Queda muy poco para la primera cita del año a nivel de game jams, la Global. Este año repito participando en Espacio RES, ya que la pasada edición disfruté muchísimo del ambiente del evento: una jam con el tamaño perfecto y con muchos detalles para que la experiencia fuera excelente para los participantes. Eso sí, este año quiero hacer exclusivamente audio, para tomármelo con más tranquilidad... Si me enredo a programar me estreso y llego el lunes KO al trabajo.
Últimamente estoy trabajando en algunos juegos nuevos para móvil que se desmarcan un poco de los típicos juegos de puzzle. Estoy revisando un poco mi workflow y he estado estudiando la música de algunos juegos móviles de éxito, entre ellos Clash Royale. Tengo un par de temas analizados 100%, a medio camino entre un análisis puramente musical de diseño de juego. Es interesante leer o interpretar algunas decisiones en función del diseño... desde luego lo hago desde una perspectiva bastante hipotética, pero en cualquier caso es un buen ejercicio de reflexión.
Al mismo tiempo, estoy toqueteando las últimas versiones de Wwise, que me han dado algunos problemillas de integración en Unity a la hora de actualizar versiones anteriores. No hay grandes novedades, pero quiero profundizar en algunas features que apenas he tenido tiempo de estudiarme. ¡Y quién sabe! Quizás me prepare este año para la siguiente certificación en algún momento :)
Definitivamente el Roland Super JV es uno de mis sintes favoritos. Hay algo en su diseño que me encanta: no sólo sigue una lógica sencilla, sino que con un poquito de mimo, todo suena genial: a medio camino entre lo espacioso y lo arenoso. Puede ser casposo (como muchos de los presets que trae) o estar bien al frente. Además gracias a los editores que hay hoy en día, no necesitas tarjetas de memoria para acumular cientos de programas. Las tarjetas de expansión son absurdamente caras eso sí...
Recientemente me he deshecho de algún aparato que apenas usaba y he obtenido de carambola una segunda unidad, con la expansión dance. El reto parece ser conseguir la Vintage Synth... En eBay están por las nubes, rondando los 150€, pero tengo alguna localizada que espero poder adquirir de aquí a no mucho tiempo a un precio razonable.
Además de trastear con el SuperJV, estoy invirtiendo bastante tiempo últimamente en profundizar en la programación del Fantom X, que realmente tiene un esquema muy parecido. El editor para Windows es un poco doloroso, pero con un poquito de maña se puede llegar a un flujo de trabajo aceptable. Eso que dicen de "no es tan importante la calidad del sonido como la facilidad de uso" es una gran verdad, máxime cuando tienes que batallar con manuales poco claros y menús llenos de submenús...
Estoy intentando hacer patches un poquito diferentes de lo que estoy acostumbrado (y de los que normalmente necesito en el trabajo): más sucios y un poquito más abstractos que los que vienen de fábrica. Buscar el punto medio entre la ligera imperfección y la usabilidad es delicado. Por ejemplo, si te pones a jugar con valores muy extremos de LFO para obtener una desafinación cíclica entre osciladores, es fácil llegar a algo poco utilizable en un contexto de música tonal. El Fantom tiene una matriz de modulación bastante completa de la que se pueden sacar cosas muy locas, y es un poco fácil perder el control con cuatro tonos por patch.
Los sonidos más imperfectos además requieren una idea musical lo suficientemente buena para funcionar, ya que no son tan fáciles de encajar como otros elementos melódicos al uso. Justo en ese terreno se encuentran la composición, los arreglos y el diseño de sonido. De ahí que sea un poco difícil hacer patches en el vacío, por el mero gusto de explorar posibilidades. El proceso de escritura y diseño de sonido tienen que ir de la mano... Tirar de presets inicialmente puede estar bien, pero creo que es algo a evitar en la medida de lo posible.
Esta semana además adquirí Ableton Live en su versión 9/10 aprovechando su oferta de lanzamiento y estoy dando mis primeros pasos durante el puente. El modo session es muy muy divertido... Estoy deseando poder terminar algún tema y publicarlo :)
So after a jam organizing spree of four years, I guess it's time to stop and relax a little bit.
I don't even know how I got this far with all this! It's hard to believe that Familiar was created about eight years ago, a short time after creating this blog. We built synthesizers, threw lots of parties, organized game jams, created spicy vermouth cocktails, met awesome people, made great friends and enjoyed our time doing what we wanted to. I guess Familiar is about that: doing what you like surrounded by incredible people.
Time has passed and I have changed (nothing special, everyone changes). I feel like there's already a community running and working in the city. Also I feel like making "big" events isn't the right thing to do any longer. Yep, an 80 people event isn't that "big", but it needs a lot of energy and time that I need to invest in other stuff (music, side-projects, family). That's why I'd say that Familiar Game Jam is "on hiatus" by the moment.
Otherwise, I feel like joining some friends and make private game jams in the Familiar Forever format. My best jam experiences have been with very few people, in a cozy place... no planning, no limits, no budget... Just friends and the will to make games, learn and have fun. I'd also like to throw a game dev party in the style of Nexo Indie Resort next year. Maybe Familiar Game Camp 2?
