108 Adventure Game Challenge

[steep briar]

Don't think we'll do another Powerjam this year but there's the AdventureX jam in November I think

[lost violet]

Game jams. Tough racket.
https://tenor.com/view/glenn-gary-glenn-ross-gif-18999589

[uneven summit]

Yeah, I think I'll be sitting that one out!
I have three little games to polish now, I think that's enough to be getting on with...!
I do like the idea of doing a gritty one to make the kids go "SICK!!!" though...

[lost violet]

A good play is to do a significant jam every 6 months or so. Skill up in the meantime working on maybe a larger personal project (just something for Itch). But working here and there in the down time keeps you sharp for when a jam comes around. I never do this, btw...but it's good advice. hah

I also think it's a great idea to polish past efforts just to the diminishing returns bit. Maybe 2-3 weeks of leisurely efforts that won't bother the family!

[west ledge]

indeed

[uneven summit]

Yeah! I put some work into getting the story all worked out, so I really want to get to the end of that. And then I have all of these Display: 'This happens' and it feels like a good time to practice doing little animations and testing out bits of sound and stuff, just to raise the game.

[sinful copper]

I’m gonna step up my treason a bit and help my team polish their Popochui game a bit. Then I’ll probably settle back and finish a one or two of my PQ games by the end of the year. Speaking of diminishing returns, I have several games that have not even been published or I polished but haven’t bothered to release. I actually haven’t committed to any large project yet, but I think that should be a goal by the end of year.

So PJ4 finish something sounds good to me!

In most likely to do something like discussed here do a series of games and then make a polished bundle. I’ll have to really discipline myself to take on a commercial game if ever

[kind pagoda]

my post-jam plans are the Italian translation and maybe adding a few animations like picking up stuff and the down/up anims

then I think I'll try to port all my old games to PowerQuest and try to set up a "Gugames Jampilation" game on Steam with all of them. I want to put them on Steam (for free) but I don't want to spend 100$ for every single one 😅 it's too many now

[uneven summit]

Do you think free is better than 2€ in this case? I guess it means you can just click download to get 'em...

[steep briar]

Yeah you could charge a tenner easy. There's a lot of content there. Might not make much but it'd be good value and I think people would be happy to pay for a nice bundle

I'm planning to package up telwynium once its done and sell that as one game

[uneven summit]

Presumably just after you ship The Drifter?!?

[rotund crystal]

I’m in for the boxed copy with physical copy protection!

[kind pagoda]

yay, Yann from Goloso Games just found a game freezing bug in my game 😛

[kind pagoda]

luckily just fixed and uploaded 😅

[sinful copper]

@lethal spruce finished yours. It reminded me of visiting Nottingham/Sherwood Forest as a teenager and throwing a fit about my dad taking a photo of me in a kid's robin hood hat. Anyway, the ending was unexpected and halarious. Some feedback obviously this being an impressive protype with spawning, etc. More signage to indicate where to go and who to talk to. Zooming in and out could be an interesting feature here as well. I overlooked the coin at first and wondered around quite a bit. I was able to walk into the castle with the soldier and hangout inside. I actually have an unfished game that works similar where I was also considering spawning characters in an open world maze like this. The open world maze was also the reason I've never finished LOL. Too much art to polish and gameplay needed a lot.

[steep briar]

@uneven summit Played through yours. You were super ambitious! Did great to get as far as you did and it serves as a great demo for the full thing too. I really loved the spaceship design and the baby art. Especially the "Device" baby, such a cool room. Your background art is great, I have some thoughts on character art too but only if you want it. Also didn't expect the sweary grown up humor with the style, but it's pretty fun and tongue in cheek 😄

I could see how the logic would get muddled with 4 separate quest lines and things. Definitely would be easier to track with enums. One for each baby, like. eg. ||enum eGreenBaby { Start, Seen, Killed, Listened, KnowAnswer }||
And a few other things can make it easier, like you can check I.Diary.EverCollected instead of I.Diary.Owned. ||I could get a second copy of the diary once I'd given it away the way you did it.|| (though I don't know why I didn't call that property "EverOwned", would have been more obvious :P)

[sinful copper]

@lethal spruce my open world thingy. I was also experimenting with a dither shader which is pretty sweet too. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uqf9D2fHUl8

[steep briar]

SUDDENLY BARNEY

[sinful copper]

haha wait until you see you.

you're the wizard

this one is actually pretty close, but what i did was make a big maze so the entire game is complete except the middle doesn't play well and haven't been motivated to fix it up and complete the map art. I overwhelmed myself.

the gnome is pretty funny and there's a puzzle that you have to fool a goat on a bridge.

[sinful copper]

@manic rapids Loved it! Nice work. Even if I couldn't place that cat on the tree stump.

[uneven summit]

this looks great!

