Hi!
This was my first year participating in the GGJ in Córdoba, Argentina, I was a little scared because of not knowing Unity or Game Maker which are the main engines that were used in the Jam, I wouldn’t be using construct 2, the free version is pretty limited for me, and I don’t know if you can even code on it, also I’m always trying to use open source technologies. So I was left with only two engines that I knew, the BGE and Cocos2d-js. The last one-day jam I participated and tried to use cocos2d-js was a disaster because you need to manually craft some basic things like the touch gestures, and some others are very time consuming too, that time we didn’t finished the game, not even had a playable demo.
Also the last jam I used the BGE was pretty good, not the greatest game, but it was a bug-free, very polished, and nice looking game which is something very important considering the miserable 8 hours that the jam lasted. Here it is that game: Dodle Hoop
So If I had to code, I would probably had to use the BGE. But the problem was, that probably no one else would be able to code because the BGE is not very known, not like the other engines I mentioned. Long story short, when the teams started to form, we ended up being two coders, and one 2D artist, and a miracle happened… the other programmer knew how to use the BGE!
So yeah, we used it, I said miracle because later I asked other teams and no one knew how to use the BGE, someones not even knew blender had a game engine.
Later we started the development, the second coder wasn’t that much present, but still contributed a lot. The theme for this year GGJ was “Waves” so we were making a puzzle game where you program an alien astronaut suit to pass through the level’s obstacles, the parameters you pass to the suit are the amplitude, frequency and phase of a sinusoidal wave, and the suit draws that wave when you start the navigation. We were afraid that the game mechanics were too complex and too bored, we even tried a completely different mechanic which ended up being even worst.
The Game
So the game is called “The Sinuous Paths of Space and How to Traverse Them Using Sinuses, Cosines and Tangents v2.0”, It was fun when I presented the game in front of the other jammers :eyebrowlift:. We make the title and the sounds a little wacky because of not knowing until the last if the game itself would be fun, so that was our plan B for having fun with the game when someone played it.
All the sprites were made by the artist, he was great!
Sounds were made by me and the artist too.
Music by me.
Coding by the other coder and me.
Here is kind of a trailer of the game:
The global game jam game page: http://globalgamejam.org/2017/games/los-sinuosos-caminos-del-espacio-y-c%C3%B3mo-recorrerlos-utilizando-senos-cosenos-y-tangentes
Itch.io page: https://mateosss.itch.io/the-sinuous-paths-of-space-and-how-to-traverse-them-using-sinuses-cosines-and-tangents-v20
The game is available for windows and linux.
Final thoughts
It always amaze me the great results I had with the BGE in very short times, even if I had to code some particles and sprite animations systems, but also, it always depress me knowing I really can’t use it for real games beside jams or personal projects. I want badly to play this game on a mobile phone, I want to share it with my friends, for them to play it, not only look at the video, so that’s sad for me.
For real games (a.k.a games that should generate money) I will continue to use cocos2d-js probably, until I learn Unreal or Godot, which are my next goals. But I’m happy because before the jam I thought of the BGE as a disappointment, like something I learnt that wasn’t that good, and I wanted it to be. But after the jam, after seeing again great results with it, I will probably continue to use it in some jams, but, that will not last much, eventually I will learn a engine which, when I use it, produces equally fast projects as the BGE, that will probably completely kill the BGE for me.
Armory looks promising, but it is another engine, I don’t know if it will be as easy as the BGE, but for real projects, I prefer platforms, functionality and capabilities, more than speed and ease of use. I write this as a personal opinion, and a thought I was having for a long time now, I really want to stick with the BGE, but, objectively, I can’t.
Thank you! and sorry for any grammatical error.
