A wonderful example of a game-jam development projection. Great insights into your method of tackling something like this, combined with a candid narration of your mindset. I just about snorted my morning coffee when you sprinted for the first time xD Liked and subbed; you deserve more attention!
Honestly, you should continue working on this game. I can see a whole cozy village kind of thing going on with a romance system where you could make money from lumberjacking to buy gifts for villagers, a sort of progressing generation of the village where, you kind of build your house, then sell wood you chop from a little houseside stall manually, which an NPC buys to build a lumbermill, allowing you to sell wood there just by visiting and the rest of the village grows over time. Maybe eventually, you unlock carpentry and can upgrade or add to your house with a workshop. Then you start getting requests for furniture or other crafts
This was such an insightful video. I tried Godot but learning code was a little to hard for me and Gdevelop 5, No-Code Engine - which is updated constantly. I’ve been trying to improve my knowledege and the logic of events, also learning some pixel art. I have more respect solo indie developers working on their first game(s) and mine is called Starborne Whispers. Great video!
@@stingly Indeed, you're so right! I think it's ezze to get caught up in the 'how' when, in the end, it's all about the experience the player has. Tools like GDevelop have really allowed me to focus on the creative side of things while still learning and improving along the way. It's been a fun even somewhat challenging 😫journey working on Starborne Whispers... I hope players will enjoy it as much as I’ve enjoyed making it. Thanks for the encouragement - it means a lot coming from someone like you❣
This was a fun video! Trying to learn about game dev, as a games artist I don't get to do a lot of the acc building ahah. So cool to see how u go about it! I agree w/ some of the other comments about art direction, but considering how little time u had, I'm still impressed!! Nice work 😎
I'd love to have the skills to be an artist! I've tried a couple of times, with varying success... I do have plans to learn how to draw better using a digital stylus in the new year, so hopefully that helps me create new assets for game dev! Glad you enjoyed the video ❤️
Thanks very much! As you might have seen in the video, I have plenty of ideas on how to extend it - I think that depth and purpose are the two missing things that need adding, but like you say, the base is there!
Awesome job! You did a lot for 16hs. Also, you prioritized perfectly the basic features for an mvp. Great job. Quick tip for video editing: try to normalize the audio for your narration, because at some points your voice got overshadowed by the background music
I don't want it to sound harsh, just trying to suggest ways to improve. The cohesion of art direction is non existent. Extremely simple and sharp-looking trees to rounded cartoony character and buildings to realistic terrain and ground texture. In my opinion the look would turn out much better if you had used those hex tiles for terrain, and that's just the one example of approaching it. Generally if you use asset packs try extracting as much from one pack so style doesn't change between assets. Hope that helps
Totally agree - the decision around the terrain was based solely on time. Using a plugin like Terrain3D or Heightmap allows for rapid prototyping, whereas using tiles takes a lot of time. I think that both could work, and in hindsight I maybe shouldn't have textured the ground... 🤷♂️
@@stinglyYeah, I feel like simply making the terrain a flat texture would make it okay. If you wanted more spice, a couple grass tuft and pebble models would do the trick.
very cool gameplay! but visually it looks a bit messy the realistic terrain doesnt fit at all woth the rest of the cartoony assets, and it ends up looking like an asset flip
Hehe, you're quite right! Someone else commented about the terrain, and I think in hindsight it's not helped by the textures. It's a total asset flip - there's no way I could create a playable game in 16 hours in 3D with animations without using premade assets! I think there's still an element of design choice in the choice of asset though...
I subbed as I'm trying to learn game dev myself. I liked your video. I was wondering what your questing ideas were? When you mentioned about winning a game jam , I started to try and think how a judge might think, and I'm just thinking before you start next time I would try come up with a more interesting game? Because I feel like with this you put lots of effort into the bones but the idea itself isn't really interesting to me. Sometimes simple is good but it seems overly simple and not in an interesting way if you're trying to win, but you have the skills to win I think. I have lots of game ideas if you want any haha!
also as an ecologist can you put a mechanic in to plant more trees lol, the game right now is chop all the trees down, and have a lot of money, that is the gameplay loop I can see :') not so cosy ;)
Hehe, good point! I started off with the idea to plant trees too but ultimately ran out of time. I'd like to introduce different trees that require different skill levels to fell, and introduce a crafting mechanic. Then different npcs could request different things for you to create... There's a lot I could do with the game!
