Game Gen - Week 25

Nearly Finished with the Game Jam!

Blood Cell Bash - 2D Browser Game Development:

The idea for this game came to me after a conversation about blood types and the immune system with my partner. I thought, "This could make for an interesting game!" and that's how Blood Cell Bash was born!

I aimed to create something quick, fun, and with minimal artistic details to convey the concept effectively. Blood cells in a bloodstream seemed perfect—simple visuals and straightforward functionality. Here's a look at the progress so far, though I'm still making a few tweaks before releasing it on itch.io:

Here's a short video of some of the gameplay:

Here is some of the code work I did in Construct 3 for the different functionalities:

Setup: This is the "begin play" section in Construct 3 that initializes some of the core game functionalities.

Player Movement: Here's the code for how I implemented player movement.

Bacteria Functionality: I used functions to specify the bacteria UID, ensuring that each one behaves independently.

White Blood Cell (WBC) Mechanics: This part was tricky but fun to figure out, with some help from Vives!

Game End and Health Blobs: Lastly, here's how I set up the end-game sequence and the random creation of health blobs.

I’m pleased with how the game turned out, especially considering the limited time I had to work on it. A few more tweaks, and it’ll be ready for release!

Dungeons and Dragons One Shot:

Aside from Blood Cell Bash, I also created a Dungeons and Dragons one-shot for my brother’s bachelor party. Since this also involves game design, I thought I’d share a few details.

The concept centers around a wedding theme but with a twist: a "fake wedding" orchestrated by a villain using forbidden magic rituals to gain power. I wanted to incorporate elements of the Fey Wilds or Underdark, so I brainstormed different ways to lead the players into these mystical realms.

After jotting down various ideas and exploring different solutions to the mystery, I came up with a plan I’m really excited about. (If my brother is reading this, stop here!)

The game’s villain is an outcast, an evil changeling determined to take over the material plane—what you and I know as the real world—and unleash the creatures of the Fey Dark into the mortal realm. Alistair, our villain, has meticulously plotted to fulfill a prophecy he obsessively believes in. He’s used his shape-shifting abilities to "trade places" with the real prince of the kingdom, holding the true prince captive in his dark lair. The Princess and King have been enchanted, ensuring they suspect nothing.

Will our players uncover this nefarious plot and stop the wedding before it’s too late?

Here are some of the props I created for the game:

This is the enchanted charm that holds the enchantment of the King and Princess and needs to be destroyed to release them. 

Here is the "bloody" coded message they will need to solve to understand what's happening. 

This is an old court document they could find to get more information on who the bad guy really is.

This is a map they could find which could lead them to further information about what's going on. 

Planning a Dungeons and Dragons game can seem overwhelming, but it's actually really fun if you get into the storytelling! You're always going to have to do some improv as a dungeon master, but I think that's part of the fun too! 

My goals for next week:

• Finish and upload Blood Cell Bash to Itch.io
• Continue on my 2D Mobile Game
• Work on some Unreal Engine technical skills, like creating puzzles and traps. 

Game Gen - Week 23

Finished Tarot Game and Continued 2D Mobile Game Progress:

The last two weeks I have made progress on two different games I've been working on. I finished up a demo of a Tarot Card experience that my friends and I have been working on, and I think it came out really nice! Here's a video going through how I created the game: 

Tarot Game Video Overview:

This is a somewhat simple game, but I learned some cool new tricks, including using Media Players and playing videos using Blueprints. I also learned a lot about using Lerp and Timelines to move objects. I had a lot of fun creating this with some help! 

The art is nearly complete, though I have some touch-ups I want to make on the card art itself. 

2D Game Progress:

I also continued to make progress on the 2D Mobile game "Starpaws" that I've been developing. We mainly worked on the trade and inventory system, including a save system that works with the inventory. So overall we created a save system, a trade inventory system, and the widgets to manipulate the trade system as well. Here are some screenshots of the code implementation to show you what I've done:

First, here's a video where I go more in-depth over the code implementation: 

Here's a short gif of the game itself as it is now:

Here is how the Trade Inventory Menu looks currently:

Here is the blueprint to create the Items in the Trade Inventory list as shown above:

This is the Data Table which uses a Structure that is defined in C++ and then we add the information about the items in the game here: 

This is where we define the functions and variables for the Save System: 

Here's how the save system works, it's pretty simple. We can get the inventory when needed, and we can update it either using a pointer to F Inventory Data or local data. 

Here's the functionality for how we first verify the save system for the trade inventory manager, and then we create a saved game. 

Here are the Trade Inventory functions that grab the items from the data table or load them from the saved game if there is one. 

This is how we created the Struct for the Inventory Item data that is used throughout the game. This is what the Data Table is using for it's structure as well. 

This is how we set the actual data for the individual item in the item's to trade list. 

This is the function used to update the quantity of the items to sell from the Trade Item Widget. 

So far, I have learned a lot about C++ and am starting to really get a grasp of how it works. Figuring out how to utilize the Data Table with C++ was challenging, but a great learning opportunity! 

Next week I hope to continue on the Trade System and how the NPCs will purchase only items available to trade, and won't spawn if no items are yet added to sell. I also want to begin working on how farming will function, but not sure what we will want to tackle next yet.