Homebrew competition!!

[Ziz]

I agree with richiz (not the "EPIC video"-part, but the "no new deadline"-part).


I worked hard in the last days to write a cool game in time. A new deadline would mean, that my efforts weren't necessary...


And I think, that richiz, B-ZaR (HIS game is EPIC) and foxblock are near to finish, so that wouldn't be fair, too. ;-)


But if there are really only 4 or 5 competitors, you could split the price-money in 4 or 5 parts (being the only one WITHOUT a (little, just £10 or similar) price would be very demotivating) or/and you could keep a part of the money for the next contest.

 

[richiz]

Very true, if you put the effort in you can have a polished game in 2 weeks. 2 months was a bit long I think. I haven't done any work (beside finish level 4 and 5) since I posted those videos. SO I completed my game like a month ago (beside little things like scaling properly and putting into a pnd


I probably should've worked at getting it into C++ but I've been a bit swamped this month.


I'm quite confident people are working on this behind the scenes though tbh. I really hope that guy that was doing the castlevania style game puts in for this competition

 

[sswam]

Did a bit more on my game yesterday and this morning.


I don't have proper monster AI and combat working yet, but last night I added a particle type "PT_BLOOD", for when my hero is savaged by (touches) a monster, or when he thumps himself too hard! Particles are nice and easy compared to bigger objects! My trees turned out to be one of the most dangerous objects, he can easily hurt himself while climbing them.


There is a weird situation with the collision detection where he can get half stuck in a tree then squashed through it. I didn't like this, it could make it too easy to get past the tree. But now when that happens the hero is totally smushed with an awful splash of gore over the tree and dripping off it, he cannot survive it!


When my hero dies, his body disappears and only the head remains to bounce around and decorate the landscape! I'm not keen on violence in real life, but for some reason it seems comical in my little 2d game, a bit like those exploding lemmings. I guess I do like some Tarantino movies come to think of it.


I'm going to keep some quirky accidentally bizarre 'features' like deadly trees and rocks that float in water, I think they make the game a bit weird and interesting. In real life one seldom has to climb over a tree to get past it, but my game is strictly 2d so there's no walking past. And in real life, very few rocks float. But I will pretend mine are pumice rather than to bother with fixing the code for buoyancy: "The extrusive volcanic rock pumice can float on water."


I'm having lots of fun with this. Hopefully I can get it ported to the Pandora in time for the comp. If not, I'll post a PC version and port it to Pandora ASAP afterwards. I think I'll want to continue developing it for a while in any case. I had a crazy idea, try to use every button, key and input device on the Pandora for something in the game...! Most of the keyboard can be used with a 'singing' function a bit like a piano keyboard, but I didn't code it properly yet and it might be a bit strange to the rest of the game.


About dev tools I'm using vim, gimp, netpbm and make, on an HP mini with Ubuntu. I think the Pandora's PowerVR GLES might be more powerful than the Intel GPU on this netbook! Language and libs: C with SDL/OpenGL, and some of my own libs and preprocessor.

 

[sswam]

Richiz, have you considered extending the deadline? We've lost two entries already.

I don't mind either way but we don't need to extend the deadline or change rules for this comp, why not continue with a "rolling game dev competition"? The next batch of games might be due in another 2 months or whatever. The Pandora is a really good homebrew platform, there's plenty of enthusiasm to make games for it. it would be fun to continue and we'll build our skills too. We'd get a different range of entrants each time I guess.


I think 2 months is a good timeframe, it gives us time to get something done even if we're also busy at work. Also, "2 months" is a culturally significant period of time for the Pandora project...!

 

[WizardStan]

I think 2 months is a good timeframe, it gives us time to get something done even if we're also busy at work. Also, "2 months" is a culturally significant period of time for the Pandora project...!

I don't want an extension either, but this seems like a good idea, almost. Having one contest end to roll into the next one seems a little over the top to me. Perhaps 2 month contest followed by 2 months off? 3 contests a year. That 2 months off gives developers a chance to relax, and time to decide what the next contest can be about.

 

[bzar]

^ +1, sounds good to me.

 

[darfgarf]

definately don't change the rules, that just makes it more confusing, those of us that have to drop out will for various reasons, no sense extending it as then the people who get their arses in gear will just get annoyed.

 

[richiz]

Lol you lot are gonna get me in trouble if Skeezix sees this


NO RULES ARE CHANGING, BLUE PROTOMAN ASKED IF THEY COULD BE CHANGED BUT THE MOTION WAS DISMISSED.

 

[Ziz]

I have a new video. The last days I were on a Linux convention, so I hadn't have much time to develop.


You see in the YT-Vid and the YT-Description, what happend since the last time.


