2024.10.15, 2:48am

So, 48 hour jam is over, this is the version I posted. It was a local event, a lot of like-minded people, was quite fun.

I had bigger plans for the project, but I got lost in the environment design and a bit of chatting ( kind of wish I had more time for that one).

After having good sleep before last day, I realized I’m ready to join a team next time. I could see where the other members could save up time, even though in theory “I could do it all myself”.

I was lucky to figure out how to fix my template, and that I didn’t need any new knowledge to make this project. I used mostly everything I tried already with previous jams. Camera issue is one thing I’ll need to research in length, other than that I can work on small simple games or even dabble into visual novel / cinematics.

SuperGrid was a huge help in my location design, I learned couple new tricks working with it. So good for prototyping, even though modeling a location separately would have been a better choice (this is where team members come into play).

I forgot to post a list of assets I used (everything free), I didn’t have time to import Metahuman character & nothing was textured or adjusted beyond prototyping (even the water wasn’t added, just similar stuff from assets already there).

Maybe it is due to scalable option instead of highest resolution, but my game ended up being 600Mb (compared to 2Gb of a smaller project I did for Bluebeard jam), and it didn’t show up in Unreal engine visually the same way as when it is launched from a package. Despite the assets used were obviously for prototyping, it still ended up looking quite nice visually and relatively easy to understand what’s up. A lot can be improved, but for a jam entry, this is one of my best ones (including soundtrack & a text-based space game).

Major lesson to learn though, is rest and preparation. For me the jam fell between my night shifts (I work 3 rotating shifts), and I went into first day with 1 hour of sleep. RedBull, despite what people think, doesn’t help much and may end up making you feel worse (caffeine + sleep deprivation is actually a bad mix, you need to drink water instead).

Some more lessons: consider teaming up & plan a smaller game or prep better, because socializing on such events is potentially more valuable than working on a project.

I wasn’t expecting to do anything significant on the jam and even participation in it was under a question, but now I have something that will probably divert my attention from Bluebeard (partially because the project is messed up for some unknown reason and needs to be edited to original condition). But this game is something that overlaps with an idea I had for Jack’s story that isn’t heavy on the lore and is basically Doom style game. Maybe this game will end up being what I’ll concentrate on as my first commercial release. I’d say this is all thanks to the theme being very broad to adapt to.

Overall, each new jam is easier for me and makes me more sure that gamedev is something I could do as a career. It is very easy to get immersed in a process of learning Unreal Engine and enjoy tinkering with it, but I also have no luxury to study for fun, because in half a year or so I’ll have to decide if I can safely be a gamedev/art freelancer or I’ll need to look for employment.