[uneven summit]

Hey Dave. Thanks for playing through. Glad you enjoyed it. I'm still working on with it, trying to get the rest finished and to make the gameplay I have a bit more diverse. The jam is about half the story.
AH yes, the diary. It slipped through me brain net. I did know about EverCollected, just didn't think to use it there.
All feedback is good feedback so I'd be happy to hear your thoughts on the character art too.
I just can't see how the enums work yet. Is there an relevant example in one of your gamejam entires where I can see it in the source code and trace it through? I've looked at the w3 and it hasn't made sense - yet...

[steep briar]

You could post some of your game logic/varibles and I could say how i'd change those to enums? It's not hard though honestly

[kind pagoda]

enums are just "named ints" but I never use them anyway 😛

[steep briar]

OK, thought of an example from your game.

For the baddie talking to the babies, you maybe have this in your globals script header:

public bool m_talkingGreen = false;
public bool m_talkingRed = false;
public bool m_talkingBlue = false;

So when you want to set him "Talking to the red baby" you'd have to do this which is really messy:

Globals.m_talkingGreen = false;
Globals.m_talkingRed = true;
Globals.m_talkingBlue = false;

And to check if he's talking to the green baby:

if ( Globals.m_talkingGreen )...

Not bad, but to check he's not talking to any, it's:

if ( !Globals.m_talkingGreen && !Globals.m_talkingRed && !Globals.m_talkingBlue ) ...

Which gets really confusing and error prone fast

So with enums you'd do this in your global script header to set up a variable which is one of the 4 possibilities:

public enum eTalking { None, Green, Red, Blue };
public eTalking m_talking = eTalking.None;

So when you want to set him "Talking to the red baby":

E.Set(eTalking.Red);

And to check if he's talking to the green baby:

if ( E.Is(eTalking.Green) ) ...

Or to check none

if ( E.Is(eTalking.None) )...

It's probably one of those thigns you just need to try yourself. It's a lot easier really than what I imagine you've been doing 😉

[steep briar]

Do you have a text doc somewhere where you've written what all your random ints mean? I remember doing that for my AGS games ha ha

[kind pagoda]

I tend to use const int now so I have a lot of BIG_LETTERS_WITH_A_MEANING 😆

but I should really go for enums for stuff like acts because if(Globals.Act3 || Globals.Act2) is annoying

[steep briar]

Haha, found my old sample. I think in old AGS you had to use GetGlobalInt/SetGlobalInt and just pass it a number and get a number back. So fun 😛

made code so unreadable

[kind pagoda]

now you reminded me of how you had to reserve a bunch of ints in case you wanted to extend the game later and make it savegame compatible

that's an enormous downside of AGS

[steep briar]

That's not bad, but more typing than with the enum extension stuff I just moved to core, and autocomplete helps a lot too with remembering what options you had in an enum.

[uneven summit]

Ahhhh, I kind of see - so it's like a named int

[steep briar]

yeah exactly

more or less literally that 😛

Also guga, a lot less typing- and you can't accidentally set the wrong variable to your const int, since the compiler will tell you.
eg.
if ( Globals.m_statue == Globals.STATUE_BOWL )
vs.
if ( E.Is(eStatue.Bowl) )

[lost violet]

@kind pagoda Switch to enums. You know better 😉 All of you...do likewise.

[kind pagoda]

ok, that's my goal for AdvXJam2024 😛 an enum game

[lost violet]

Literally. All enums are is 0..n, renamed to be human readable and held in a nice little container, vs a million bools to track.

They were a no brainer before, but after Dave rolling in his enum extension it's plum crazy to not use them now!

[lost violet]

Discovering this was the final nail in me leaving AGS. I mean you can still make a ton of money making/shipping games on AGS but that shit is just nonsense. Talking to some devs they were reserving like 99 of each data type for patches. Just in case.

[steep briar]

I assumed the patching thing was fixed years ago, it might be, I know there's people working on improvements and that was one of the big ones

[kind pagoda]

I haven't touched AGS in three or four years so maybe this has changed 🤷‍♂️ I mean, I'm glad that AGS still resists, I'll always love it like you love your first car, but I'm never going back

[lost violet]

I don't think so Dave but that was early/mid 2022? But I don't think there were many core engine changes planned or going.

[west ledge]

the only reason I would try out AGS would be to use an older version that can build for DOS

being Windows only was a deal breaker for me, and apart from that I've heard a lot of issues like the ones you're mentioning

another deal breaker is the difficulty of porting

[lost violet]

I think ports matter but for PnC games...ports aren't going to make you any real money, so I'm not sure it matters much. Mac is like 1-3% of PC sales. Mobile is pretty dead. Xbox/PS5 aren't a place for PnCs. Switch - maybe. But I worried more about AGS future proofing. I suppose those in charge of it will keep it limping along at least on PC indefinitely. But too much was left to random forum / community ppl to write free modules. Good luck with that.

