Howdy folks, bet you’ve all been grateful to not have weekly notifications about my ramblings. Well, here we go, they’re starting up again! For this, the first post of 2020, there’s quite a bit to talk about. I’m going to start with some of the changes coming to the Twitch channel.
Regular streaming is going to start again on the 4th of February, and there will be weekly #DevDay streams going forward – every Tuesday from 13.30-15.30, UK time. The theme of the Tuesday streams will change each week, and a schedule for the month will be published ahead of time like so (also shared on the ConstructTeam Twitter and Facebook):
But what do each of those stream themes mean? Well:
Construct Twitch Jam
On the first Tuesday of the month, the Construct Twitch Jam will be the theme for the stream. In these sessions, I’ll start by picking a random theme using something like the BAFTA YGD tool. Then I have to build a game that fits that theme in a set period of time, say 60 minutes. That game will then be uploaded to the arcade for you lot to laugh at, I mean play.
What would be great with these, is if further down the line, other people jammed at the same time, then I could play through other people’s games as well as my own at the end of the stream. So, if you’ve got the time, jam with me!
Make a Thing
More of my hugely imaginative titling going on here. The Make a Thing streams are exactly that, I will be making a specific thing in Construct 3. Now, that could be a platform game, a version of Pong or a specific game feature like a menu system. The idea being that these more focused streams would be more useful to you guys and will then be edited down nicely for YouTube. So will everything else, but these are more YouTube friendly if that makes sense.
Oh, and with the new Twitch channel points now enabled, you can spend some of those and pick the theme for one of my Make a Thing streams!
Big Game Dev
These are pretty much what my Tuesday streams have been up to now. A chilled session where we chat and I work on my Pokemon-inspired game project in Construct 3. I suppose there’s not much more to explain about those streams.
Talking of the Big Game Dev streams though, that links nicely into me actually telling you what’s been going on in said Big Game. Well, I’ve been experimenting with the meatier mechanics that need to go into the game, including things like the inventory. I have an image in my head of what I want it to look like, I just need to figure out how that fits into C3.
A player obviously needs to be able to access the inventory, so that means I’ve been messing around with ideas for the menu system for the game. Again, got ideas of how it should look, and I’m building some little test projects to see how it will all work (including the bare bones of an options menu!) Once I get a good, robust system built that will probably make its way into a tutorial too!
And of course, the dialogue system was far from finished, so I’ve been working on that. I now know how I can call functions from within the dialogue, and I’m working on a way to use timelines and the MoveTo behaviour in a similar way to trigger things like cutscenes. That’s progressing quite nicely actually. Then my next challenge is branching dialogue. Woo! Fun times ahead.
Oh, and as a fun little experiment, I built a super-basic but functioning day/night system, so that might feature in the game, as well as a time system specific to the game. That way, people who can only play at a certain time won’t be restricted to one view of the game.
So there you go, an update from me. You're welcome. I hope to see you on the Twitch channel during February, there's plenty to look forward to! If you're not following us on Twitch yet, then pop over to the channel and fix that please ;)