A wedding Jam

So, when Seb (ToadArrow) asked our team if anyone wanted to do a jam, of course I was down. I love Jams!

But there was one caveat... I was getting married on Saturday (May 27) right in the critical home stretch of the GameDev TV jam. We decided I could still contribute enough to get it done.

So fast forward and I'd say that by the time I had to drop the jam to wrap up office work and hustle for last minute wedding prep, the game loop wasn't yet finished and we had a long way to go before we had a playable (let alone a polished) piece of game for everyone to check out.

Fast forward again to the end (literally I had 2 hours to work on it before the deadline), and Seb had brought just about everything together in spectacular fashion (thanks @ToadArrow!), and we could actually see the finish line.

The end product? It's not elegant but the core game loop should work and be bug free (please let us know if you see any bugs).

My takeaways from this jam

- Doing a jam in your wedding week isn't a super idea though it can make for additional challenges if you really want them lol!

- It takes a tolerant spouse to understand the value of the jam in the above scenario :)

- Jams are always as fun as you make them. If you're not feeling it take a break for a bit before your next one.

- Working with new team members is great! I should say in a different context since we certainly already work together!

The good things (learned or implemented):

- Modular design allows for a LOT of forward customization. Sometimes it's easy to hardcode sequences or elements but if you use a flexible system you can easily swap things out later or even create more content more rapldly. In the 3d portion, I put the time in to allow for the loading of ANY dungeon layout... essentially any 3d prefab at all provided it has spawner (prefabs) and a spawn point (prefab). The waves are scriptable objects that modify the number of enemies and the behaviour which can be added to another SO for a sequence, allowing essentially an infinitely scaling experience, and also probably easy to integrate with Unity's new User-Generated Content system... Havne't played with it enough yet but it's definitely primed for that :) 

- It's good to have an idea of the limitations of your target platform in advance. I quickly learned the early assets i chose were way too heavy for a WebGL game and wasted some time sourcing and swapping them out.

- This was my first time using Root-motion driven motion on a navmesh. It's suprisingly logical and straightforward, big thanks to this video for explaining it easily (and providing the sample code).

What's missing and where I would take this game if I worked on it more:

- A better dungeon. The 3d map is a room right now. That would really need to be improved :)

- A better alignment of the transition from movement to attacking (animations). Currently the attack/damage system is hit based which is good but it needs a lot of tweaking including how the transitions happen.

- More levels (there are 11 max, but more would be more fun). As of now it scales fast towards the end, if anyone finishes it let me know, you deserve some cake.

- Weapon reloading, ammunition pickups, melee weapons. The 3d portion needs a far more interesting shooter resource management system and MOAR guns for sure.

- Multiple dungeons/rooms with some objectives other than killing zombies.

- A bit more of a story overview.

That's it, hope you all enjoy this one :)