Creating a Reverse Survival Game ! My first game jam - Devlog #1/2

In November, I spent 10 days working on a small game jam project - a reverse survival game, where you play as mother nature !
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Video Chapters :
0:00 Intro
0:30 The MiniFantasy Community GameJam
1:23 Day 1 - A New Beginning
4:19 Day 2 - (Too) Basic AI
7:38 Day 3 - Loot Frenzy
11:26 Day 4 - Looting ... Bugs
13:20 Day 5 - Homo Sapiens
17:36 Day 6 - Sapiens & his trusty tools
22:18 Devlog #2 preview

[@oberonpanopticon]

There should be a hard mode where the AI is a factorio player

[@Slangnegativ]

Brilliant concept, I love it. There wasn't any focus on the player (nature) in this episode and I guess the jam is done. But I think it would have been perfect if the challenge of the gameplay was that the AI human was a crafty little bugger that would make steady progress while awake, while the players powers and decisions all take time to have effect. Bottomline being that it's a game about longterm planning. Maybe some powerful direct effect abilities as well but these could be expensive enough that they could lose you the game.

[@UnPawsGames]

That does sound awesome, I think it would have resulted in a more interesting gameplay (and realistic). But as you said, the gamejam is over now, and I think this idea might have necessitated a longer development time, especially for playtesting.

[@CaptainDCap]

@@UnPawsGames Is there anything stopping you from finishing this project on your own time? Assuming you have any care to.

[@UnPawsGames]

@CaptainDCap This was actually just a small gamejam project, and I messed up my code so much I'd have to start all over if I were to expand on it ... maybe one day !

[@CaptainDCap]

@@UnPawsGames Fair enough. Consider this my humble pre-order of the triple deluxe special edition.

[@Not_Nik0]

@@CaptainDCap Count me in

[@boomshockalocka]

Turns out, I don't like being cruel to my human, I found myself doing my best to keep him alive as long as possible.

[@champignon5620]

My man's sleeping nearby the tent I think he missed the point of a tent 💀 (Keep up the great work always a pleasur to get the notif)

[@UnPawsGames]

Thanks 😁

[@StaredownGames]

"When we get a disease, what happens? We heat up to get rid of it. You believe in Gaia Theory? It's the theory where the Earth is alive. It's heating up to get rid of its disease, which is us." - Richmond Valentine, Kingsman. I'm paraphrasing from memory but this was my first thought upon hearing your pitch. lol

[@Spooky90097]

That quote makes you think.

[@Spooky90097]

But the earth made us, so are we just cancer then?

[@HSuper_Lee]

That is a conclusion trying really hard to find an argument.

[@somethingclever4297]

​@@HSuper_Leeif you've seen the movie you would know that the guy is crazy.

[@solsystem1342]

​@@HSuper_Lee Of course it's not literally true but biosphere is under strain do to the total of humanity's actions

[@user-cd4bx6uq1y]

This made me remember a game Idea I had when I was like 10 of a simple multiplayer thing where one guy plays as a thundrstorm and it takes less time for him to cast lightning if an object is tall

[@ballchen4768]

I immediately fell in love with the idea for the game when you introduced it. Can't wait to see the rest of the progress!

[@matheusadornidardenne8684]

Bro's inventory is a Fibonnaci's sequence.

[@higurashikai09]

First step: coffee Cue my jitters. Tea doesn't give me the same effect so I choose it over coffee. Sorry, coffee.

[@Eugensson]

Can we all appreciate how adorable the bumpy walking animation is.

[@hoel4573]

Again a super high quality dev log. I liked a lot all the detail information on the debuging processe and programing stages. But it would be also nice to really deep into the time management of your work and how your day are stuctured

[@scout-s5227]

The biggest source of bugs is that your visual studio is not in dark mode XD

[@hunterchichester5720]

Yeah,light attracts bugs.

