Day 0 😲

This is my 2nd game jam. My last was in 2021, and I leant loads, including Godot which I spent 2 weeks learning before the jam. If you’re interested, here’s Little Spy, my entry for My First Game Jam: Summer 2021

Other things I learned are

• The upfront planning paid off
• Using existing assets was a massive time-saver
• Getting feedback earlier would have helped me
  • I re-wrote the entire character control mechanic the day before the jam ended based on playtesting from friends
• Publishing the final article took much longer than I anticipated

So, with that in mind, this DevLog entry outlines what I did before Day 1 of Linux Game Jam 2023.

Learning PICO-8 🧑‍🎓

When I learned Celeste was initially a game jam PoC made with PICO-8, I wanted to learn more about it. So, I’m using PICO-8 for this jam, and I’ve spent my spare time learning it in the last couple of weeks. I already love it, I think I might be spending some time with PICO-8 after this jam, it’s just too much fun.

I read the PICO-8 manual twice, it gave me real vibes for the 8-bit computers I used to own. I spent some time looking at PICO-8 carts and learning from others’ code, and I joined some PICO-8 Discord servers to share ideas and made some demos.

Antsy Alien Attack Pico 👽️

This a sequel to a ridiculous coding challenge we did on the Ubuntu Podcast back in 2019, where we each made a game using bash 🤦 There is video evidence of this monstrous idea, but it was good fun.

I had a basic game design with the original Antsy Alien Attack and thought it deserved a refresh using something more appropriate.

Planning 🗺️

So, with my game idea and some PICO-8 skills acquired, I started planning what I’ll try to make. I wanted to minimise time spent making SFX, Music and graphics, so I also did some asset discovery to determine what I would use to make the game. I really want to focus mostly on code during the jam. No need for more explanation, here’s the GitHub repo.

• https://github.com/wimpysworld/antsy-alien-attack-pico

Packaging 📦️

As this is a Linux Game Jam, I thought packaging PICO-8 games for Linux users would be appropriate. So, yesterday I made a placeholder app, created some scripts to export to all supported platforms and packaged the Linux exports as a .deb and a Snap. If I get time, making an AppImage and Flatpak are stretch goals.

Store Pages 🛍️

Creating an Itch page and publishing Little Spy burned up loads of time last jam. And getting the last build updated was frantic. So, yesterday evening I wrote some initial docs (based on my plans), pushed them to GitHub and then created an Itch.io and Snap Store page for Antsy Alien Attack Pico based on those proto-docs.

I’ve made a script that uses butler and snapcraft to automate publishing new builds to Itch.io and the Snap Store. I am hopeful this will maximise my jam time in the closing hours of the event 🤞

Early testing 🧪

My placeholder app is text, some wavy text that says the game is coming soon and a sprite. Simple.

This morning I shared my test builds with friends seeking compatibility feedback for the .deb and snap installs. Those were both fine 💪 However, my friends have handhelds such as Sony PS Vita and Miyoo that use fake-08, an emulator for the PICO-8 game. I have spent some time today changing my simple text output functions to be compatible with fake-08. I am not done yet, but learning my stuff was busted early is good. Test early. Test often.

DevLog 🪵

Something else I found useful last jam was making a short DevLog entry each day, it helped me see the progress that I actually made even when I initially felt that there were no significant changes. I recommend other participants take a few minutes to jot down a few words in your own DevLogs for this jam 👍️

Have a great jam, I am looking forward to seeing what you all create 🕹️