Added directional sprite support to my raycaster today, so now you can see FRIENDLY WORLD INHABITANTS from multiple directions

… as long as they kind of look cool:

Working in 3D always seems to produce the best effects whenever anything goes wrong. Anyone else have any artful embarassments yet? If so, it might be nice to share 😁

Please find my raycasting game Burning Glyphs

7dfps

I always wanted to take part in the 7dfps. I always played shooters. My first one was DukeNukem3D, which a friend showed me and I was blown away.
When I received the Game Engine Blackbook for Wolfenstein 3D as a birthday present, I knew that I don't have any more excuses. I can wholeheartedly recommend the book. It is written very well and in an entertaining way, contains a lot of helpful explanations and also was proofchecked. This is important, because a lot of tutorials on the internet contain minor or major math errors, inconsistent or confusing variable naming and so on. I have been there, and I have found my missing minus sign just due to this book.

So 7dfps it should be. I only learned some dasy into 7dfps that the next kajam will be about raycasting. So bear with me for submitting the same game twice.

raycasting

The raycasting was written from scratch, and I have to say: "That is not so easy to get right!". It took me a lot of drawings and scribbles on paper. But eventually I managed.

c++ in 2020?

I am working as a c++ software developer and c++ is in fact my preferred language to write games. Lucky for me I was working on a so called JamTemplate which was lately being able to compile to web via emscripten.
I had to try this out! It wasn't easy, especially getting multiple libraries (SFML, SDL) combined in one framework. Burning Glyphs was so to speak the full rehersal and I am pretty happy how it turned out. Of course there are still a lot of quirks and issues left, but I am confident that they will vanish throughout the next projects. And to be honest, witnessing your c++ code being executed in a browser is pretty awesome :D

It has been an excellent event, we have seen some wonderful games, but unfortunately it is time for us to move on. If you have a game in the works, don't worry, we will do this again, it is a regular event!

In the meantime, however, we are looking forward to the next Kajam, which will be focused on raycasting! The 9th Kajam starts on the 4th of January, so it's time to get prepared for that! Read about it here!

There are four days left for Feedback Fortnight! If you haven't played all the games and left some commentary, now is the time to do so! Of course we won't get angry if you do this five days from now, but then you'll have missed the event, your comments won't comment for karma on the game you've submitted yourself, and you'll miss some (but not all) of the fun!

I've turned off submissions to the event. If you really really really want your game submitted and were just waiting until that bug was fixed and I closed submissions just a little too early, feel free to contact me to get your game submitted. However, in this situation, you've missed two and a half weeks when you could have been getting feedback!

So far things have been going well with lots of commentary on all the games (that I've been looking at)! I said I would play all games that can run on my computer, I haven't yet, I did play a bunch, but I will play them soon!

That's right! From the 4th to the 31st of January, we're having another Kajam event. Your mission is to make a game that uses ray casting in some way, graphical or otherwise.

But what is ray casting?

In 3D graphics, ray tracing is a rendering method in which "virtual light rays are "cast" or "traced" on their path from the focal point of a camera through each pixel in the camera sensor to determine what is visible along the ray" (Wikipedia article). For a resolution of 320x240, that would be 76800 rays each frame! Ray casting is an optimised version of Ray tracing where only one ray is required for each column of pixels, which means only 320 rays each frame! This is the technique used in classic games like Wolfenstein 3D!

So I have to write an esoteric retro 3D renderer?

I encourage you to give it a go, but it's not required! There are plenty of other reasons why you might "cast rays" in a game. The same ideas are often used in physics simulations, AI, and sometimes seemingly simple operations, like checking if a player can jump. So please feel free to use your imagination! If it involves rays, we're happy :).

But what is a Kajam?

Kajam competitions are month-long events in which people make a small video game focusing on a specific aspect of game development. They're a perfect opportunity to learn, experiment and level-up your gamedev skills!

Detailed rules here.

Some relevant links:

• Retro FPS ray casting tutorial at lodev.org
• Ray-Casting Tutorial For Game Development And Other Purposes by F. Permadi
• A ray casting renderer in 265 lines of JavaScript
• Different uses of ray casting in Unity (interesting even for non-Unity devs)
• AI ray casting in general

Time to find those works in progress that you would like put before others eyes! Yes, it's time for the Feedback Fortnight. Dust off your project, make it as nice as you can, and submit it to the ferocious critics of Alakajam!

We are entering the preparation phase. During this phase you should submit the projects you want feedback on. If you are excited to play other games and give feedback, although that phase has not yet started, every one will be happy if you start doing so.

How does this work? Submit a game. It can be pretty much any game, whether a game jam done in 24 hours, or something you are working on commercially. It does not need to be complete. It can be as rough or as polished as it happens to be. Tell us about it. If you tell us what you specifically want feedback on, you might get more focused feedback.

Meanwhile, for the following two weeks, you should play all the other games submitted. Write up some commentary on what you see in the games, what works well and what doesn't. Play the games and tell everyone else how their games make you feel.

The following is copied from our previous post to clarify a few points!

What can I submit?

This is a very open event, where you can enter for instance:

• A personal hobby project you have been working on this year
• A game jam entry that didn't get enough feedback or that you expanded upon since
• A work-in-progress commercial game project (as long as you keep your build free and publicly available)

Of course this can be either a solo project or a team-based one.

