I had Friday off, so I thought I'd throw some ideas around before the theme was selected. I made a controller for the player, except it wouldn't work at all. I could get the player moving around, but colliders wouldn't work. Or colliders would work, but I'd get strange behaviour, like the player being tilted just enough towards the sky so that it would fly up to the air, and gravity not seeming to work.

Variations in my code look like so:

        //rb.AddTorque(Vector3.up * r);
        transform.Rotate(Vector3.up * r);
        //rb.MoveRotation(Quaternion.Euler(Vector3.up * r));


        //transform.Translate(Vector3.forward * s);
        //rb.velocity = transform.forward * s;
        rb.AddForce(transform.forward * s); 
        //rb.MovePosition(transform.position + transform.forward * s);

Transforms on the rigidbody (abbreviated here as rb) work with collisions, but do not result in the motion I am looking for (most notably, staying on the ground!). Moving the transform itself does not respect collisions.

The next thing I did was delete the scene I was working in. So I can't make an animated gif of the various things the player did. I don't know how I deleted it, but I can't find the scene anywhere. I hadn't made prefabs of anything, so lots of stuff was lost.

Next, I modeled a mushroom in blender. "Model a mushroom in 3 minutes!" the advert for the video said, but it took me closer to an hour. However, upon importing said mushroom to Unity (and find the scene disappeared), I find the normals of the mushroom cap are inverted.

I can't seem to include images here, otherwise you'd be looking at a mushroom and the inside of a head of a mushroom. (Edit: It appears that the brower I am using, Brave, is not showing the images, but Firefox does show the images. So your mushrooms may vary. Let me know if the normals are working on the second image.)

I've been programming in Unity for years (my first global game jam was in 2012 with Unity) and yet today I feel like a beginner all over again. I've been mostly doing 2D stuff, and today I am recognizing how much easier the 2D stuff is.

Today has been rough. Even the man pages are returning error messages instead of telling me how use things.

Thank you to everyone who has submitted and played the games! We are now at the end of Feedback Fortnight!

As always, just because the event is over does not mean you can't still play the games, and leave meaningful feedback on them. It does mean that you will no longer be able to submit new games. Don't worry, there will be another FF coming soon -- usually in about 6 months but the schedule is not set yet!

Making a game is hard work. Showing a game can be fraught with emotion. There was a quote in a magazine I read recently that struck me:

"Anything beautiful or meaningful now seems like a miracle when I consider how easily it might not have been made, and I imagine the odds it had to beat just to exist."

--Aaron Cometbus, from Cometbus #59

One of the reasons I do the things I do here at Alakajam is to promote new beautiful and meaningful things. While it is easy to throw your hands in the air and decide it is not worth it, or there will not be an audience, or that we can't make it beautiful enough for our discerning critics, I feel it is worth to let the insanity carry us and try to make new artworks anyway.

With that crazy thought, Alakajam #14 is coming soon! Try to make something wonderful! Don't despair if it doesn't come out beautiful, and remember we only get better with practice!

It's time to play games! If you haven't submitted your game yet, do not despair! We will leave the submission window open until the end of the event.

Go! Play the games! Give the authors of these games your ideas, your constructive criticism, and your feedback! Try to answer specific questions they may have, and try to give them new ideas so that they can come up with new questions!

If you didn't submit a game, that's okay! Anyone can play these games and give their feedback!

Remember, there are no ratings. Please, remember that there is a person who is showing their craft who will be reading your comments, so please do not be mean with no other value. Instead of saying "this game sucks!", try "I am not enjoying this game because …. , but maybe it could be improved by making changes like ……". There is a lot written on the topic of giving criticism, and I can not rewrite it all here. But please try to be considerate while still giving good feedback!

After some short delays (we love you Kajam!), we now begin the second edition of Feedback Fortnight! We know that you have been working on something, perfecting it, but it just needs, it just needs someone else to play it! And tell you if it is fun or not! And tell you if you succeeded in doing the awesome things that you have been prepping for!