[west ledge]

I think Switch does numbers, I always meant to ask some people about this- no other way of knowing

I believe Tom Hardwidge had success on the Switch

but he is using Visionaire 😉

[kind pagoda]

I've also been told that the Switch is a good market for adventure games

[west ledge]

on the other hand Tom even tried out iOS which I doubt if it sold anything

[kind pagoda]

I was thinking of porting TWoAF just to be able to say "I have a game on a Nintendo console"

[west ledge]

but to have the option...

[kind pagoda]

so that my daughters can boast it with their peers 😆

[lost violet]

Numbers? Not really. Everything I've heard is very small compared to the already small pc numbers. In most cases a dev porting them is better advise to put that time (3 months ?) into a new game vs what they'd make on Switch.

[steep briar]

Yeah definitely want the option, especially if the game does well on steam, even if it's 20% of sales, that can be a lot to miss out on becaue of engine choice

[lost violet]

You have to get real numbers vs just reading social media and assuming they did well.

[kind pagoda]

he said that iOS is absolutely not worth it

[west ledge]

my friend Manos who did the art, wants to show the game we made for the Challenge at a "bring your dad at school" day , and I think we'll polish and add controller support and put it on a switch or steamdeck 😄

[west ledge]

was expecting that 😄

[west ledge]

yeah definitely, I meant to ask Tom up close last time I saw him but I couldn't just ask him straight out, we were having fun with all the craziness Develop is

Adam (locomotive) is releasing for the Switch though and he is using PQ

[kind pagoda]

true, but there are factors other than mere numbers and money - like "I need a nintendo switch to test my game" is a great excuse to convince a wife who wasn't too thrilled about buying a console for the kids 🤔

[west ledge]

hahahahaahha

[lost violet]

Loco-Motive has 100k wish lists. It's big enough to worry about a Switch port. Unicorn in the PnC world. And their publisher probably demanded / paid for it anyway, so...

[west ledge]

Would love to chat him about his journey with it after he survives the release

[steep briar]

Ability to port is still important to have as an option, regardless of whether you end up doing it on a given project

[lost violet]

lol a switch is what...$300? What sort of monster would withold Nintendo from her children? Divorce.

[lost violet]

100% agree. You never know. Just saying...

[steep briar]

Dev kits cost a lot more Guga- and you can't play retail games on them bahaha

[lost violet]

Being on Unity and ability to port essentially keeps your game alive as long as Unity survives.

[kind pagoda]

That's the actual purchase. But my wife doesn't know that. I'll buy an actual Switch along with the devkit 😛

[west ledge]

yeah well it depends on a lot of facotrs, but let's say you were looking for a some money and were talking to people , and you were going , it's on AGS vs it's on Unity

because PQ is Untiy

I argue PQ would fare better.

[lost violet]

Hmmm...make it your spare time and weekends. Forget looking for money to make your game. Control your destiny.

[west ledge]

I don't argue there but I'm trying to take large enough steps already towards that

if that make sense.

for now I'm having fun learning and doing

[kind pagoda]

anyway seriously speaking I'd do it just to tick a box, for the experience - gamedev is a hobby for me, I think I could recover the devkit cost with sales eventually and that's enough, being able to say "I made a game on the Switch" is enough motivation

[west ledge]

@kind pagoda sorry if you don't want to share it's fine but what do you do normally ? I thought you were more or less doing gamedev from what I saw online!

[kind pagoda]

I'm a software developer, but not on games

[west ledge]

ah great, we're alike

[kind pagoda]

I think most of hobbyist gamedevs are developers by day 😛 at least the ones I know

[west ledge]

true.

In the spirit of controlling thy destiny George said before

I'm fed up with making things other people want me to make to be honest

and since I've always wanted to make games- I'm going to give it a shot, it's just nicer if I don't go bankrupt while I do it 😄

[lost violet]

That's why nights/ and weekends works. Low pressure (just sacrifice social life etc). If you ever make more money than your job you can make a decision. If not, it's extra $.

[west ledge]

Not far off from the target, not sure how much social life I can spare

but yeah

[lost violet]

I do not recommend beginners in game dev quit their day job and work on a game for 2 years. Good way to go broke nad still have to get a job.

[west ledge]

Only way of working on a game for 2 years would be someone paying the bills for the development.

atm.

[manic rapids]

I already don't have a social life, so win win for me! 🤣

[lost violet]

PnCs tend to make so little money that having to pay a publisher or someone else back will leave you wil very little money. I think few games will be Loco-Motive (and those guys were pro game devs for a few years prior to starting the game). So be realistic

[west ledge]

@kind pagoda thanks for the honorable mention! ❤️

@kind pagoda I'm extra glad because the crowd was my idea and one I had to fight to get in the way I did... teams.