At the moment I am to tired to write an acceptable English. <_<

https://www.youtube.com/embed/q4kvKtEuSbc?feature=oembed

 

[pokitfoxx]

any chance we can have a competition game section for apps.openpandora.org ? or will there be a links thread here with them all accumulated?


basically just wanting a place where they can all be found without looking through 10 pages of thread posts?

 

[sswam]

My game guy is now able to die in many and varied ways!


I made a video of it:

http://sam.ai.ki/rescue.avi


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1-LBATWPmcY


Still a ways to go!

any chance we can have a competition game section for apps.openpandora.org ?

I think it's easier to find software with the wiki than the apps site: http://pandorawiki.org/Games. When we add our games to the wiki, we can put 'Ori' (original) in the Type column, and maybe 'platformer competition' or something in the Notes column.

 

[foxblock]

I asked rickiz to create a new thread for us to submit the games (and just to submit the games).


That way everything is in one place and it does not get clustered with comments.


Whether one then uploads the game to apps.open-pandora, the file archive or a private webspace does not really matter.

 

[Tam Toucan]

My game guy is now able to die in many and varied ways!


I made a video of it:

Nice. Like the camera movement effect. And the rope at the end, is that using verlet physics?

 

[richiz]

I asked rickiz to create a new thread for us to submit the games (and just to submit the games).


That way everything is in one place and it does not get clustered with comments.


Whether one then uploads the game to apps.open-pandora, the file archive or a private webspace does not really matter.

Yes I'll do that tomorrow.


Ziz and Sswam looking good guys!! Loving the death effects and loving the Ziz's concept - it's pretty bizarre

 

[bzar]

sswam: That's starting to look a whole lot better! The rope especially seems to work nice.

 

[sswam]

Nice. Like the camera movement effect. And the rope at the end, is that using verlet physics?

Thanks. The camera rotates a little bit when it moves, and you can zoom it in and out. I thought I might as well do something like that, since GL can apparently draw rotated, scaled, zoomed linear blended images just as quickly (or slowly) as it draws aligned ones!


It simulates the rope as a whole lot of little linear springs joined together. It can be anchored to the landscape at one or both ends, and people can hold on to it. For the discrete integration it's just using the simple "Euler Integration", i.e. step-by-step chunky polygonal integration, like the rest of my game. It's not stable if the forces get too high, so in that case the rope breaks into pieces (and the hero may plunge to his doom - but in the video he deliberately cut the rope)! Euler seems to work okay to simulate fairly loose, fragile ropes, more like a bungee cord made out of coiled tissue paper than a regular rope. The people appears to have a low-tech culture, so I guess it makes sense that he has a very poor rope!


Thanks for the reference to Verlet physics, I'll read up on that - maybe I can use it in a future game.


I've still got to finish code for the rope climbing, then get the ladies to follow the hero and climb ropes to get out of the caves (that's the main objective). The hero can climb up and down the walls like spiderman, but the ladies can't, so the hero needs to lay ropes for them and help them to get out. They must be pretty tough ladies if they can climb up and down long ropes like that: this could also be explained by the low-tech / high manual-work and fitness culture.


... and I've still got port it to GLES and try it on the Pandora! I'm a bit worried because I've been using lots of floating point math, which might be slower on the ARM. There's plenty of potential to optimize my code, it's not very efficient at the moment.


The music in the video is "Punishing the Atoms", based on this movie scene from "Ninth Configuration".


"I'm convinced that we can walk through walls... Not only me, anyone."


http://sam.ai.ki/atoms.avi


It's an awesome scene and good music, I think! I hacked it down from 6 minutes.


I thought it's appropriate for my dying hero vid when he keeps shredding himself by bumping into things.

 

[foxblock]

sswam: I especially like the camera effects, looks very organic


Keep it up.


Man, I still have a long way to go with Greyout, I really like working on the engine - it will be piss easy to create new levels and full chapters for the game and get them into the game, too.


But I noticed I keep myself from proceeding to creating the actual main chapter and story - you just find another little thing to work on


EDIT: Give me some numbers guys, how much content will be in your games? (maybe that motivates me to actually build a dozen of levels).


foxblock out

 

[sswam]

Give me some numbers guys, how much content will be in your games? (maybe that motivates me to actually build a dozen of levels).

Mine has one proper level (cave) so far, 68 x 41 tiles. The game isn't finished yet and the level can't be completed yet.


I also made one 'friendly level' so my son could collect lots of gems without encountering any dangerous animals / spikes / fires, etc!


I'd hope to include a few more levels, maybe some smaller / easier ones.


I think 5 would be good for the competition, I can add some more afterwards.

 

[Scntrblob]

Good progress up there


Is there someone up to creating a nice splashscreen?

 

[PokeParadox]

Even though I haven't taken part, it's interesting to see the progress you guys have made, awesome stuff!


Can't wait until the compo and your releases!