[@honaleri]

This concept is epic. I think this should definitely be made into a full fledged game... I even like the idea of thos concept elsewhere. Like a full anti-life sim, where resilient self-reliant AI have to survive, against an evil godlike player. Even cooler, if you played as an evil god and needed human souls and sacrifices to gain "agency points". You only get "movement" when NPCs die. So you simultaneously want to keep balance between them growing in population and then you culling that same population. But if you kill them all, then you lose all your agency points, cause they were the fuel to your power. Game over. Or... Imagine a mulitplayer roguelike game, where 1 player is all the NPC and monsters, and they have to make enemies and bosses to kill the hero party, it could even work where the heros are other live players. Wait... that's just DnD.😅 But, it would still be cool to be the villian in an RPg story, maybe even a feature where you write what the conflict is, and all the spicey "we will conquer all of you" lines. But in this game, balance would be key, you get more points if you kill them late in the game compared to early in the beginning, but you gain "upgrade points" for every point of damage you cause them.. So letting them level up for a catastrophic and thematic ending- "they were so close" makes you have an higher score than just slaughtering them day one to slimes.

[@ibarrygames8240]

I just finished my very first game jam submission myself with 3 days left. a spreading theme good luck

[@UnPawsGames]

Congrats on sumbitting your first game jam 💪🎉

[@_gamma.]

Jams based around assets are my favorite

[@romaneq6415]

ooouh the teasing of the next episode seems nice. Loved this one, it's great to see you explain the building of the IA.

[@jackviga8714]

man i really enjoyed all of your videos, been binge watching all of them today. amazing explanations, great viewer engagement and funny/entertaining video voiceovers. really hope your channel blows up. (the visuals for the games “mini fantasy” is amazing as well i’ll look in to it, i have been looking for something like this to start working on a roguelike idea

[@UnPawsGames]

Thanks so much 😁 The MiniFantasy assets are such a perfect starter pack to create any 2D game. The creator is an amazing person. The community he created is so unique and welcoming... I can't stop recommending them !

[@ThomasWinget]

10:46 -- Programmers have to deal primarily with two types of bugs: memory leaks, concurrency, and off-by-one errors.

[@calicow]

"The dude really likes sleeping" he's just like me fr fr I was wondering what you were up to! Game jams are a great use of time when you're trying to expand your skills and finish things with tight constraints. I spent the last two weeks on my entry for round 1 of GDKO and even if I don't make it to round 2, I'm happy with what I learned and can apply to my personal project. The concept for your game is great! Good job keeping the AI organized after a couple setbacks. It feels just complex enough to get out of hand if not managed well. It seems like you've made a ton of progress and I can't wait to see the second video! Thanks (and curse you...) for reminding me I need to give Against the Storm another look since its latest updates. I've been told by colleagues that it's so much more robust since the 1.0 release and I already enjoyed it so much in early access. Have you considered starting a discord server for your channel? I've found KZbin dev servers to be a fun place to hang out with likeminded folks, and for the channel operator it seems to be a good source of feedback and testers.

[@UnPawsGames]

Yes I think Game Jams are awesome to expand your skills and sketch out ideas. Although I tend to quickly become overwhelmed (as you'll ee in the next devlog). Great job on submitting for GDKO ! A Discord server is coming witg my next concept, in February 😊

[@ingmarvansoest1481]

Awesome video! But... clean your coffee machine :D

[@UnPawsGames]

😅

[@KootFloris]

Go for it!! "A forest is a country, and every tree a village" when we look to the interconnectedness of all life. How can we teach this to humans. This game idea seems a great step!

[@artifact2454]

omg that medival fencing bit was so funny! Also relatable, I did the exact same thing hahahah

[@daahhboyy]

Good job ! Really enjoying your videos, you are doing great! Continue comme ça !

[@Heidewizzka]

Love the game Idea and the video is really nice to watch!