[manic rapids]

https://youtu.be/uEI0rO_PNuo?si=TpSV62j4N9phXDy9

Spoiler alert: he quit his 'employment' but still works full time as a freelancer. Just a clickbait video really.

[west ledge]

uhm yes! agreed. I like shooting for the stars and settling for a moon though 😛 While being realistic.

The good thing is Greece is not that expensive yet so development here costs less

or at least people need less money to develop something

But we do not have much talent

at least in Greece

[west ledge]

oh and although Loco-Motive looks amazing, I'm very curious to see how it'll sell.

[kind pagoda]

that's my main problem - I live in Switzerland. If I still lived in Sardinia I could probably make a living with my games, or at least enough to go part time

[west ledge]

Oh noes

[kind pagoda]

but here... life costs a lot and my current salary allows me to support a family of 4 😅 I'll never reach those numbers

but gamedev pays for my vacations, so I can't complain

[west ledge]

oh yeah I get it, you're more likely to a 6 figure salary I'd guess

[kind pagoda]

I had many other hobbies and they were all money sinks, this one's the opposite

[lost violet]

It will sell better than most other indie PnCs by a large margin. Wishlists convert abou 20% for the first couple weeks. So they will get 20-30k sales first couple weeks (maybe more as time goes on). And do maybe 100k sales in a year or so (at discounts).

[manic rapids]

That's a pretty nice goal!

[west ledge]

I understand, it's a unicorn 😄

[lost violet]

Well another game that has maybe more serious art and bump the prod values over Flabbington and you might be getting to the range you're thinking about. I think you could easily 2-3x Flabbington's sales with a new game.

[manic rapids]

EnumQuest. Revenge of the Bools.

[west ledge]

haha

[lost violet]

Well there are 4-5 in that range or close, the top tier PnC devs. Just throwing out data. You can calcualate rough earnings on most games if you have wishlists.

[west ledge]

I've done a little research on the games that are out there. Looking into predicting through wishlists more lately.

I did make this stupid little extension to keep track of steam sales when I visit a game page

https://github.com/iokaravas/vginsights-chrome-extension

uses vginsights

3 out of 4 devs have told me it's not that far off

I've asked 4 😛

[lost violet]

you can generally calculate game sales off Steam reviews. (about 30x for the low end and 50x on the high). There are outliers on both sides. I know devs with 70x and some with 20. But the 30-50x ballpark is good enough to estimate. fwiw.

If anything your estimates will be low which is better than being high

[west ledge]

hmm I'm not sure how vginsights is doing it but it might be using a similar method if not having a way of getting sales

[steep briar]

@uneven summit @west ledge I noticed some snapping with the camera zoom stuff in your games and fixed it today. I'm away for a long weekend but I'll make a new beta when I'm back and it should feel smoother and not glitchy if you update after that

[west ledge]

haha nice!

Let's push PQ forward!

[uneven summit]

Cool! Yeah, I wasn't sure how to fix that

It was when I released the camera I had fixed

[west ledge]

yeah I barely figured out what was going on , with all the running around

good thing you noticed

[steep briar]

It happened when changing zoom/position when the camera was already transitioning. I mainly notice it because I know it shouldn't do that 😛

@uneven summit oh the character thing, was going to sayn if you're doing more on it-
I'd avoid drawing the characters directly facing the camera, it makes things look flat, like they're not really in the world. I only noticed it particularly because the environment art was so cool and organic looking. But I tend to avoid any cardinal directions for characters, even just slightly off the direct up/down or profile makes them look more natural and fit in better.

[uneven summit]

Ahh. Interesting. Yes, thanks for that. I noticed that Dan had his characters slightly off centre. You're right, I do that a lot. Hmm. Something to think about.

[steep briar]

Not talking about the space babies themselves btw, I loved them. And made sense they were staring vacantly into space haha

[west ledge]

not 100% related but ... it reminded me of this. https://youtu.be/hUmZldt0DTg

If you do photography you start thinking about it a lot, and at some point it becomes second nature

[manic rapids]

Shots fired in the 108 Discord 🤣

[kind pagoda]

he's an AC user 😛 he's biased

[uneven summit]

Chris IS awesome. Dave is MOST awesome.

