Adventure Game Studio

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

When will it take place?
This hourgame session will take place on Mar 06, 2010, Saturday. It will start at 19:00GMT and participants will have an hour to make their games + 15 minutes to beta test / upload (i.e. 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 annouced on IRC (3 simple steps to IRC (http://www.adventuregamestudio.co.uk/yabb/index.php?topic=39361.msg518585#msg518585)) and here.

Additional infos
- 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-existent AGS template for your game (e.g. that Verb-Coin GUI template).
- You cannot use the stuff you've made earlier, because this competition is about making something new.

Uploading:
Suggested hosts to upload your entry to are:
Recommended:
- TerranRich's ShutUpload (http://shutupload.com/)

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 possibly a couple of less favourite ones), and hopefully someone will do the counting.

Important: please post here if you'd like to join but the timeline is not ok for you! Slight changes are always possible!

As usual: please post here if interested in participating.

As not usual: Domithan (http://www.adventuregamestudio.co.uk/yabb/index.php?topic=40027.0) managed to make an interesting documentary on the making of an hourgame (his hourgame). If you have camtasia or camtasiaesque software, it would be great to se your "Let's make it" too! Or blog about it, or just open Notepad, do something!

i will come

dunno about camtasia though

I'll be there, and I'm using the same template as the last time, but since I don;t want to have an advantage I'll give it to you too.

My template (http://shutupload.com/dl/0c8e496af301/)

I'll also try to record my progress :P

Well, I got fired from my Job yesterday so it looks like I will have some free time on my hands... I will try!

Could well be involved here ! depends on hangover skillz

As usual the theme will be announced here and on IRC (http://www.adventuregamestudio.co.uk/acirc.htm) in more or less 10mins.

Get ready lads and lasses!

Quote from: Sinsin on Sat 06/03/2010 17:37:42
Could well be involved here ! depends on hangover skillz

Cannot enter as I'm still at work and I thought the time was 8pm kick off

Think I may have been a bit too ambitious!

My 1/32-assed attempt is called POWERELEPHANT

http://www.mediafire.com/?j244hmaznzh (http://www.mediafire.com/?j244hmaznzh)

(and it sucks)

Ten minutes to spare and I even had time to make music for it.
Paint (http://www.box.net/shared/q8vssd0iiz).
Edit: Technically involves PAINT not paintING. Ah well. Also didn't have the stuff to make a video, sorry.

Here's mine:

(http://www.kweepa.com/step/ags/games/Painter.png)

http://www.kweepa.com/step/ags/games/Painter.zip

[EDIT] Making of on youtube:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZLr2DN2KHdc

Done!

(http://i725.photobucket.com/albums/ww251/FTUltra/screen-1.png)

The painting (http://shutupload.com/dl/92d563c36e49/)

I probably shouldn't even upload this... I realized it was 3:00 and so I just slapped an finish in there...

Here's the new concept behind it: You recently bought a painting at auction... turns out it's cursed. In your sleep it has eaten you! OH NO! Now, escape before you are digested and turned into a portrait...

http://shutupload.com/dl/2d182cb05ca9/

Quote from: Dataflashsabot on Sat 06/03/2010 19:50:42
Ten minutes to spare and I even had time to make music for it.
Paint (http://www.box.net/shared/q8vssd0iiz).
Edit: Technically involves PAINT not paintING. Ah well. Also didn't have the stuff to make a video, sorry.

LOVED IT!

Museum guard nightmare:
Download nowish
(http://shutupload.com/dl/5bb5de86bd45/)

I wanted to make it longer but I focused too much on the "art" :=

Quote from: FSi on Sat 06/03/2010 19:48:54
My 1/32-assed attempt is called POWERELEPHANT

http://www.mediafire.com/?j244hmaznzh (http://www.mediafire.com/?j244hmaznzh)

(and it sucks)

Couldn't get this to run. Anyone else have trouble?

Quote from: SteveMcCrea on Sat 06/03/2010 20:13:04
Here's mine:

(http://www.kweepa.com/step/ags/games/Painter.png)

http://www.kweepa.com/step/ags/games/Painter.zip

Pretty cool effect!

