My current plan is to use the haxe programming language to create my kajam entry. In theory I can write a single codebase that can be compiled down to a headless (no graphics) server to run in the cloud, while having that same code be able to produce the playable version of the game. In order to get multiplayer support in the browser, I'll also be using websockets.

But more importantly I want to be able to quickly iterate on my entry during my free time, so I've set out to automate as much of the build and deployment workflow as possible. Nothing fancy, just a makefile that builds the server, deploys it to the remote server and launches it. I can then launch the client on my local machine and see messages passing between the server and client, which seems like a pretty important precursor to a remote multiplayer game. Testing with a local server on your development machine is OK but bypasses a lot of the issues that can occur with a 'real' server out on the interweb.

The test was successful but revealed that terminating the server on the remote server left a zombie process sitting on port 8000, which means that attempting to run the server again would fail as the port was unavailable. This behaviour didn't occur when hosting the server locally, so there's some instant proof that it's worth testing on as realistic a setup as possible. Hooray.

So I am joining the Multiplayer Kajam.

Tools that will be used:

• C++
• My self-written Jam Template, based on SFML
• Visual Studio & Visual Studio Code
• Aseprite for graphics

We will join in a team of three

• Thunraz
• BloodyOrange
• and Laguna

We started yesterday evening and already had some trouble with our ISPs. One was configured to use only IPv4, the other was configured for only IPv6 (with an ipv4 tunnel). We found a way around that, where the only restriction is that I cannot be the host, but we can work around that as local testing is still possible.

I wish everyone best of luck for the jam!

So, I finally managed to get working:

• Game Center Sign In in SwiftUI
• Matchmaking
• Start a match
• Exchange data between clients (just some strings with random data for now).

This means I can start making a multiplayer game!

Because Game Center is strictly peer-to-peer out of the box, I'll try and implement a deterministic lockstep mechanism. Hopefully the Swift Decimal type is stable accross architectures.

This is a living list, gathering links suggested by the community. Please share your recommendations in the comments section or Discord, I'll update this post accordingly. Thanks!

General purpose

• What Every Programmer Needs To Know About Game Networking
• Making a Multiplayer FPS in C++: Series of articles about designing the networking for multiplayer games. The examples are in C++ but the solutions can be adapted to other languages.

Unity

• Mirror (Docs, Pong example): Free Networking API designed to be ease of use, it reportedly has a good reputation.

• Mirage: An allegedly improved fork of Mirror, with more features

• Photon Bolt (Official tutorial): Offers cloud hosting for game servers, with a free plan that is more than enough for a jam game.

• Forge Networking Remastered

• Article: Choosing the right netcode for your game (compares MLAPI, DarkRift 2, Photon PUN, Photon Quantum 2.0 & Mirror)

C/C++

• Beej's guide to network programming: A popular and thorough introduction to networking in C
• Curated list of networking resources for C

I just finished a video that covers and explains the development of Wandering Soul from the top level!

Didn't make it up in time for the 48hr deadline, but at least uploaded for the Unranked section. Although I think I must have accidentally set it up as Solo and now I can't change it, maybe Monsieur Admin can help me set it to unranked as it should be please :) ?

I feel like I should post something about lessons learned, but I make the same mistakes every jam so lets not pretend next time will be any different.

• Used the less than most stable version of Unity that gave me no benefits and might have wasted a bit of time wondering why setting the font sometimes worked and sometimes didn't.

• Spent too long drawing pixel art tilesets that didn't actually work anyway, too much time drawing assets that are hardly ever seen and not enough time with the ones that fill the screen like 95% of the time.

• Gameplay is not that interesting, didn't worry too much about combat not being that exciting because I thought "ah its not really about the combat" but actually didn't have time to add that non combat stuff anyway, so it sort of is about combat, but either way if you have a mechanic you might as well make it as interesting as it can be, and if I had spent more time play testing earlier I might have realised there was some quite easy stuff I could have done to make it more strategic and interesting.

Anyway next week starts the 7 Day Roguelike so maybe I'll make a sequel for that and expand it with some more interesting mechanics and maybe even procedural levels.. sounds like a stretch already.

Anyway despite all the usual issues I still had a lot of fun making a thing

P.S I'm still working on the previous raycasting jam too ….if that ever gets to be playable I'll post a link.

Hello everyone!