[@KryyssTV]

Sound to me like you need the equivient of a task aggro array not a loot aggro array. Many games use this for bosses if they're dealing with multiple players or NPCs attacking it and permits an aggro priority queue typically based upon how much damage the target is causing, how far away they are and a further aggro modifier which devs use to prioritise tanks and healers who typically do less damage. In your case, you have multiple tasks which all contribute towards the "player" healing damage to one of their bars. Since the tasks themselves can be stand-alone functions or multistep functions you can apply an "aggro" modifier to each task to define if it'll heal more or less. The AI can then look at the amount it needs to heal and select a task it knows will meet that requirement. If the player reaches a critical theshold but has the ability to immediately perform a task to save itself then it abandons the current task for a quick fix and then re-evaluates afterwards. Keeping in mind of course that you want an imperfect AI. In all honesty though, this concept would be more fun if you're trying to keep a stupid player alive ala Lemmings rather than trying to kill them.

[@UnPawsGames]

Yes, this seems like a good system, I didn't know about it! I think it would have worked here. Although I prefer the idea of eliminating the human threat rather than saving it, playing as mother nature !

[@KryyssTV]

@@UnPawsGames I'd suggest adding a failure condition for mother nature then as having the survivor escape the forest is a desirable outcome but having them remain in the forest until you kill them isn't very interesting in the long term. Good gameplay is often boiled down to managing conflicting goals. If the player can win, then the survivor should also be able to "win". The thing is that if the survivor is making use of the environment to survive and the player is changing the environment to be uninhabitable then the competing goals are that you need to get rid of the survivor without destroying the ecosystem.

[@darkmoens]

18:45 c'est exactement comme ça qu'on joue à un survival. Tu pars chercher du fer Tu trouves de la laine Tu fais un lit Tu n'as toujours pas de fer

[@UnPawsGames]

L'histoire de ma vie en ce moment sur Medieval Dynasty 🤣

[@bgiv2010]

I like. I am also working on a reverse city builder inspired by Terra Nil. Good luck. Let's play each other's games!

[@Thelimelightisinvisible]

This is turning out beautifully!

[@martinetaconet1091]

Bravo pour ce travail incroyable !!!

[@insanecamo]

Great video! Unrelated from it, please clean the poor espresso machine lol

[@JamesThompson-zu3bq]

Against the storm mentioned!!!!

[@LonelyTurtle-xd5yb]

Ooh just like yesterday I got a new game idea to make a short game about hunting, where the ecosystem will quickly on unbalanced if the player did something wrong like killing all wolves.

[@user-cd4bx6uq1y]

Very good video with lots of potential for the channel. The only real issue (though I can't say for sure) I see is that the way this devlog is made is based in many ways just on "that's how devlogs are" instead of something related to the environment this channel operates in to allow for something even better. That's (still just) my very stupid basic and vague note laid out in corporate language Here when 54k views and 2.51k subs

[@pandadadx7]

You made a basic GOAP ai system. Don't know if you have looked into it, but if you revisit this, you should.

[@queezel7633]

Great video and great project! :) On a side note, last year against the storm was still in early access. But it reached Version 1.0 (full release) last december (8th). So I don't think there will be that much more content updates in the future ;)

[@Vivalestat_7]

YES HES BACK

[@UnPawsGames]

Yee ! 2024 should be a huge year 😉

[@tony355367]

great design concept

[@chimericpaladin35813]

you could have instead made it a two+ player game where one or more plays the environment and the other plays the human(s), which would have been easier on you to make as you only gotta worry about the ai for the animals/monsters, just an idea i had as soon as ai was mentioned, you dont have to do this, its just an idea i had to make things easier, still a grea game youre making

[@UnPawsGames]

That's an awesome idea. But multiplayer is a whole other world I haven't explored yet 😶‍🌫️

[@scyther-x4903]

This style of pixel art reminds me a lot of an already existing mmorpg called Tales of Yore.

[@UnPawsGames]

Tales of Yore is developed by a fellow colleagues that uses the MiniFantasy assets too 😊

[@Wezryx]

Can you make a version of this? Which is like the concept as it is meant to be fully realized.😊

[@fI0ppaYT]

i dont know if you already implemented this because im half-way through the video but you should add so if a player owns a tent, the energy regenerates faster and if the player has cooked food, the hunger bar goes up more. but anyways, loving the game so far and i hope to see big progress :)

[@Fallout3131]

This sounds cool!

