Rush Hour! [Post-Mortem]

Before I tell you the story of the final day let's recap of my week in Hell.

Day 1: I Join the Fray!
Tonight I stumbled upon this jam out of a creative block and not wanting to play something but make something. After I read the theme it grew on me as I surfed assets to see if inspiration would strike; and it did!

I saw cute bunny chibi characters and thought I needed to use them. Then I came up with the idea of a cafe based game but I needed it to be simple so it’s very bare bones and you won’t create each unique coffee item and all that. But still it should be fun!

I started to think of ideas and how I’d make this all work; and how it would work! I made this Trello board since I’ve been a fan since college and it’s only gotten better. I started getting some basic assets together and readying up to actually do some work; honestly I’m very excited!

Once all this planning was “done” (at least for the moment) I started setting up the project in the engine and got a little character controller working in it; as well as some animations! Of course the animations are from Mixamo as I suck at animating and it’s a jam game. And the models are from some talented creators on Sketchfab so I didn’t really do a lot of work on the visual part of the game. But that just give me more time to focus on the actual gameplay.

With a little guy running around, some animations popping off; and I even got it so the bunny model can be recolored easily! I decided to take my leave for the night and get back to it in the morning!

Until then!

Day 2: Blooming with Progress!
Starting the morning off very…cold, I’m out of milk and quick coffee creamers. So, it kinda sucks for game dev honestly but I got goals to hit before my shift at work!

I started with just making sure the character controller was working and ended up making a few tweaks. I took out the plain block and replaced it with a couple of tiles that’ll eventually build a full park area. I also added in the camera full and got a nice little angle instead of just a stagnant plain camera node. And I got animations working pretty nicely! Although the jumping to landing transition isn’t the nicest at the moment.

Next up I wanted to knock out the simplest goal which was the currency system. I settled on using cash instead of gold coins since it’s based around modern society. The money is called “Bloomies” and is inspired by Canadian currency which is always so colorful and fun.

I also started adding in the day cycle system since I didn’t want to post a little GIF here with no lighting and no background. I have been using Godot Sky for the past 6 months for any 3D project because it works so good and I have a modified version where I coded in calendar tracking. It’s a very nice asset so you’re not spending forever on getting a nice little day cycle going and again focus on what matters; gameplay.

At this point I started to wonder if I had bit a little too much off for this morning. There’s a lot that goes into even basic features such as new art pulls out my S25 and pen as well as the nitty gritty on how it works. But nevertheless, I charged on to making the level template! It’s the next thing I need to start on the rest.

Making the level template started off pretty basic then quickly devolved into “I need all of this and more before it’ll even work…” which simply is what it is. I started off by assembling a little level kit that I could build levels with that felt fun. This wasn’t too hard thankfully and got me past square one when I test out the level. Then I made an event trigger node so that you can either leave a level early by going back and forfeiting some collected goods. Or you can reach the end of the level and continue on or leave with all your goods. This then made me need two screens where I can select an option which I really didn’t want to do UI work early in the morning; but then I did. Albeit they’re quite simple and still lacking in spots but they’ll do for now.

AAAH! So the level template was done then right? Well not quite. I had to add a little fade transition to make things a little smoother. Then it was done and I could move onto getting the travel system setup.

With quite a bit done I can feel myself start to slow down and drift away to other things; meaning my time on getting stuff done today is done. I moved two goals to tomorrow which is fine since I hadn’t planned anything for tomorrow for this reason. But after that the last stretch of the jam is going to be HEAVY so I’m aiming to get more done than planned up to the 21st.

FAST FORWARD TO AFTER WORK! And It’s 11pm and I’m not sure how much I’m going to actually do. But I figured I’d work on something so I jumped into trying to figure out how levels are picked and all that jazz. Turns out I set myself up for a lot of growing pains that I tried to relieve as painlessly as possible. First step was setting up a Wild Zone Manager that just acts as a scene that’ll pick the levels and also track things such as coffees being sold and all that. It acts as a buffer between the park and the levels allowing me to work with everything a little better behind the scenes. With that made I got it set so it picks a new level each time from within the biome but won’t repeat levels for the best experience.

This forced me to make 2 little platform sections as “levels” to try out the system. And it worked! Kinda….There was some glaring issues that popped up that weren’t hard fixes but rather annoying bumps.

Keeping the sky the same through the park and levels was something I overlooked but not a hard fix. I simply added a global tracker that was updated before the game moves to a new area. Then once you’re moved to the wild zone or the park it’ll set the GodotSky scene to that time and then track it further. Allowing me to keep a consistent sky across the game without killing performance.