[lost violet]

Mount up Warriors. We ride.
https://tenor.com/view/the-warriors-subway-gang-gif-11732375

[kind pagoda]

but no, I used AC and I hate it most profoundly

[uneven summit]

Hey @rotund crystal, I just finished BIG SPOOKY MANSION. Loved it. The puzzles are nice, the story is fun, the ending is pretty satisfying. The costumes , use of lighting and sets are great. I like how it is all 'overscaled' to emphasise the kid view on life. Loved the simplicity of the design of everything, and how even with such a reduced set of challenges, if you do the puzzle design nicely, it still takes a bit of head scratching to figure things out.|| Like when Penny was inside and Henry outside, it took me longer than it should have to realise that I could just swap items through the window bars.|| I got stuck|| when Henry was upstairs and Penny downstairs - I think because I had tried to talk to the stairs earlier and it hadn't worked.|| I could have used a little hint there, maybe in the dialogue between the pair? And then there were really nice flow sections where everything I tried just worked and it advanced the story in fun ways. ||(Knowing to use the laundry chute because I had tried to use it earlier when stuck without a broom, knowing to use the broom on the 2nd cobwebs later because it had already worked|| - satisfying) All in all, great work. Looking forward to seeing it appear as a bundle one day - maybe with a few more animations thrown in? Are you planning that?
Also, are the characters based on your kids by any chance? I played the first one and you alluded to real life events.

[uneven summit]

Hey @blazing bridge , I just played your game finished too. I thought it was really fun. I loved the sound effects, the animations, the pop up visuals when people were speaking, and the music is really fun. It gives it a lovely flippant playful feel. I thought the whole thing was a fast blast, close to being a graphic novel. On a deeper level, I find the juxtaposition of all of the different characters and the love story element works really well in this style. It's like a kind of psychedelic dream space where you get to see people's inner weirdo or something, and a fun way to play with gender. Good job.

Some tiny niggles - ||1 - yeah the forest path - I guess I just needed to hear the voices coming from off screen to know to look for that.
2 - after I used the fish I still had it in my hand
3 - when I went to quit after the game ended it wouldn't let me... don't know why. Said 'That doesn't work'||

[blazing bridge]

Waaa thank you so much for playing and for the kind words Sam!! I'm so happy you had a good time with it!
Also thank you for the feedback! I was already aware of the quit button not working on the title screen, I genuinely forgot to attach code to it 😆 an easy fix once we can post updates!
||thank you for pointing out the sardines, though!! I must have forgotten to remove them from inventory after the cutscene, whoopsie hehe||

I'm hoping to play more games tonight!! Really wanna get to yours, it sounds like everyone's enjoying it 😄

[rotund crystal]

Thanks for playing, and for all the great feedback! Yeah with this game I couldn’t think of a lot of inventory puzzles, so many of the puzzles were centered around just swapping between the characters to do stuff. I am planning on doing a bundle of all 3 games with updated animations and more polishing. Including voice acting from the real Henry and Penny. 😄 I was hoping to have it done by Christmas, but we’ll see how realistic that is

[uneven summit]

Ha. I imagine it's nice to have a computer game series made after yourself before the age of ten! Cool! Seems like you have a good source of material for more games in the series then! (Oh, I also loved|| the eyes moving! ||And even better that it wasn't a puzzle!)

[rotund crystal]

Yeah that was fun to do. I made the paintings into PQ characters and used their facing property to control the eyes. It was my quick way to do it for the jam because I didn’t want to take the time to figure out the formulas change a prop animation based on the character location 😝.

We’ll see how my kids feel about the games when they grow older into teenagers… but for now, yeah it’s a lot of fun to work on these with them. Definitely lots of source material.

[kind pagoda]

@rotund crystal Amy was playing your game on stream and aaaaaalmost found a game breaking bug

once penny goes to the chute, if you're henry and go upstairs, switch to penny, then switch to henry again, everything's dark

if you manage to go back downstairs, then the light comes back

[kind pagoda]

also @west ledge why did Shipshape fall to the last place in submission order? did you have to fix a game breaker? (and if so, what was it 😄 )

[west ledge]

Yup the inventory bug

It kept coming up so…

just consume instead of end

[kind pagoda]

what inventory bug?

[rotund crystal]

Good to know. Thanks @kind pagoda! I’ll take a look at the vod. I plan to totally rework the game’s logic now that the frenzy of the jam is over.

[west ledge]

if you used an item it kept the item you clicked on

and if you used that item it broke the game

because it didn’t exist in the inventory

[lethal spruce]

I've been leaving comments on your pages as I've been going, still have a few to play, sorry I've been super busy and slower than normal to get through them. I have to say, wow, this is some amazing work by everyone, fantastic PQ games have been made that will be enjoyed by a lot of people for a long time to come 🥳 Awesome work!

[west ledge]

Me too! But I’m on the go and I can’t play windows games on my Mac 😦

[manic rapids]

You can! https://getwhisky.app/

[west ledge]

nice wine wrapper

[manic rapids]

I'm back from vacation and looking forward to catching up on all of your games!

[uneven summit]

Welcome back

Somebody asked me for a walkthrough (shudder) - contact with the outside world!

[manic rapids]

@uneven summit Don't forget to tick the little Windows box so your game shows up as Windows compatible:

Ah, guess you can't edit it until after the jam now?

[uneven summit]

Oh, thanks Dan. That stuff you can edit. I guess it's just uploads that are off limits?

