MAGS September: "Animals" (WINNER: Fitz)

Started by Atelier, Sun 01/09/2013 19:44:02

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Atelier

This month's winner was Monty the Komodo Dragon by Fitz.



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Topic: 'Animals'

This month's guidelines were set by Radiant:

The theme for September is Animals. In almost all games, the protagonist is a human who saves the day, but there are more creatures in the world than just humans! So the main character of the game has to be an animal (goat, goldfish, sparrow, bear, you name it). Please take to a real animal; not a fictional species or toy.
It should be relevant to the gameplay that the animal has different abilities than a human, but how you fill this in is up to you (e.g. having non-standard command buttons, or being unable to talk to humans, or you can't take certain actions for lack of opposable thumbs). There are no restricitions on genre.

Ending 30th September



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What is MAGS?

MAGS is a monthly competition for amateur adventure game makers. The idea is to create a game in under a month, following the rules set by the previous winner. It aims to help you work to a deadline, improve your skills, or provide a kick-start into making adventure games. Regardless of skill, MAGS is for everyone. Voting is based on "favorite" games, and not the most artistic, or the best coded. If you have bad art skills, use it as a chance to do some graphic work. If you're sub-standard at coding, use it as a chance to give scripting a go. Ultimately, people will vote for the most enjoyable entry.

You may get help for the competition, although you must end up doing something yourself. You should however be warned that it proves difficult to organize a big team within thirty days. You are not allowed to use material already created before this competition. Your game must be completely new! Music and sound is an exception; you can use free material that is available to the public, if you wish. Modules and templates are also allowed.

Entering MAGS is simple. First, conceptualise your game following the month's criteria (see top). Second, create your game fueled only by coffee. Finally, post your game in this thread, including:

âÅ"“ A working download link
âÅ"“ The title of your game
âÅ"“ A suitable in-game screenshot

At the end of the month, voting will begin, usually lasting for fifteen days. The winner chooses the next month's theme, and their name and game is immortalised in the MAGS Archive. For more information, please visit the Official MAGS website.

TGames

#1
I will enter this competition

DBoyWheeler

Um, would anthro animals be allowed?  Or is it strictly natural non-anthro animals?

Armageddon

But humans are animals... I hope someone makes a game based on Animal Farm except you're watching it as a human so you can't understand what the animals are saying to each other, and then they eat their human.

jannar85

Let's hope I find the time to finish it this time... Starting now!
Veteran, writer... with loads of unreleased games. Work in progress.

DBoyWheeler

Either way you slice it, I'm in.  Since it's just animals (unless anthro animals are allowed), I'll keep it simple--maybe three or four rooms at most.  First I'll need to think of WHAT animal to make the protagonist.

TGames

#6
I finished the character for my game Sherlock Bones

I'll make sure to keep you guys updated

DBoyWheeler

I've come up with an idea... even a pending title:

The Blackbird Strikes Back

The story (in a nutshell): Some human shot your mate and ruined your nest!  Now you want to get even--by making this human's life miserable!
----
Once I have some sketches, I'll post more.  Again, I'll try to keep the game simple.

Arcangel

Umm thats allowed?
Not my Draw only example.
Humanoid form.


Or only real animal form....?

Radiant

Frankly I haven't heard of the term "anthro" before, but the intent of the theme is to be about actual animals, not about humans with cat ears and a tail :grin:

Arcangel


dactylopus

Quote from: Radiant on Mon 02/09/2013 20:17:34
Frankly I haven't heard of the term "anthro" before, but the intent of the theme is to be about actual animals, not about humans with cat ears and a tail :grin:
Anthro is short for Antrhopomorphic, which is when you attribute human qualities to something other than a human.  I'm somewhat surprised you hadn't heard it, as anthro characters are quite popular today.

Either way, I agree that the theme is meant to be about animals, not fictional humanoid animals.


Armageddon

Quote from: TGames on Wed 04/09/2013 03:53:57
dang it
I think we should make it an exception, as long as the animal is still distinguishable. No furries...

Stupot

There's a nice looking game called Shelter where you play a mother badger trying to keep her children protected.
Who, knows, it might provide some inspiration for MAGS :-)
http://www.giantbomb.com/videos/preview-thing-a-preview-of-shelter/2300-7740/

Ghost

Quote from: Radiant on Mon 02/09/2013 20:17:34
Frankly I haven't heard of the term "anthro" before

Seriously? Then you've missed 63% of the whole interwebs! And 87% of DeviantArt! (laugh)

Schizmo

#16
I've been watching this thread anonymously for a bit and I'm not seeing a whole lot of activity so far, I hope that it means everyone is really busy working on their games, but I'm worried that it means NO ONE is working on their games because everyone decided they didn't like the theme.

