Hourgame Saturday - starts March 20th - winner! magma42

[Kweepa]

Download and play and:
http://www.adventuregamestudio.co.uk/yabb/index.php?topic=40409.msg533626#msg533626

Hourgame Saturday

What's an hourgame competition?
The purpose of Hourgame Saturday is to encourage amateur game-making, or to put it bluntly, to make you plant your ass in your chair and finally make something.
In this activity your task is to make an AGS game within a strict and very short deadline (i.e. one hour).

When will it take place?
This hourgame session will take place on Saturday (duh) Mar 20, 2010. It will start at 19:00GMT and participants will have an hour to make their games + 15 minutes to beta test / upload (i.e. the deadline is 20:15GMT).
The time has been tested by several competitions already, so I think it is generally suitable. If not, see below.

How do I participate?
A theme is set by the previous week's winner and by the contest's host in event of his/her absence. It will be announced on IRC (3 simple steps to IRC) and here.

Additional info:
- While it is not forbidden for the theme-setters to participate in the activity, their games cannot be voted for (to prevent accusations of cheating and to discourage regular participation).
- Instead, theme-setters are encouraged to draw trophies for the contest's winners.
- Making your game from scratch is strongly encouraged, though it is not forbidden to use music or artwork from public sources if you are allowed to (e.g. using public domain music tracks in your game is OK, but not really necessary). It is also possible to use a pre-existing AGS template for your game (e.g. the Verb-Coin GUI template).
- You cannot use stuff you've made earlier, because this competition is about making something new.

Camwhoring:
If you have Camtasia or Camtasia-esque software, it would be great to see your "Making of"! Or blog about it, or just open Notepad, do something! No twittering.

Uploading:
Suggested hosts to upload your entry to are:
Recommended:
TerranRich's ShutUpload

Not recommended:
:'( http://www.mediafire.com/
http://www.sendspace.com/
http://www.rapidshare.com/

Or your own place.

Voting:
Just tell us your favourite game, and I'll do the counting. You don't have to enter to vote!
(If you want to tell us what you liked and disliked about all the entries, that would be super nice of you!)
The voting will end when all the entrants have voted, or on Wednesday, whichever comes sooner.

Download and play:
http://www.adventuregamestudio.co.uk/yabb/index.php?topic=40409.msg533626#msg533626

[Questionable]

Tell me what the topic is and I might try again...  ;P

[Shane 'ProgZmax' Stevens]

- You cannot use stuff you've made earlier, because this competition is about making something new.

I've always found that to be odd when coupled with:

- Making your game from scratch is strongly encouraged, though it is not forbidden to use music or artwork from public sources if you are allowed to



Ergo, it's okay to take artwork from other people off of google but not for you to use perfectly good artwork you made yourself but never had a use for before?  Utterly, utterly bizarre.  I vote either to:

1.   Make it so all content is required to be fresh and your own

or

2.  Allow you to re-use or borrow as you like.  


I have no preference for either, I'd just prefer a little consistency.

[Questionable]

I would say that music should be an exception, but I agree that existing artwork shouldn't be allowed.

[Shane 'ProgZmax' Stevens]

Why should music be an exception?  It's part of the game like everything else.  I'm not sure I understand the argument that some things are fine to reuse from some sources and others are not just because.  It's just not very logical to me.  Perhaps if ags had built-in tunes/sfx like it does art (if you use templates) this kind of argument would make sense to me provided you used those assets, but if we're going to say original artwork then why should music be an exception?  Interestingly enough, even though you are allowed to use other music sources I've found people rarely have done so, often using little tunes they've whipped up themselves or had none at all.  Same with sounds.

[Questionable]

Because even the most basic PCs have paint programs, but not all of them have Garage Band. Because Visuals+Coding = Game but Coding+Music = a pleasant sounding blank screen...

Music is not integral it is complimentary and more difficult for people with small resources to digitally render than visuals. The music would have be limited to audio expressly distributed with a free-use license, in order to avoid stepping on toes.