[uneven summit]

Currently testing some fun stuff for the next draft... 😁

[blazing bridge]

RAT SPOTTED

Instant game of the year

[uneven summit]

I'm trying to add in excitement. Where better to start than with Giant Space Rats!?!

[sinful copper]

I really enjoyed your game thus far @uneven summit but was stuck on the rooms yet. Will play again soon. Still have the others to finish as well

[uneven summit]

That's cool, Dan. Thanks! I enjoyed yours too. It's a great concept.
I got a bit confused with what I was supposed to do after a certain point... ||(I switched some batteries and covered the light bulb but couldn't figure out what else I had to do.)||

[manic rapids]

I'm currently switching my title screen menu to a GUI instead of props so it can be translated. FUN!

[sinful copper]

Thanks. it was thrown together quickly. You are supposed to electrocute the rat then drag it to the door having removed the screw first but the whole thing is very broken and needed more design work. I gave some feedback and we’ll hopefully fix it up. Never winning a puzzle design award. 😅

[steep briar]

Probably too late, but fyi you can just tick the localize tickbox on the PowerText component on these instead

[manic rapids]

Right but it doesn't have hover states and stuff like you have with GUI buttons, right?

[steep briar]

Nah unless you script them manually👍

[manic rapids]

Done now anyway 😅 Positioning and aligning GUIs is always a challenge!

Can you fade in a GUI? 🤔

[blazing bridge]

OH the parser template has examples of that with its title screen gui buttons!!

Can't look at the code rn but if you already have a parser project it's right there ^^

[kind pagoda]

Pfft real slackers encode language in the anims so you can go P.NewGame.Animation = "NewGame_" + Settings.Language instead of remaking stuff the proper way 😆

No Rest For The Wicked had four languages and I remade art for all title screen buttons instead of switching to gui 😛

[manic rapids]

@kind pagoda Aside from that, I am really struggling with fonts with accented characters for localization. Any tips?

[steep briar]

You have to fade the individual Labels/Images/buttons but they have functions for it

[steep briar]

@uneven summit @west ledge Got the new PQ beta up, updating should make the camera smoother with your zooms/pans (though i'd backup first, it is a beta still 😉 )

@blazing bridge Should be able to click to skip the typing text now in the new beta too. There's a "Text No Skip time" field you should set to zero in PowerQuest settings to make it more responsive as well.

[blazing bridge]

Thank you so much Dave!! This is awesome!🌟

[uneven summit]

Awesomeness.

[west ledge]

Nice!

We'll be remaking the game this month so I think I will try it last minute 😄

[kind pagoda]

If you bought the "Bundle for Ukraine" on itch a year or so ago, there are some fonts with full diacritics there

https://not-jam.itch.io/not-jam-font-pack or these ones IIRC

[kind pagoda]

These are https://somepx.itch.io/humble-fonts-gold and https://somepx.itch.io/humble-fonts-gold-ii, I use these in my games, but the guy (somepx) has many other great fonts

[manic rapids]

Hmm. I'm testing with one of those fonts, which has the full set. I download it, drag it into Assets/Fonts, then set it as my DialogText font, but it still seems to be missing characters. Not sure if I'm doing something wrong 🤔

Oh hang on, I think I'm using the wrong version...

Nope, still not right. WTF?

[manic rapids]

Seems like I maybe have to create a Font Asset with Extended ASCII, but then I don't know how to use that as the DialogText font 🤔

Hmm, think that might only be for TextMesh Pro. I'm lost.

[steep briar]

It should just work if the font has the characters

You can edit fonts with that bitfonter2 thing if you have one that's missing a couple. I've done that before, there's not that many you need for French/German/Italian/Spanish

[manic rapids]

Tried that too, but I can't get it to work.

[steep briar]

What's wrong with that second screenshot?

[manic rapids]

The last character. Should be à

[steep briar]

Hmm, maybe your encoding is wrong when your imported?

[manic rapids]

More obvious with Spanish:

Maybe. I exported to CSV from Google Sheets, and then imported that.

[steep briar]

There's a few options for encoding, I'm using excel so can't vouch for the one I said was for Google Sheets. But you can try different ones and see if they come in correctly. Though you should be able to check it's the correct text in the text fields in unity anyway

[manic rapids]

Where do I check that? I'm not clear where the CSV goes when you import it.

[steep briar]

There's a dropdown setting in the CSV section I believe

[manic rapids]

Ah yeah. When I switch it to Google Sheets, thats when I get the unexpected columns error. I'll try the others.

Ok default worked.

[steep briar]

Hmm that one should work, it used to haha

[manic rapids]

Can't believe I wasted so much time on that 😆

[steep briar]

Maybe Google sheets changed format (or its different person to person)

But yeah cool. Csvs seem to come in random different flavours. It was a bit of a mystery to me too

[manic rapids]

I would prefer to stick with the BASS font. I'll see if I can figure out how to modify that with Bitfonter. I was having trouble when I rebuilt and imported the new font, it didn't look good.