I thought I would share how it was like to make Submerged. During the theme submitting phase, we had talked amongst ourselves to find out what we wanted to create. Turns out, one of us wanted to go cave exploring, one wanted aliens, another one wanted a mermaid fairy paradise, and the last one wanted to create a game about linguistics. I am not going to lie, I thought we were doomed. BUT turns out, Ancient Ruins was the perfect theme to create an alien mermaid underwater cave diving adventure centered on merm-alien culture! Who knew?
We hadn't put much thought into what our gameplay would be like beyond this desire to create a game that had a little bit of what we all loved and was centered around exploring , so we analysed our strengths. We had two team members who had jammed before (Hekkusu and myself) and two newcomers who are from other fields but had an interest in dabbling in game development. So we put our strenghths to work!
I programmed, did the sound design, and worked on scenery.
Hekkusu was our main animator and character artists, making portraits, enemys, our character (and pet!).
Louise7 was a first time jammer and created a beautiful storyline for our game, made a script for every bit of dialogue!
and Shooliagods, also a newcomer, managed to make our UI/UX clean and beautiful, making portrait frames, small pixel details (all the bubbles!!) that brought everything together.

***So this post is an encouragement to everyone who is not a dev, you can do it! You too can jam! ***
So congratulations to all the first time jammers, I hope you are proud of what you accomplished!
I know we are <3

TREASURES is a rouge-lite platformer where you collect treasure and then return to the surface. While at first this game seems to be simple, it actually has a high skill cap. Here are some tips and tricks to help you collect more treasure and get better at the game.

1.Wall Climbing. If you are stuck in a place that seems you can't get out of, try wall climbing. Move either left or right, jump(space) and press J, you will grab onto the wall and stay there until you jump or press J again. Now while you are on the wall repeat the steps again and you will scale the wall like it's nothing (just make sure to time your wall jumps).

2.Rare treasure. There are three different rarities common, uncommon, and rare chests. When you are looking around for treasure, if you see this one then something expensive will be inside! https://im.ezgif.com/tmp/ezgif-1-d45e583bc1e5-jpg/ezgif-frame-001.jpg

3.Hidden Treasure. When you encounter one of the tents or huts make sure to go near it because a treasure could be hiding behind it.
Sometimes treasure spawns behind tents or huts so keep an eye out for them.

4.Head Up to the Surface When You Have Low Health. When you are descending in to the lower levels of the cave make sure you keep track of your health, spikes, creatures and even falling could end your run! So be wise and make a descision to go up before it's too late.

5.Make Wise Descisions on what you are carrying. When you find some treasure take a little time to think "Is it worth it to pick this up". Remember you only have twelve slots before you can't collect anymore treasure, so make sure you know what treasure you're picking up so you don't run out of space when you find rare treasure.

6.Better treasure. The deeper you go you will find better and more expensive treasure but you will also find more creatures so make sure you are ready for it.

Thank you for reading this post. If you have any questions about TREASURES, feel free reply and ask.
The game https://alakajam.com/11th-alakajam/1089/treasures/

Play Wandering Soul Here

'Tis a hard game. I'd advise not playing it if you aren't comfortable with bullet hells. lol

Mid-jam I feared that I won't have anything remotely playable, but in the end I was able to submit something.

What went well

• The scope was rather well chosen all things considered. Fortunately I was able to shave off a lot of features that I have initially planned, without compromising the core gameplay too much.
• I was very pleased to discover the pixel tool in Affinity Photo.
• Choice of a 12x12 tiny block size helped a lot, since this was my first foray into pixel art after two decades.
• Love2d was great to use, I didn't have any hickups.
• Somehow I managed to retain a normal sleep schedule.

What went poorly

• I have realized way too late that my logic for making pieces fall after explosion is wrong. This makes the game harder than intended.
• I've spent too much time animating the conveyor belt, when I realized I could have had it done in a few minutes.
• The controls are not well explained and somewhat unintuitive, they require more work. This is similar to my previous game, so definitely something to work at.
• Too much time wasted just playing around with the game rather than coding.

What's next
I'd like to continue working on this one a bit. There are so many features that the game is missing:

• Music and sound.
• Actual puzzles, requiring some planning.
• More levels.
• Crawling, jumping, falling…

Some of the features I wanted to have in the original game. In my head the game should have looked much more like ancient ruins, in the current version one has to squint quite a bit to find the theme.

• Sand tiles that always spill over.
• Buttons and doors.
• Water and water bricks.
• Traps.