Ok, two more questions before the Jam officially gets underway.
First, I know we have already discussed engine and framework code and deicided that was ok to use for Jam entries. What about re-using and/or re-purposing code more generally?
I have written a fair bit of procedural world generation code for various other projects and was hoping to borrow liberally from it for my Jam game. The code will have to be considerably re-worked and tuned to fit my Jam game but it will be a starting point, so I figured I should ask if that was ok with the community?
I know the simple answer would be to chose an open license and publish the code before the jam, but I have a myriad reasons for not doing that, not the least of which is that it's actually just snippets from several experimental and incomplete projects, so not really anything that's comprehensible to anyone but the author much less suitable for publication.
Anyways, I'm sure I'm not alone in this question. There's a lot of 'not quite engine' code that every game requires (state machine, movement/jump physics, etc) and it seems pointless to ask folks to re-code it all from scratch for a Jam that's about showing off OGA assets not coding wizardry. On the other hand, starting from somewhere is always better than starting from nowhere and so could be considered an unfair advantage in the competition. I guess the devil is in deciding where to draw the line between allowing sensible code re-use and allowing outright re-skins of existing games and asset-flip type stuff.
Secondly, the game I'm hoping to make for the Jam is called 'Medusa Must Die!' and I have to confess I did make a (very) simple prototype for it many moons ago. This was during a period when I was protyping several different game ideas trying to decide on which I should pursue for my next big project. I decided on a different game and shelved the Medusa Must Die! prototype having never gotten any further than extending surt's original ikaros set a bit and working up a simple 'player movement' demo where the player could walk left and right and jump about. In the run up this year's Jam, I've done more work on the sprite set and released it to OGA. As far as the code goes, I plan to start a fresh project and not even look at the work in my prototype. Still, I wanted to ask if this was ok with everyone? I know enough about the protype to know it will not be useful in creating the actual game. Still, I suppose just having made a prototype once upon a time could be considered a headstart on making the game and I am happy to pursue another idea if folks think this would constitute an unfair advantage for me in the competition.
Saturday, June 30, 2018 - 08:56
@VinnNo.0: Yeah, no worries at all about the violence you describe. Although it helps that the creatures being so abused are adorable. Well, actually I don't know, maybe that makes it worse. :)
Either way, no worries, although as MedicineStorm suggests a small warning might be nice. Last year, I did play all the Jam entries with my two young boys, and was planning to do the same this year.
On a technical note, pretty sure what you are describing would be called 'fantasy violence'. I see that label on ESRB ratings a fair bit. Seems to be applied to games that have violence in a cartoon or otherwise abstract setting.
Saturday, June 30, 2018 - 08:43
@Cougarmint: Yay! First, I second this idea! Secondly, although a righty myself, I have worked really hard to make sure the player characters in my current project are fully ambidextrous. It really is quite a bit of extra work in terms of animations and coding and design and things. Not too much, but just enough that I've several times found myself seriously considering throwing in the towel on the idea and just falling back to ye old 'righties only' approach. It's especially disheartening when I've gone looking for an example of how to approach something (a UI or controller issue, etc) and realized that even the pros rarely, if ever, bother with lefty support. So anyways, it's nice to hear I'm not the only one whose noticed the lack of lefty love in the video game world. Feel a bit vindicated for sticking it out despite all the extra time it's cost me.
Saturday, June 30, 2018 - 08:30
Looks like we got some good stuff brewing for the competition!
I'll be trying to bring to life my ikaros inspired game from many years back. This one's been stuck in my head for years, constantly set aside to work on more 'urgent' things, well no more! I've developed the idea a little more in my head, but the core pitch hasn't changed:
The game is 'Medusa Must Die!'
You play successive generations of a family cursed to battle Medusa through enternity. Every life is another generation of the family. Every generation the world gets bigger, Medusa gets tougher and new weapons/items are introduced. You have one task, find and kill Medusa. If you succeed, all your items, weapons, upgrades, etc. are handed down to the next generation, but if you fail and die, all your equipment is scattered and the next generation must start from scratch, forced to scour the world in search of your lost gear. Gameplay is metrodavania with procedural world creation. Upgrades include a succession of Ikarus wings granting high jump, hover, double jump, etc. As well as other Greek mythology-based items and weapons. Theme is the endless cycle of violence and revenge as the story alternates between you seeking to avenge your forebearer's death at the hands of Medusa and a resurrected Medusa returning to wreak vengence upon you for your parent's sins.