[steep briar]

That font looks ace btw

[manic rapids]

haha

[steep briar]

I suppose it's a bit big when you have lots of text

[manic rapids]

That's this one: https://not-jam.itch.io/not-jam-slab-serif-11

Yeah, bit too chunky. I'll see what I can do. Thanks for the help!

[steep briar]

Glad we worked it out !

[manic rapids]

Letter spacing isn't quite as nice, but it works.

Can you set a different font per language, so I can use the default font for English and the extended one when needed?

Ah nevermind, set the letter spacing to 0 and it looks good now.

[uneven summit]

Dan, how are you doing the translations? Do you happen to be a multilinguist or are you trusting to an AI translator?

[manic rapids]

I asked if anyone wanted to translate it, and a few people volunteered. Got Italian done, Spanish and Portuguese in the works.

[uneven summit]

Wow. Cool. A + B = Amazing. Where did you ask that?

[manic rapids]

In the 108 Jam discord.

[uneven summit]

Wow that thing is full of chat! I had it on mute since before the jam as it was constantly pinging me 😬

[kind pagoda]

Glad you got the fonts thing sorted out. Diacritics are a mess and whenever encoding enters the picture you'll be full of ~Ã's and other crazy combinations where you just had an è

[manic rapids]

Out of interest though, where do the translations go when you import the CSV? I don't see any changes in version control, so I guess it must be in one of my ignored folders.

[steep briar]

They're stored in the SystemText prefab

[west ledge]

good to know, I will also be doing Greek soonish

[manic rapids]

@sinful copper I was just playing your game and got some weird font issues:

Anyway, I've played all of your entries now (except for Sam's, as I've been advised to wait for the updated version), and left comments on the itch pages. Nice job everyone. Looking forward to the results, there are definitely some strong contenders!

(Also, a month is too long for voting. I feel like everyone has pretty much moved on at this point 🤣 )

[steep briar]

It's there voting in this jam, or just the judges?

[manic rapids]

Yeah I just mean the judges voting.

[sinful copper]

Was that the Mac version probably?

[manic rapids]

Windows version, but playing on Mac (via Whisky).

[west ledge]

dang it I gotta find time to play the rest, I was stuck with reviewing some games for AdvX

and remaking my game ...

and... and.. 😄

[kind pagoda]

Results are in! We lost to Adventure Creator 😭 but we got the rest of the podium and half of the top ten!

[manic rapids]

Gotta get Duck to make the switch to PQ!

[kind pagoda]

I tried, believe me, I tried 😆

now I'm working on the translation but I still struggle with newlines in the csv, I have a few \n in my texts and it breaks everything and I don't remember how I fixed it for TWoAF

[west ledge]

Oh no!

I can't believe we got 7th place. I'm actually... proud?
/me faints

[manic rapids]

I just uploaded my updated version with translations and a bunch of other improvements.
https://mostlydecent.itch.io/enlightenment/devlog/817433/post-jam-update

[kind pagoda]

This is exactly what I expected to see after importing the Italian translation, yes

[manic rapids]

I had that, it was to do with the encoding. I selected Default and it worked.

Unless those newlines are causing trouble.

Not sure why the error is in Chinese though. It was the same for me 😆

Oh, maybe that's just part of the encoding issue?

[kind pagoda]

could be, I'll try with Default

I solved the newlines by replacing \n with \\n, but I had also \r in one object for some reason

[west ledge]

yeah encoding 😢

[lethal spruce]

I was the best and smartest person in the game jam, but everyone including myself believed I was the worst 😆 🤣

Congrats everyone 👏 there is a lot of well deserved awards there for your games even if it wasn't 1st place. Well done 🥳 🎉 🎊 🍾

[rotund crystal]

I’m cool with 6th! My first non-PowerJam jam. And my adherence to the theme was…. dubious. 😝 Nice work all! Excellent showing!

[steep briar]

You got #1 for funness which I agree with!

[uneven summit]

I'm totally fine with 17th
😭

[uneven summit]

😄 Thanks guys. I guess that's what you get for handing in a half finished story with no animations!
And the top entries really were great. 🧢 🎩 (hats off)
Learning curve, cutting teeth, thick skin, live to fight another day etc!

