Sunday - 28 days left

On Saturday, I made a fateful decision: I submitted The Progoster to the 2020 Finally Finish Something Game Jam. 

The point of the game jam is simple: By the end of the month, you have to finish whatever you're working on. Now, obviously I'm not going to finish the entire game by January, but my goal is to get the demo up for everybody to have fun with!

Remember way back in Week 1 where I said that "I'm sure I'll have the demo up in 5 weeks?" Well, it's been more than five weeks. While, yes, my productivity has waxed and waned a lot during those five weeks, I'd still like to take less than several months just to make the demo. 

So what do I do first? The most important task right now is to make this game possible to beat. So what does the player have to do in order to beat the game? They have to beat the boss. So that's what I'm working on right now. 

Now, you may not know this, but I am a HUGE fan of boss fights! They are my absolute favorite thing! A childhood playing Gears of War 3, Alien Hominid, and especially Castle Crashers has instilled me with a love of unique boss fights that make the tedium of killing normal enemies over and over again worth it! And it's only in action games like the one I'm working on right now where bosses can really, really shine! This isn't even my first time making a boss. The final level of Yoko Ono: The Video Game has a boss fight, even if it is one of those lame platformer boss fights where you just run away from the boss. And of course, my first ever completed game, Xalor Smite, is just one big boss fight!

So here he is: The Head Chef.

Originally, I wanted to make the Head Chef just a floating head (which I'm just now realizing is an excellent pun), but after plopping it into the game, I decided that it would be cooler as a stationary cylindrical enemy that can pop in and out of the ground. 

I hate to say it, but this is me trying my best to draw something cool. Like I've said, I am not an artist. One concern I have with the design is that it'll give children nightmares. 

"Oh come on, it's a little aggressive looking and the teeth aren't quite cuddly, but it's really not that disturbing."

Well, you haven't seen its animation. Behold. 

See what I mean? It's as if a genie got bit by a radioactive shark and a radioactive seal, both of which had rabies.  I can definitely imagine a little kid being terrified of this. But I don't think I'm going to tame it down. Everyone has pop culture that scared them as a kid. Besides, I'm sure that it will embed this game into their memories, achieving my greatest goal in life: Making something that a person other than me one day feels nostalgia for.

Right now, he doesn't do anything. He just sits there looking unstable and hurts you if you walk into him. If you watch the video, you'll see that I haven't programmed explosion damage into it yet. Took my dumb dumb brain a while to remember that in the video. Past Mick's such an idiot.

What will his attacks be? I'm not entirely sure yet. Here's some ideas bouncing around right now:

• Enemies could come out of his gaping maw.
• He burrows under ground and tries to hurt you as he comes back up. This could increase in frequency as he gets hurt, much like the Corn Boss in Castle Crashers. 
• That big mouth demands a laser beam to be shot out of it.
• He could summon large groups of enemies in specific formations. For example, he could burrow underground as a formation of baguettes spin across the screen. Once these baguettes have left the screen, he comes back up.  These wouldn't be the same as the actual enemies, they would just look and vaguely move the same way.

Despite the Game Jam's promise to finish the game by the end of the month, it technically closes on February 2nd. Including today, that gives me exactly four weeks to get this done.  That is...actually a lot of time. If you don't count the week of development that I didn't document, four weeks would be two thirds of my progress on this game as of writing this. 

So am I worried about having a functional and beatable game ready for the game jam?  Not really. Of course, all kinds of unforeseen disasters could, and probably will, happen. But I'm sure that the game will be a full, if short, game by then. Here's the bare minimum of what I need to get done in order to release a demo:

• I need to finish the boss fight. 
• I need to make a screen for when you beat the demo.
• I need to design the demo level.

That last one is pretty loaded. Not only does good level design just take a while, but I'm not even sure what you could find in a level. Is it just a bunch of rooms with enemies leading to a boss fight?  Or is there more? Are there rooms with power ups and upgrades? Are there secret rooms?  The answers to these questions are probably dependent on how soon I can finish the boss fight and the win screen. While these are the requirements to make a program that you can classify as a "game," there are some more things that I feel this game definitely needs.

• Music.
• A trailer.
• Updated screenshots.
• A more in depth menu screen, with, at the very least, something that states that the game is a demo and that you should totally check out the devlog.