Feels ambitious for a Jam title, but I think I have the tools in my chest to get it done.
Will be using my own game engine, C# with SDL and OpenGL. Mostly Gimp for art. sxfr and Audacity for sounds.
Good luck all! If last year's jam is any guide, players are in for a good time come July 30! :)
Plan to use these for my game jam submission so it all kind of works together, I guess that's the magic of running this theme just before the jam. Whoever had it, that was a good idea :)
Wednesday, June 20, 2018 - 16:37
Hi all, are we allowed to submit more than one entry for the challenge?
I have done an expansion to surt's classic ikaros set that certainly fits the theme of the challenge well, but I didn't tag it yet because I wasn't sure if we were limited to one submission per challenge.
Wednesday, June 20, 2018 - 16:30
I have attempted to add some poses and animations for the sprites in this set.
Been incubating this one for a long time, finally going to break it out for the Summer 2018 Game Jam.
Hope you enjoy the results!
Tuesday, June 19, 2018 - 16:36
Sounds like a good plan. And because I can't believe I forgot to mention it, here is the original gold standard of rope swings:
ps
done on an Atari 2600 too, so don't take any gruff from your programmer about 'it can't be done on a NES' ;)
Tuesday, June 19, 2018 - 13:39
Interesting discussion....
There must be something to the DK style rope swing because intuitively it looks for 'realistic' than the straight line rope swing. I think it has something to do with the stiffness of the rope relative to the weight put on it. But I struggle to think of a real life example where I'd expect a rope to swing with such a pronounced bend.
As a quick note, if you don't care about proper weight and physics and all that, the curved DK style swing is a pretty simple extension of the straight rope swing. Just divide the rope into multiple segments attached end to end then rotate the lower segments more than the higher segments. This can be done either by adding the rotations as you go down the segments, or even by calculating the rotations seperately and just making sure to rotate lower segments more than higher (near fulcrum) ones.
Ok, two more questions before the Jam officially gets underway.
First, I know we have already discussed engine and framework code and deicided that was ok to use for Jam entries. What about re-using and/or re-purposing code more generally?
I have written a fair bit of procedural world generation code for various other projects and was hoping to borrow liberally from it for my Jam game.
The code will have to be considerably re-worked and tuned to fit my Jam game but it will be a starting point, so I figured I should ask if that was ok with the community?
I know the simple answer would be to chose an open license and publish the code before the jam, but I have a myriad reasons for not doing that, not the least of which is that it's actually just snippets from several experimental and incomplete projects, so not really anything that's comprehensible to anyone but the author much less suitable for publication.
Anyways, I'm sure I'm not alone in this question. There's a lot of 'not quite engine' code that every game requires (state machine, movement/jump physics, etc) and it seems pointless to ask folks to re-code it all from scratch for a Jam that's about showing off OGA assets not coding wizardry.
On the other hand, starting from somewhere is always better than starting from nowhere and so could be considered an unfair advantage in the competition.
I guess the devil is in deciding where to draw the line between allowing sensible code re-use and allowing outright re-skins of existing games and asset-flip type stuff.
Secondly, the game I'm hoping to make for the Jam is called 'Medusa Must Die!' and I have to confess I did make a (very) simple prototype for it many moons ago. This was during a period when I was protyping several different game ideas trying to decide on which I should pursue for my next big project. I decided on a different game and shelved the Medusa Must Die! prototype having never gotten any further than extending surt's original ikaros set a bit and working up a simple 'player movement' demo where the player could walk left and right and jump about.
In the run up this year's Jam, I've done more work on the sprite set and released it to OGA. As far as the code goes, I plan to start a fresh project and not even look at the work in my prototype.
Still, I wanted to ask if this was ok with everyone?
I know enough about the protype to know it will not be useful in creating the actual game. Still, I suppose just having made a prototype once upon a time could be considered a headstart on making the game and I am happy to pursue another idea if folks think this would constitute an unfair advantage for me in the competition.
