.
HOOOOOO BOOY.
~~~~~~~~~~
Day Three is basically over. I figured out what was causing problems with repeating graphic tiles, and I got the basic layout done for the first level... Without making enemies and goal points work. Haghck, I didn't even get signs and trees to render again. Still gotta figure out what's wrong with that one.
It turns out that right now, the y-limit places on my graphic tile repeaters don't work properly if that place is not divisible by the right number. In this case, that number is the "repeat width", or what is put in the code to decide how spaced each tile should be. Which is not 0, it's 32 for this one. 32 from one tile's top left corner across to the next tile's top left corner. And you can space them out but that's not my main point. The problem is that without "round" values the tile ending place flips out and blinks over and over. It was really annoying but by Scott I've figured out how to fix it.
Here are the images. I think you'll start to know what I'm doing to keep it on-theme.
DAY FOUR
I'm starting to feel the pressure now.
I might not be able to add the Wilderlands, I might not add the automated dialogue cutscenes, and I'm definitely not going to add that bird's-eye-view overworld I came up with a while ago where you can go to different levels and talk to NPCs. I got combat working but even now I still haven't given any of the entities pathfinding.
As you can see, I changed the water. I still need to change the sky. Every level of this game should have its own theme... background colours, ground-texturing, and moving background scenery. I think I can do it, but the question is how much of it I can do.
In New Zealand it's 12:26 PM...
I also made the wooden chests give items to the player when they're broken. It doesn't even matter if the breakage is the compact disk's fault. The items are health and spin points so far, but I haven't made an animation that shows something "coming out" of the boxes yet.
More progress got made...
Day Four is over. I am now officially in the last underhalf mark.
DAY FIVE
I need to texture the damn ground.
The ground is done! Though it looks a little distorted sometimes.
I also made a save system that is supposed to be correctly saving whether or not you collected all boxes by level's end. I had to fix a lot of box bugs to get the counter working right as well.
I am now almost certain that there will be no procedurally-generated wilderness, where you get resources, fluff about, watch a cutscene, or anything.
It was a magical idea, but the duration of the jam has gone on so long by this point that not only would it probably kill the last of my previous remaining development time needed for other things, but also I have forgotten what made the feeling of The Wilderlands so special to me. There are no button menus, and only three levels are "complete". I still haven't animated the enemies at all either. I better take this break I'm on, and then get a move.
This is crazy, I want to get out of here. (*ะด*)
See you on Day Six.
DAY SIX
It's really getting down to the edge now. I have less than 15 hours to put the game into a "complete" state so that I can spend the last day doing critical compilation and testing stuff. I don't want to leave something like the level reset programming to Day Seven, I just know that would be madness.
9:02 in the morning. I got up a lot sooner this time. This is the first screenshot I took.
Time is getting old.
Modding support, saving and loading progress, saving and loading options, fully resetting game worlds... Yes, I am living it. If you're just using a framework, this is not easy.
It's 4:24 PM and mum is working on half of the music right now.
I hope this all works out.
Goodbye Wilderlands. You were nice, and I hoped for you.
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It's now 9:13 PM on Day Six, and I am spent. The game is almost complete. I just need to put mum's music in it and bundle it, basically. I know it can be done. Just, oh please, please tell me I didn't fuck up the time step.
DAY SEVEN
This is it! My last day to put the game in. I need to add mum's new music to the game, and I better do it quickly.
And then...
I think it's over. I probably don't have to strain myself any further today. The game, as it is with its current Version 1a flaws, has been submitted.
If you think something is seriously wrong with the game speed, please tell me immediately, before the last 19 hours are gone.