@stingly Thank you for the response, and I didn't laugh lol. I think this goes to show that you don't need a beast of a gaming pc to get into game dev. Plus, I noticed that running linux too! Which is awesome!
It's actually Pop!_OS - I ran Manjaro for about a year before this, but have been on Pop!_OS now for many years. Obsidian is a great tool - I use it to organise notes and ideas for games and videos mainly, and then during development of the games I use the Kanban plugin to manage my tasks.
I'm new to game dev, 1 year in, but i am starting to try some starter projects, do people actually play small small games like this with only a few mechanics? Like, is 100 sales for $3 each possible with a small game? I can make all my own assets, but idk if people actually download small games. Just $300 would be worth it in my case, borderline homeless.
I guess it depends on the game and the experience. I bought and played A Short Hike, and it was a great experience for only a few pounds. Of course, the amount of level design and characters probably took a long time, but mechanically it's very simple... Wrt my game, it's not worth anything in this state... But I think with some sort of quest system and better progression, it could be sellable.
This is gonna come off harsh but, game creation is a privileged job. Most people with the capital to create a meaningful game also have money or family they can live off of for months or years before shipping that game. Its privileged because, no, a homeless person would not have the time, extra capital or personal security to do a job like indie dev. If you can reliable make a game a month for mobile and sell the rights of it to a mobile platform or webhoster, you could get some 500 bucks to 2000 bucks per sold game, but the rights are relinquished, no royalties. This is a method some use to make regular income on small games. That is a reasonable method that has worked, but if you are almost homeless, get any job, and come back to game design when you are safe and secure. Don't go hungry please.
@@honaleri Think i didnt really explain my situation well enough My rent is 200-400 a month and i haven't really had to work for a year while i've been learning game development, because of the social programs available in major cities. I am borderline homeless because I live in public housing with other ex homeless and crazy people, i was homeless for 3 months last year before getting placed here by a homeless program. So I have time all day to make games. I will not go back to working a regular job, 40 hours a week. Its a waste of my time, because it wont get you anywhere in 10 years. I believe you'll get somewhere faster in life by betting on yourself and making those small games for 500-2000 a month. I only need 300-400 a month in profit to survive. I feel like the agency of indie development or entrepreneurship is way more worth it than a Full time job where you cant cook for yourself, cant see your friends or family, cant raise a family, have no time to work out, and have to warp your personality to fit in at work, shortening your lifespan from stress Only went so far to explain this because everyones advice is always "Dont do it, go back to work". But the people who make things happen advice is always to go for it and just get started,. Like people are playing life too safe or something, thinking they will work full time and develop games in their free time.
Great video and love the vibe (of the game and video haha) Could you possibly do a deeper dive into how you made the animations and animation tree? I've been struggling with that myself for a little while now trying to transition from 2D to 3D
The animations came as part of the assets from Kenney (you should check out his site - links in the description). I can't remember where I first learned about the blend trees though... maybe I'll put together a tutorial for them in the future 🤔
Hey man this is a really nice video but i got some feed back the music is a lil loud it overshadows your voice. Keep going your channel is very underrated ik you will one day find success
Thanks for the feedback! I spend quite a lot of time trying to get the audio levels right when editing, but sometimes I miss bits! 😂 I'm certainly not the best editor yet!
TH-cam did its thing and recommended me this on my fyp Also a software developer thats now going into hobbiest game dev - subbing to watch your journey and would love to work on something with you one day 😁
Welcome to the Game Dev Community! I recommend working through some tutorials (like the Heartbeast RPG I mentioned - links in the description) to get a good understanding of the tool and how it works, then try some game jams before working on a "proper" game. As I said in this video, 2-day jams are tough for me due to family commitments, but there are plenty of week-long and 10-day jams out there. Good luck!
