General idea - open source Peggle clone with Pepper and Carrot characters Engine - Considering GDevelop, Godot and C++ based frameworks

Stuff to do:

• [x] Play Peggle
• [x] Decide engine
• [x] Start making stand-in assets
• [x] Research Peggle physics
• [ ] Implement mechanics
  • [x] Implement just blocks
  • [x] Implement ball
  • [x] Implement walls
  • [x] Implement bonus blocks (without functions)
  • [x] Implement score
  • [x] Implement multipliers
  • [x] Implement shooting ball
  • [ ] Implement powerup
  • [x] Implement gui overlay
  • [x] implement basket freeball
  • [ ] Implement score freeball
  • [x] Implement fever
  • [x] Implement sound pitch
• [X] Make levels
• [X] Make final assets
• [X] Ball
• [X] Blocks
• [X] GUI overlay
• [X] Portrait
• [X] Music
• [X] Sounds

Ideas:

• ~~Acessibility~~ (Sorry, barely got the time to finish, wait million years for an update)
• Linux
• Open source

Team:

• Tired Bunny (That’s one who posted it) - https://tired-bun.neocities.org/
• Laika - https://system-maid.neocities.org/
• MiFix - https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCuwqPLV20-KzS9VsUQNMVQw/discussion

Day 1

skipped

Day 2

Time spent - about 1.5 hours

Laika

Getting Bunny away from reading unhealthy amounts of manga was hard

Tired Bunny

I was supposed to go to park, but due to circumstances I got sad, then dizzy from being sad and nervous… So I went back home, so I actually started working on jam or something (after Laika dragged me away from manga ^^)

MiFix

agreed on being tester for the game.

Todo list snapshot:

• [x] Play Peggle
• [x] Decide engine
• [x] Start making stand-in assets
• [x] Research Peggle physics
• [ ] Implement mechanics
  • [x] Implement just blocks
  • [x] Implement ball

Day 3

Time spend - about 30 minutes

Tired Bunny

We also didn’t do much today, but I was able to rework how blocks worked to make them more like how Peggle worked and make so no Node2D objects are left after destroying blocks.

Todo list was not changed

New ideas: use David Rewoy artwork as background (was considered from start)

Day 4

Time spent - about 3 hours

Tired Bunny

Now we are picking up the pace! I made simple score and stage number GUI as separate scene, “kinda” fixed up the camera issues, reworked block script to support different types of blocks, and even made several “unintended behavior catchers” with warning messages and additional behavior to exclude possibility of it becoming a game breaking glitch. Actually, I really want to thank my c++ university lessons for making me understand programming a lot more in-depth so I am able to comfortably work with things that I found counter-intuitive before in Godot. Now I was able pretty much understand Godot and GDScript in these several days after first starting to use them seriously

Laika

From my standpoint, we made very small amount of required work while wasting slightly less than half of time we have, so while we are picking up the pace, I find my colleagues tendency to laze around first and then quickly do a lot of work very unhealthy and also, quite contagious. This also means that leaving planned work on final assets to the last days is not an option anymore so it will be done in the meantime instead, and last days will not be free enough to make serious polishing

Todo list snapshot:

• [x] Implement bonus blocks (without functions) (still need to put assets in place)
• [x] Implement score
• [x] Implement multipliers
• [ ] Implement gui overlay - in progress

Day 5

Time spent - 3 hours 20 minutes

Tired Bunny

Hey, I still feel like I am making a lot of progress + feel like pro programmer that first asks questions why does engine work this stupid way and then understands why and then understands that stupid one is actually me

Laika

Our progress report in two points - Still just picking up the pace and still no proper test build to provide our tester with. Next day we should focus on getting ball shooting to work and making level complete trigger graphical confirmation of completion.

Mifix

“-I am… -Not… -Like, proper member of a team or anything…” (translation is loose)

Todo snapshot:

• [x] Implement walls (Main work was for implementing bonus blocks getting functions and properly being spawned on level + counting orange blocks for finishing level)

Day 6

Time spent - around 10 hours

Laika

It’s the first time we were working for almost a full day on this project. We made a major rework, and moved a lot of things out of separate scripts in favor of unifying code and changing options of scene script using exported values changed per-object. Thanks to this, script is not split up or attached to scene root but attached to root of so called generic scene that is present in every level as an object with level related settings and objects common between levels

Tired Bunny

We actually finished proper build of this game for sharing with our tester, but it wasn’t without some sacrifices, as I missed a meeting with online friend… sad.

MiFix

I will check it out tomorrow.

Todo list snapshot:

• [x] Implement shooting ball
• [ ] Implement gui overlay - in progress, added level finish gui and artwork of walls

Day 7

MiFix

My highscore is 4100. Well, it’s playable, sadly, no sound.

Tired Bunny

Hooray, we got a passing mark from MiFix!

MiFix

Idea is actually cool, but no sound, so you got a little bit more than passing grade

Laika

So this is how we focused on implementing sound in our game for all this day.

Todo list snapshot:

• [x] Implement sound pitch

Additional credits: CC0:

• Versilian Studios LLC for xylophone sound bank https://freepats.zenvoid.org/ChromaticPercussion/xylophone.html CC-BY:
• Leify for “calm tutorial” music piece - https://opengameart.org/content/calm-tutorial

Day 8

Tired Bunny

We basically only have 2 mechanics left to implement, after that we can go fixing UX issues and making consistent graphics.

Laika

Don’t forget we need to make levels too. I think we should postpone making power-ups in favor of other tasks and only work on green blocks if we will have time or easy to implement mechanic ready. Don’t forget you still barely have any idea how to fix aim.

Todo list snapshot:

• [x] implement basket freeball
• [x] Implement fever
• [x] Implement multipliers (this time actually fully made them into gameplay)

New ideas: Implement flying score text as child of block node Trace aim by shooting invisible ball

Additional credits: OFL:

• Manila Sans Bold - https://fontlibrary.org/en/font/rocketpayzfont#Manila%20Sans-Bold (was replaced later) PD:
• Ode to Joy - https://wikisource.org/wiki/Ode_to_Joy_(Beethoven)

Day 9

There is almost no recording, but aiming and flying score features were implemented

Day 10

There is big graphics rework that was made, adding Pepper portrait and new AI-generated background, and also added main menu and levels and made final builds.

Tired bunny

Whoah, what a day. I nearly missed a fire starting in neighboring house while working.

Laika

Our tester MiFit got some injuries on his hand that day and was not able to participate in final version testing. Wish him a good health please.

Additional Credits: CC0 itsmars for https://opengameart.org/content/health-orb-11 CC-BY Dakal for https://opengameart.org/content/2d-bars OFL: DrukaatieBurti-Bold font by Kārlis Kalviškis - https://framagit.org/peppercarrot/fonts (replaced an old font)

PostMortem

Tired Bunny

I have learned that I basically cannot predict anything and planning should be more vague and broad. I also learned Godot basically from scratch, and had a lot of fun.

Laika

I learned that my bunny comrade is lazy as real bunny. I am in charge of making this devlog and video version of it that is in works.