What I learned from my SteemitJam attempt.

G'day Steemjammers,
Having never done anything of the sort, and being a beginner to all of this, I have noticed the areas that I need to work on the most, ignoring the actual development part which I will always work on.

Planning, I didn't plan at all, I opened up UE4 and started tinkering, I should have broken down and planned out a few of the elements, even if it was after starting.

Instruction, I really need to start writing instructions and introductions and the sort, it is clear that no one had a clue what the goal was, hell, I'll give it an attempt now.


"You are awoken from cryosleep to alarms, something has happened and your cryopod has been jettisoned over a moon somewhere between earth and your destination, you can see the ground approaching and you brace for impact, but it doesn't come, you look again and have only fallen 10% of the distance you expected, low gravity is a boon considering there is no propulsion on cryopods"
"You take the time to gather what is available to you, it was your job to wake the others, so you have the tools required to do that, The cryopod converts to a protective exoskeleton with a jetpack, meant to be used to mine a distant asteroid field, now your only means of survival, if the battery dies you die."
"You hit the ground, impact was negligible, you press the button that exits you from the cryopod in the exoskeleton and instantly notice that the conditions of this place are a huge drain on your suits power, you will need to find a power source and pray some engineers survived to survive the first hour"
"You look around, you were the first to land, the others are falling, giant heavy machinery falling like balloons, they will not last long on this planet if they stay asleep and unprotected, time to do your job, wake them up, keep them alive."

Controls are WASD, CTRL crouch. Space Jump, hold for larger jumps, space in the air for jetpack boost.

The giant balls are the cryopods, your gun is the tool used to wake people up. When you shoot a cryopod if there was a survivor inside your survivor count will increase and a cone symbolising the survivor will appear on the map.

A green cone is an engineer, they produce power, a blue cone is a civilian, they use up resources but are the basis for any future score, a red cone is a panicking survivor, they steal resources and are a general drain.

You can decide to kill a survivor by shooting their cone.


Practice is practice.

Checking requirements, I missed the deadline because I did not double check, I had the instinct to check a few hours before and assured myself I didn't need to, I should always check if it is easy enough.

Time Management, this has always been a weakpoint of mine, I can get lost in a project but I can just as easily get lost outside of the project. I need to learn to budget my time properly, I could have gotten a lot more done.

Building for outside systems, my engine isn't setup to build for Linux so I want to have that sorted by next Jam, I think I might just set up a VM, I am sure I can remember enough bash.

So yeah, all in all it was a good experience, and i kind of like my idea so it has been added to the book of ideas I want to make one day.

Thank you to all involved, I look forward to the next one.

-Drakahn

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I'm glad that you learned something while making this game! Hopefully, I'll see you again in the next SteemitJam!

This post has received a 1.56 % upvote from @drotto thanks to: @drakahn.