Game Jam Postmortem

I have a lot of mixed feelings about this project. For one, I'm glad I finished another jam, and as usual, wish I could've done more. However, unlike my last completed jam, I had a lot of other different issues than just not enough time or bad game scope.

To start with, this was the first completed "3d" game I've finished. I say "3d" because the only 3d part is the overworld. Everything else is 2d, including the objects in the 3d space. This is mainly because I can pump out pixel art fairly easily, but 3d art can take long for me. That isn't to say I didn't want to make 3d models, as a matter of fact the reason is something entirely different. 

One common struggle I had with this project was motivation. About halfway, I start to lose motivation simply because I knew I wouldn't have time to create all I wanted, so I had to narrow scope. That isn't a new thing, but specifically for this jam, most of what I was looking forward to was trying to make 3d models and fluid combat. These had to be sacrificed because I spent way to long trying to figure out Godot's shaders (which feels so limiting coming from OpenGL and Unity), not to mention the lack of open source community shaders I'm used to finding.

It also doesn't help I've never made a dungeon-crawler AND turn-based combat. Luckily I swallowed my programmer pride and referred to a lot of online tutorials, but a lot of them were outdated for Godot 4 or I could tell they weren't easily scalable. For the dungeon crawler, I copied the "level-cube" idea for using customizable cubes for level design, and most the movement code was used one-to-one, just translating it to a more composition-based structure and Godot 4 language. Easily what caused a lot of problems was the battle code. Some good practices were used at the start like separating the code into separate nodes for composition, but as time ran out I just gave up and resorted to spaghetti code. For instance, I used Resources for Enemies and expanded on the tutorials code to pull random moves from said resource. Obviously command pattern would be the best path, but changing the main loop to fit that while creating a whole new player system wasn't possible with my limited knowledge, so all I did was just compare move names in a giant if-else statement.

That being said, I don't have all negative views for this project. I spent a lot of time staring a screen or distracting myself midway through due to the issues I had, but once I finally finished levels and the game loop, I could work on polish and art. By no means is the art amazing, but I had such a fun time creating enemy sprites and coming up with the DigiStrider art. It makes me said I didn't have time to animate these sprites in any sort of way, because I love the cybersecurity mixed with amateur art aesthetic so much.

So if there's anything I learned about this project, is that I'm never trying to make a turn-based combat AND something else in a week xD. Not to say it isn't possible, but I what I look forward to in turn-based combat is much more than just attack->enemy attack->repeat.