Between These Walls (My First Gamejam 2020) [Download]

24/07/2020

Between These Walls was my very first game ever that I made in 2020 during the "My First Gamejam 2020" hosted on itch.io. At that time I was between preparatory class and my first general year at a video game school. I really wanted to learn Game Art, the pipeline and optimisations but the year after would be my very first year discovering the world of 3D art.

Earlier, I think I had played a game from someone that became a very good friend of mine named [Matt Reeves] (no the filmmaker). He made several games, most notably "NEMESIS", "Beyond The Curtain" or "Two Lines", and this is because of the last one that I wanted to make a game by myself too and entered in an obsessive moment where I really wanted to do something. He made Two Lines for a gamejam, I saw it on the youtube channel of Alpha Beta Gamer (which became my favorite youtube chanel at that time and I was like "why not making a gamejam too while I'm on holidays ! It would be amazing to see my game on the ABG channel". His works inspired me a lot for BTW and still inspires me to this day. I remember asking him how he made the roughness on the walls by mail, this was my very first interaction with him.

So I took a look on Itch.io to see which gamejam I could make and saw the "My First Gamejam" which, as its name mention it, is for people that never made a gamejam ever.

Since I love making stuff all by myself, I decided to work alone. It was a 3 weeks jam but I discovered it a bit after it started, so I started working on the game for only 2 weeks. And there began my little journey into learning to use Blender, Unreal Engine 4, code with blueprints and Substance Painter ! I learned everything because of tutorials I found on internet, I tried things, modified these as I think it's really important not to purely copy someones work or tutorial but also modify it to understand what you're making. The theme for the gamejam was "Change". We were free to not use the theme but I like having something to hook on so I know where I can go and I thought about an apartment, on that would change everytime you come back to it or you wake up.

I started drawing some quick stuff in my sketchbook, how the monster would look like, the apartment and all the props I'd need to create.

This was and still is my actual apartment layout but reversed ahah. I didn't look that far for the environment but since I needed to be quick and efficient, that was an option. I was living with someone that did some bad things and I think, in a way and while not making it consciously, it inspired me while I was in this sort of hell. Me and my best friend realized that sometimes after this person left my apartment and my life.

As said before, I like to make everything by myself, so I really wanted to make the meshes and textures from scratch, and I did .... terribly, but I did. I learned everything on the job but didn't knew about things such as the reset transform, High/low poly, triangles or not, etc. So if you want some fun facts, here you go ! First of all, the monster is in the game as he was in Zbrush, so a really high poly mesh. I remember making the texturing in Zbrush too, so I just painted on him like that. As for the sink in the bathroom, it's a high poly mesh too. The building across the apartment we're in in a single piece. I don't remember if I did a really high res texture but it was hard to make it not blurry. I didn't knew we could make modular assets.

Everytime I make a game, I always make multiple build during the development so I'm sure there's no errors. But at that time, I was in the euphoria of making my first game and when I was in this kind of euphoria, I tend to release my work too soon, so I made a little beta of the game, which was a bad idea and taught me to be patient before releasing something. Someone made a video of my game, but since there was nothing in it, it was simple a walk simulator and nothing happened, well it was a bit deceiving. So I quickly removed the beta of the game and kept working on it.

Most tileable textures were made on photoshop with filters and some textures I found on internet or pictures I took. That is a reason why some textures like the floor, is not that good. The rest were made in Painter.

As for the sound part, I mostly searched on freesound.org everything I needed and reworked these on FL Studio. I also composed every music of the game except for the radio and credit one. For the last ones, I asked my very good friend [SUFFREN] if he was ok for me to put 2 of his new songs in my game because they sounded cool and fit the ambience. I wanted to promote my friends work with this game and did the same for my best friend [Sarah] artwork I put as posters. I also put some of my artworks ...

The end of the gamejam was getting close, I tried to make the package of the game, but there were some problems. I couldn't recall what was the problems but the host of the jam was ok to give us a little bit more time. I upload the game (without removing all the basic stuff from UE, that's why the game is at maybe 7GB) on itch.io and was waiting to see some comments on my page to have a review of what others people from the gamjam thought about it. Not that much comment.

It's 1 or 2 days after that everything went really really quickly. A huge amount of comments on my game page and videos on youtube were spawning quickly with people from all around the world playing my game. I was cringing as hell because I wasn't fully satisfied by my work as I knew the game was not as beautiful as I wanted. It was really exciting and horrifying at the same time. Everything happened so quickly. Tons and tons of videos flooding my page and youtube with my game, the one I made in 2 weeks with stuff I learned from youtube and forums. And I'm really happy, because people saw my game but also loved the radio music from my friend Suffren and loved the posters from Sarah ! It made a huge promo for them as people really wanted Suffren's song to be released and Sarah to make some real life posters.

One day, I woke up and saw that Alpha Beta Gamer made a video on my game. I was so happy. While many other videos were being uploaded continuely, this was my achievement at that time, I did what I wanted to do. I was hoping for it but not really believing in it and it still happened and to this day I'm still really happy and proud of that. And even prouder that Markiplier also made a video of my game. It was absolutely crazy ! And, if I remember correctly, it was my friend Sarah that sent me the video of Markiplier playing my game. This was completely surreal. You're just a guy in your little studio apartment, making a little game for a gamejam cause you want to learn how to make a game and all of this happens.

As all of this happened, I was continuing my studies for Game Art. I was still in general 3D stuff learning 3DS Max with Vray or digital painting. Beside that, I kept working on the game because I learned more stuff and wanted to extend the game lore. I wrote some stuff with Sarah's help and upgraded my props and textures but didn't had that much time with the homework I had. I think I came back in 2024 since, that year, I was in the Game Art section, learning game workflow, so I wanted to apply this to my game and removed everything to make a fresh start ... without keeping the original Unreal Project. I searched on my hdd and all but couldn't find anything, so I guess it's lost forever. At least, I still have the build. So here's some screenshot of what I upgraded before abandoning this project. I think, while I'm not satisfied with what I did, I have to accept how it turned out and let it like that and improving through other projects.

Mistakes help us grow.