I guess I could do the trailer and screenshots on Saturday, which I guess is my "Marketing Day," but I think that the music and menu screen will be done on scheduled development time. Learning how to make music is not something that I want to do on my one day that I have semi-off. Now that I have Photoshop, it should be much easier to make large art like a menu screen, a win screen, a page background, etc. Adobe will also definitely help with the trailer.

Oh yeah! Even if you were to count the new boss as only one "thing" (which I think is rather harsh),  I've still made three improvements to the game today!

•  Added ground works for new boss.
• That bug where the coffee cup would sink deeper into the wall and go backwards wasn't just with that one wall. I'm not sure why I assumed it was. But I am now confident that that problem is gone...I hope.
• I added a new layer for the bullets. This was mainly done because of some of the boss's properties, but it'll be useful in general.

I'm sorry that 80% of this wasn't a devlog as much as a how-do-I-get-people-to-play-my-game-log. But I think what makes this devlog stand out is how much detail I put into describing every slight change I make, as well as documenting my thought process mid-development. Besides, being able to get people to play your game is just as important as being able to make a game.

Monday - 27 days left

Let me tell you about this day.

5:00 am: I wake up.

5:00 am - 7:20 am: I am constantly doing stuff that isn't necessarily fun or relaxing.

7:20 am - 2:40 pm: School.

2:40 pm - 4:40 pm: After school workout for track.

4:40 pm - 5:00 pm: Run on the treadmill immediately after doing vigorous leg work outs and shower.

5:30 pm - 6:00 pm: Actually eat food.

6:00 pm: Practice the piano for five minutes because it's all that I have left.

6:05 pm: I try to work on the game. Nothing makes sense. Everything feels impossible. My brain is tired. I'm tired. My legs are tired. I'm empty.

So...I guess I'll be doing game development in the morning when I still have some willpower and creative energy.

Tuesday - 26 days left

Yep. Doing it in the morning is much easier. 

• The boss now takes damage from explosions.
• The boss can now move to one of nine spots in the room (I haven't completed the animations for this yet.)
• The boss can now spawn a random enemy (This definitely needs some more work. The enemy is always behind the chef, so you usually can't tell what enemy it is until it moves. I'll have to make it dependent on where the boss is facing, which will be a bit annoying.)

So, while unfair and uninteresting, I do technically have a boss fight. The boss randomly teleports which can do a lot of damage if he teleports onto you and takes your off guard. In the final game, you will have much more time to get out of the way. The fact that he spawns enemies also makes  things a little bit more interesting. 

Expect updates like this pretty often. Yeah, I made my three changes, but they weren't very impressive changes. Game development's going to be a lot less fun going forward.

Wednesday - 25 days left

Today I made two changes.

For one, the coffee cup enemy would still stop bullets if you shot it while it was in its death animation. This has been fixed.

I also decided that the boss would be much easier to develop if I made everything from one direction first. So, all code that causes the boss to look anywhere but down has been commented out.

I have improved the enemy spawn a lot! Instead of instantly spawning enemies on himself that you really can't see until he moves, he shoots them forward. Here's what it looks like!

If you're worried about the amount of enemies that got stuck in the lower wall, don't be! This is only because he can only face down right now. Once he tracks the player, this shouldn't be a problem.

Now that I'm only programming for one direction, it should be much less daunting every morning when I have to work on the game. I think that things are finally looking up!

Thursday - 24 days left

I have added an animation for when the boss spawns an enemy! While doing so, I accidentally made it so that he would just keep spawning enemies at a rapid pace. This has been fixed, but I have made another state for that chunk of code, as I think it could come in handy. What if, for example, when you got him down to a super low amount of health, he just went to the middle of the screen and started spewing out tons of enemies? Wouldn't that be interesting!

Friday - 23 days left.

I'd hate to tell you this, but I did nothing on Friday. I woke up with my legs and throat in utter pain, liquid leaking out of my eye, and an incredibly ingested nose. I didn't have the energy to do anything, much less work on the game.

Saturday - 22 days left.

That also includes today. It was took all of my remaining will power to just finish up this devlog. I'm really sorry if I'm disappointing you. I have a plan for how I can make my weeks less physically exhausting, so hopefully next week will be all pistons going once again.

As always, thank you for reading.