That's all folks! I'm releasing some new games soon before the end of the year, so stay tuned :)
Woah! It's been a while since the last post here. I've been very busy working in a couple of freelance projects and I haven't been able to find the time to write. I'm using twitter a lot these days, so I'd say it's a nice way to contact me :)
Yesterday, the fourth edition of bitbitjam came to an end. This has been the third time I've joined this jam and the second time I've worked in a Game Boy game for it. On this occasion I've teamed up with my friends zalo (coding) and kirblue (level design). My work was all about art: music, sound effects and graphics. You know, I can't call myself an artist, but I have lots of fun pixelling around!
Starting Out
The week before the jam started, we were wishing to make a Zelda-style game, with an action-RPG gameplay, a little bit of dialogue, NPC puns and all that... but then, the theme was made public...
So we had to deal with 'Velcro Sheep' and design a game that just used one key as input. Mixing these two elements with our initial idea of a Zelda-ish game was impossible, so we decided to take a different approach and tried to make something fresh. In the beginning we thought the theme to be extremely restrictive, but finally, after having the initial concept, we felt extremely satisfied with it.
So first Friday, we basically decided the idea of the game and went to have some beers in the monthly gamedev meeting of the city... 'Just a couple of beers'.
Haha.
Of course a hangoverish saturday came along.
Let's Do It!
After some rest, a nice amount of tortilla with salmorejo and countless glasses of water, we had some decent core gameplay at night. We had the basic elements: a kawaii sheep jumping and climbing around with the only use of a button, a couple of enemies and some special platforms. This was the state of the game saturday evening:
On Sunday morning, kirblue started working on level design with us. He's designed great levels of increasing difficulty that have an awesome sense of progression. Very nice work!!
This time, the main technical evolution has been using a SDCC version that included lots of fixes to the previous one we were using. For the rest, we've used the same collection of tools: ZGB, GBDK, GB Tile Designer and Map Builder, mod2gbt and gbtplayer and BGB. I also used the fixed version of GBSoundDemo, an extremely useful ROM to design your own sound effects.
For the static screens, I used Aseprite and the awesome Game Boy Tile Data Generator. It's a bit of a hassle to use 256 tiles for every screen (it doesn't check if the generated tiles are used more than once), but it's fast, and as we're not going to make physical copies of this, we don't care about ROM size. It's so painful to use the Tile Designer and the Map Builder for such big screens... I found other bmp2gb converter that features tileset optimization, but it was just usable for the Game Boy Color. Maybe for the next jam!
I used OpenMPT, my favorite tracking software, to write the music for the game. The tunes were supposed to be polkas in the beginning, but they're a mix of bluegrass and Johnny Techno-Ska haha. The system we're currently uses lacks lots of important features for GB music: volume envelopes and vibrato. Volume envelopes are essential to avoid the classic audio clicks that the constant volume channel reset outputs. I'm thinking about giving MML+XPCMK an opportunity for the next game... Let's see if I can practice with it!
Impressions
Overall this jam has been a great experience for me. It's been fine to have a complete week to produce a retro game with such a great team! Having kirblue on board with us it's been awesome, because he's iterated the design of each level a lot, and thanks to that, the game feels more fun and polished than the average game jam prototype.
Of course the game has its flaws. Personally I couldn't find the time to do backgrounds or work a bit more on the sprites. I still have to fix a couple of things that will make it for the post-jam version (sometime soon I hope). I would have liked to make more diverse tiles, so we could have different "level worlds"... Perhaps that's too much to ask for in a jam :)
So as you can see, it's a great time to start developing for the old 8bit Nintendo handheld. Lots of new tools and lots of new people getting involved. What are you waiting for?!
I'd like to thank the creators of every tool we've used and, of course, bitbitjam organization team :) See you very soon! Maybe on the next GBJAM?
Is this a post-mortem? Kind of! I'd like to keep on working on the project, so I can say this is a post-mortem of the compo version :)
This has been my first Ludum Dare Compo and it's been TOUGH. My main problems have been two:
It was my first time trying to make a game with this engine... and it was also the first time in a while coding in C
I didn't really have a gameplay concept
I just wanted to implement collisions, animations, etc. I was stuck in many stupid problems and I just couldn't manage all the tasks in time. I came with this short little demo that, at least, works :D You can give the code a look in this GitHub repo. Please remember that I'm not a coder, so any advice will be more than welcome!
It's a shame that I didn't find the time to make any audio for this :(
I want to find the time to think about the project and make a simple finished game!
My previous experience in Super Princess' 2092 EXODUS was very different, because Zalo was doing all the code stuff and I just had to make graphics, animations, music and sound effects.
BTW I organized a little local site in my city, Sevilla. We only had a special rule: everyone had to wear a hat!! The ambience was great and very enjoyable. The last time I was in a jam with less than 30 people was looong ago :) Thanks to everyone who shared the whole weekend with us!! You can check every game made in our local site in this link.
I'm willing to repeat the experience, but I think that the next jam will be Bit Bit Jam #4 this summer. Is anyone up for a local event? ;D