Another issue was that my character controller settings were set and tuned in the City area but not for the actual scene. To fix this I just took those settings and copied and pasted them to the core scene and bam fixed.

While I’d like to keep working on this and get the travel system working as well as the death and continue exploration all work. I’m pretty exhausted and am happy to get this little feature ironed out so I can do some heavy lifting tomorrow morning.

Day 3: Speaking in Code
I started the morning by getting a coffee and figuring out what I need to do today. And there’s a lot that’s not even on the list that I had to add; so I started with my least favorite part the dialogue system. I got a nice little portrait that I definitely didn’t trace the 3D model in Photoshop then add colors myself. It’s a simple portrait I’ll likely just recolor for other bunnies if they need to talk.

This system is so I can nicely add in the few story elements later as well as have some “dialogue” for travel and the wild zone. With it now working with a nice little setup I’m pretty happy with it. I really do like the little art bits I made for this one albeit I used pretty basic tools and very little actual creativity; sometimes less is more. I also picked up a new font for text reading so it’s clearer and the original font is for headers and stuff like that.

With the base dialogue system working and I even made sure spamming the continue button wouldn’t mess up interactions; I wasn’t done. The next big feature was having an option system that was flexible. This way I can really centralize these systems and all dialogue and dialogue adjacent mechanics function and feel the same. Plus if there’s no bugs in the testing zone there won’t be any bugs anywhere.

While I’d love to have some 90s anime art for the portraits and more refined interface; for a jam I think is pretty solid and gives the vision I have for it. After a lot of issues I finally got a decent little option system working in full! And the way it detects what logic needs to run is pretty simple. Each button is connected to the event player’s signal for option selected. Which then you can connect to whatever logic making it very versatile and simple.

Now I can actually get into some of the other stuff such as the travel system and “death” system. Only took me a whole morning. I set them up and they completely work, there’s some level of polish I could add but won’t for now since that’ll be a stretch goal. When you die as well you get the hospital billing screen and get billed the fee. I want to add in a first death is free deal later.

Now I have all my basic events setup and the gameplay loop more or less works. A lot of good stuff done today but I’m gonna eat and try out the new Overwatch content then off to my weekly session of Balder’s Gate 3 with my brother. If I get time later I want to start jumping on more goals!

After my plans for the day ended I got back to doing a few things! First thing I did was add in a little feature where if you choose to stay in an area you get a little bit of knockback which feels good.

The last thing I cooked up for the night was another boring system that I unfortunately need. The item and inventory system which are definitely not up to code snob standards; but took 30 minutes to assemble and get going and very easy to modify. Now items can be created, added and removed from the player inventory; and even items that can be picked up!

With that done it’s officially 1:11 and this is technically day 4 at this point so I’m going to go brush my teeth and lay in bed where I’ll drift off to sleep with Rick & Morty playing in the background since I’ve ran through too many comfort shows in the past few months.

Day 4: Say Hi to Roger!
My day job starts at 4:30pm and I need to start walking by 3:20pm, so it’s gonna be a day!

I started off by not doing what’s next on my list because I don’t want to start my day with doing AI work. So instead I decided on building the park area and this is the result!

While I wanted more detail I keep reminding myself it’s for a jam and I don’t have a lot of time left. I’m pretty happy with current look of it and even got the little coffee stand ready for operations!

The next thing I did was got the day cycle stuff all working so now when day begins a little banner pulls up with the day count and a little tip on it. I also finished getting the daily report working so now the player will see how they did that day for sales. And from here you can continue to keep playing through the night or go to sleep since you won’t make sales during the night. I even made a little scene for it and it didn’t take much time!

I brought home a 26 ounce cup of cold brew with my favorite flavoring and cream; and pray it be enough to get my daily goals done tonight. I need to finish the AI and the buying coffee process since my days are numbered and this is THE MAIN MECHANIC OF THE GAME! So here’s Roger, yes Roger the Rabbit and he’s the first customer NPC in the game and so far; he doesn’t work.

No, he’s not supposed to stand there but currently he refuses to follow my haphazard code and stands there looking around. For now

.