* runs in from work and sits down

""READY"" ....  "AWWWWWWW :(

Alright, here's mine, and my first actually finished within the hour too, I think

There's supposed to be a plot that ties in with the stupid nonsense I keep going back to, with Shoes that destroy the world and an angry smiley face, and damned if I could be bothered to make sense of it. Well, that'll learn me I guess. Go play

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/1410300/Curse%20of%20the%20Painter.zip

Here's mine.  I got started a bit late so there's not a whole lot to do, just help Timmy finish his painting in:

TIMMY'S DAY OUT!

http://www.mediafire.com/?wz1dzonodmk

8 games!  :o outstanding!  8)  :=

Now:

Voting begins then.

Questionable's Untitled Piece - No idea what to do in this one. Looks nice-ish but no direction.

Dataflashsabot's Paint - Like the drawing, music's nice, but no, um, well game there. Nothing to do. I can 'win' by just sitting and watching it.

fsi's Powerelephant - Considering how quickly it was done I think this one is pretty nice only the two things to do in it, but whatever, pretty cool.

kweepa's Painter - Whoa... well, cool 3D effect to be sure, but it seems kind of unnecessary considering every relevant thing is on the one side of the room, to say nothing of being disorienting, and it was all but impossible to find the click point on the brush.

Progz's Timmy's Day out & Wyz's The Painting - Both very nice, follow the same sort of puzzle, nice art, both leave me not sure why you picked the interfaces you did over the default, particularly with Progz which left the chalk all but unclickable,

Bulba's Museum Guard Nightmare - Simple, functional, fun. Honestly no complaints, other than why the piepan starts off unclickable, but you get it by interacting with the painting. bit unintuitive.

Toss up for me between Wyz and Bulba, can't decide, so I'll vote for which of the two of them comes closest to guessing the number I'm thinking of.

Quote from: magma42 on Sat 06/03/2010 21:43:12
Toss up for me between Wyz and Bulba, can't decide, so I'll vote for which of the two of them comes closest to guessing the number I'm thinking of.

42? :D

Quote from: magma42 on Sat 06/03/2010 21:43:12Questionable's Untitled Piece - No idea what to do in this one. Looks nice-ish but no direction.

I know... sorry! I had a much grander concept but I fell flat on time. I figured I would rather submit something rather than nothing though...

FSi's PowerElephant:
Very funny as usual! And great ending cutscene.

dataflashsabot's Paint:
Entertaining monologue.

Wyz's The Painting:
Animation, clean background, puzzles, interactions, and a screen recording. This one has it all! Shame there wasn't time for some inventory items...

Questionable's Compiled:
I couldn't finish this.

Bulba's Museum Guard Nightmare:
Good stuff, but a bit hard to interact with.

magma's Curse of the Painter:
Nice wormhole, entertaining monologues. But where's the nuclear footwear?

ProgZ's Timmy!:
Superb artwork, but not much of a game. Plus very late!

My vote goes to Wyz!

(Still rendering my screen capture. I had to restart it because the camera video was totally out of sync.)

Quote from: Bulbapuck on Sat 06/03/2010 22:33:21
42? :D

Was it that obvious? Ah well then, vote goes to Bulba.

Quote from: SteveMcCrea on Sat 06/03/2010 22:58:36magma's Curse of the Painter:
Nice wormhole, entertaining monologues. But where's the nuclear footwear?

The shoe and the Smiley are both supposed to be in the painting on the easel, in fact. God help me I don't know what I was trying for, kept trying to shoehorn in this billshut narrative I seem to have going about the shoes and the smileys and prophecies or something, theme o' the week didn't really fit with it that well. Originally the Timetraveler disappears, the wormhole evaporates, and behind it is a full wall mural of the first scene from my first hourgame with the stick figure and whatever...

You know what, I just read the last paragraph that I was just typing out, and have begun to fear for my sanity.

Heh.

