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[MagicJam]

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Twitter @MagicJam | MagicJAM tumblr | Construct 2 forum

Bonus Zones!





Higher Quality WEBM of above gif!

DEVLOG # 01

MJ: Hello there everyone!

I would like to showcase MagicJAM. A wild and zany ‘fast food quality’ 2D action videogame.


Ricky: Hey I never gave you permission to take these photos!






MJ: We will be paying you for your time Ricky, don’t worry!


Ricky: Pssh I don’t work for free so ya better pay me.

MJ: Ahem...anyway.. This is a videogame for videogames! Highly inspired by 90s radical radioactive culture. We got ooze, we got neon colors, we got floating eyeballs and other dumb shit.  It’s nonsensical, stupid, entertaining and filled with weird, siiick characters and environments.

So just like fast food let’s get right to it!



Ricky: Enough with the freaking metaphors. Show something cool and stop wasting my time!! (I’d rather be tuning up my ride...)

MJ: Right-O but first...

The way we would like to present this game is that it’s not a main course meal. We are only 2 people and we both have days jobs. In order to craft this experience it’s gotta be frozen, thrown on the grill, cooked to a crisp and then thrown right into your pretty faces. Place the patty between two buns and throw some cheese on it and call it DONE! It’s gonna be quick and dirty development and you’ll get to see how it’s made. That is if that’s okay with you Ricky?

Ricky: Whatever....like I give a $@#%

MJ: Here’s what we are -currently- serving:

Plain Cheese Burger
Medium Fries
A Beverage of your choosing!



Ricky: Mmm now that's what I call a true red, white, and blue ALL American meal. What a deal!

MJ: That’s right Ricky, This is the happy meal of games and YES, it does include a toy! It’s not going to be nutritious for you, but it will hit the spot and be very filling!


Ricky: ...a toy?

MJ: Ya know...for the kids.


Ricky: If you don’t get to the point and show some cool $#@& I’m gonna wring your scrawny little neck until ya do!

MJ: Yikes okay okay! Let’s get to it (for real)


Ricky: You’re lucky I’m in a good mood. Otherwise I would’ve given ya a bruising from my world class fighting technique ‘Blurry Punch.’


MJ:? Can we get a demonstration? Not on me of course! Here take your aggression out on these complete Eyes-Holes!

Ricky:


MJ: Ewww gross you exploded it’s eye-face all over the place!!


Ricky: AWW YEAH!! I CAN FEEL THE TESTOSTERONE FLOWING THROUGH ME! LET’S HIT SOME MORE OF THESE EYES-HOLES!!



MJ: Uggghhh..I’m gonna be sick *burp*


Ricky: Gotta go faaaast! Meep. Meep.



MJ: Whoa awesoooome! The way you are running reminds me of a few certain characters. I can’t quite put my finger on it. Actually, that also reminds me of a long, drawn out, dull story that has to do with bug fixing and quality assurance testing. It’s all coming back to me, I can remember it like it was almost yesterday...

Ricky: ARRRRGGGGHHHH!!! I warned you scumbag! Don’t waste my time! Consecutive Blurry Punch X10!!

*BANG SMASH CRASH BOOM ZOOM SHOOM LOOM KLANG ZAM BAKLOW*

MJ: AAAAAAAHHHHH! OOOFFFF! OOOUCH! YOOOWWWZA!! YAAAA HOOO HOOO HOOOOOIEEEE!!


Ricky: Well that takes care of that guy. I’ll be running this show from now on. So if you have any questions you’ll have to ask me!



Ricky: So long punks!
I’ll be back!


[edited title for clarity]

[MagicJam]

DEVLOG # 02

MJ: This time we are going to show off a bit of animation development. From very rough, to tie down, to clean art.

The animation intent for this game is going to be very smear/blur heavy. We think smears are super cool so they are going to be prominently featured in MagicJAM.

Another aspect of this games development is we are only doing ONE PASS on our animations, BGs, etc. Since we are only 2 people and we both have full time jobs, we don't have the time or luxury to noodle 1 animation or 1 BG to death. We can't nuance the nuance or this game would take 3 years. We will still make some kick ass art though.



Ricky: Sounds like an excuse to do some shoddy slapdashed together work..

MJ: Trust us, the quality will be high regardless! Anyway..on to the post.

STEP 1: VERY ROUGH




Ricky: Hey! What's going on here? Looks like junk! I'm not that scrawny! Are you trying to say I'm not manly?

MJ: Of course not, this is just a rough stage. Just wait until you see what's next.

STEP 2: TIE DOWN

MJ: See there ya go, All thickened up, manly and thiiick. In this stage it's pretty self explanatory. The drawings are cleaned up and volumes are matched for the final model. The drawings are tightened up at this stage and the design of each pose is made stronger. Also the silhouette is strengthened and each frame is drawn with the intent of strong shape design and very clear negative spaces.


Ricky: Yeah, thats more like it. Great job!



