GameDevHQ GameJam entry "PlanetCreator"

Aloha! This is the devlog for the GameDevHQ GameJam submission "PlanetCreator" for tbe December 2020 game jam. The theme of this jam was "New Beginnings".

Day 1: After a brainstrorming session, I decided to try my first platformer (I know, isn't it the standard beginner genre?). The story I had imagined was about a young penguin trying to venture out for the first time and avoid some obstacles. But I didn't get good enough vibes to continue...In my mind, I always wanted to have some kind of customization game, where you can create your own planet. So after a few hours I scrapped the idea of the penguin and decided to go for my planet creation theme. I worked on a simple system to change the colors of different planet materials. After all, customizing a planet is simply changing colors of the mesh renderer color. I worked on a simple 3d planet in blender and called it a day.

Day 2: No work on the jam.

Day 3: I drew a basic cockpit and finished it in GIMP and arranged the buttons for chosing the planet's colors in a neater way. Now it was time to finally think about game play and the story. My interpretation was as follows: You are a group of scientists who were fed up with COVID and wanted to create a new planet for themselves. They ventured out into space and by being brilliant and obvioulsy rich scientists, they have the ability to customize/create a planet. However, they failed to bring suitable equipment for analysing the planet...So their only hope is build a planet, get onto the planet and hope they will live :D 

Given that I have only a few hours in total for the game jam for personal reasons, I cannot really implement a crazy solid gameplay. Honestly, for me it is mainly to play around with a pretty planet, and participate in a GameDevHQ game jam, as I am a big fan of Jon and his crew :)

As always, I want to create ALL assets myself, because that is the way a gamejam was supposed to be done! At the end of day 3, this is the current progress without post processing:

Towards the end of day 3 I realized that I still lack gameplay. As always. So I thought about options to make the game more fun. I thought about being able to fly onto the planet and and have a FPS game where you need to collect samples and kill enemies. But given that I don't have that much time available to invest in this jam, I rather decided to skip improving gameplay :D Instead, I focus on the bit I have (which is making a relaxing, nice planet of your own) and expand upon this. Rather than introducing new mechanis, it is easier to add more of the same. 

So I added a small asteroid that you can customize, and a generated asteroid belt. I also found out that you can apply post processing effect onto UI elements if they are set up correctly. Neat. 

I fiddled around with trying to change the colors of the trail renderers for the asteroid belt and it took me about 3 hours without getting any further. It is really odd that getting reference to another object's trail renderer is so tricky, but I think I came up with a solution. It would be nice to also customize the color of the trail renderer...

Day 4: Today was about fixing trail renderer and making a "go crazy - make everything random" button, where all colors are randomly assigned. That might increase the fun and excitement. I played around the idea to add a second and third camera to make "screenshots" of your favorite planet, but havn't decided yet to implement. this is what it looked like at the beginning of day 4:

Whether or not I will have time to update the UI is another big quesiton...It kindof bothers me that it isn't pretty, but it almost has this "made with MS Paint" feeling to it...which makes it too ugly to hate?

At the end of day 4 I included a quick menu, about section and a funcy tune. The only thing left is rethinking the color palette and aligning it a bit better with a proper color palette instead of randomly chosing colors. I also have one issue where 3 colors don't match the expected colors. I have no clue why. I checked the direct light if there was a strange color selected, any  post processing that could have intereferred but that wasn't the issue... So maybe no one will ever notice? :)

Day 5: I decided to spend a bit of time improving the UI and aligning the color palette to make it a bit more coherent. I used this website  https://flatuicolors.com/palette/defo to pick neat colors. After doing so, I realized that the overall scene is looking a bit empty. At first, I thought about adding a black hole or a shooting star, but soon realized that the most obvious solution would be a SUN! So, after playing around with the particle system (and randomly trying different things and hoping for the best) I actually designed a pretty little sun that orbits around the planet. Another nice feature I implemented was a halo/athmosphere for the planet along side with 3 basic colors. It is simply a point light with three different colors. Interestingly, I had a bit of trouble getting the trail renderer color match the color palette. Whenever I defined the RGB values (as in 122,40,30,1) it did not work. It only worked with one RGB value and the other two set to zero. After googling, I found out that you need to convert them (as in 122/256 = 0.47f) - weird, but it did the trick. So now the trail renderer of the asteroid belt matches the color palette as well :)

This is what the game looks now at the end of day 5:

Day 6: I decided to re-make the music as it wasn't feeling "spacey" enough. I wanted more reverb and more openeness in the music, so I've spend about an hour to finish a very simple tune. Compiled it and uploaded it on itch.io. Project complete :)

Let's see what the verdict will be. I expect quite a fierce competition from the GameDevHQ guys and girls, as they are all very talented and have access to filebase :) If I get into the top 30% that's a victory. But jams are for fun, so no reason to get obsessed with ratings! 

Lessons learnt:

• As always, I am unable to have games with actual gameplay. I never find a "fun" mechanic that I can build upon. There is certainly no lesson learnt here :D
• Using a pre-defined color palette makes a big difference, comparing look and feel of day 4 and 5 clearly illustrates the benefit of using colors that follow some basic color theory
• I learned how to make a space sky with stars and a hint of clouds
• I created a sun particle effect that looks nice and can be used for future games!
• My UI tends to be horrid - it still is mediocre, but I feel it is better than some of my previous games. But I still find it hard to make buttons looks nice. It was a good new idea to include the buttons onto the computer screen, but I believe someone more talented would have ceated amazing artwork and amazing UI. I just don't know the recipe...How hard can it be to draw some pretty buttons damnit!
• I created a simple customization manager - though not really scalable, it is a good first attempt. Let's see if I can improve it next time

Results

WOW - I am really happy and suprised about the results:

Art and sound #1 woohoo! In total, my game ranked #3 (16 submissions) which is amazing, thanks everyone who voted and actually took the time to comment, provide feedback and rate! As always, I am really not surpised by gameplay being scored lowest - I just cannot make games fun, like ever...how do people do that? Do they just stick to a commonly used genre and mechanics? How hard can it be to make games fun hahah?