This 72 hour jam finished 15/05/18.
The 2018 Spring UE4 Jam was my first of many collaborative projects with Love, a passionate young programmer, as as with the artist Lost Chibi, and my second game jam, ever. The theme was "Transformation", and the team crafted a beautiful story of a little girl rationalising the death of her father with help from a plushy dinosaur, who must save her from a wildfire in her mind.
We were lucky enough to recieve an honourable mention in the official Unreal Engine livestream, with Amanda Bott commenting on the cute art style.
The Team.
Our artist, Lost Chibi, really came through for us. The design for the UI and the dinosaur were spectacular and eye catching, and almost certainly sealed our honourable mention.
Love, our main programmer, did very well to develop not only the difficult physics that allowed our plushy hero to drag around a miniature firetruck, but also those necessary for him to hose his enemies.
IrishKilter, our main environmental designer, developed a highly challenging platforming level involving jumping from a shelf, to a rotating ceiling fan, and then to a mantelpiece.
The Music.
Keen and perhaps overly-excited, I tried my best to make an adaptive, seemless score that would start with one loop during one section, and be able to cross fade relative to in-game events.
Musically, this was no problem whatsoever - the loops can be found in their entirety here. It was done by creating a sparse, diatonic melody, which sounded emotional and mournful by itself, and then recontextualising it to different modes by altering the rest of the arrangement.
The difficulty arose in this being my first time working with Unreal Engine, and while I knew perfectly well what I wanted to achieve, I knew not how to communicate it effectively to the programming element of the team or do it myself. Since this project, I've learned much, much more about Unreal Engine.
Result and some thoughts.
We didn't win anything, but that was OK. I learned a lot, and learned a lot about what I had to learn regarding programming, engines, and more. Play it for free here: https://jfaw-love.itch.io/firesaurus-rex
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