making games is hard you need art programming game design sound design it's really a miracle
that any game gets made at all so i'm gonna try and make one in a week by myself
logitech challenged me to make a game in a week so a big thanks to them for sponsoring
this video they even sent out some free equipment to help with the process the
studio series desk mat it's so smooth and clean it almost makes me not want to eat at my desk but
i will anyway the mx master 3s mouse made of 27 consumer recycled plastic with new quiet clicking
usbc quick charging and ultra fast scrolling so i can scroll social media and procrastinate
even better than before the mx mechanical keyboard made out of 45 consumer recycled
plastic wireless illuminated with quiet mechanical keys it's built for performance
mmm not that kind of performance this kind of performance
oh this one's my favorite the logitech brio webcam and setting all this up was
super easy all i had to do was plug in the little dongle and off i go
it's time for the challenge theme a developer who is sucked into their own code what would you make
for that type of game and let me know in the comments but the first thought that actually
came into my mind was some sort of platform and game where you're the developer running along the
lines of your code jumping on bugs to squash them maybe that's just a bit too obvious what if it was
metaphorically sucked into your own corner what if i made a spaghetti chord simulator where you
just spam type to write as many spaghetti lines as you can as fast as you can maybe there can be like
crazy little events that pop up bugs that crawl down the screen and you have to type the right
prompt as they appear on the screen or i didn't really figure out the core game loop when i was
brainstorming these ideas but that was enough to get me started anyway and i wasn't the only one
taking part in this challenge either i even got the opportunity to play robert's game and it is a
masterpiece it's a 3d puzzle game where you read lines of code found in game to figure
out how to solve each level it's super unique full of character and charm and actually really
challenging if anyone can figure out level six you gotta let me know i didn't get to play zyger's
unfortunately but i'm so excited to see what they come up with in their video so definitely go and
check out their channels and see their perspective on this challenge as well so i started off by
getting some text on the screen when you type but it looks kind of ugly so i made it green but it's
far too big it doesn't look like you're writing code at all so i made it smaller when you type in
just showing up the letters that you're typing is not really coding you need to have like if
statements and functions and variables and all that cool stuff so now when you type a letter
you get your favorite lovable chord snippets such as hello world and subscribe to soul tunes
and it feels like you're coding already just by spamming the buttons which is super satisfying
but it's not enough so i started to add the bug with the text prompts which i didn't really know
how to do unfortunately i found this youtube tutorial by jim biv which basically solved
all of my problems got the book to respond to text i could even make it move and i introduced
some spawn points to get some bugs spawning into the game day two we got some bugs but they need
some custom prompts so what i started off doing was created a prompt list that they could choose
from but i wanted them to all be associated with programmery type words with that in it was already
a lot more challenging and satisfying but it's endless there's no real punishment for actually
missing one of the prompts so i made it so when the bug hits the bottom of the screen
it restarts the game there you go easy game loop it's core game up it's done ship it maybe if i
could do one major task a day that would be enough to get me through the whole seven days the basic
idea for the atmosphere that i want to get across in this game is that you're sitting at an old pc
in spamming code the graphics would be one bit with an accent color obviously the accent color
has to be green because that looks like the matrix it's quick to produce as well and i've never made
a game in a week before start creating the artwork in clip pseudo and a converse size of 112 by 112
pixels i really love working in the one bit style there's just something so relaxing about only
having two things to worry about black and white and that's it to start to create the little bugs
that would be coming down screen as well i imagine them like actual bugs because i don't know what a
computer bug actually looks like i did a couple of different designs for these bugs as well trying to
leave some space for where the text will go inside of them then i spent some time setting them up in
game but the sizes and the text were too small i was fiddling with this for so long and the longer
words just wouldn't fit on and the pixels look too chunky for the text in the background so i
went back to clip studio to upsize the artwork to a 240 by 240 pixel size i started working on a new
bug as well which gave me a lot more room to add in some detail but i still kept getting that weird
cut off text eventually i got it to work but i had to sort of scrap my original design idea
and instead just cutting the bug in half and placing the word in there day three so day
three started with animating the bug i did this in a sprite just a very simple walk animation as it's
coming down the screen after i finished animations and exported the sprite sheets i then just had to
put it in the game engine in godot i then start planning the scores and how all of that would work
