Showing posts with label competitions. Show all posts
Showing posts with label competitions. Show all posts

Saturday, April 16, 2016

new game: "Shapes Hit!" for Ludum Dare 35 (theme: "shapeshift")


It's April and I still haven't finished and released anything all year, so I thought I'd push something out pretty fast -- it's a quick little game for the 48 hour game jam "Ludum Dare" -- called "Shapes Hit!" (content warning: there is poop in this game.)

I think it's a pretty short straightforward arcade game: just hold down the left mouse button, move your mouse to aim, and try to hit all four targets. You can play an in-browser WebGL version on the Ludum Dare entry page, or over on the itch.io page... and that's pretty much all there is to it.

This isn't a very deep or intellectually complex game. Some of my friends tell me I'm the Robert Mapplethorpe of games, but sometimes I think I'd rather aspire to be the John Waters of games?

Things I still have to do: add some audio and sound, and maybe push out some Windows / OSX / Linux desktop standalone builds. I'll probably wait until after the jam for that.

Monday, September 1, 2014

September pageant at Makega.me: "MAGIC IS REAL"

Merritt Kopas is the makega.me pageant runner for September, and she has come up with a doozy:
"We're all born a Witch. We're all born into magic. It's taken from us as we grow up." - Madeline L'Engle

magic has been incorporated into games for decades. but it's most often in a way that borrows from the tabletop games like dungeons & dragons -- as just another means of inflicting damage. magic in videogames is both spectacular and mundane. fireballs are boring.

magic is the power to change our circumstances, to invoke the world we want to inhabit. magic is a little evening ritual, the charms we carry to protect us, the spaces and times we invest with meaning. magic is a response to the destructive, crushing weight of oppression. magic is spectacular and mundane, but not in the way it's depicted in games.

instructions:
make a game about magic that veers away from the usual treatments of magic in games.
The full pageant brief is here. I'm looking forward to seeing all the new games people will be making!

Saturday, May 3, 2014

"SERIES" is the first MakeGa.me pageant theme!

"We make game, do you make game? MakeGame is a place for you to show some similar-minded folk what you're working on. Get feedback, discuss design problems, share inspirations. Every couple months we host a pageant. A month-long 'slow-jam' where we all make games to explore a chosen theme. Welcome!"
MakeGa.me is a new game development forum from the ashes of the former Super Friendship Club. A lot of the original guiding principles remain: to learn from each other and help each other make great work. To help motivate each other, there are monthly "game pageants" -- a game jam-like that de-emphasizes winning or losing. Ian Snyder's organizing the first one, focusing on the idea of a "series"...
"Instructions: Make a two or more small games all revolving around one central theme or idea that when taken together form one cohesive whole. Make the games good. For examples of this in other media, you might look to Thirty-Six Views of Mt. Fuji36 or Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird30 or [if you have other examples or items of inspiration, reply below!]

Starts on May 1st, finishes on May 31st. You're welcome to enter any media you prefer, games or not. Disobey any instructions, or follow them rigorously. If you haven't made games before, and aren't sure where to start on the technical side of things, just ask : there're plenty of people here who can give guidance."
Full briefing is here. Looking forward to seeing you all over at MakeGa.me!

Saturday, February 22, 2014

A first-time IGF judge with IGF submission advice... and why the IGF doesn't matter?

This was my first year being an Independent Game Festival judge. As an IGF entrant in the past, I found myself confused and frustrated with the judging process. I've realized that a lot of the frustration came from not knowing how the process worked.

(If you're still frustrated with the IGF, though, that's fine. Say so! That's how it gets better.)

Thursday, September 19, 2013

Nostrum and clouds.


Hey! I made "Nostrum," a short flight sim game for the Oculus Rift VR Jam thing, and I placed 2nd. I won a bunch of money and a t-shirt, so I'm pretty happy with that.

For the first week of the three week jam, I was actually prototyping a lion simulator game. Then I watched Porco Rosso and thought, "wow, that'd be a fantastic game." So I stashed away all that previous work and started something new.

Monday, December 17, 2012

new game: "Barback" for Ludum Dare #25

"Barback" is a 1-2 player cooperative / competitive Tapper-ish variant about 2 brothers and a bar. It should take you about 15-20 minutes to play through. It's a Ludum Dare "jam" game, which means I spent 72 hours instead of 48, and used remixed assets from outside sources. The extra day was worth it though.

Theme-wise, perhaps it doesn't really fit with the "You are the villain" theme, now that I'm done with it and looking back. I didn't want to make a game with obvious villains, but I think about my mental concept of a "villain" and by definition it seems to involve blatant villainy and a twirlable moustache. In this narrative, the villains are mundane: your own crushing feeling of failure, or people who care about you but are very pushy, etc.

Friday, December 14, 2012

Triple Jam Pile-up this weekend!