@VinnNo.0: Yeah, no worries at all about the violence you describe. Although it helps that the creatures being so abused are adorable. Well, actually I don't know, maybe that makes it worse. :)
Either way, no worries, although as MedicineStorm suggests a small warning might be nice. Last year, I did play all the Jam entries with my two young boys, and was planning to do the same this year.
On a technical note, pretty sure what you are describing would be called 'fantasy violence'. I see that label on ESRB ratings a fair bit. Seems to be applied to games that have violence in a cartoon or otherwise abstract setting.
@Cougarmint: Yay! First, I second this idea! Secondly, although a righty myself, I have worked really hard to make sure the player characters in my current project are fully ambidextrous. It really is quite a bit of extra work in terms of animations and coding and design and things. Not too much, but just enough that I've several times found myself seriously considering throwing in the towel on the idea and just falling back to ye old 'righties only' approach. It's especially disheartening when I've gone looking for an example of how to approach something (a UI or controller issue, etc) and realized that even the pros rarely, if ever, bother with lefty support. So anyways, it's nice to hear I'm not the only one whose noticed the lack of lefty love in the video game world. Feel a bit vindicated for sticking it out despite all the extra time it's cost me.
Looks like we got some good stuff brewing for the competition!
I'll be trying to bring to life my ikaros inspired game from many years back. This one's been stuck in my head for years, constantly set aside to work on more 'urgent' things, well no more! I've developed the idea a little more in my head, but the core pitch hasn't changed:
The game is 'Medusa Must Die!'
You play successive generations of a family cursed to battle Medusa through enternity. Every life is another generation of the family. Every generation the world gets bigger, Medusa gets tougher and new weapons/items are introduced. You have one task, find and kill Medusa. If you succeed, all your items, weapons, upgrades, etc. are handed down to the next generation, but if you fail and die, all your equipment is scattered and the next generation must start from scratch, forced to scour the world in search of your lost gear.
Gameplay is metrodavania with procedural world creation. Upgrades include a succession of Ikarus wings granting high jump, hover, double jump, etc. As well as other Greek mythology-based items and weapons.
Theme is the endless cycle of violence and revenge as the story alternates between you seeking to avenge your forebearer's death at the hands of Medusa and a resurrected Medusa returning to wreak vengence upon you for your parent's sins.
Feels ambitious for a Jam title, but I think I have the tools in my chest to get it done.
Will be using my own game engine, C# with SDL and OpenGL. Mostly Gimp for art. sxfr and Audacity for sounds.
Good luck all! If last year's jam is any guide, players are in for a good time come July 30! :)
Wow! Very flattered! thanks all!
great showings all the way around for this challenge, now onto the game jam! :)
awesome, I have added the tags. Submission is:
https://opengameart.org/content/ikaros-extended
Plan to use these for my game jam submission so it all kind of works together, I guess that's the magic of running this theme just before the jam. Whoever had it, that was a good idea :)
Hi all, are we allowed to submit more than one entry for the challenge?
I have done an expansion to surt's classic ikaros set that certainly fits the theme of the challenge well, but I didn't tag it yet because I wasn't sure if we were limited to one submission per challenge.
I have attempted to add some poses and animations for the sprites in this set.
https://opengameart.org/content/ikaros-extended
Alright surt, it's happening! Medusa Must Die!
Been incubating this one for a long time, finally going to break it out for the Summer 2018 Game Jam.
Hope you enjoy the results!
Sounds like a good plan. And because I can't believe I forgot to mention it, here is the original gold standard of rope swings:
ps
done on an Atari 2600 too, so don't take any gruff from your programmer about 'it can't be done on a NES' ;)
Interesting discussion....
There must be something to the DK style rope swing because intuitively it looks for 'realistic' than the straight line rope swing. I think it has something to do with the stiffness of the rope relative to the weight put on it. But I struggle to think of a real life example where I'd expect a rope to swing with such a pronounced bend.
As a quick note, if you don't care about proper weight and physics and all that, the curved DK style swing is a pretty simple extension of the straight rope swing. Just divide the rope into multiple segments attached end to end then rotate the lower segments more than the higher segments. This can be done either by adding the rotations as you go down the segments, or even by calculating the rotations seperately and just making sure to rotate lower segments more than higher (near fulcrum) ones.
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