Glacier Racer

9/9/24: Now that the gamejam has passed, I have updated the game to fix the issue with points and the timer continuing to run after losing the game. Also added the proper graphics for when the player loses, and usaed my 'crackling campfire' sound effect at that time.  I plan to make this a fun game and change / fix a bunch of stuff to make the gameplay smooth and fun, such as ghost sleds from other riders from the leader board passing you or being passed by you depending on the top 10 scores time frames, jumps, bonus tracks, lean animation when turning, and parralax background scrolling.

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Game Jam development notes:

Hello from Roadhammer Gaming! This (7/27/2024/3pm) starts the PolyMars and ScoreSpace #speedrun gamejam where I'm hoping to submit a snowmobile racing game in 3 days, there's a lot to do and a lot of updates to be made, stay tuned :)

I'm not the greatest artist in the world (as anyone who's played my games can attest haha) but this time I'm going to use a combination of AI art made during the jam and modified into landscapes, players and items. The 2 pics with the dirtbike and the snowmobile in action are the images I asked AI to draw, then the creation pic shows some of the modifications I did with them.

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Game Controls:

Left Mouse Click: Use mouse to click the game's menu buttons.

Keyboard: Use letters to type in a player name from the 'Name Player' button in the game menu, can click again after entereing a name.

ENTER Press the 'Enter' key to set the entered name from the click 'Name Player' button.

M: Press the 'M' key to open / close the menu.

Arrow keys: Use the arrow keys to move around . Try and hit moving crystals and hearts for points and lives!

Crystals: (good) , points:  Red = 50 to  90, Yellow = 60 to 100, Green= 70 to 110.

Snow Flake (Bad): 1 heart.

Heart: (good) + 1 heart + 200 to 400 points.

GAMEPLAY:

You start with 3 hearts, but can aquire more, but if you lose all your hearts your snowmobile siezed up and you lost. I have a  BURNING  sound effect I was going to use upon losing the game, but I forgot to implement it , it is in the downloadable  v.0.1.1.1 tho :( But you can press any key to try again! The game and objects get faster as you progress, the minimum time to complete a room is 2 minutes, but that 2 minuites is only being timed when you are pressing the 'UP' arrow key to be going in the right direction. (down the glaciers) Watch out for the deadly snow flakes, they will take a heart from you.

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GAME STRATEGY:

The best game strategy, for what it is, is to stay at the bottom left of the page, pressing the UP arrow key while you are  stuck against a glacier wall in front of you so you can continue to scroll the snow beneath you , then dart out as soon as you see a treasure to intercept it, then move back to bottom left and press the UP button . You get bonus points for each scene completed relavant to how much time it took you vs the min possible scene time of 2 minutes each.  The 'sweet spot' for picking up objects is when your left top is lined up with the middle of the approaching objects.

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THE GAME MENUS:

When clicked, Start: runs the game, Info: Brings the Leaderboard and game info up, Name Player: lets you name your player on the leaderboard, Music: turns on / off the music and: music option buttons:  chose between Trance or wild 8bit game music, Sound: turn on or off the game sounds, Quit: exit the game

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It is done, with only 31 minutes to spare, I'm fairly happy with the outcome, it's definitely not the best, but I believe it's fairly bug free and everything works! the scrolling snow is a little glitchy but it moves correctly anyway, now to relax a bit!

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Final day! just 7 hours left! newest version 0.1.1.0 is up for download, the game mechanics are about done, just dealing with paralax backgrounds and setting up scene changes and win / loose the game. lots to do so will get back before the jam ends, hopefully with a final build

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re-uploaded a new version because I fixed the in-game menu and the game is in a no - bug state.

4 1/4 more hours in day 2 left, the game is now somewhat playable,  Arrow keys to move and 'M' key to open / close the menu, which also brings up the leaderboard. player boundries, image scale, and distance - to - speed ratios are in place and the game timer is working, 

Issues: Menu isn't working well in the game, but works fine on start screen.

Lots more to do in the next 28 hours, the clock is ticking!

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On to day number 2, after 28 1/2 hours I have the skeleton of a game, Graphics are prettymuch done, Game music is done, there's a leaderboard of sorts that can be viewed from the info menu button, press 'M' in game to access the menu,  and the menu automatically starts on game start). You can now download the game for Windows, but no character movement is enabled yet, but you can view the info screen, listen to the 2 game songs (you can select from  either the Trance  song or the wild 8 bit song I made) and enter or quit the game

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Well day 1 went well, (see devlog for details) I am not a great artist so I teamed up with Copilot AI (who uses DALL-E 3) to make imagry that I described, and then spent the next 10 hours editing thOSE images and creating game items from the pallets and pixel structures I took from the pics. Today I want to go over to ButtonBass and see if I can make a gamesong or 2, Then it will be on to creating the objects for the game graphics.

One note, I'm not having a lot of luck integrating Lootlocker with GM:S2 tho, it inits fine but when the example game player dies it throws a "can't find object .rank....." so I have a backup one I downloaded years ago but somehow still works, I'll try to fix lootlocker maybe it's just a bug in the object or I don't have the rank object code in any of (all) the objects from the extension.

Good luck to everyone!