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Just tried licecap and it's working way better :) thank you for the suggestion!

I will definitely look into this tomorrow. I need a computer break now haha!

I think I made some pretty good progress so far. The player's sprite, title screen and background are definitely not the finished versions yet, but I'm slowly getting there. Also, at the moment I'm not worried about the display of the collectibles in the upper left corner, because I haven't finished the sprite yet and I don't think it would make sense to worry about the spacing too much at this point.

I couldn't solve the issues I had with the second and third text-boxes text animation, but I will get back to it on another day.

Things I want to fix ASAP: When pressing space to start the game, the player immediately jumps. If I can't find a solution, I will simply use another key to start the game.

Also I've designed three levels I really like today.

Thank you for your help!

I've actually read about the scaling and rounding issue on various other forums, but couldn't really wrap my head around it. This is how I set up the room:

And this is the view:

For the x and y placement of the textbox, I've used the round() function, because I thought that would solve the problem, but it doesn't so far. However, even though this bugs me a lot, I consider this to be a minor cosmetic flaw at the moment and will try to focus on other more important things.

I put the art on hold today in order to focus on the game mechanics and have decided how I want the game to start: There will be a row of text boxes the player can read by moving further to the right. I actually really like the idea, because it allows the player to experience the story while playing - I think it may be more exciting than just doing a text intro.

It literally took me hours until that text box really worked, but I still have a few problems:
- I have NO idea, why the border on the left and upper side is bigger than the one on the right and bottom - I've tried all sorts of different values but I can't seem to get it to work. If I won't be able to solve this, I will ditch the border, even though I'm really quite fond of the way it looks.
- The intro happens on one room, so the player actually only sees the first text animated and when he/she reaches the next one, the text is already typed out. If I can't find a way to solve this issue, I will probably have a room for every text box (there's only three, so I think it might not be too bothersome).

Also, I have no idea why the gif plays so fast and doesn't display the "i" in comprehension, because it is definitely there when I play the game.

The plan for tomorrow is to try to find solutions for these problems and start properly designing some levels. I've decided to let the art rest a bit in order to definitely be able to submit a finished game.

Hi Konrad!

Thank you very much for your long answer, I really appreciate it! I'm currently using Photoshop, as I'm most familiar with it (I'm a photographer), but with the recent humble bundle I also got Pyxel Edit and Hexels, so I might give them a try tomorrow. I followed your advice and put the art aside for a day in order to work on the programming of the game.

I actually wanted to have him wag his tail back and forth but couldn't do it haha, I will give it another try tomorrow.

Didn't have much time to work on the game today, but I tried to work more on the player's sprite. I think it's slowly getting better, but I'm definitely still struggling a lot. Here is the process I made today in a gif:

I definitely want to do that, but the software I downloaded (screenshottogif) somehow can't handle the movement well - is there any other program that you would recommend?

and thank you :)

I'm ending this day with a nearly finished player sprite (idle, walking and jumping animation included) and the sprite for the cat that still needs a lot of work:

Conclusion for today: I have heavily underestimated how much work it is to create the sprites, but I guess I'm having fun trying to make them as good as it is possible for me. I've always been bad at drawing, so I should've known that this wasn't going to be easy. However, I'm still very much enjoying working on this thing. :)

Tomorrow I want to focus more on the programming side as well as some level design.

May I ask how hexels helps you to do it faster? I got it as part of the recent humble bundle, but haven't really gotten around to play with it.

Also, this is looking absolutely beautiful! I can't wait to play this :)

I'm currently working on the idle animation for Odin, this is what I have so far:

Damn, I never thought it would be THIS hard to do some (seemingly) simple pixel sprites. Any feedback would be greatly appreciated. And I have absolute no idea how I'm going to do the walking animation haha, but I guess I'll figure it out somehow!

10.1.

I decided to re-program everything I had so far because I was very messy and needed to get everything organized in order for me to not lose track of everything. So sadly, no real progress today. Aside from a very simple title screen (that actually works and I'm a little proud because I figured it out by myself haha! Don't forget that I'm a complete newbie :P)

And I've tried my hand at making a little gif of the still pretty glitchy controls so far, but for some reason it doesn't look smooth AT ALL (which it actually does when playing):

That's it for today. I plan to work on the hint system tomorrow, as well as on the player sprite, because it very clearly needs more work done and is desperately lacking a real running animation.

thank you! I'm trying my best to actually finish this and not stop midway which is something I tend to do way too often.

btw, I just played Starbot and am madly in love with it! Such a touching experience.

Today was mostly spent with trying to figure out where I want to go with the story and some pretty rough level sketches, as well as reading about level design theory.

The plan for tomorrow is to work on the start screen as well as the hint system.

Hi everyone!

I'm really excited to participate in this game jam. This is my first time ever trying to develop a game and create sprites and therefore obviously also my first time participating in a game jam. Right before I stumbled upon this site I've started following some tutorials on GameMaker Studio, so it was at the exact right time and a great coincidence, as the game I was planning to make would have been about a dog anyway!

The game I'm trying to create during these 2 weeks will be about my dog, Odin and is very loosely based on the one time he ran away from us. It will be a simple, minimal platformer in which the player will take on the role of Odin, trying to find his way back to his human parents. On his journey he will occasionally get help from a cat which will guide him through his journey by explaining the controls etc. in a very arrogant and hopefully humorous way. As of now, I do not plan to add any enemies and the player will not be able to lose, I want the focus to be on the experience.

So far I have the basic mechanics done, which involve jumping (+ double jumps), platforms and moving platforms. (thanks to some great tutorials by Shaun Spalding as well as Heartbeast!)

Here is a screenshot:

The background is obviously just a placeholder for now and I definitely have to work more on the player's sprite (and animate it) - which so far has been the hardest part.

I'm really excited about all of this and so far am still very determined to finish this! :)