Technically yeah, you did cheat, if you worked on the game outside of the window given for the game jam. As you identified, the headspace and level of commitment is different when you have to manage your time in such a short period rather than a longer time with similar working hours but time for proper breaks, reflection, etc. I don't think it's that important as this was a cosy jam with no ratings and you were honest about it, and you actually came up with a game in the end under vaguely comparable restraints anyway. I wonder what you actually could do if restrained to just 6 hours though? I used to do a lot more game jams like this when I was younger and had different demands on my time, but maybe the solution would be to adjust scope and see what could be done in a really short period? I recall doing jams that were as short as 100 minutes long, and it's a real sprint to build anything at all in that time frame.
Thanks, I appreciate your thoughts! As I said at the start of the video, I've done a few 2 day jams before, all of which ended up being just a few hours of actual work time due to family commitments - like this one which I did in 8 hours th-cam.com/video/CmAWQn4TBX4/w-d-xo.html - and yeah, the time pressure is real! 100 minutes is mental though! 😂
Missed opportunity for Lum Bear Jack
Cool to watch, thanks!
I like that! Thought I was being clever with Lumber Jack, calling the bear Jack and getting him to collect lumber! That's next level though 😂
My first thought after "grafting" the bear head.
A wonderful example of a game-jam development projection.
Great insights into your method of tackling something like this, combined with a candid narration of your mindset.
I just about snorted my morning coffee when you sprinted for the first time xD
Liked and subbed; you deserve more attention!
Thanks very much! It's taken me a while to become efficient at game development, so hopefully my ramblings can be helpful to others!
Honestly, you should continue working on this game. I can see a whole cozy village kind of thing going on with a romance system where you could make money from lumberjacking to buy gifts for villagers, a sort of progressing generation of the village where, you kind of build your house, then sell wood you chop from a little houseside stall manually, which an NPC buys to build a lumbermill, allowing you to sell wood there just by visiting and the rest of the village grows over time. Maybe eventually, you unlock carpentry and can upgrade or add to your house with a workshop. Then you start getting requests for furniture or other crafts
This was such an insightful video. I tried Godot but learning code was a little to hard for me and Gdevelop 5, No-Code Engine - which is updated constantly. I’ve been trying to improve my knowledege and the logic of events, also learning some pixel art.
I have more respect solo indie developers working on their first game(s) and mine is called Starborne Whispers.
Great video!
You choose the tools that work best for you! At the end of the day, nobody playing your game is going to care how it was created.
@@stingly Indeed, you're so right! I think it's ezze to get caught up in the 'how' when, in the end, it's all about the experience the player has. Tools like GDevelop have really allowed me to focus on the creative side of things while still learning and improving along the way. It's been a fun even somewhat challenging 😫journey working on Starborne Whispers...
I hope players will enjoy it as much as I’ve enjoyed making it. Thanks for the encouragement - it means a lot coming from someone like you❣
12:00 this transition has burned my eyes
Hehe, if I'd have planned it I could have done some sort of snazzy wipe or something! It was just coincidence!
This was a fun video! Trying to learn about game dev, as a games artist I don't get to do a lot of the acc building ahah. So cool to see how u go about it! I agree w/ some of the other comments about art direction, but considering how little time u had, I'm still impressed!! Nice work 😎
I'd love to have the skills to be an artist! I've tried a couple of times, with varying success... I do have plans to learn how to draw better using a digital stylus in the new year, so hopefully that helps me create new assets for game dev! Glad you enjoyed the video ❤️
Love the game, it looks really interesting and its got a good base for becoming something even better!
Thanks very much! As you might have seen in the video, I have plenty of ideas on how to extend it - I think that depth and purpose are the two missing things that need adding, but like you say, the base is there!
cool; it is nice to see what people can make with assets and plugins from the community, and a little (16 hours) of work! Lumber Jack;
Absolute godsend! There are some insanely talented creators in the community!
Awesome job! You did a lot for 16hs. Also, you prioritized perfectly the basic features for an mvp. Great job.
Quick tip for video editing: try to normalize the audio for your narration, because at some points your voice got overshadowed by the background music
Thanks for the feedback!
Amazing dude, definitely gonna check this out.
Thanks very much!