Event schedule

• Preparation phase: on November 22, the event will open submissions. That's now! It's started! Let's see your games!
• Feedback phase: on November 29, all entrants will be formally invited to start playing and reviewing each other's entries. In the meantime, submissions will remain open until the last few days for late entrants.
• End: on December 17 the event will be officially closed. The games won't get any rankings or ratings, just feedback. No bragging about being first, but who cares, you will get good commentary! Comments will continue be open on individual games, in case you think of something to tell after the deadline.

Tips

• To improve the quality of your feedback, give indications on what aspects of your game you are most looking for feedback on. This is especially true of bigger projects like commercial games.
• If possible, make your game build available on multiple platforms or the web
• Don't neglect commenting on other games: longer, more constructive comments get rewarded more "karma", and this karma score helps you get displayed higher in the game list.

The 2020 edition of Feedback Fortnight will be from November 22 to December 17! This is an event where you submit any game project, complete or not, and ask for feedback. If you enter the event, you are also invited to give feedback to the other people, as the goal is indeed to exchange feedback between participants. To make this more effective, we have a "karma" system in place so that the more feedback you give, the more visible your game is.

What can I submit?

This is a very open event, where you can enter for instance:

• A personal hobby project you have been working on this year
• A game jam entry that didn't get enough feedback or that you expanded upon since
• A work-in-progress commercial game project (as long as you keep your build free and publicly available)

Of course this can be either a solo project or a team-based one.

Event schedule

• Preparation phase: on November 22, the event will open submissions.
• Feedback phase: on November 29, all entrants will be formally invited to start playing and reviewing each other's entries. In the meantime, submissions will remain open until the last few days for late entrants.
• End: on December 17 the event will be officially closed. The games won't get any rankings or ratings, just feedback. No bragging about being first, but who cares, you will get good commentary!

Tips

• To improve the quality of your feedback, give indications on what aspects of your game you are most looking for feedback on. This is especially true of bigger projects like commercial games.
• If possible, make your game build available on multiple platforms or the web
• Don't neglect commenting on other games: longer, more constructive comments get rewarded more "karma", and this karma score helps you get displayed higher in the game list.

See you then!

The next edition of the Alakajam! series starts on February 26th!

As always, the event is about making a game, from nothing, in a weekend. Teams or solo devs, beginners and professionals are all welcome to participate. If you opt-in to the competition, you will be ranked against every other contestant! If you prefer a more relaxed setting, the unranked jam will still give you an opportunity to get plays and comments.

Schedule

Dates	Phase	Description
February 12, 7pm UTC	Theme submission and voting	You can submit theme ideas for the jam and vote for all other submissions.
February 19, 7pm UTC	Theme shortlist	Only the best 10 themes are kept. Rank them by order of preference in this final phase of theme voting.
February 26, 6pm UTC	Countdown stream	An official stream is held on Twitch to launch the event!
February 26, 7pm UTC	THE JAM!!!	Start making a game solo or as a team, and simply submit it before the deadline!
February 28, 7pm UTC	End of ranked jam	The main competition ends here, exactly 48 hours after the start time. Submissions will remain open for an additional hour after the deadline.
March 1st,10pm UTC	End of unranked jam	If you want to go for a relaxed weekend - or need more time - you can create a game in the 72 hours of the unranked jam.
March 14, 7pm UTC	Results	After two weeks during which all entrants are invited to play, rate and comment on other peoples games… The results are released and the winners crowned!

Rules

There are three divisions:

- Solo, in which you make a whole game alone in 48 hours
- Team, in which any number of persons can gather to make a game in 48 hours
- Unranked, a more open division which grants about 72 hours to finish the game. Useful for those not interested in the competitive aspect of the event, want to work on an existing project of theirs, or simply did not finish their game in time.

See the full rules for the Alakajam.

How to enter

All you need to do is:

1. Create an account on this website
2. Publish your game before the deadline

A lot of participants also post an "I am in" blog post presenting themselves or their team before the event. Describe what tools and frameworks and engines you will use to create your awesome game! Which themes do you like? Let us and the community know!

If you can, feel free to spread the word about the jam - the more we are, the merrier! glhf ;)

The Jamician, mascot and protector of our community, has recently challenged his evil twin known as the Jellymancer… And lost ownership of Alakajam! in the process. After some drama, this has just been confirmed by the Jamician themselves, concluding the controversy about the challenge results. In case you missed the events that led up to it, here is what was previously on Alakajam!

A disturbance in the jam

The 10th Alakajam! has been host to unusual announcements, starting with a mysterious tweet several weeks before the jam. When theme submissions started, surprise changes where made from the usual rules, with the theme submission limit raised to 10, in the name of "chaos". It became clear that Alakajam! had been broken into by a mysterious character.

The second phase of the theme selection saw 20 themes shortlisted instead of 10, with the list itself getting shortened one theme at a time as the jam got closer. The Jellymancer then decided the jam would have not one, but three available themes:

The Jamician's Challenge

During @DanaePlays and @Aurel300's jam launch stream, The Jamician took a chance at getting rid of his opponent, by challenging him to a gaming tournament. In the competition, three games from the jam would be played by everyone for a few days. The Jellymancer would compete in it, and commit to leave the community alone in case of a defeat… while victory would make him the owner of the jam.

When the tournament took place, the Jellymancer only posted modest scores and it seemed clear that the players had managed to beat him fair and square. But in the last moments of the competition — in an evil twist fitting of the Jellymancer — he posted much more skillful scores, including a controversial top spot at the Square Maps game.

His surprise victory triggered a lengthy investigation… Before The Jamician finally had to accept the victory of his opponent.

And this is how Alakajam! came to be… in the hands of C H A O S