Screencast here:
http://www.kweepa.com/step/ags/games/MakingAnHourGame.wmv
It's an hour long so it's probably best to right click, save as, then play with VLC at some ridiculous speed.
It's also 80Mb so go easy on my hosting. That and the hour long should be enough disincentive I guess. :=
[EDIT] I reduced the file size to 55Mb or so.

I'm pretty pooped right know so I'll vote tomorrow. I also made a recoding of the making of my Hourgame entry. The quality is a bit harsh, sorry about that.

You tube link: 6 times the actual speed (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BzNTnXOSERo)
This is still processing so in the mean time, folks with VLC installed can use this link (http://shutupload.com/dl/826cce7f98fd/).

Got round to check your screen recording SteveMcCrea, very nice. I could actually read the scripting there :D I've enjoyed watching it.

FSi:
Yay! Power elephant! whatever that might be :D

Dataflashabot:
Nice entry but not really a game.

SteveMcCrea:
Accept for the hard to hit hotspot a very good entry.

Questionable:
I liked the background, but it seems that all there is :(

Bulbapuck:
Great gameplay as always!

magma42:
You had a great idea but then time happened, but still a nice entry!

ProgZmax:
Wow, the graphics are stunning!

Well this is a really hard decision. But in the end I think I go for Steve. Mainly because he had to to a lot of debugging in the end, and still managed to get it in on time!

(I'm in a bit of a hurry so I don't have time to comment on all of them, sorry about that :( )
I'm going to vote for Steve, mostly because 3D panoramas are damn complicated things to set up so he was pretty ballsy going for it, and he managed it.

[edit][offtopic]Mine's is the second 'non-game' entry I've made for Hourgame Saturday. Maybe I should stop doing that  :P [/offtopic][/edit]

Quote from: Wyz on Sun 07/03/2010 13:57:09
Mainly because he had to to a lot of debugging in the end, and still managed to get it in on time!

Glad you noticed! (I had to add functionality to the panorama module with minutes to go.)
Hooray for camwhoring!
Speaking of which, here's a slightly blurry 10x sped up making of my game on youtube:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZLr2DN2KHdc

FSi:
Never could get it to work, not sure why...

Dataflashabot:
Hilarious! Some of the silliest writing I've come across in a while. Not a really engaging game though... =D

SteveMcCrea:
Really cool project! I'm in awe that you were able to finish this on time!

Wyz:
Simple but effective! You were realistic and produced alot of components that made a pretty engaging game all in the span of an hour! Overall I feel like this is one of the most "polished" feeling games submitted.

Bulbapuck:
Witty, functional and a unique concept! I know there was only an hour but I just felt like there should have been more to it.

magma42:
I feel like you ha the same problem as me: time. Although you were quite a bit more finessed in your tie-off than I was.

ProgZmax:
I feel like it's tie between this game and Wyz. Very polished, simple but playable and very complete. There was some difficulty in clicking the chalk but it didn;t ruin my day.

All-in-all it is down to 3 people: Prog, Steve & Wyz. Steve had probably the most complex game but it almost feels like a bit of a gimmick that doesn't really offer any value. I feel like this could have been THE most polished game in the bunch, but instead it was 3D for the sake of being 3D and it made the Brush more difficult to click than ProgZ chalk. That said IT'S FREAKIN' 3D! Prog and Wyz did have similar games but between the two ProgZ looked better but Wyz had more elements and wasn't frustrating to me in the least...

Tough Call.  I gotta' vote Wyz at the end of the day, though.

the most enjoyable game for ME was the ProgZmax's, but the clicky chalky difficulty

but I go for  Wyz

FUUUCK!
I just spent 30 mins writing summaries of every entry, and my vote.. I had triple-checked it for spelling errors and had even put in a lot of unnecesary jokes. But my touchpad was over the "home" button so when I was taking the cursor to the "post" button I found myself on the AGS forums... And back didn't work.... :'(

So fuck it. It's 1AM here and I need sleep.. May edit this when I'm not tired and angry.

My vote goes to Kweepa for... Let's say 3d and boobies or something..