This weekend is the classic monolith of game jams, Ludum Dare #25! Theme is still pending for a few more hours...

Also, this weekend in New York City is a special game jam hosted at Parsons called "Game On", co-sponsored by Github and Mozilla. The main requirement is to make an HTML5 game. Prizes include a trip to GDC 2013 (wow!) and I think there's free food to jam with, at least. (And as long as you're here this weekend, also check out Spacewar! at the Museum of the Moving Image, charting the long lineage of shooters from ur-game "Spacewar!" on a PDP-1 replica through Metroid II and ending with Halo 4.)

ALSO, this month in Chicago, there's the Six Pack Jam. Jake Elliott and friends are putting an arcade cabinet in some bar in Wicker Park and they want cool games to put on the cabinet! Here, the implied constraints are 2 player compatible modes with short arcade-scope play sessions, but maybe that's just my interpretation.

You could, potentially, make a 2 player HTML5 game with [LD theme] and submit everywhere. Whoaa.

Thursday, June 7, 2012

7dfps: The Leaden Circles, prep

(I'm making an FPS in 7 days, as are many other designers. This is cross-posted.)

"One feels even in the midst of the traffic, or waking at night, Clarissa was positive, a particular hush, or solemnity; an indescribable pause; a suspense before Big Ben strikes. There! Out it boomed. First a warning, musical; then the hour, irrevocable. The leaden circles dissolved in the air."

Mrs. Dalloway is a novel by Virginia Woolf about a rich white lady in 1920s London throwing a party for a bunch of random acquaintances she doesn't really care about. She does it because she likes the attention and it's good for her husband's career.

It's also about a smart-ass white dude coming back from India who judges everyone.

It's also about a depressed World War I veteran who's going insane, hearing trees sing in ancient Greek. It's also about.... well, 20 other people.

It's not an easy read on the first try. Virginia Woolf wrote it in a "stream of consciousness" style, meaning you go back and forth between different characters' heads, often without warning -- sometimes several times in a paragraph. Sometimes you're reading what he thinks she thinks he thinks, as filtered by her (?!) but trust me, it's rewarding. Part of the idea behind making this is that hopefully it'll make the logic and systems governing the book (novels and narratives are systems!) more apparent.

Now, most of the different book covers feature a portrait of some random lady on the front... which totally misses the point. My favorite version is the one above, Wassily Kandinsky's Akzent in Rosa (1926). Sure, the book is about a Mrs. Dalloway, but it's also about consciousness, some kind of unseen universe on the edges of human comprehension.

My plan is to adapt Mrs. Dalloway as "The Leaden Circles," a single player squad shooter with a stream of consciousness mechanic, kind of in a Space Hulk format. You'll ping pong between the different characters, chaining together thoughts, memories, and feelings -- and to win, you have to get this rich petty vapid white lady to feel something deeply profound at the end of the day.

I'll be using Unity, C#, Maya, Audacity, Photoshop, and source material from Virginia Woolf, CGTextures, FreeSound.org.

Let's do this, and good luck to everyone!

Sunday, November 6, 2011

0 Hour Game Jam: "Apollo 2"

Because daylight savings time ended and was rolling back an hour, a bunch of people decided to make a game in "zero hours." The full results are here. As for my entry, I clicked the "get theme" button and got "moon." So I made Apollo 2. Take a few minutes to play it in your browser over here. Missed out on the fun? There's always next year...

UPDATE, 8 May 2017: due to this game's only super-fan's special request, this has been ported to WebGL. You can now play it here on Itch.io.

Tuesday, November 1, 2011

Super Friendship Club's "EDITOR" pageant, Nov 1 - Nov 30


Yes, Super Friends... it's that time again.

You now have one month to make a game that includes some sort of level-editing component, along with some mechanism for sharing levels. It's not nearly as hard as you think.

A "level" can be anything. A "game" can be anything. An "editor" can be anything. Just make something.

Check out Mr. Lavelle's advice and some more helpful info here.

Good luck!

Monday, October 3, 2011

Super Cult Tycoon 2: Deluxe Edition (alpha v0.9)

An RTS collab with Eddie Cameron (@eddiecameron) in your web browser, made for Super Friendship Club's "Mysticism" pageant.

Control your very own cult in Colorado; brew Kool Aid, sew wallets, build PR agencies, summon amorphous capture spheres, construct monoliths and ward off those pesky FBI agents -- then run off with the money. We were kind of aiming for a tycoon / tower defense / DOTA kind of game, and it doesn't really work as it should yet.

It's still pretty crash-prone, but pretty playable for the most part. Give it a few minutes.

http://www.superfriendshipclub.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=366

Unity3d web player required, 3.5 mb. Textures from cgtextures.com, sounds from freesound.org

Wednesday, August 31, 2011

Super Friendship Club's "Mysticism" pageant, Sept. 1st - 30th


Make a game about "mysticism" by September 30th.

