Hey, I am jelle and last weekend I joined the
extra credits game jam
However, there was one slight problem, the
jam lasted 3 days and I was just about to
go on a trip!
so… well, let me just tell you what happened.
it was friday evening and the next day, I
had to get up at 3u45 in the morning because
the ride would take all day, that way we could
arrive at a nice time in the afternoon.
I Packed my bags and waited for theme reveal.
and the theme was….
[drumming]
“take care”
okey! let’s go!
hmmm, or I could go to bed…
or I could get a bit of gamedev in,
or, I could do some sleepy time.
game, sleep, game, sleep…
well, why do something today, if you can do
it tomorrow as well!
Sleep it is!
[alarm clock]
urg, okey, let’s get ready for a 10 hour
drive!
The trip went smoothly as I took the first
shift and we were on our way to France!
As the sun rose I started thinking about Ideas.
The theme reminded me of ludum dare 46 where
the theme was “keep it alive”.
There, I made a game about eggs, check it
out if you haven’t already!
But this time, I wanted to do something different.
Because I couldn’t take my big PC with me,
I had to work with what had, my Ipad and old
laptop.
A nice and simple 2D game would be perfect.
As I was about to take a nap, I saw all these
caravans and motorhomes on the road and I
had the perfect idea:
You are on a roadtrip with your family, but
your car isn’t big enough to fit everyone,
so, unfortunetly granny has to sit in the
caravan…
of course you don’t want anything to happen
to her so you will have to drive carefully.
not only are the roads curvy and narrow, but
there are others on the road who are racing
to get to their destination, so, well… you
better not get hit by them.
okey, so, while I was still in the car, I
started to draw some vehicles, I started with
a cool edgy musclecar and, when I got to the
colouring part, I remembered there was an
extra credits challenge to use a limited 4
colour palette from the old ms-dos games with
the cga adaptor.
but then I saw that 4 colours really isn’t
all that much, Luckily there was a hack where
you could use all 16 colours, so, that was
what I was going to do as well!! hmmm, what’s
the fastest colour?, red of course!
next up, was the family car, and of course
It was pretty small, because, granny doesn’t
fitty.
I picked a colour that’s as far away from
the red as possible, green! and with the cute
car ready, I drew the caravan.
When I coloured them, I used flat shading
with the darker colours from the palette,
and also added highlights to emulate the shininess
of the metals and car paints.
we were nearing our destination,so I drew
a tile-able road texture, because I’ve got
a great idea about how to make the road, but
more about that later.
as I finished off my drawings, we arrived
at our new home for the week.
so I can get to my computer and start making
games! but first! swimming time!!
alright, i’ve got my legs stretched and
I’m ready to start programming!
[set up tour]
I started with coding the basic car movement.
Because I wanted to use physics to move the
car around, so I can do some crazy hits with
the other ones, I based the movement on one
of my previous projects where I control a
shopping cart with an arduino.
Only this time, it would be even simpler,
because it is only 2D! when I press forward
I apply some force in the cars forwards direction,
and when I turn, I directly affect the rotation,
and crank up the drag of the car so the sliding
get’s supressed and the car doesn’t become
an ice cube skimming on a wet floor…
then I did some testing and ….
well, I have been awake for quite a while
already….
ZZZZZZ
The next morning I got up bright and, not
that early, because i’m on vacation!
swimming, sunbathing, and walking..
okey, enough of that, back to making a game!
I started off with adding the sprites to the
car and I got began working on the Road generation.
I used a sprite shape to create a smooth road
with very little control points.
perfect for fast level creation.
And I made sure the tangents of the points
were long enough so the corners would’t
get to sharp.
Next up was the main element of the game,
the caravan, I tried to add a hinge joint
connected to the car, but after trying to
control it, and it, eeuuh, controlling itself,
I realised I did something wrong.
I did some other stuff, and after a little
while I tought about adding another rigidbody
as the tow hook at the back of the car so
the caravan could grab on to that instead!
aahhh, much better!! what a smooth ride!
wait, I need a solution for the abrupt road
ending.
I didn’t want to make different levels and
spent time on level design, because I am on
vacation!
So I created a procedural road generation
script that would place control points at
certain distances away and give the points
a random offset in alternate directions.
This way, the road becomes an infinite zig
zagging road.
now I can drive as long as I want! hmmm, after
all that driving, the road became pretty long,
and that’s not really usefull, actually,
it’s really useless!
So, I created a checkpoint system that if
I pass it, it removes the first points and
adds the same amount of points at the end.
that’s better, now there are only as much
points as I need all the way to eternity!
after that was done, I went back to the pool
and called it a day!!
the third day was also the final day, and
there were still a lot of things that I wanted
to add.
I started with adding the enemy cars and created
some basic AI, the ai was programmed to drive
towards a control point and once it reaches
it, It retargets to the next one! and so on
and on and on…
first I tought this would be to easy since
they would all follow the same path but luckily
physics are really unpredictable and hectic,
so the cars just go crazy all the time!! perfect
for me trying to avoid them.
once the cars would reach the last point of
the road, they would be transported back to
beginning.
because they were so hectic, the cars tented
to escape the road at the beginning and started
driving next to me, and that’s not what
I want! so, I added a starting place where
all the cars would start out and moved it
together with the first point so it would
alway close out the road.
now, It was time for some visual indicators.
I added a damage system that calculates the
car damage based on the impact force of the
eney cars and added some particles for when
the cars hit the caravan!
I also created damaged states for the caravan
for when it’s health becomes lower than
a half and 20% respectively.
when you see the damage, you know granny is
in big trouble!
I also added a distance tracker and a more
precise damage slider.
Okey, the game is almost done, I have created
the core loop and to finish things of, I added
tire tracks with a particle system and some
cacty along the road.
I added a start and ending screen and the
game was done.
I submitted it to Itch.io and got back to
the pool!
you can play it right now on itch.io, and
let me know what you think of it!
If you liked my little vacation jamming, be
sure to hit the like button and subscribe
if you want to see more of this in the future!
and I’ll see you guys next time, where I
will be back at the desk!
bye.