Now he’s running wild! Of course he doesn’t have animations yet or even looking at the right direction; but in time he will! Before that I need him to buy a coffee. While setting this up I realized…I’ve never had 3D characters hold things in Godot without them being modeled to said item. So how are these buns gonna hold the coffee cup? Because as my professor once said when my teammate suggested we cut arrow visuals from our class tower defense project and he said to the effect “No visuals for the main part of your game? What?!”. And thanks to his wise reaction of shock and disgust we have Roger holding a coffee cup. Doesn’t he look so thrilled?

Of course now that he can hold his coffee doesn’t mean he can buy it; yet.

BAM! Now Roger is buying coffee! Of course this is a little forced but if he does naturally stumble upon the coffee bar and decides to go to the interest point it’ll result in the same. Currently the system is very basic, NPC stumbles on coffee bar, they buy coffee; they leave. You get money based on the base price of coffee plus if there’s any flavors or creamer it adds their values to the final price then it removes the item used from your inventory.

I also did some stress testing and patched up some stuff to make sure it can handle several customers at once. While it’s visually kinda a mess; it works fine.

I’d like to be able to write some logic to where some bunnies won’t want coffee. Some might buy multiple; some might want just a black coffee; others might only want flavored and creamed coffee. There’s lots of little details I can add in but not until the game is actually completely playable. Right now most things are tied together but it’s not test in full just yet. In fact I might need to do a little rework to make coffee selling organic while away in the wild zone.

Back on track it’s 2:17am but I can still get more done and I want to get as much done before it’s all over. Next thing I did was make it so the partner bunny controller is at the coffee bar now! You can’t switch with them yet but halfway there since they interact with customers now.

This is also an organic interaction! I also gave each customer a patience meter that goes down over time and when it’s up they leave the park. Now once I make a generate for them to spawn in (Tomorrow not tonight) it’ll be full circle with them! Then I just need to ensure the night end really works with everything.

I feel I got a lot done and tomorrow there’s some simpler tasks like a title menu and pause menu I can crank out pretty quick. The rework of areas, generating customers; and more! But for now I’m tired.

Day 5: Night of the Living Park
Barely 7 hours after my final touch upon this game and away to bed I attempted to go. I’ve done my morning exercise routine, I took my shower to prep for the day ahead; and I’m back at it again to finish up some serious progress!

Technically I failed a goal yesterday because NPCs don’t spawn in. However I wrapped up a few things ahead of time plus got the jump on some good design decisions yesterday. So today I’m going to start out with reworking the scene system which is going to require A LOT of code going bad needing a fix.

I officially have everything running in a single scene….potentially a bad idea? Of course. Was it the only way to really get the results I wanted? Yes. The worst part is probably that there’s nothing to show for it in a GIF since it was just taking what was already working and just recoding it.

I took a few hours to do some house chores and then came back and got bunnies getting randomized colors. It’s….a choice I’m going to refine some but this is the current look at it.

A bit of coding later and now you can full start the first day in it’s full glory! Customers spawn in and you gain popularity with each coffee sale. Higher value coffees increase popularity faster. And the more popular the coffee bar is the more people will come in aside from the guaranteed handful. And you can move to the wild zone and back with ease; no lag. Although it’s lacking the polish of transition effects.

The last two big features I needed to add in tonight was partner swapping and crafting. Big items but nothing I can’t handle. So I started by making a Paper Mario inspired “live” menu that doesn’t pull you out of the game but lets you switch characters and soon open the crafting menu. It needs some polish but so far it feels nice!

For the “live” menu(s) I setup a set of inputs just for them to make sure they don’t mess with gameplay. Now the menu feels much better and works 100% of the time.

I’ve done a lot tonight, so I wanted to start getting some of the polish goals done since it’s getting harder to put in the big thoughts for the last big mechanic. This is the splash sequence I came up with and the little dino is actually cropped from a picture I took of a Starbucks cup I drew on for a random customer. I thought taking it and slapping some toddler looking coloring would give it some charm; and honestly it really does.

I also hired a VA to do a little voice bit for the studio splash screen which is pretty exciting; honestly really love this mostly finalized splash screen. I jumped over to the title screen next and honestly couldn’t 100% figure out an emotionally impactful scene that would look fantastic; and then I reminded myself it can be mid it’s a jam game. So I took the idea of a title like “The Last of Us” and “Spec Ops” and dumbed it down enough to get done fairly quick and this was the result!

I like this a bit despite it being quite simple and not really spectacular. It shows the day cycle off and points out the cafe bar which is the HUB of all player activities.

I also worked in the intro scene to the game!

After that I worked on the little goal reached scene! The game finished scene only plays once you have the said amount of currency and return to the park. This way you won’t get ripped out of a Wild Zone run or out of your slumber at home.