before putting it in the game as well when coding this i use the singleton so that the scores can
persist throughout the game so that i can use that value for leaderboards later on big brain with the
score work in the game we now have a simple basis for a high score based game but i'm still not
quite sure what the game is at this point i didn't do too much pre-production so i spent some time
in paint again brainstorming some ideas typing for too long feels a little bit like a choice
i thought it'd be a good idea to put a time limit on the game i thought of like a coffee event where
the coffee pops into the screen and it increases your time by 10 seconds or something like that
a youtube tutorial pop-up event where you have to spam spacebar to play a video which will give you
some sort of bonus another pop-up event where you have to copy and paste to get some more code which
will give you like a multiplier bonus or something like that so i started implementing the time based
gameplay with just a simple timer when the time runs out the game is over and i started working
on the coffee cup graphics i generally use a mouse for pixel art so that's what i was doing
here the hand was actually super difficult until i remembered that i actually have hands and i can
just use my own hands as reference after finishing that off i just implemented the coffee with the
animations in the game engine and all you have to do when it comes up is click on it to drink it
i was actually concerned that clicking on it would take away from the main typing mechanic
i also kind of like it it's stressful it keeps you on edge realistically if you are typing
and you need to take a drink you have to move your hand away from your keyboard which realism
it's a realism based spaghetti code simulator so after that i started working on the pop-up
which was fairly simple then all i had to do was set it up and animate it in godot so i programmed
these events in as well as a multiplier system so when you do consecutive events you actually get a
score multiplier as some sort of reward i got the window pop-up working with text that changes color
when you type in the correct prompt for just a little bit of feedback because i thought that
really needed it i then started cleaning up the main graphics just a little bit and started making
the type in hands as well i used a sprite to animate the hands just a couple frames of typing
fortunately i only had to do one hand then i could just copy and paste it and then flip it
horizontally to save me a lot of time pop that in the game so that they animate when you type in and
that's the end of day three day four start of the day cleaning up the bonus multiplier and putting
some new ui elements on the screen with only three days left the game was a complete mess there's
just so many different systems i knew if i wanted to finish this project i had to get all of this
under control today at this moment when playing there was too much emphasis on the bugs i wanted
to be a spam cody spaghetti typing game and that just kind of took away the focus a little bit too
much i also noticed with a bunch of bugs on screen that is actually an error that happens with target
in the right bug sometimes so i made it so that you can backspace to delete your inputs i thought
it would be a good idea to not only add a little session timer not just so you know how long you've
been playing for also to help me when balancing it so i know how long the total session time is
i started brainstorming to figure out what the actual core game loop would be and this is what i
came up with so the core loop you have 30 seconds to write as many spam lines as possible when the
time is up the game is over the secondary loop would be the events pop-up events will pop up and
challenge you and sort of get in your way from spam typing you've got the bugs the coffee and
the pop-up the third loop or system is the combo reward this kind of adds a reason for the events
instead of just ignoring them imagine it's sort of like a multitasking stress management game kind of
like actual deving but that's just the loop idea i spent hours play testing this trying to balance it
tweaking systems like the event animations to make them more consistent calculating the difficulty
scaling is it impossible is it too easy and when i was done player testing it i even did some more
play testing is it progressing too fast or not enough is clicking the coffee really annoying
as a different mechanic or is it a fun challenge i tried adjusting the coffee event a little bit
and that just brought me even more bugs balancing the game was an absolute nightmare and i felt lost
throughout most of this day but one thing that finally brought it together was simplifying it
and making the events more universal and made it so that every event pop-up has the same reward
when you hit it i'm not saying it's balanced because it's based purely on my skill level
but at least it feels like a game now therefore was a long day day five so day five got started
and i was feeling a little bit burned out from the crazy play testing sessions of day four but
i managed to get started planning out the stats for the end screen after that i started doing some
ux design and paint trying to figure out the flow of the menus and how they'd all fit together then
started working on the main menu and i decided the game was going to be called spag bool spaghetti
code spaghetti bolognese also known as spag ball here in the uk and boolean is a coding term so
spag boolean or spagbool genius so i worked on the main menu in that title in clip studio and then
just put it in the engine now the game works from the menu screen i had an idea to pop the style a
