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Time to bang the gong. 2017 Summer Awful Jam Gong Show schedule
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Aug 3, 2017 19:18
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Tann posted:Smash-em Randal by TeamTime000
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Aug 3, 2017 20:50
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Angry Minion Bird And Shrek by Team Afal Team Afal is another one of those teams with a great style I always look forward to. This one had me grinning in multiple places, you did an awesome job. Excellent theme-adherence and I've grown fond of your art style. I'm a fan of the dumb long distance stupid explosion games and this was a fun one. I may have missed out on some of the upgrades because my third game after bombs went a bit infinite and got me all the way to the next minigame. I did replay a bit at the end and checked out the extra mechanics, awesome job with the real(?) online leaderboard. Oh poo poo the next game though. No spoilers but I'm so glad someone referenced that aspect of bootleg games in this. jo and I looked into them a bit but... decided not to haha. Overall perfect game for a jam and you should be very proud (parent) highlight: I loved the ending credits, that's a recent internet joke that I took a liking too. I'm sad you didn't get a chance to make it longer! Thriftynauts by The Dapper Spendthrifts This game is pretty rad! I love the ambience and setting you went for and the idea of upgrading your ship and turning space junk into random items is awesome. I found myself picking up so much junk and it was hard to work out what the base wanted the I soon just had so much stuff and every time I went to the base a random item flew out of it. I feel like with a bit better balance and UI to show what's going on this could have been a real gem. highlight: The bespoke sound-effects! Juice by ok hand emoji Lovely pastiche of various games, plays well and pretty juicy! I really love that you have a custom death animation for each weapon, that's a really nice touch. The music fades between areas are brilliant. Not much variation in the gameplay but it ended way before it got old. highlight: cool and simple pixel death animation, I'll be stealing that! I'm gonna try to get the web export for my game working now, all these web games are putting me to shame!
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Aug 3, 2017 21:04
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I fell into the usual trap of balancing the game around how I played it, which ends up with a lot less Junk than most people because I realize that Derelicts don't drop Junk (I should've made that more explicit) and also I can let the base get hit a lot in order to deliberately relieve some junk. Though I am happy with the aesthetic -- it came across to me as fairly meditative. Yes I hope to go mad with power, but the 15-minute-blocks of playtesting melted away in quick succession. Also Krita paintbrush effects were a life-saver. Biggest retrospective tip o' the jam from me: Carry a notepad. I picked up a tiny little pocketbook with a tiny little pocket pencil and made sure to have it on me at all times. Which is good, because I'd be in the darnedest of places and I'd have some sort of very important thought. There was precisely one that I didn't write down because it was so blindingly obvious that it didn't need writing. I may never know what that idea was.
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Aug 4, 2017 02:23
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JonTerp posted:Time to bang the gong. Darn. I'll juuuust be getting off work when you start playing Super Gargle Blaster. Hope I catch it in time. One more video for the fray: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0CsHWiUHHnI
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Aug 4, 2017 03:36
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Jo! You're not alone! I also had no idea how to score points in Fast Forward Record Rewind. I actually didn't even realize you could leave the recording device unattended. Fast Forward Record Rewind https://vimeo.com/228314404 Tamale Drive https://vimeo.com/228314067 DMCA Takedown - Seize and Desist https://vimeo.com/228314265 About out of upload quota for the week. Not sure when those reset.
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Aug 4, 2017 04:02
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Last one, I promise! (Because then I'm out of space until Saturday.) SimShine. Also known as: I am bewildered! https://vimeo.com/228316427
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Aug 4, 2017 04:29
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Jo posted:Darn. I'll juuuust be getting off work when you start playing Super Gargle Blaster. Hope I catch it in time. The other bits and bobs that do things, do do things too. Tab toggles the proximity sensor so you can judge how close you are (brighter == better) before planting the recorder. The fog/smoke machine things hide your recorder but not you, so you can get close, drop it, then run off without worrying about a guard seeing a thing out in the open. I do appreciate you trying it out and I'm glad you enjoyed some parts of it! Hammer Bro. posted:Jo! You're not alone! I also had no idea how to score points in Fast Forward Record Rewind.  I thought "People will see what happens and make assumptions to base their conclusions on", which definitely happens, just everybody else makes different assumptions than I thought they would. Thank you as well for giving it a shot!