I don't want it to sound harsh, just trying to suggest ways to improve. The cohesion of art direction is non existent. Extremely simple and sharp-looking trees to rounded cartoony character and buildings to realistic terrain and ground texture. In my opinion the look would turn out much better if you had used those hex tiles for terrain, and that's just the one example of approaching it. Generally if you use asset packs try extracting as much from one pack so style doesn't change between assets. Hope that helps
Totally agree - the decision around the terrain was based solely on time. Using a plugin like Terrain3D or Heightmap allows for rapid prototyping, whereas using tiles takes a lot of time. I think that both could work, and in hindsight I maybe shouldn't have textured the ground... 🤷♂️
@@stinglyYeah, I feel like simply making the terrain a flat texture would make it okay. If you wanted more spice, a couple grass tuft and pebble models would do the trick.
Yeah I'd quite like to revisit it at some point and spend some time decorating the map with more assets... It'd end up looking a lot better I think
I get what u mean. But with the time constraint , I'm just glad he managed to finish it.
The game looks cute! Well done
Thank you!
very cool gameplay! but visually it looks a bit messy
the realistic terrain doesnt fit at all woth the rest of the cartoony assets, and it ends up looking like an asset flip
Hehe, you're quite right! Someone else commented about the terrain, and I think in hindsight it's not helped by the textures. It's a total asset flip - there's no way I could create a playable game in 16 hours in 3D with animations without using premade assets! I think there's still an element of design choice in the choice of asset though...
I subbed as I'm trying to learn game dev myself. I liked your video. I was wondering what your questing ideas were? When you mentioned about winning a game jam , I started to try and think how a judge might think, and I'm just thinking before you start next time I would try come up with a more interesting game? Because I feel like with this you put lots of effort into the bones but the idea itself isn't really interesting to me. Sometimes simple is good but it seems overly simple and not in an interesting way if you're trying to win, but you have the skills to win I think. I have lots of game ideas if you want any haha!
also as an ecologist can you put a mechanic in to plant more trees lol, the game right now is chop all the trees down, and have a lot of money, that is the gameplay loop I can see :') not so cosy ;)
Hehe, good point! I started off with the idea to plant trees too but ultimately ran out of time. I'd like to introduce different trees that require different skill levels to fell, and introduce a crafting mechanic. Then different npcs could request different things for you to create... There's a lot I could do with the game!
@@stingly oh ok I see I see, would definitely add depth 😊 good to know you were going add planting trees too hehe!
Maybe a silly question... what was that program you used for your todo lists? Is that built into Godot, or something seperate?
Not a silly question at all! It's called Obsidian obsidian.md/ - I use it with the Kanban plugin, all available for free 😊
whats that todo app you had at 14:20?
It's called Obsidian obsidian.md/ which I use for all of my notes and ideas. The Kanban board is a plugin for that, all totally free 😊
Super nice :)
Hi, thanks for the video. Do you mind providing a little bit of information about your laptop specs? Like the name, cpu model, or amount of ram?
Promise you won't laugh? I have an old Samsung Series 7 Ultra, running an Intel i5-3337U with 6 whole GB of RAM! 😂
@@stingly XD
@stingly Thank you for the response, and I didn't laugh lol. I think this goes to show that you don't need a beast of a gaming pc to get into game dev. Plus, I noticed that running linux too! Which is awesome!
What OS is that? Fedora? or Mint? I am also curious about how you use Obsidian in your daily-life and integrate it into the workflow.
It's actually Pop!_OS - I ran Manjaro for about a year before this, but have been on Pop!_OS now for many years. Obsidian is a great tool - I use it to organise notes and ideas for games and videos mainly, and then during development of the games I use the Kanban plugin to manage my tasks.
You are built different.
Thanks, I think! 🤔😂
buen video! muy interesante!
Thank you!
Slick!
I'm new to game dev, 1 year in, but i am starting to try some starter projects, do people actually play small small games like this with only a few mechanics?
Like, is 100 sales for $3 each possible with a small game? I can make all my own assets, but idk if people actually download small games. Just $300 would be worth it in my case, borderline homeless.
I guess it depends on the game and the experience. I bought and played A Short Hike, and it was a great experience for only a few pounds. Of course, the amount of level design and characters probably took a long time, but mechanically it's very simple... Wrt my game, it's not worth anything in this state... But I think with some sort of quest system and better progression, it could be sellable.
