1977: Bottlecap Legends, part two

1977: Bottlecap Legends, is a hotseat multiplayer precision racing arcade game inspired by traditional street games, You can play the current version at https://slash.itch.io/1977-bottlecap-legends

Version 0.3 is out, but first things first, let’s continue where we left

Continued development as part of “Creando Tu Propia Historia”

Tan Grande y Jugando organized a jam called “Creando Tu Propia Historia“; entries from GameJam+ were invited to take part and continue development so there was really little risk on jumping in. The theme of the jam, “Bridges and Bonds”, was inherited from the We Create game jam, since it was an allied jam.

Since this was aligned with the continued improvement on the game as part of the GameJam+ “incubation” phase, I said why now, so we jumped in hoping to improve the original entry a little bit.

November 20, 2023

Since we know the weakest point of our GJ+ entry was the UX (because I had to do it myself), I started roaming the “looking for a team” discord channel there for UX people. I finally contacted “kovak”, who looked into our entry and found it interesting. We set to talk about the game next day with the team.

November 21, 2023

9:00 AM Part of the team assembles again to discuss the future of the project including Kovak. We do some brainstorming and recall the list of possible improvements that we build at the end of the original GJ+ submission. As mentioned before, we decide on improving the UX of the game, especially getting rid of the improvised instructions bar and replacing it with a proper onboarding.

9:34 AM, Quietgecko mentions he had made a menu track for the game that we didn’t manage to integrate for the GJ+ submission. We add integrating it, to the list of things to do.

10:01 AM, I decide to create a google sheet to track the tasks of the game since it becomes more of a need as we spread out of concentrated jam mode and instead work async as time permits for each

6:28 PM, I contact jucarave again, asking if he’s up to work in two critical improvements over the original entry: Fixing the drag sensitivity and detecting when the caps abandon the track. This is something I detected while playtesting the entry, the idea of a grab and a flick mode, while interesting for its flexible sandbox possibilities, was a bit awkward to use. He says he’s up to it.

November 22, 2023

12:49 PM, Kovak sends a very complete proposal for an improved onboarding flow, including mockups and flowcharts on how he envisioned the improvements and new gameplay mechanics. Unfortunately, due to busy-times, none of the team members manages to comment on it during the day.

November 24, 2023

7:22 AM, I finally manage to check out the proposed improvements, some of them (like the addition of checkpoints, turn control, flicks counter) don’t look doable for the looming submission deadline of the jam, however we should consider them for the GJ++ phase.

10:50 AM, QuietGecko mentions the idea of having an additional, more upbeat track for the in-gane, racing mode, given the changes on the flow we are envisioning. We start shooting a lot of ideas including my favorite: Rainbow Road from MK64

5:46 PM, Jucarave shares with the team his progress on making the bottle-cap return automatically to the starting position after leaving the track.

7:06 PM, Jucarave claims the improvements for the dragging sensitivity are done as well.

November 25, 2023

9:07 PM, Kovak is working on improving the UI assets, buttons, fonts, overall making things look much better.

10:14 PM, I finally have some dev time to work on this, the plan is to implement the UX improvements but first I need to validate the fixes made by jucarave.

10:24 PM, there’s something wrong with the collision detection, so I have to summon jucarave to hotfix it online while streaming my dev push.

November 26, 2023

12:21 AM, I detected some issues with the drag sensitivity fixes, they seem to rely on the actual resolution the game is being played on, so I point that out to jucarave for him to take a look. I also share with the team the first part of the implemented improvements in the flow.

3:44 PM, jucarave sends the fixes for the floaty dragging.

5:32 PM, Kovak sends a new update for the UI improvements to be made in the game, including new UI assets and some gameplay ideas.

November 27, 2023 – The Last Day

5:36 PM, the plan is to integrate all the UI assets from Kovak, remove the instructions bar and the “grab mode”, and call it done, there’s no time for anything else.

7:52 PM, reporting some progress in the improvements

9:27 PM, Quietgecko activates

11:09 PM, Quitegecko adds SFXs for respawn, hit, and improves the menu music

11:46 PM, I call for code freeze. I managed to put in a lot of the flow and assets designed by Kovak.

11:54 PM, QA Starts.

11:57 PM, A critical bug is found with the dragging in one of the stages; it’s moving all the bottlecaps along with the camera. Damn.

11:59 PM, I managed to fix the bug and submit just on time. That was close. This is version 0.2 of the game.

The after-days, GJ++ and v0.3

November 28, 2023

12:04 AM, I discovered a pretty ugly bug (still not a game-breaker like the other one, and yet). The respawn locations for the bottlecaps are being altered by the dragging mechanism.  I ask jucarave to take a look and maybe submit a fix next day (for GJ++, since the “Crea Tu Historia” deadline is past)

9:06 PM, jucarave pushes the fix.

December 3, 2023

Since people is seeing the project, I decide to spend some time on it mainly to be able to push to the public the fixes made by jucarave almost one week ago; pushing through I manage to create a new version, 0.3, with many changes including:

• Split 1975 scene into two stages (championship stages 1 and 9)
• Relocate bottle-caps immediately as they leave the track.
• Prevent flicking while the bottle-cap is moving.
• Tweaks in the colliders to improve the game flow
• Disable collisions between bottle-caps

That’s the story for now! Play the game for free, no download required, at https://slash.itch.io/1977-bottlecap-legends