[blazing bridge]

Honestly I thought you stuck to the theme really well! One would expect it to be Henry experiencing the (Jam's interpretation of) dunning Kruger, so it was really cool playing through and slowly realizing it's actually Penny who's right ahaha

[manic rapids]

Also don't forget that the theme sucked 🤣

[uneven summit]

As I said, I'm totally cool with coming 17th (unfinished, 2nd attempt at game jam etc) (😭 )
I'm also trying to be cool about this comment from one of the judges:
'Wasn't a fan of the main character's constant self-loathing, or the edgelord writing'
But if I'm honest, I'm not totally cool with it. I know one shouldn't get hung up on reviews, and that I WAS pushing things a bit with the content - but, for anyone who played Giant Space Babies (TM), would you say that was a fair comment? Or pushing things a bit too far? (I had to look up 'edgelord' first... weird word. Kind of cool, kind of repellent...!)
[I nearly didn't post this, but figure this is the right place to get some honest feedback]

[kind pagoda]

I liked the writing, I did find it a bit too "rude" in some choice of words but it was funny - and I love self loathing characters 😄

[uneven summit]

Do you think it's wiser just to avoid the F-word altogether? I just find it so useful sometimes...

[uneven summit]

Also - Guga, I'm still thinking about your game. Kind of marvelling at the elegant simplicity of it tbh 🌟
If you don't mind sharing at some point, it would be super interesting to know how you create the conditions in your head for those kind of games to occur.
I've snooped around a bit on your website and found some useful notes on how you brainstormed for the 108. But any further insights into that focus on creating a believable world with minimal 'brush strokes' (i.e. minimal puzzles and characters) would be great to hear. Unless it's a trade secret of course!
I really struggle with the need to over complicate things...

[manic rapids]

I would offer an opinion, but you asked me not to play it until you release the update, so I can't comment 😆

(Also had to look up 'edgelord' though).

I'm old, and not down with what the kids are saying these days.

No issues with swearing generally though, in the right context.

[blazing bridge]

Honestly the only word I'd consider cutting out might be your use of the r-word. That was a bit jarring. And i know it was an unlikeable character using it but i think it came off way more intense than intended, at least compared to the calibur of swearing you used before. But everything else was pretty suitable for the tone you were aiming for imo!

And even then I'd only do that if you feel it's appropriate to. Where I'm from that word is still considered a slur, but I know other places consider it on the same level as like. Fuck

And I forget if I mentioned it already, but I do really love the artistic direction you went with. Very surreal,,, like obviously the giant space babies designs took the cake but you can really feel the thought and love put into every room layout too

[uneven summit]

What's the r-word?

[uneven summit]

Me too!

[uneven summit]

It's nearly there!!! 😬😁

[uneven summit]

Ohhhh. That word!! Did I use THAT?!? Yeah, that IS bad. I'll revisit that for sure! Thanks.

[blazing bridge]

Yeah, ahaha. The space girlfriend says it the first time she talks with the protaga

[sinful copper]

Edgelord… cool. I liked that your game was so bizarre even if not suitable for everyone. It felt very stream of consciousness and didn’t feel like it was designed to antagonize anyone.

[steep briar]

I assumed the constant self loathing was because the theme of the jam said the main characters had to think they're stupid haha. So if anything that felt like exploration of the theme. Which may not always result in a "better" game but is good as a designer to experiment with pushing in weird directions

I wouldn't use the word "edgelord" since it seems to be used mostly by edgelords trying to win an argument on the internet 😛 but yeah I think the swearing comes off a bit juvenile. It doesn't seem "in character" and kinda takes you out if the world you've created a bit. I think it can work if you're careful but it has to feel deliberate.

This is constructive criticism and analysis though, when I was playing I was having a good time. I'm surprised it came low, but might have been dismissed by judges as unfinished, it wasn't until I'd dug a bit deeper that I discovered the cool unique premise that's there

And yeah it's hard to take feedback like that. When when I get 99% positive feedback on something I struggle not to get upset by the 1%. That's natural 😛

[blazing bridge]

I know its easier said than done but I honestly wouldn't beat yourself up too hard about your writing not being someone's cup of tea, especially when people more in your target audience enjoyed it

I feel like you were successful in writing for a very bombastic and crass story! It's very fun

[steep briar]

Yeah def feel proud of what you've done! Any analysis should be just takeaways of what you can use in future 😉

[uneven summit]

Thanks, all.
I love this place.

[kind pagoda]

ahhh the thing is, I don't know 🤣 I often just wing it, there's no fixed process. Sometimes it's bottom-up (I know the goal and I add obstacles), sometimes it's top-down (I know the puzzle mechanics and I find a way to adapt it to my story), and I refine iteratively

AdvXJam is next month, I'll try to document more my process 😛

[west ledge]

oof guys I'm very sorry I haven't played the rest of the games

I did watch a stream and I loved all ❤️

I've been itching to play the DumbFellas

[west ledge]

So I found this animation show based on Karagiozis, I think we did a much better job...

https://youtu.be/ZSmZoFBOOnQ

[blazing bridge]

https://cherrylux.itch.io/wagasa-post/devlog/858247/finally-a-post-jam-update

better late than never i guess! 😄