Fucking 30 minutes I could have been sleeping that time but noooo I was writing a nice message that was automatically deleted fucking anyway what the fuck and why the fuck doesn't back work as it's bloody supposed to and ARRRRRGGGHH I could have been fucking sleeping that tim gotta get up early tomorrow but I was gonna be good and post the vote which I had forgotten before fucking hell I really liked the games too they deserved a fucking praise but instead I'm writing this damn rant.
Why am I doing that again? Wasn't there something else? Ahhh.. sleep......

voting closes in, like, 24 hours.

So we're not playing tomorrow? :'(
I'd be up for it again.

Yeah, I enjoy writing silly monologues and this is the only excuse I get :P

Quotebut the clicky chalky difficulty

An unfortunate side-effect of using the verb gui was that the top overlapped 50% of the chalk, something I didn't consider when I made the background because I had planned to make a gui (but ran out of time).

Steve- Not much of a game?  Which hourgame was?  They were all limited to repeat clicking on things for a result, including yours.  That comment just bothered me somewhat because it could and should be applied to all entries, not only mine.

Quote from: ProgZmax on Fri 12/03/2010 15:56:44
Steve- Not much of a game?  Which hourgame was?

I thought Wyz'z waz. That's why I voted for it.

Quote
They were all limited to repeat clicking on things for a result, including yours.

Oh, I know. I wouldn't vote for my gimmicky piece of crap.

Quote from: ProgZmax on Fri 12/03/2010 15:56:44
Steve- Not much of a game?  Which hourgame was?

I thought Wyz'z waz. That's why I voted for it.

...and that's why I ALSO voted for Wyz  :D

So uh
Wassapining

Wyz's The Painting: really polished! I enjoyed the graphics and the outcome of the puzzle very much (everything was really well drawn taking into account it was made in less than one hour). One of my fav. entries.
DFB's Paint: No game as usual, I appreciated the whole "blue paint" thing (which was borrowed from some criminal dudes who borrowed it from an horror movie, right?)
FSi's powerelephant: a spiritual sequel to PowerCoW from Uranus (http://www.adventuregamestudio.co.uk/games.php?action=detail&id=758), lovely background and main character. The thing I like about FSi is that 99% of his game are delivered well before the timeline, which makes him a cool dude.
Kweepa's Painter: really awesome! I was quite surprised when I forst took a look at it. Gameplay doesn't really match or take advantage of the 3d effect, but that's almost impossible to achieve in an hourgame. Bonus points: debugging at the end =)
Questionable's OP: now *that's* something innovative. It's an incomplete entry of course but the idea was pretty nice and I'd love to see that developed some more.
Magma42's Curse of the Painter: really well developed, with distinct graphics, a belivable character, non obvious puzzles and a pshycho-whirl. Thumbs up!
ProgZMax's Timmy: Probably the best graphics ever to be seen in an Hourgame, a colourful character with personality and some challenging puzzles which I enjoyed much (it seems I am alone there). It was half an hour after the dealdline, but from the IRC log it seems you started to work on it after way after the others, so it's ok.
Bulbapuck's Museum guard: there are many things to be praised there, strarting from "this city at night" background choice, very very witty writing and probably the most useful bit of dialouge in an adventure game (A: "Why?", B: "Bye" A: "Crap").
I really empathised with our Guard and always like to have "something" else to do in the game after beating it (in this case, try to run away from problems).

Well, in the end my vote goes to Bulbapuck.

Since we're here, let me announce the winner too: Kweepa! You have the honour to host this biweekly compo next saturday!

Hooray, thanks.
Although now that means I miss out on a round of hour gaming. :'(
A bittersweet victory indeed.

Quote from: SteveMcCrea on Sun 14/03/2010 16:52:16
Hooray, thanks.
Although now that means I miss out on a round of hour gaming. :'(
A bittersweet victory indeed.

That reminds me of this post (make sure to read the answers as well)

http://www.adventuregamestudio.co.uk/yabb/index.php?topic=38927.msg513170#msg513170

:P

Congrats Steve! I'm glad you've won actually. ;)
Hah, wait, I can't make next Hourgame :'(