[@FlamingGranola]

U DESERVE WAY MORE LIKES

[@breakablec]

Unit tests would make for less debugging

[@JakeTheUhh]

cant wait!!

[@nwnico07]

cant help but to tell you, that we could see your background at 14:24

[@Kindlesmith70]

Playing the environment to remove the inhabitance. Heh. It's not a new thing, but still interesting. Have you played the board game VAST? Either one would do, but Vast: The Crystal Caverns I would recommend to take a look at just for curiosity. I love watching how games are slowly built up one aspect at a time. Can't thumbs up the video as there's too much junk that has no relevance to the topic (making a game)

[@BABABABABANCHAN]

if you like against the storm, i'd highly recomment dotAGE; it's another rogue-like city builder focused on trying to save a colony from multiple calamities (it's REALLY hard)

[@UnPawsGames]

I bought it on release day 😁 it's very good !

[@mscottveach]

what is that city builder he shows a shot of when talking about against the storm?

[@KDSBestGameDev]

Great video, but at 17:55 using | instead of || triggered me very hard. There is a difference and | is not correctly used here. If the first entry lootSource is ItemWorld is true and you use | then lootSource is World... is also checked, which is totally not necessary. If you use || and the first statement is true then the second statement doesn't get executed. This also is most likely not compiler optimized, because there might be an intention to pipe like this, but in this case it is not good and a bad practice. Also checking for the class type is also a bad practice. This would be way too much to write in short maybe an enum in ILoottable exposed as a property like LootSourceType or move the specific implementations into the ILoottable. Sorry for the rant. I just realized it's a gamejam ignore what I said. I have done way worse in a gamejam xD

[@UnPawsGames]

Thanks for the explanation ! I did not know this, so its super useful to me. Is there the same difference with & and && ?

[@ofghanirre5342]

Hellooooo ! Loved the video ! I used to develop a similar system to mimicate human behavior based on Health, Hunger, Thirst and Fatigue ! As I am not a game programmer I did without Unity or anything so the result might be a little ... ansi :3 However I am so glad I found the video ! would love to follow you on this journey ! And maybe help you with ideas / rules trees ! The decisional Tree for an AI is actually a good way of developing your system ! If you want to increase the possibilities using AI you might want to look up the deep reinforcement learning subjects ! Anyway was a cool video, with good editing! Suscribed and liked

[@UnPawsGames]

Awesome, thanks for joining ✌️ Your participation will be super interesting for my next series of videos !

[@UnPawsGames]

Btw I recently bought an asset to help build & visualize behavior trees on unity. I'm so excited to try it out !

[@ofghanirre5342]

@@UnPawsGames that is awesome ! Tbh i don't have many experiences with Unity nor game Developping ! But if I may help in any way that will be a pleasure ! Btw if needed we can exchange in french 😁👍

[@Monkkie]

For the majority of the video, I was wondering if if he just forgot that the human wasn’t actually the player

[@markc.7984]

Off topic of all the excellent and fun game development, what city builder game is that you show while talking about Against the Storm? :)

[@UnPawsGames]

It's Anno 1800 ! Such a huge game.

[@markc.7984]

thanks! @@UnPawsGames

[@schwerzeli]

Very good video

[@blueawesomedinosaur]

Looks great! Would you mind if I make a game with a similar idea as a civilization sim?

[@UnPawsGames]

Thx! Of course not, you enjoy creating your game 😁

[@Antiork]

is a decision tree realy considered AI?

[@rebdochka5108]

i love thid idea

[@vvotchme1576]

wow a ball of fur and big brown eyes, furby!

[@black_forest_]

ouh, doing this with a group of humans, like a village might be cool. Like, they can also develop more technologies and defences so it gets harder with time.