little bit and that was to put in a c or t shader i got this from a website called godot shaders
super useful this took a while actually to balance the visual clarity with the style sometimes
less is more i think i start on the end screen creation which is a play on blue screen of death
but obviously green which is what happens when your computer malfunctions it's kind of nice to
actually see all of these stats at the end of the game to see how you did and we have a full visual
game loop now a menu the game and the end screen but i did think this game is kind of complicated
to just pick up so i got to work on a tutorial i just duplicate the main game scene and create some
custom functions that would lead you through each step of the tutorial so you start the spam type in
and then go through each of the events once you've done all those you can choose to start the game
quit go back to the menu or whatever hopefully it's useful for new players i haven't really
tested it so i don't know day six started making a bug destroy animation in a sprite i started to
program that bug explosion into the game but for some reason i just couldn't get it to work didn't
want to spend all day trying to figure this out so i just left it and moved on this wouldn't really
be a game without some screen shake so i tried implementing that and it was super satisfying
but maybe a bit too distracting at times just like the crt screen effect from before sometimes less
is more i thought i'd try getting leaderboards to work because that's something i really wanted to
put in the game luckily for me there's an awesome tutorial for this online and a back-end service
for door called silent wolf which can host all the scores for you for free this was all really
straightforward to set up i just followed the tutorial and all of the examples on the site
made a little screen so the player could input their name and then it would show the leaderboards
when you submit your score had to set up a custom leaderboard scene which was a complete nightmare
with the ui it just did not want to be central to the screen tried so many things eventually i
got it to work but i really hope i never have to touch that part of the game ever again i think it
only shows the top 20 for now so if you want to get your scores up there i guess just get good
day 7. i started the final day by polishing up the main game art put that in the game and check
it out and then started working on the audio i thought it'd be super fun to try recording
the sounds myself for the audio coffee typing and the wind chimes and then took these sounds
and bit crushed them in audacity using a free plugin called crush this gives them a nice retro
sound i started implementing them in the game by creating an audio manager singleton that would be
responsible for all the sounds and music in the game i didn't really like how they were sounding
so i went back and recorded some more and created some alternative ones in bfxr i finally had the
new sound effects that i was happy with for music had browsed a while for some 8-bit or
chiptune music but none of it was really matching the vibe i was going for i had an idea to use
ambient office sounds as if you're working in an actual office obviously i had to [ __ ] that
to make it sound retro as well with the music and the sounds together it gives a really interesting
atmosphere and experience when you're playing the game so i decided to roll with it i thought
it'd be a good idea to add some sound buttons in the game as well so you could turn off the
sound effects in the music i drew these directly on the monitor made sure they actually worked on
game when you clicked them and then i created a custom godot splash screen so it fit nicely
with the style of the game the final task left to do was just to export it and host it on the
itch so you can all play and try and beat my high score there's probably a lot of bugs with it so
be careful let me know what you think anyway okay so i'm going
to play it right now and i'm going to see if i can get a high score let's go
come on boom look at that fast fingers if you spam the right buttons you might actually get
a word filled in for you you notice that i'm nearly running out of time but it's
okay because when i am completing one of these events like the bugs or the coffee right there
it's giving me extra time oh no my god that was a subscribe one don't forget like go and subscribe
easy it's too easy for me maybe maybe the dev is too good at the game maybe i've made it too easy
oh i missed that one i say that as soon as i say something like that i miss so
spam the buttons three seconds left get as much score as i can
and there it is folks i got 29 693 lines let's submit that to the leaderboard click on it
or install tunes boom submit loading scores number one soul tunes give it a shot if you
like and see if you can beat it that was a super difficult challenge as a beginner developer i was
a bit too scared to try game jams myself so a big thank you to logitech for this opportunity
and for sponsoring the video after using this equipment for this project i really do think
this series is a solid choice for any creator or developer looking for some style comfort and
performance when bringing their ideas to life the software allowed me to fully customize the
buttons which was useful and the battery life is actually insane i didn't need to charge it once
and you know i really put this keyboard through its paces with all the typing i've been doing
and it still survived and i've got no calluses on my fingers so i'm impressed definitely check
this series out if you're looking for some new equipment there's a link in the description if
you want to play this game see if you can beat my high school and thanks for watching