#LOWREZJAM 2025 is on!! Pumped to participate again this year.
I've noted down a bunch of ideas for a potential direction in the past couple of weeks but the closer we got to the jam starting the less excited I was about them lol.
Soooo I'm just going with whatever I'm in the mood for…which seems to be this sci-fi themed top-down shooter thing with the ZX Spectrum palette for some reason. Just mocking up some art and playing with ideas in my head for now. Hmm.
About 30 hours into #LOWREZJAM I have the foundations of my data model for the world, locations within it, basic entity management, collisions, and a player controller with movement, including traversal between locations. I'd be content to put it down here for day 2, but I think I can make decent progress towards enemy entities with health and a shooting mechanic. We'll see!
Pew pew
Couldn't help myself and implemented shooting today after all. There's a generic pickup/weapon system working in the background too so this should be fairly easy to extend later. As a treat I also have player facing locked while shooting which should make for a nice experience…once there's stuff to shoot at anyway.
Tomorrow: enemies! Maybe some UI! Who knows!
#LOWREZJAM #GameDev #IndieDev #IndieGame #ScreenshotSaturday
Lost a bunch of time today to technical issues; how on Earth I made movement depend on screen DPI/refresh, I have no clue.
But now I have basic enemies and some scaffolding for behaviors in there! I also played a bit with the scenery along the way.
Hoping tomorrow I can add an ammo mechanic and a HUD, then I think I'll have enough stuff in there to start designing the map in earnest and explore the rest of the requirements organically as I go.
No fancy GIF today; but I did figure out how to export tile maps in Aseprite thanks to a generous soul on its forums; docs on it are very spotty. Thanks, Zeltrix, wherever you are! https://community.aseprite.org/t/export-tile-sheet-and-map-as-data/10180/5
(I've been doing hobby #GameDev on & off for over a decade now and I'm somewhat ashamed to admit this is actually the 1st time I'm authoring levels instead of writing generators…this is a lot of fun, and VERY different vibes to messing w/ algorithms)
My level data importer is not _quite_ there yet…
Got the level importer fully working finally :3 It was a hassle to get the flip/rotation flags working together nicely, but it's all good now.
I assembled some locations in Aseprite as a test & implemented a couple of missing features on the way.
Tomorrow: planning, then over the next week or so I'll be heads down on level design (& missing stuff I run into on the way).
12 days left of #LOWREZJAM …Starting to feel the heat of all the work ahead of me.
Life sure is lifing right now. So much for submitting anything for #LOWREZJAM this time around :( BUT! I have a really solid base to build on which should be quick to jump back into when I get the itch for (mostly) level design at some point.
Good luck to all of you still grinding, and congrats to those that have already submitted!
Bálint Magyar