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Aug 4, 2017 05:20
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I feel your pain and honestly I still had a good time -- letting me continue despite "failure" was a smart design decision that I think all games should make these days. Like, to the extent that RPGs should just have a Movie Mode that just advances the main plot if you don't feel like doing things and adjusts your stats accordingly for when you dip back out into gamey mode.
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Aug 4, 2017 06:06
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dupersaurus posted:Awful Runners by KT Games nolen posted:BOOTLEGS by poot n toot  TomR posted:BBA SLAM by Beeconomic Advisors Gunzil posted:Soul Castle by Chroma Inc Lemon posted:Bootleg Bernie and his Album Making Journey by Team Porkchop Express awesomeolion posted:DMCA Takedown - Seize and Desist by VEG BOY REPUBLIC More later, etc. etc.
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Aug 4, 2017 11:32
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Siminu posted:Krum Frog Geach ABC is as delightful as it looks. Even the monster at the end, despite not really existing, gave me a goofy grin. Pretty much the whole time. All grins. Also I am aware of the issue of Karm Fog & friends exiting the screen and I am gonna do my best to fix it, but probably not 'til judging is over (if for no other reason than because I'll have no time to work on it 'til then, oops)
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Aug 4, 2017 13:38
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Doom Goon posted:I really liked the idea of this game, or even just a low-key sailing game. I also liked that it took the theme in a more literal example and was part of the other side of what I was expecting (besides bootleg console games, of course). I think I did run into some issues with the game, a lot of it being the UI. I'm not just talking about the controls not being in-game but stuff like having to use the keyboard to shop or no easy way to restart (and when you did the money didn't reset right). It was also really difficult to determine how much headway you were making (especially without camera control and with fog) and I'd seem to get glued to the NE portion for what felt like ever even when trying lateral sailing. I also ended up almost "capsizing" a few times until it actually did glitch where the world tilted and I got stuck in the "ground" (which was actually kind of hilarious). But besides that I did have fun trying to figure things out with the calming sea soundscape and doing the little market speculation I was capable of. Whoops, you can look around but I forgot to mention it (left and right arrows). The the capsizing happen near colliders?
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Aug 4, 2017 14:26
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Late to the party, but I finally have a public build of my game: Sherlock Holmes and the Three Mysteries. I also put the source code up on github. The version I submitted for judging lacked much of an ending and credits/attribution. The public build should make more sense though.
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Aug 4, 2017 15:02
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If our game is single and multiplayer, will you guys be playing both modes during the gong show?
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Aug 4, 2017 17:28
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Hammer Bro. posted:Tamale Drive Thanks for the video! It was really great to see someone play the game. From all the feedback we've gotten it's obvious that we didn't message when exactly is the right time you should switch back and forth from Tamale mode. In earlier versions I had the game automatically switch back the menus when the cop turned away or in the cop car's instance, when the windows rolled up, people wanted control of when they could go back into the minigame, so I changed this without considering that it may not be clear, specifically with the cop car, when you should switch back. The car does actually check to see if there's anyone in front before moving forward, the only time the cop checks to see if they have the DVD menu up is when they roll down the windows, as soon as it rolls up you can switch back even if the cop car is there. Again, this should have been messaged more clearly, and I'm thinking of maybe adding a "SPACEBAR" icon popup when it's safe to switch back. Also a few of the strikes you get in day 1 are from a Cop that pops out of the trash can. The trash can will shake for a few seconds and it has the chance of spawning a cop or a raccoon (that's where that laugh was coming from). Part of the design was that we wanted to keep the player engaged at both parts of the screen but I think the trash can spawn isn't balanced very well as you don't get a good indicator of the fakeout or even any feedback that something is happening on the bottom portion of the screen. We got this idea to add in a bird that sits on the lid and flies up past the minigame screen as a warning to the player but it was a last minute idea that we didn't get time to implement. I was worried that Day 3 was going to drag because of the high goal of $1600, so I did bump up the cash reward to $22 (hey these DVDs are hot commodities!) and another thing is that there is actually a Score multiplier that goes up if you are on a winstreak on the minigames. I was running out of time and didn't implement an indicator of what the current multiplier is, but I'll be adding that, along with a "GOAL OF: $400/$800/$1600" so you know exactly how much you need at all times. It's a design mistake to announce what the goal of the day is in a skippable text box. And I had a good laugh when I saw the two hands bug come up at the end, I uhh.. thought I fixed that.  