I understand your argument that it should be "all home brew" or "truly open" but making a decent midi is infinitely more difficult than drawing a stick figure in paint. From my observations many AGS user tend to be on the lower end of the hardware/technical spectrum (although this is probably not the case for people enters Hourgame) which exacerbates the level of difficulty in creating audio.

I could fall asleep at night either way but I whole heatedly believe that the ability to create music (not artistically, but technically) is more limiting than the ability to create even rudimentary visuals.

[Kweepa]

Tell me what the topic is and I might try again...  ;P

Ok, the topic is

Spoiler

announced at 19:00 GMT.

[close]

Shhhh!

Ergo, it's okay to take artwork from other people off of google but not for you to use perfectly good artwork you made yourself but never had a use for before? Utterly, utterly bizarre.

Madness? This is HOURGAME!
I think the rationale is that
(a) everyone starts from the same baseline, with access to the same resources.
(b) usually, if you get something from google, it's not going to be in a decent state to include in an AGS game and will need massaging, so it's still a challenge to make the game in an hour.
I'm just attempting to explain the rationale, not defending it. I'd be happy to say that the web browser should be closed for the hour.

Why should music be an exception?

Again, this is not a defence, merely a possible rationale.
(a) music is not generally an essential part of the game, so it must come third to the artwork and scripting. Since there is a tight time limit, there's not likely to be 15 minutes to spare to compose and score a track.
(b) people that can actually write music and produce an mp3/midi file are rare here.
(c) everyone has AGS installed. everyone has MS Paint. not everyone has music composition software installed.
(d) err...
(e) what Q said.

[Rex Mundane]

I'm down for this, naturally. Want to try the video thingie too, what program did you use Steve, that got webcam as well as screencast at once?

[Kweepa]

The free trial of Camtasia studio. It only lasts 30 days though so I won't be making another :'(

I had a thought to add a little variety to this hourgame. What if I announce the theme today so that everyone has 24 hours to mull it over? I'm having a lot of fun thinking of ideas that fit the theme. I think we can trust people not to start their game early.

[Bulbapuck]

I had a thought to add a little variety to this hourgame. What if I announce the theme today so that everyone has 24 hours to mull it over? I'm having a lot of fun thinking of ideas that fit the theme. I think we can trust people not to start their game early.

I'm gonna say no, just because hourgames are supposed to be a jumbled, caffein-rushed mess That's what I like about them

[Questionable]

DEFINITELY NOT!

Spoiler

PM Me... =P

[close]

[Kweepa]

Ok, forget that idea then.
See you all here tomorrow.

[Kweepa]

The game starts in 50 minutes!
Stay tuned for the theme...

[Kweepa]

Today's theme is:

SAFE

Safe. Adjective. Not in danger.
Safe. Noun. A strongbox.

GO!

[FSi++]

HEROIN QUEST

Cap'n Nemo told me to make a weird dopey game, so here you are.

Also, it's that kind of japanese adventures, genre-wise. Oh well.

[Vince Twelve]

BAM:

Safe And Sound

I had planned some beep beep beep sounds in the background and an arcade flying sequence at the end but pfff like that was realistically going to happen in an hour.  Phew.

EDIT:

OK, so I took an extra 15 minutes and added TWO SOUND EFFECTS!  Updated the original download. SUE ME!  Or just turn off the sound to hear what it was like after only 1 hours work.

EDIT2:

Safe And Sound source code in case anyone is interested in this crap!  Warning!  It sucks!

By the way, all art was made with my track pad as I have no working mice in my home currently. 

[Questionable]

If I could figure out which way was up in under an hour you guys would've had to deal with

THIS


That's right boys... Ohhhhh Yeah.

DLing now...

[Bulbapuck]

Sorry I couldn't join this week, but my laptop isn't working :'(

I'll play the games as soon as I get it to work again

[Rex Mundane]

Here's my little bit of nonsense.

Later than I wouldve wanted, but in my defense I and m'lady are sick as no fewer than 7.3 dogs at the moment. Looking forward to seeing everyone elses work.

[Vince Twelve]

Magma's was brilliant!  Three!  Count 'em!  THREE puzzles!  Ish.  Well done.