[@davidmende3409]

12:04 thats obviously a fat pigoeon 💁‍♂🔥

[@Wyklepheph]

This is basically like WorldBox or other god simulators. Not really a new idea but def a fun game genre

[@aaronking2020]

Subbed 👍

[@ampmunkey]

Off topic, but the board games in the back, is that the whole game or just the lid? If it’s the game, how are they mounted? Looks dope!

[@UnPawsGames]

Thanks 🙂 It's just the lid resting on 2 nails, 1 at each top corner.

[@ampmunkey]

@@UnPawsGames Makes for cool decor, in my opinion. Might do this myself with a couple of my favorites.

[@gabimferraz5212]

dudeee i want to play this game

[@deltha_the_1st]

Bonjour, ami francophone, c'etait une bonne vidéo

[@UnPawsGames]

Merci!

[@_SilverSoul]

What did you use to create the game? I wanna make a game of my own, or atleast begin the process

[@UnPawsGames]

I used Unity ! Go for it 💪

[@camdenmiller7127]

Wouldn't a queue of decisions be a much better option?

[@donovian2538]

14:00 whats the music playing here? Shits a bop.

[@Fallout3131]

Hey what environment did you make this in?

[@Fallout3131]

edit nevermind I just heard you say unity, thanks! leaving my comment for the algorithm tho :)

[@matthewbryce2494]

What is the name of the game at 16:19? looks stunning!

[@UnPawsGames]

Anno 1800, the latest from the Anno franchise. I highly recommend it if you're into city builders with long production chains !

[@Sonlokill]

stp gooner, man. it's ruining you. you're such a talent...

[@user-lg9ln7qx7c]

12:13 my dev life hahaha

[@black_forest_]

I wonder what difference it would make if the player couldnt see the inventory, just his actions

[@UnPawsGames]

I add an ability for the player to unlock the inventory in the second episode, so it starts locked :)

[@daanvossen9392]

you could make it so the human has a really long term goal of indusrtialising what would make nature(the player) less and less powerful

[@ISavant]

I really like your game idea, wondered briefly how i'd implement it myself (and i'm not a game dev, just a nerd trying to learn UE5), and scope-creep destroyed my idea in like 30 seconds flat 🤣

[@UnPawsGames]

Well... This stuff happens 😂

[@user-lg9ln7qx7c]

12:13 my dev life haha

[@mking5500]

Dont you press your coffee? It looked very pale running out your machine. I dont drink coffee myself, but i make a lot of it for others at work😬

[@UnPawsGames]

I prefer my morning coffee that way 😊

[@dungeonmasterdave1617]

Very surprised how much effort and time you invested into this design just on ai. After so many days and you still haven't implemented any direct elements of the game jam theme. Probably all the debugging didn't help either. Looking forward to seeing what you do next.

[@thelegendarykillgore9167]

My first choice to

[@Fallout3131]

2:02 LOL

[@orkhanabdullayev-sr5xe]

Name the human Jerry.Jun(AI)or . Or jerry

[@rustkitty]

17:55 uh, is that a "binary or" operator? Why? I've never seen anyone use that outside of weird low-level trickery.

[@UnPawsGames]

Yes, exactly ! Remnants from my past professional experiences, lol

[@Jackhenrey]

In my first game jam i created a map making board game

[@Praecantetia]

Isn't this kinda like sims?

[@eliottbellanger644]

17:08 tu est français ?

[@UnPawsGames]

Oui :)

[@eliottbellanger644]

@@UnPawsGames tu rétabli notre réputation 😂 oui les français savent parler français

[@KoolDude-lf9jh]

Where’s the gameplay?

[@emilemerten6535]

Hi I can write music for your project

[@hehehehaw21]

I want

[@Thixxy]

YOU DIDNT SAY HI

[@Kasperbjerby]

Did you really just do a ad for a game you dont even want to play? 🤣

[@NewerSwagger-gp3hj]

I wanna do the same thing, but staet un a third world country!!

[@insantonua]

using other people's assets to promote your content is a big nono. and illegal. you might want to change your two thumbnails before klei entertainment see them

[@King_Ben_IV]

Stay on topic. The end of day tangents were very annoying