GET LUCKY
GMTK Game Jam 2022 [Roll of the Die]
48 Hours | July 2022
Summary
Get Lucky is a graphic novel dating sim where the player attempts to persuade Lady Luck to let you pay for dinner. I was one of nine developers and acted as one of the two programmers. This Game Jam was only 48 hours.
Working with one other programmer, we each developed half the systems for the game and worked together at the end to link the two halves together.
My primary accomplishment was the dialogue system. The structure was easy to implement without sacrificing functionality. In addition, I streamlined the dialogue pipeline that saved valuable time for the writing.
Out of 6,147 entries, Get Lucky was ranked #407 overall and #163 in presentation!
Dialogue State Diagram
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Once the game loop was decided, I got to work and drew diagrams for the game.
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Having these diagrams while implementing the system ensured that they'd worked the first time and maximized our development time.
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This state diagram mapped out what goals were needed from the system and how player input would be handled.
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This also doubled for planning out how the UI flow would work.
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Dialogue Manager
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Having a well thought out manager and data structure for the dialogue was essential to completing the game in time.
- DialogueOption contained the writing and reaction images options for Lady Luck.
- DialoguePool held DialogueOptions in groups and would retrieve options when requested. It automatically repopulated itself when empty as well!
- DialogueManager was the main driver for the system, deciding which pools to use and when.
Auto Dialogue Parsing
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With such little time, I wanted to ensure our writers had could focus on writing and proof reading without worrying about engine implementation.
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I created a tool that would take in dialogue that automatically broke the text into 'lines' which fit inside the dialogue box without cutting off words.
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This allowed out writers to quickly import their writing into one spot without worry of the dialogue being too long for the system to handle. We estimated that it saved 8 hours of testing and bug fixing in a 48 hour project.
- As it was compartmentalized, it was easy to add functionality such as changing text color based on the character speaking.
