What is Jolly Cooperation?
Jolly Cooperation is a indie game where you and couple of your friends explore between the dynamic dungeons to uncover the truth of what caused the historical curse that has been placed on this island.
What inspired me to make this game?
The short version? Because we enjoy playing games but more importantly, we enjoy playing games cooperatively.
The long version? I’m bored and I’m tired. I’m tired of watching AAA companies control the entire industry while providing mediocre coop/multiplayer games riddled with micro-transactions and live services that don’t survive longer than a year in some cases. I’m not saying what I’m creating will be revolutionary by any means, but I can guarantee you that you won’t have to make a choice between eating and entertainment, you should be able to have both!
So what is the point of this page?
I want a log of our progress, so that we can look back and be proud of the work we accomplished.
So how did this all begin?
Honestly, this was the hardest part for me since I could not draw, or 3d model……or rig or animate or program.
My friend was willing to do the programming which was nice because I could never get the handle of object oriented programing.
Over the years I managed to get a handle of Blender and Zbrush (with the help of some classes I found in Udemy).
As a useful resource for whoever is interested, I learned how to sculpt and re-typologize through Bran Sculpts.
With that skill set learnt all that was left was rigging and animating.
I tried learning how to animate through Animation Mentor though I have to say I did not find the speed of which they teach you great. I understand that they hire people within the field to teach so you get a inside look of what is currently happening in the industry but learning like that is a young man’s game. However, thanks to Animation Mentor I was able to communicate with one of the mentors and get personalized classes with him every couple of weeks, allowing me to learn at my own pace , plus,I would much rather pay an individual then a company any day haha.
With animating currently in the pipes rigging was the last hurdle.
Now I had managed to get most of the theory through the channel called Dikko and I have to say his tutorials were a god send.
I learnt allot through him and his community but there a few parts concerning drivers that I had trouble with so I communicated with Ravenkal and with her help I should have a proper document on how to rig all the characters I need for my game.
The first character entering the fight
Jolly Cooperation
WIP island hub (ignore the pink ocean, it is currently broken and I’m trying to figure out how to fix it haha)
Funny enough, it all started when me and a couple friends played Lethal Company. A wonderful game where you work for what I can only assume was a intergalactic repo company. You go from planet to planet and enter derelict factories in order to collect as much stuff as possible. The only catch? You’re not alone and to make matters worse, it’s all timed. After spending hours playing this game (about 15 hours) we moved on to R.E.P.O. Similar in nature as Lethal Company aside from the fact you are able to fight back (for the most part). Again, another amazing and fun game with chills and thrills galore (about 35 hours played). Now aside from several obvious similarities between the two games there are a few things I would like to focus on. One is the way the multiplayer is done. Using Peer to Peer allows the consumer to be able to keep playing even if the company cuts off support for it. Two is the pricing, the pricing for these two games each are around 13 dollars (Canadian for me, this price will vary depending on where you are from.). In a world where consumers do not really own the software that they purchase, I find that it is important that prices match the reality of our ownership.
At the time I was incredibly addicted to Elden Ring and Overcooked 1 & 2 (both amazing games by the way if you had not the chance to try them) So Lethal and R.E.P.O. was able to sooth that itch. While watching Delicious in Dungeon with my wife (fun Netflix series) it hit me, what if I could make a game that is peer to peer, cheap and has both a dungeon crawling location that is dynamic and a dungeon that is not dynamic but is story driven (like some of the craves or cathedrals in Elden Ring). There was only one catch. I had no experience in creating a game and had no idea where to start.
It started with the motivation of a friend
When trying to figure how to begin I brought my idea to my buddy Philip who had done his studies in Computation Arts. Thanks to his knowledge and his willfulness to teach me I started by filling out this game design document. This honestly was a life a safer since I was having quite the trouble putting all of my ideas in place.
If anyone is interested in this document to help clear up their ideas for their next game click here!
Now that I have the idea, now what?
While looking for a style for the game that I can realistically achieve I always quite enjoyed the simplicity of cell shaded graphics. A couple of old classics that come to mind would me Zelda Wind Waker and Tales of Symphonia. With that style in mind I wanted to make characters that had a middle ground between complicated and simple. With that being said I would like to introduce you to our first character, Rosie the Wizard Frog (or Toad, I keep jumping between the two).
Now, I want to show you my first attempt of making Rosie because sometimes, I find it difficult to look at everyone else’s perfect art without judging my own incredibly hard.
This… was Rosie 1.0
She was simple in some places and too busy/complicated in others. The collar could have had a bit more polies to bend properly, the scroll pouch could have been bigger and the staff is quite generic. So why am I saying all of this? Because sometimes, no matter how long it took me to get to this result, I was still unhappy with it.
So I took a breath, brought back the original finished product and tried again. After another month or so I managed to create something a bit more to my liking.
All this to say, if you make something and you aren’t happy with the result, try and try again.
