Global Games Jam 2012

So after a weeks worth of work on a flash game (What can i say im an art perfectionist?) i got into uni with what seemed like a weeks worth of food nervous as a mouse in a storm pipe and an open mind i was suprised to see how simple it actually was, We got our theme after meeting some of the comp- *cough* i mean guests and sat down to work.

What can i say... We had mixed ideas but me and another artist refused to decide soley on ideas and to focus on if it was realistic enough for the coders. After about ten minutes of brainstorming we got it down and began to work, Seeing as it was the first day we didnt want to stay working for to long so got some basic stuff done and decided near midnight that enough was enough and retired to ready us up for a long session the next day.

Saturday came about and with my newly packed bag (including kettle and slippers) i set back to work on animating our 3D lovechild mantis hybrid "Kevin" and set in. We managed to get most of the assets done and the game looked pretty impressive, We jigsawed the game together and gave it a try... Thats when disaster hit.

Kevin decided that his animations weren't cool enough and his coding wasnt nearly as sophisticated enough and threw the biggest hissy fit in the history of gaming. He had deliberately rejected his coding.... Well what can you do? So we took the animations away and began again, Well kevin seemed to enjoy it so far so good? Well. We put him in the game and he seemed to like them, About 5 minutes later when we added in the attack + sting animations into the game we found kevin did not like to use them on the floor and only used them in the air, Yes. A computer created character with no sentinent behavior out of the realm he was built in had given himself a better attack animation... He had invented his own crane kick, And as a side effect? He taught himself to walk biped without a biped walking animation.... We were stunned and amazed, The creature we had hated about 5 minutes before had now captured our hearts with an affectionate display of helpfulness.


So we had a working alien in the game attacking running boxes. Time for the rest of the animations? Yeap, Easy work compared to kevin. About midnight we had all of our assets in the game working and to some extent finalised, Time for sound? Well... It took a while and with alot of procrastinating, (See stream for details) but we got there, Our sounds were put into the game close to the final time and we finalised the game.


Feedback? We got some amazing sound feedback off pixelh8 who ended up giving us an award for it!!! They loved some of the artwork and said the game was good, Though the controls were a bit complex (No idea)


Overall, I LOVED every minute of the games jam, Was such a good experience and cant wait till my next one :)