https://cthran.itch.io/ryan-laley-gamejam-illuminate
I tested myself by doing a 72 hour GameJam Solo. The aim of this was to see how much I could do by myself so I could better my confidence and also better understand where I needed to develop myself.
In this game jam I design and coded the entire thing myself on UE4
I came up with the idea based off the prompt being: Escape Room
- I began by brainstorming what I could do design wise within the theme and decided early on that I was going to do a singular puzzle design that would increase in difficulty before then letting the player escape.
- My main inspiration for the piece was the light puzzle from Prince of Persia Sands of time. I remember playing that part as a kid and thinking it was a really cool idea.
- Before starting on the tech part of the game I quickly drew up 3 different puzzle designs the player would have to complete so I would know what needed to be created and gauge if I could complete it.
- I created the Ray of light mechanic to use line traces that would interact with each pillar and update based off interaction point. During testing this effect, I found that I couldn’t allow for the player to be make an infinite loop since it would crash the game, because of this I had to go back and change a few of my designs for the level.
- I created all the light pillars to update off the same custom tick from the source point. This was to try help optimise the entire action as to reduce the load on other peoples PC’s when playing the Game Jam.