Somehow I managed to make it into the middle of February before remembering to do this blog post. But yes, my friend and I made yet another game for Global Game Jam.

This year’s theme was “Mask”. The reveal video showed off a few different ideas around it, from face masks to masking tape to camouflage. My friend and I came up with an idea each. I wanted to make a sniping game, and my friend wanted to make a Mario Party clone.

His idea was too difficult to make in the allocated time, and I felt my idea wasn’t original enough.

So he suggested instead a game where you go around a mansion, talking to people, acquiring masks, and gaining entry to other areas. A bit like Hitman in an Eyes Wide Shut scenario.

I’ve already made a video about the game, so you can check it out there. It covers most of what I want to talk about anyway.

After thinking about it in the weeks since, I’m not that impressed by what we made. One, it moved away from the idea we had due to time constraints. Two, it became far more comical than originally intended, although I’m not as bothered by that because it made it more fun to play. But lastly, I just don’t think what the player is doing is that much fun. It’s yet another prop hunting game. Which is a genre I already did back with the ThreeThingGame game “Keep Warm”. If there was more time, I probably would have implemented the original idea of wearing masks and a more in-depth dialogue system. Just to make it stand out more.

Anyway, Godot is improving, but I still get hung up on some of its design decisions. But I cover that in the video.

I suppose I should elaborate on the point I made near the end of the video about not doing it next year. Well, there are a couple of reasons. Firstly, every year I join the Hull University site for it. However, I haven’t been a student there for more than a decade. And as much as I get along with my old lecturers, I really shouldn’t be hanging out with Uni students who are a good decade younger than me.

Secondly, I’m planning stuff for next year. I can’t say too much just yet, as I’ve only just started working it out, but I will say that if things go according to plan, I will be far too busy to take part. I have a lot of research to do, so I won’t make any further comments until I am absolutely certain it is happening.

And just an additional point for being too busy for things, I still have Tur and Cybersurfer to work on.

Anyway, at the beginning of that video, I mention I did some work on a networked C# Godot project to use as a testbed for the jam, which ended up not happening.

Well, I’ve done a bit more work on it since then. Unfortunately, I haven’t found a solution to a problem with it. Basically, I can run a dedicated server, but if I try and make a peer-to-peer game, problems start occurring. Currently it doesn’t work at all, but previous issues included the host working for everyone, but clients not being synced. Clients working for the host and other clients, but the host not working for the clients. And finally, duplicating players.

I’ll continue to work on it, but I have no timeline for when I’ll publically release it.

That’s it for now.

I’m hoping to have a new demo for Tur out in early March, but this might get delayed to May. I’ll keep you updated.

-Adam