I discovered AGS last month and I was far too late to participate in the MAGS for August (I had an idea about a space ship drifting off its course towards a sun; which I think is great for HEAT) but I decided I would consider participating this month because small little projects always seem like a good way to throw yourself into a program head first. I learn best when I dive in.

UNFORTUNATELY due to circumstances completely outside of my control, I find myself painfully lacking in free time this month and I don't think I will actually have time to participate, which sucks because I was looking forward to it. But I thought I'd share what little I came up with in a few days so that people don't get discouraged by the theme.

My game was set to be about a dinosaur in captivity in some sort of science lab/jurassic park/secret complex. His goal was to escape. Nothing too complex about it, but I was hoping that dinosaurs might be an interesting take on the theme of Animals since they're extinct however they were very real at one time. The first puzzle was more about timing than anything, there is a man in a security room in the foreground overlooking the dinosaurs terrarium, casually reading the paper and not paying much attention to his job. The terrarium would span 3 simple screens, the leftmost screen being the security room and the rightmost screen being the edge of the terrarium where an electrified fence is currently active and preventing the dinosaurs escape from the first area. The goal would be to interact with the window while the man takes a sip of his coffee, attacking it and startling the man, causing him to spill his coffee on the console, which would begin to flash red and disable the fence in the next room. If the player could not figure out the timing and interact with the window when the man was holding his coffee (or if I could not figure out how to program a timing dependent puzzle) then interacting with the window 3 or 4 times would cause the coffee to tip over, solving the puzzle by default.



Don't judge the WIP screens too harshly, I had a rough sketch of the room and never got around to finishing the man or putting doors in. He doesn't even have a chair, but I assure you he is kicking back and living it up on his secret government paycheck. (also it looks like tinypic converted my images to jpgs which is why some of the edges are fuzzy, namely the word "danger")

I hadn't gotten much further than that concept when my life went crazy so that's all I have for now, but surely the dinosaur would not be able to hold any items due to the fact that it had tiny hands (T Rex perhaps?). I was thinking its abilities would have been PUSH BITE and ROAR but like I said I had in no way thought that far ahead.

I hope this encourages people to keep working and to think outside the box, and at some point I would like to work on this again if only to learn how to make a simple "escape the room" type game.

Retro Wolf

@Schizmo: It's a shame you can't participate! I like your ideas, the spaceship game sounded cool. I'll be watching out for your first release!

Durinde

I'm working on a pretty simple game where you are a beaver. I haven't touched AGS in a couple of years, so I'm spending most of my time just relearning how to do things.  I'm just planning a couple of puzzles around gathering building material and attracting a mate.  I've only managed to get a couple of hours to work on it so far due to real life commitments. All I managed to get done was drawing the character with some VERY basic animations and roughing out some puzzles on paper. I am the opposite of an artist so I've wasted a lot of time just trying to get a half-presentable beaver. Still a ton of stuff to do, but I'm hoping just by making this post I can motivate myself a little.

Anyway, it isn't pretty


I hope to have some time off this weekend to work at it in earnest.

Fitz

Don't worry, Schizmo, everyone's probably working like busy little ants deep down underground -- only to launch a merciless attack, come September 30 ;) Plus, it's still pretty early. I've finally conceived of some sort of a plot only yesterday, and all I have right now is one left/right walkable.

Speaking of which, meet Monty Lizard!



He's a Komodo dragon, living a happy family life (as evidenced by his cheerful smile). Said family will be the trigger for his eventful quest -- full of deadly threats, long journeys and clashes with the unyielding forces of nature.

OK, so it's not going to be THAT long :P My scripting helper Sephiroth and I wanted to do something short and fun, 3-5 rooms, I guess. For the same reason, I chose this collage-esque style instead of hand-drawn art (I was inspired by a beautiful AGS game with graphics made from cut out paintings -- anyone remember the title?). I'm also thinking about adding some voice-over (some samples of me goofing off with my mic can be found in this thread). Not for the characters, no. Monty and his family are lizards -- and they're as reptilian as can be. Don't mind Monty's upright stance -- I'll have you know Komodo dragons are actually perfectly capable of standing on two hind legs.

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