This is gonna come off harsh but, game creation is a privileged job. Most people with the capital to create a meaningful game also have money or family they can live off of for months or years before shipping that game. Its privileged because, no, a homeless person would not have the time, extra capital or personal security to do a job like indie dev.
If you can reliable make a game a month for mobile and sell the rights of it to a mobile platform or webhoster, you could get some 500 bucks to 2000 bucks per sold game, but the rights are relinquished, no royalties. This is a method some use to make regular income on small games. That is a reasonable method that has worked, but if you are almost homeless, get any job, and come back to game design when you are safe and secure. Don't go hungry please.
@@honaleri Think i didnt really explain my situation well enough
My rent is 200-400 a month and i haven't really had to work for a year while i've been learning game development, because of the social programs available in major cities.
I am borderline homeless because I live in public housing with other ex homeless and crazy people, i was homeless for 3 months last year before getting placed here by a homeless program.
So I have time all day to make games.
I will not go back to working a regular job, 40 hours a week. Its a waste of my time, because it wont get you anywhere in 10 years. I believe you'll get somewhere faster in life by betting on yourself and making those small games for 500-2000 a month. I only need 300-400 a month in profit to survive.
I feel like the agency of indie development or entrepreneurship is way more worth it than a Full time job where you cant cook for yourself, cant see your friends or family, cant raise a family, have no time to work out, and have to warp your personality to fit in at work, shortening your lifespan from stress
Only went so far to explain this because everyones advice is always "Dont do it, go back to work". But the people who make things happen advice is always to go for it and just get started,. Like people are playing life too safe or something, thinking they will work full time and develop games in their free time.
Great video and love the vibe (of the game and video haha)
Could you possibly do a deeper dive into how you made the animations and animation tree? I've been struggling with that myself for a little while now trying to transition from 2D to 3D
The animations came as part of the assets from Kenney (you should check out his site - links in the description). I can't remember where I first learned about the blend trees though... maybe I'll put together a tutorial for them in the future 🤔
Hey man this is a really nice video but i got some feed back the music is a lil loud it overshadows your voice. Keep going your channel is very underrated ik you will one day find success
Thanks for the feedback! I spend quite a lot of time trying to get the audio levels right when editing, but sometimes I miss bits! 😂 I'm certainly not the best editor yet!
@@stingly I think there is a way to make your audio always one level in Obs but I don't remember how
TH-cam did its thing and recommended me this on my fyp
Also a software developer thats now going into hobbiest game dev - subbing to watch your journey and would love to work on something with you one day 😁
Welcome to the Game Dev Community! I recommend working through some tutorials (like the Heartbeast RPG I mentioned - links in the description) to get a good understanding of the tool and how it works, then try some game jams before working on a "proper" game. As I said in this video, 2-day jams are tough for me due to family commitments, but there are plenty of week-long and 10-day jams out there. Good luck!
Technically yeah, you did cheat, if you worked on the game outside of the window given for the game jam. As you identified, the headspace and level of commitment is different when you have to manage your time in such a short period rather than a longer time with similar working hours but time for proper breaks, reflection, etc.
I don't think it's that important as this was a cosy jam with no ratings and you were honest about it, and you actually came up with a game in the end under vaguely comparable restraints anyway. I wonder what you actually could do if restrained to just 6 hours though? I used to do a lot more game jams like this when I was younger and had different demands on my time, but maybe the solution would be to adjust scope and see what could be done in a really short period?
I recall doing jams that were as short as 100 minutes long, and it's a real sprint to build anything at all in that time frame.
Thanks, I appreciate your thoughts! As I said at the start of the video, I've done a few 2 day jams before, all of which ended up being just a few hours of actual work time due to family commitments - like this one which I did in 8 hours th-cam.com/video/CmAWQn4TBX4/w-d-xo.html - and yeah, the time pressure is real! 100 minutes is mental though! 😂
don't love these happy accidents in game dev?
What is your browser?
I'm using Zen zen-browser.app/ - I really like it's minimalist UI 🙂
@@stingly thank you bro!
hi godot not bad im use godot before create all object aseprite my game I was thinking about my own game, but I'd rather make it smaller
I love Aseprite - such a good program!