GameDevTV Jam 2023 Planning

 It has been a while since I have posted something here, but now that I have a tiny bit of time, I can finally work on my own things, so am entering the GameDevTV jam for this year. Why? Everyone who enters gets a free course so why not? I am going to be focusing my free time on writing some books on creating a game engine from scratch, so in preparation for the game jam I will spend the days I am able to work on it creating a game from scratch. Unfortunately, I still do have other obligations so will only be able to get in 30-50 hours during the 10 days so will have to take that into account. I am losing this first weekend and next Friday for sure and suspect there will be interruptions on other days so we will see how much I am able to do.

What do I mean by from scratch? There will be no libraries or frameworks other than the standard libraries and what DOM provides. I will write all the code. Ideally,I will extend this restriction to artwork and sound effects but that will depend on how much time I have at the end for polishing the game.

The theme of the game is Life in 2 Dimensions. The thoughtI immediately came up with is some variation on Conway’s Game of Life (CGL). Doing a straight CGL would not be much of a challenge, but if I did this more like a strategy game then there could be something interesting.

My idea is to use a hex grid where there would be 3 distinct types of cells which are either food or enemies. Red Cells eat Green cells which eat Blue cells which eat Red cells. Each round is broken into phases. Phase 1 would be the absorption phase where the cells around each cell is counted. If there are more enemy cells touching a cell then allies, the cell will be absorbed becoming an enemy cell otherwise it stays the same. The next phase is the movement phase.  

The rules for movement are easy. Head towards the nearest food cell (or, fake food cell when I add that later) though only using empty cells, so will stay still if cells closer to food are currently blocked.  Not sure what order the cells will move in, will be playing around with that aspect. 

The game will be an attempt to convert the entire board to your color. With the ability to place fake food on the board to guide the activity. I am hoping to have a crude version of the game by Tuesday or Wednesday as due to other obligations I am not going to be able to start until Monday.