STEP 3: Final Clean:

MJ: This is what you've all been waiting for...This is the model that we are using in the game. Could it be better? Yes! Could it be made 120% perfect? Yes? But would you prefer that or would we be better spending our time if we worked on new mechanics or level design? The choice we made is to focus our priority on the levels and game mechanics. If we were to polish up this animation in lieu of anything else, we feel that ultimately the player has gained nothing. We would much prefer to build more content that can actually be played around with.




Ricky: Glad you guys are taking my suggestions for once. I don't know if the world is ready to handle me at 120% quality.

MJ: It's really for our players own safety to be honest.

MJ: Well that's it for now! Say good bye Ricky.


Ricky: Good bye Ricky. Wait...where am I going?

MJ: The shows over. It's time to go home.


Ricky: Wha...huh? Oh. It's about time. So long for now dudes. [Drives away into the sunset]

MJ: What a cool guy..

Next time we'll be looking at the evolution of a pose. From rough to clean. The animating is the easy part, coming up with an appealing pose for each frame is the brain breaking part. Welp until then, see ya.

[Excy]

As a dev who is currently struggling with writing story and dialogue for my NPCs, I appreciate the take you're taking on the devlog, haha.

Also this art is swanky.

[MagicJam]

Hey thanks man! I appreciate it. Yeah, I think it's more fun this way. For me and for everyone that wants to check out the game. Ricky is quite a character :D Expect to see him chiming in here and there as we move forward.

[MagicJam]

DEVLOG # 03

MJ: Here's a little mini update for MagicJAM

Here is a rough animation of Ricky's walk. It's an interesting idea and a lot of work went into it but we scrapped it ultimately.




Ricky: Yeah now instead of walking like a pansy I speed around like a freight train. I even have a smoke stack.




MJ: Well that's all for now. Just a little quickie. Until next time.

Anyone know any better ways to capture HD gameplay? I need to up the quality of these posts. Thanks in advance

[MagicJam]

Short little update for screenshot saturday

[Alexandre Belmonte]

Woah! Great 90s vibe!

Loved the humor and how energetic the animation is looking. The punches seems so powerful!

[MagicJam]

Thanks Alexandre Belmonte! Our artist really appreciates your compliment but for him this isn't the 90s, this is just what he thinks is cool   It just so happens that the 90s are cool haha.

Devlog 3.2?

Oh and while I'm here I wanted to post this new gif we just made. I really need to fix the code for the hanging...

Anyway it's coming along great so far and we keep out pacing our projections. We hope to show video footage soon. We still have to do a much better pass on all of our sound effects before that happens though.

[MagicJam]

Just a smidge of an update.

As an aside, since I'm just one soul that does the programming, co-level design, and community stuff I have to really pick and choose what I want to accomplish each day. I can either create new things for the game or I can post about things we already created on tigsource, twitter, tumblr, etc. I often choose the 'make new things option' However, I am still trying my best to keep people that are excited for this game up to date. I'm hoping to strike a balance so that I can update with little things everyday. We'll update with Devlog style explanation less frequently since it takes a lot of time.

We have been working on bonus sections for our first level. Currently we have 2 bonus sections. Each one uses the existing gameplay in a different and challenging way. It's also level 1 so it's not soul crushingly hard. We are doing our best to set up the learning expectation and not bombard players with hard challenges right off the bat.

We will have more bonuses and secret sections in the game. Perhaps 1 or 2 per level? Not sure just yet.

[MagicJam]

Animation update!

We finalized the jump animation.

We will make the hair drag differently depending if you are jumping up, falling, going forward, etc In the mean time I have added smoke particles so that it's easier to follow the character with your eyes visually. As an aside after launch and after people have played the game we might update the jump animation so that it's more flashy. Right now though it's perfect and complete. If we had more time or money we would go all out but this is a nice little appetizer of what we plan for the games animations.



Also work is being done on laying out Level 2. Level 1 is done (barring some post development polish) Level 2 is a totally different ball game and will put a smile on anyones face haha.

We are also considering a secondary character that has cosmetic changes only. More on that later 

[Sora]

Popeye and earthworm Jim had a baby.

[MagicJam]

Hey thanks dude! :D

Another little update. Work has begun on level 2. I apologize for the small gif but I can't for the life of me figure out how to show this game off with quality gifs that are hundreds of MBs. I've been pretty annoyed about that.



Heres the companion webm https://gfycat.com/TinyVigilantHuia

We are planning an indepth look into the making of and behind the scenes for this game. Unfortunately, we haven't had the time. We are compiling the materials that will be required though.

[MagicJam]

Ricky: Oh yeah baby, hitting those gnarly waves!

WIP

WIP

[MagicJam]

Ricky:
Paparazzi managed to snap a pic of my surfing vacation. Aw what the hell I'll post it. I have such fond memories of beating the ink out of that Octo weirdo..

[sbeast]

Looks pretty interesting, I'm reminded of Earthworm Jim a bit.