Sector 104 Devlog

Introduction 

The aim of our game jam is for Jack, my son, and myself to learn the SDL game libraries (https://www.libsdl.org), for Jack to learn C++ and for myself to refresh myself with C++ (I haven't used it for real for nearly 10 years now). Jack is currently in sixth form but wants to be a games designer. Also for two of my other sons both want to be artists when they grow up to learn some sprite design. 

Our team consists of our whole family; Mum, Dad and 4 boys. 

I will mainly be coding.
Jack, will be doing the game design and level layout as well as coding with me.
Tom and Seth will be doing the graphics, mainly sprites and learning Aseprite. Both will also be doing a small amount of coding.
Fred will be the main games tester and quality control.
Mum will be project manager, games testing and catering :)

We plan to do quite a simple game as we are using SDL for the first time; it will be a kind of space shooter (like Galaxians or Defender) with some resource management built in if we have time. Jack and I have spend the last two days learning about SDL with the great tutorials by Lazy Foo' found here https://lazyfoo.net/tutorials/SDL/index.php.

For tools we will be using:

• SDL v2.0 Game Library
• Visual Studio 2019 Community Edition for C++
• Aseprite for sprite creation
• Subversion and TortoiseSVN for version control (VC highly recommended when coding as a team)
• JIRA for project management (to make sure we don't forget things)
• Excel for level design 

Development Log for Sector-104 : Day 1

We started off the day with Jack and I discussing the main points of the game design and making sure we both kept the game simple to develop but had enough in to make it interesting.

After that we produced a couple of rough mock ups of the game display to have an idea what we were doing. 

I then started coding the core engine bits, trying to remember all my C++ (find it's not like riding a bike and you do forget bits) and checking the SDL docs and tutorials every 5 seconds. Meanwhile Jack started story-boarding the game and fleshing out the details enough to get a list of images and sprites we needed.

We then got Tom and Seth involved, discussing the game and the style of feel of the game we wanted and provided them with an initial list of art work we needed from them - mostly sprites.

For the rest of the day Jack help supervise the art work and they got all needed sprite work done but this will need some refinement tomorrow after seeing the sprites in the game. We need to remove the outline as it looks weird against the black background of space, also we need to make details on the sprites more “blocky” to make them stand out better.

Jack also worked on a rough plan for the levels of the game, a game story (if we get time for that) and did some maths on the quantities and supply etc for the management of the in-game resources.

I spend the rest of the day completing the core game engine in C++ and SDL and Jack started to get involved with coding this too at the end of the day.

Tomorrow Jack and I will need to tune the game engine and really nail that down and get the core of the game working and Tom and Seth will be refining the sprites.  

Development Log for Sector-104 : Day 2

Jack and I spent most of the day coding, the core of the game is now there, we can move, we can shoot, we can blow up enemies. We're invulnerable at the moment but that will be implemented tomorrow. 

Tom and Seth have been doing more sprite work, refining the sprites already done and creating new space station sprites. 

Whilst we have a lot done the amount of work still to do is a bit daunting. We pretty much need to get *all* the rest of the game mechanics completed tomorrow so on Thursday we can implement the level design, leaving Friday for tuning. 

C++ coding is now coming back to me and I'm about 80% up to speed, Jack has also been picking it up quickly for beginner in the language. SDL has proven very nice and easy to use, it works pretty much as you expect to it, its intuitive which is always a good thing for an API.

The scary Kanban board - so much still to do... 

Development Log for Sector-104 : Day 3

Again Jack and I spent most of the day coding, the game is now playable but currently only 30 seconds long. 

We've met our goal just about of getting the game pretty much there by the end of today. We also managed to get our story player into the game today ahead of time. With that done Jack can implement the story and level designs tomorrow. There are still a few things to complete in the game and I will be doing those tomorrow. Tom and Seth have also been making some tweaks to the sprites today too. 

This leaves Friday for tuning and also to create the game installer. 

We're both really liking SDL it just seems to work with no issues.  

We've got the music track in the game now too - so we'll be sick to death of that by Friday evening. 

Finally feeling like we're actually going to finish this game in time. 

Development Log for Sector-104 : Day 4

We had a change of plans on day 4 realising that we couldn't really implement the story fully until all the game code was fully complete. So Jack and I spent all day completing the games features and ironing out bugs in the code. Jack has coded up all the enemy code and I did most of the game code. Jack also got music and sound effects in to the game. So the game is now feature complete but still only about a minute long.

So Friday we have to complete the story board, implement that in the game, play-test and tune it. This doesn't sound like much but this may be difficult to do in a day. One thing we know from our previous two game jams we have done is that the game pacing and difficulty level is critical to the playability of the game - we need to get this correct. As Jack is the game design this falls to him to do. I will be creating the game installer and also helping play test the game. Unfortunately we've lost out main play tester, Fred, as he's going for a sleepover at a friends.  

As with a previous game jam we will use Excel to plan out the story board and have an Excel macro export C++ code we can plug into the game. 

Development Log for Sector-104 : Final Day 5

The final day and a final push to get the game completed and submitted. 

We had four of us working on the game today, whilst Jack was implementing the story board in the game. I was fixing bugs and tweaking the way the game played plus adding a couple of other nice to haves - and also building the installer.

We were taking snap shots, sections of the game have having these tested by Fred our son that's also a fast fingered arcade fiend to test the game parts and giving us feedback - the game is possible (at least sections we tested are) but you won't complete it first go, you'll need to learn how best to defeat certain sections. You also need to converse ammo and fuel to survive - aim carefully, make every shot count.  

Mum was testing the game and also proof-reading the story for us and co-ordinating everyone.      

The game is pretty much complete, we could maybe have extended the story to make the game a bit longer, there's also one annoying bug we couldn't work out, but fortunately most players may see this unintentional behaviour as intended, I leave the player to work out what that is :)

This was our third game jam and it's by far the best end game of the three, so we're quite proud of it. We certainly met out aims of the project, Jack learnt C++, picking it up far quicker than I expected, I brushed up on my C++ and we both learnt to use the SDL game libraries; these we will definitely be using again for another Game Jam.

I will do a wash up of the project over the weekend; what worked well, what didn't, what we did well, what we did poorly, things we would do again and things we would change.