Sorry for not putting out devlogs every day of the week like I had hoped! We were super busy trying to get this game done and didn't have much time to write updates. Still, I want to reflect on the entire game jam, so here's what happened days four through eight!

Day Four

Not too much was done on this day, and we didn't have any deadlines. We did finish the player walking sprites, as well as the monster sprites. We also completed the level 4 background and started programming the obstacles.

Day Five

On Wednesday, things picked up a bit more!

Art

First, our tile artist Mason ended up redoing the levels 1-3 tileset. It was previously missing some tiles, such as ones with grass on three sides. He then completed the tileset for levels 4 and 5!

He tried to design the new tilesets to work with Godot's autotile feature, but since that requires a very specific texture setup, it unfortunately did not work. However, thanks to a very kind person on the WPI Game Jam Discord server, we now know that there are templates for autotile textures! We thus plan to use a template in the future.

Caitlyn, our background artist, finished the level 5 and start menu backgrounds. At this point, nearly all of our backgrounds were done.

Music

The music for levels 2 and 3 were completed! As mentioned in previous devlogs, all level songs shared motifs, but they also had to match the atmospheres of their respective levels. Level 3 is where the game starts to get more ominous, so that level's song isn't so cheery and dreamlike.

Programming

We programmed the disappearing platforms and the bouncy clouds on Wednesday, but the platforms were still using a placeholder texture and the clouds weren't animated properly.

Day Six

Thursday was the day that we aimed to complete all UI assets and level code by!

Art

The background and buttons for the pause menu were completed on this day.  In addition, the sprites for the boss at 2 HP and the player jumping were created!

Music

A lot of music was done on Thursday. The credits music, waking up cutscene music, pause menu music, and level 4 music were all completed.

For the cutscene, we decided to make the music first and have the animator match the cutscene to the song’s length, since the art hadn’t been started yet. This seemed to work fine.

Programming

Unfortunately, the levels were not completed--or even started--on Thursday. This was because the nightmare fuel and next-world portal had yet to be finished. A lot of our programmers were busy with school projects due the next day, so we fell behind in this respect.

In hindsight, we shouldn't have waited for the level designs to be completed to start working on obstacles and boundaries. Hopefully next time we'll get it right!

Day Seven

This was the start of game jam crunch time. Truly a fun and stressful day.

This was the day we wanted all artwork and music done by.

Art

All of the remaining boss sprites were completed Friday, those being the boss at 1 HP, taking damage, and dying. The disappearing platform tiles were made, as well as the start menu buttons and settings menu assets. Finally, the ending cutscene was made.

Music

The level 5 music, as well as music for an additional cutscene, was done today. At this point, the only song left to create was the boss fight music.

Programming

A fair amount of programming got done on this day. The start and pause menus were programmed, and the nightmare fuel finally gained functionality. This meant that we could work on levels. Late at night, we finished the boss fight (but without the boss attacks) and level two. Currently, we had something we could submit—level one had been finished and no longer contained any stock assets—but we definitely wanted to try implementing the other levels and a UI.

Day Eight: The Due Date

Ah, yes. Saturday, June 12th, 4 PM. The deadline for the game jam submission.

The day of cramming in as much last-minute coding as possible. Oh, and the music was finished up, too.

Music

The boss fight music was completed, officially putting a close to all of the music team's tasks. All of the songs that weren't already also had to be converted to .wav files.

Programming

Now this was our day. Of course, most of our programming team was busy with the NE FIRST Romi competition. However, a small group of us spent the day working on the game. This was an especially fun day because the game jam wasn't the only due date we had. Our schoolwork had been due the day before. Additionally, our FRC team had our Chairman's presentation, Game Design presentation, and the aforementioned Romi competition on the same day.

On the bright side, this meant that all of us were at the shop, making cooperation a slight bit easier.

This was a day of rushing to complete as much as possible. We rearranged who was doing what, changed our minds about the task delegation on the fly, and it was all around stressful, in a fun way.

While I worked on bringing in the final assets, Mason programmed the next-world portal. We then moved onto creating levels three and four and making the music player a singleton so that the music wouldn't restart when the player died.

By 3:00, we had combined all the levels together to make a functioning game. In the last hour, we made a scramble to add in as much functionality as we could. This meant we were all working on different features, but it was unlikely they'd all be implemented in time. I created a credits screen in place of the credits video since I couldn't figure out how to get videos working without Godot crashing. Mason tried to troubleshoot this problem with video playback and implement a cutscene, while another programmer created level 5 (without the monsters). I initially made a panic submission at around 3:30 with the credits screen but not the UI, cutscene, or level 5. Then, we figured out the issue with video playback--WEBM files didn't seem to work, so we had to use OGVs--so I hurriedly merged the cutscene in without testing it. Unfortunately, a minor error in the code caused the cutscene and credits to break.

I also attempted to implement the menus in the last remaining minutes, but there were merge conflicts, so we submitted without a UI.

The Future

As you can probably see, we released a new version of the game, Alpha 1.1, last night. We do plan to continue development of Return to Reality until it is complete. Tomorrow, I plan to put out another update with some minor additions and fixes. Then, sometime within the next few weeks, we hope to complete level 5, the other cutscene, the pause menu, and possibly the boss attacks.

Until next time!

Cierra O.

Producer

8-bit Falcons