I then made a cute ending credits scene that also acts as an actual final scene in the game which I won’t show here since it’s quite nice.

There's still so much to do but this is where I'm calling it for the day. Tomorrow I should be building levels and getting the crafting system going!

Day 6: Exhaustion Sets In.
What a day! I haven’t touched my computer until now since I had to run errands with my partner in the morning then worked the afternoon. And I have a lot to do! And honestly I’m not going to be making a lot of GIFs for this section until after the jam ends. Need to keep up with the work.

I started with the 2nd hardest part of this project; the crafting system. Could this game work without one? Not really since the whole platformer/exploration bit exists to fuel the crafting system. But it’s working and even if you have no items to craft it’ll tell you that. I won’t add recipes to tell the player what they need since I want exploration to really pay off. Maybe once you craft an item you’ll keep it in memory down the road but that’s not a feature I 100% need for the jam.

Next up is the pause menu which I thought about doing a cute minimalist menu for. But instead, I’m making it a functional phone screen with apps you can select such as the quit app, the inventory app; and the shop app. Yes, I decided a shop was needed otherwise players could technically sit around until they rack up enough money since coffee beans aren’t needed for operations. But once I implement the shop they will be needed for it to run.

At the end of the day I added in a full shop system that works and I tested it with buying ingredients then crafting the item. I made the ingredients cost a little under the item they make and made both bought ways of getting the item a little more expensive than the currency you get out of the sale. This pushes the player to explore the wild zone to get these ingredients on their own. But, flavors will still boost popularity so you can use the bought versions as a popularity booster to make more money faster even though you lose a couple currency on it. This gives the game even in a very simple form more depth to how you want to play. Plus, now the player can buy beans which they’ll need to make coffees.

I’ll implement this tomorrow morning but for now I must retire.

FINAL DAY: THE FINAL BOSS OF MENTAL HEALTH!

I’m up on it now so let’s see what I can cook up!

I started by making sure the crafting and buying system still worked and then added a new recipe set with new syrups! Now you’ll need to buy Syrup bases from the shop then you can use that with ingredients to create your own syrups!

I spent time fixing up how the phone menus felt and looked. It may seem like a bad spend with everything left to do but how it feels will dictate how smooth the game is.

With everything feeling better I made sure the popularity system and new bean system worked fine. They had complications of course which I took more time to fix and squeezed in some QOL changes. Lots of “busy work” but the game feels more like a game now.

I wanted to then fix up the daily messages of “Day X” with tips that for Day 1 have specific tips to display. There’s currently 4 different Day 1 messages and 7 daily messages. These generally push the player to go to the coffee bar, find ingredients in the wild; and craft flavors.

With that done I need to make some quick “tutorials” to get the player started. I made a dialogue event pop up on your first visit to the coffee bar. This exchange talks about the shop feature and crafting feature as well as the wild zone. This while not perfect should push the player in the right direction.

After a while of polishing this has in fact been my least productive day but also very productive. It’s a lot of playtesting the intro and portions of the game and making sure things are actually working right.

God just copying and pasting my devlogs I wrote over the course of this jam then trying to finish it off with this last day update is....straining. I didn't even want to touch this project for a week. But I can't help but feel this game could be better if I give it more love, there's just more I want to do with it. It may never be a Stardew Valley or a Cult of the Lamb; but hey I actually enjoyed making it and even playing it. My biggest complaint is that my Shift key is broken so each time you SEE a capital letter it was an effort to type; and the fact there's not really any content. I mean I even said be damned to drawing up icons for the items because I was so done. 

While it was a fun jam, I can definitely tell it took a toll on me physically and mentally; I've been downright exhausted this week and even more so today the day after. And it's not like this game will likely do numbers, for one it's not super replayable due to the lack of content and some UI bugs like other titles in the jam. And it's not entirely super polished because I chose something that's more of a foundation than a "complete" experience which is a typical me decision to make. This means the best thing I can do for my game is to figure out how to level it up before voting ends for the jam.
Not that anyone will be able to play these changes until after the 2-week voting period; but to get people to be more interested in what'll come after the jam. If I can push the game into more eyes and people like the vision, that could lead to something really cool.

So, what am I doing next? I've been talking with the little voice in my head and will be updating the post-jam update on the Trello board! (Available on the main page)
The update so far goes from simple bug fixes to system overhauls, adding some more art to the game (like item icons...); and making it a bit more polished.