If you haven't made games before, and aren't sure where to start on the technical side of things, just ask: there're plenty of people here who can give guidance.

Monday, August 22, 2011

Ludum Dare #21: FuhFuhFire!

For Ludum Dare #21 ("Escape"), I made "FuhFuhFire," a short Unity-powered web FPS where you set fire to a building and then rescue people from it. Do you try to rescue everyone but leave others behind?... or do you just escape alone? Dynamic fire propagation / level destruction, physics thingies and 8 different endings. Wow!

WASD to walk, SPACE to jump, MOUSE to look, LEFT-CLICK to do stuff.

C'mon, just give it five (5!) minutes of your time and play it in your browser here. Project source in all its hacky glory is here too.

Monday, August 1, 2011

GravityGunVille

Phillip Marlowe, bless his heart, is always running these cool mapping competitions that unfortunately don't get many entries nor exposure -- but this time he's lined up some pretty cool judges, a cash prize and a pretty workable theme, so maybe we should support him with our levels, yeah? (I'm thinking I'm going to make something for it too.)

The goal of "GravityGunVille" is to make a short Half-Life 2: Episode Two single player map with heavy use of the gravity gun by 19 September 2011. There's a $100 prize, or maybe they'll split it or something.

Let's dance.

Tuesday, July 26, 2011

Justice, still.


Had to throw away a lot of level design because the layout was simply no-good. Going for a more methodical approach this time instead of the aimless free-form improv of before. Also shocked at how much more thought I had to put into constructing my assets and props; I've never had to build expansive interiors in Unity before. Even in this scene, I've scaled all the architecture way too big and now I have to compensate in weird ways.

It's going to be a photo finish for the end of August...

Monday, July 4, 2011

Saturday, July 2, 2011

Super Friendship Club


New pastures and new projects, founded by the Cambridge scene and its many satellites.

The first "pageant" is up; you have a month to make games about "justice."

Also, post your other projects there for some world-class feedback.

See you there!

Thursday, June 30, 2011

MapCore Weekend Challenge: "Nightwatch DM"

Textures and level design by Henning Horstmann.
Many moons ago, I worked on a single player Half-Life 1 mod called "Nightwatch" with many of the the best and brightest minds of the mod community. Even with all our expertise, resources and manpower, we still overestimated ourselves and ended up not releasing a thing.

The world textures were amazing though; ~60% by Adam Foster, ~25% by Henning Horstmann.

This weekend at MapCore, we're going to live vicariously through you and actually release some Nightwatch maps -- make a small Half-Life 1 deathmatch level in 72 hours using these awesome textures!

The Half-Life 1 version of Hammer is more or less identical to the current Source version, except the design process is so much faster. No worrying about cubemaps or water shaders or prop models. Just start mapping!

Confer the thread for instructions, what to download, and various tips and tricks for working with Half-Life 1.

Monday, May 23, 2011

MapCore "Door" Challenge: Done.

This month's MapCore Challenge: prototype a puzzle where the player has to open a door, using the provided template map as a base. (aka, the "Door Dare")

We had a lot of cool entries, so by all means check them out and vote for your 3 favorites.

But because this is my blog, I'm going to shamelessly promote my own entry, "Secret Mission." In it, you have to modify the entity scripting I/O of the map itself, in-game, in order to open the doors. (The actual map logic is all faked, but I imagine the proof of concept is there...)



You might see this mechanic come back in Radiator vol. 4 some day, perhaps in the heavily delayed level, "Being Adam Foster"...

Sunday, May 1, 2011

Ludum Dare 20: Condom Corps, or "It's dangerous to go alone... take this condom, bro."

My first Ludum Dare, and I actually finished it! (Kinda.) Maybe I'll polish it some more and sell it to NYC Public Health?...


 PLAY NOW: Unity Web (compo) | Unity Web (jam)

*** If you are judging, please play the COMPO version. [Link to entry on ludumdare.com]
*** If you are NOT judging, play the JAM version in its (legally) photosourced splendor. The two builds are identical except for the enhanced background graphics in the JAM version.

>>> BASICALLY
It’s a Match3 First Person Sniper for sex education.
“It’s dangerous to go alone… take this condom, bro.”

>>> HOW TO PLAY
  • Mouse1 = fire
  • Mouse2 = zoom in
  • Mousewheel = change ammotype
1) Stare at a dude’s package. Decide what size of condom he needs.
2) Shoot the condom into his hand.
3) Match adjacent colors to create chain-climaxes for mega points.
4) Shoot well-fitting condoms to maintain a “fit streak” multiplier for your score.
5) GET HIGH SCORE!!!

Source code is here. (.unitypackage)