All you need to do is take your project - any project - and submit it. It can be your Sekrit Prodject Made In Your Basement with glowing lights, it can be something from a previous game jam, or it can be a future commercial game - and submit it to our ruthless, but very kind, game players. Then, you also become a game player, and play everyone else's game. Leave constructive and kind feedback, there are no ratings or scores of any kind.

If you do submit a commercial game, we require that you make it freely available to the other game players during the time of Feedback Fortnight. After all, if I am playing a game for you for the purpose of constructive criticism, would you really ask people money for that?

Games can be submitted in any state of development - anything from "buggy mess I can't play this to" to "almost done" or even "I just have screenshots and some ideas!" We can't guarantee everyone will look at everything, but the easier you make it for us, the more likely we will!

With all that introduction, let the Feedback begin!

Due to the Kajam running a bit late, the Feedback Fortnight will be delayed by about a day and a half. We will start Saturday 27. We apologize for making you wait. The individuals who have made these decisions will not be sacked. :)

I hope you all have your projects in working order to show everyone! If they aren't in working order, that's okay, get your non-working projects ready to go and get set for Feedback Fortnight 2021 #2! Yes this is the second one in this year, and we hope to keep doing them twice a year! Don't you need feedback on your projects more than once a year?

So with further ado, we can't wait until we open up the website for your submissions tomorrow!

It is with great sadness that I announce that Feedback Fortnight has come to a close. If you haven't played the submitted games yet, even though it's over you can still play the games and give feedback on them.

However, even though FF is closing, the next Alakajam will be starting soon! I even hear rumors that the theme submissions have already started! Make some impressive games for us to rate! And if you aren't finished in a weekend, finish by the next Feedback Fortnight so we can tell you how awesome your game is!

If your game wasn't ready for this Feedback Fortnight, do not despair, Feedback Fortnight will come back soon! Develop and improve your game so that when it does, we will have something to play and tell you what we think about it! See you next time!

It's time to give each other's games a try! If you haven't already, find your most awesome game in progress, your work that you'd like to see be a famous game someday, but perhaps it's still a diamond in the rough, and brace yourself for all the, um, nicest possibly said things people will say about it!

Then, go play everyone else's game! Tell them what you thought about it!

Sometimes it's hard to give useful feedback. Sometimes, all you can come up with is, "this isn't fun". But try to tell more. Is it the graphics? Is it the controls? Does the purpose of the game feel futile, or not important enough?

Sometimes, it feels hard to give useful feedback without inadverdantly hurting the person recieving the feedback. We are all going on a limb posting our games here, saying "try this and tell me what you think". Please refrain from simple comments like "this sucks". There isn't much there to be able to improve our game from.

Sometimes game authors take the feedback and immediately implement it, before Feedback Fortnight is finished! Watch the comments of games you've already played, perhaps the author has already implemented your feedback!

Although those small thoughts aren't the entirety of things I could say about giving feedback, in the interest of keeping the post small, I'll stop here. If I haven't said something you think is important, please leave a comment here! In the meantime, go here and try out all the games!

We know you are working on some game! And we know you need some feedback on it! Is it fun, where are the hidden bugs, did I make the sprites the right color, so many questions, how do we get answers? By playing each others games, and giving feedback!

Due to hectic schedules at the AKJ staff, things are off to a slow start, but the event is about to begin! Submit your game here by August 20 (no penalty if you are late, except less time for others give you feedback), then play everyone else's game, and tell us your opinions!

Hello all!

Are you working on your game, hoping some day that it will be finished, trying to get it done? Join our secret game club, where you will find others who are working on their games as a sort of motivational club! Once a week, we have a meeting, in which we tell our stories, whether good or bad, and we support each other and listen to each others problems and show off our successes.

You can find more details hidden in the secret text document at http://laaph.com/tmp/gameclub.txt. If this sounds like a thing you would like to join, go to that link, follow the sekrit instructions found within, and ask me to add you to the server.

I hope to see you there!

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!