Day 3 was more of the same. I spent most of the day finishing the character art and using my base character model to create and NPC. I guess I should mention I modeled the main character after my wife and I modeled the NPC shop keeper as myself. I put myself in the last game as well and I love it. No one besides me knows it's me so I don't think it's too intrusive. Well, now you know as well.

 I added in a special for the normal character where she says "Hi". It doesn't actually affect anything in the world, but I think it's cute and adds a little more adorableness to the main character. I had my wife record some lines for her to say hi as well as some hurting noises. I pitch shifted them up 3 subtones and that was enough to make her sound like a little girl I think. My wife has a beautiful singing voice and loves recording audio. I'm definitely going to try to include her more in these if I can. I recorded some lines myself and made some generic noises to record. I do everything in Mixcraft Studio 9. The reason I started making games as a hobby was to have somewhere to put my music and Mixcraft really helps with that. They had a free trial at a time when I was looking for a windows comparison to Garage Band about 15 years ago, and I just have stuck with it since then. The best part is the virtual instruments, but I'll get into that more when I do the music.

I spent the other half of the day designing the actual level. There's only one level in the game if you don't count the intro and the final boss. I was worried the number of objects on the map would slow down the game, but I haven't seen anything like that yet and I have almost everything in there. I play tested it a little bit and replaced some sections with less frustrating challenges. There were a few too many laser walls and the way the camera lock was set up, you would sometimes run into one without knowing what was there. I wanted to make it so that anytime you're required to go into something unknown, you have a moment to get your bearings before anything bad happens. Cheap deaths aren't fun.

In sections that were more difficult, particularly with the boss, I added a checkpoint right before so that you could start it quickly once it was done. I hadn't done a system like this before, but basically you just store the x and y of the checkpoint to the player and send the player back to those coordinates whenever you take damage. Everytime you touch a checkpoint, it updates the x and y with the new one.

The weekend is over today and I'll have a lot less time to work on this on workdays, but I think I have enough time to finish. The game is about 90% playable for a full game, and probably 70% of everything I want with the polish. The things I still HAVE to add are the menus, music, other sound effects and the final level. Music and sound effects are fast and easy. Menus are time consuming for me. Luckily the jam says you can reuse menu code, so I just reused the menus from my last jam with updated sprites and text. The code is in the game, I just have to set it up for this one. The final level will be the most time consuming part. I have to design a final boss stage and the program the boss to have HP so everytime you whack him it takes off some health. This should be pretty straightforward, though I think I might add in a swipe attack after he comes down which will take more time.

I'll also need to do the artwork for the boss, the checkpoint,  costume pickups, and cutscenes.

There are a few things I would love to add but I don't know if I'll have time. I would love a banjo kazooie style music swap where it changes depending on what area of the stage you're in. I think I'll just have all the songs running at once and raise or lower the volume when a trigger is hit.

I would also love to add some extra scenery and maybe redo the tiles other than the intro area. They don't quite mesh with the rest as well as I want them too. If I have a bunch of time left over, I want to try and add a bonus for collecting every item in the game. Probably just a gold character or something like they do in Japanese games. I doubt I'll have time for that though.