Fixing an old game
February 13, 2020
Today (and last night), I spent some time re-visiting the game I built with a couple friends for last year’s Global Game Jam (2019). The theme last year was “Home”. We wanted to do something completely voice-controlled, so we came up with the idea to do a game based on a scene in from the 90s Adam Sandler movie “Happy Gilmore”. In the scene, the Sandler character has just narrowly missed sinking his ball. He gets down on his hands and knees to yell at the ball and it’s pretty hilarious. Here, check it out in this clip:
Anyway, in our game you have to yell - using your voice - at the ball in order to make it move forward. You move the ball over an obstacle course and try to reach the end before the timer runs out.
Long story short - we had trouble getting the mic input to work properly, and we didn’t get it figured out in time for the deadline. So we showed off what we had completed (still a pretty fun/funny game imho) and left it at that.
And there it sat, untouched, in the rep for over a year. Then last night I thought about it - because I was looking for more projects to add to my portfolio - and I cloned the repo and dove back into the problem… and solved it!
Man, it works soooo good now! I’m pretty thrilled at the gameplay now that the critical mic fix is in. Gonna keep plugging away at it and see if I can’t release it privately (can’t go public cause it DEFINITELY is in major violation of copyright, seeing as ALL of the art, sound and music is taken directly from the movie).
Man, game dev is fun.
Alright, that’s it! Check out my portfolio website for more info!
-mr
Written by Matthew Riddett who lives and works in Victoria BC, building fun and useful things. You can follow him on Twitter