Also sorry for the fullscreen nonsense, I fixed that in the pubic build. Each day (or new screen) had a code that went into full screen. I took that out. Thanks again for this video, it's was really helpful for adjusting game mechanics and design decisions. (Also really quite surreal to see someone else actually playing a game I made. ) Also I was happy to hear you liked the music! I got my band to write the songs for the game. And it's not as cool as an electric ukulele but the main theme has 2 guitars and a keyboard on a bass setting. The main menu is closer to our normal sound and the main instrument is an old Korg snyth with guitars as backup. The songs are up on Soundcloud to download if anyone is interested. https://soundcloud.com/awafac/tamaledriveintro https://soundcloud.com/awafac/tamales
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Aug 4, 2017 18:27
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I gotta head out tonight but I managed to play another one at work today! Kurm Frog Teach ABC by Team Punch The Moon Great theme adherence, the visuals and music are extremely cute. I love the bootleg versions of the characters and ominous warnings of the end. The gameplay was alright and the minigames very varied enough that it didn't start getting old at all by the end. I like that the final boss felt like a bit of a mix of the minigames that came before it. highlight: evil big bird! I'm gonna see how long I can stay up for. Hopefully I can catch the whole gong show. Dang timezones.
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Aug 4, 2017 18:58
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Was the end boss a nod to groverhaus?
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Aug 4, 2017 20:41
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Hammer Bro. posted:Last one, I promise! (Because then I'm out of space until Saturday.) Hey there! I'm sorry you had a hard time with SimShine! I'd encourage you to give it another shot if you can stand it. In-game, if you go to the pause menu you'll find a button that says "How To Play." If you click that, you'll see a rather detailed Readme that I spent a few hours making for just your situation! You will also see a button that says Recipes -- click that to look up the recipes! I'll also look at making the tutorial a bit deeper.    When I was watching your video at times I wanted to scream because you had a hard time with things even our playtesters who weren't familiar with Factorio didn't have a hard time with -- but that may have been due to the smaller res. If the user can't figure it out, it's on me, so that was very useful feedback! ........I want to see you recording yourself playing 10 mins of Factorio's free mode.  I'm not going to hide behind Factorio for all my screw-ups -- even if my game is inspired by it, it is different, and I'm ultimately responsible for any gameplay or design flaws SimShine has, but as far as the critique about the crafting stuff requiring committing some stuff to memory, that's not something you can get around in a crafting game.Giggs, thanks so much for your thoughtful review! I've spent the past few days trying to think of a thoughtful response, I'll post it when I have it! Xibanya fucked around with this message at 21:54 on Aug 4, 2017 |
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Aug 4, 2017 21:42
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SimShine I was pretty far gone by that point in the evening anyway -- had a rough bout with insomnia the night previous and was just waiting for the clock to strike a reasonable bedtime, so I may've been out of my head. But the video was scaled down in post-processing; I played the full thing at a reasonable resolution (about 3x that of the video). Though it's frustrating as it is as a game designer, we've got to find ways to communicate the desired information to our players without explicit turotial text. People just don't read it, myself included. I did watch this video a second time and figure out where I missed a click with the one holdup -- everything else would start producing automatically once it got ingredients but I put less than five ingredients in the one factory so it didn't start (I think) and I definitely caught myself hovering over the pause button without hearing my mouse click, though mentally I thought I did click there. But let's think about the game design: is there a benefit to having what an individual factory (for lack of a better term) produces be hidden information? Presumably not, since you already had a help screen that detailed what could take what. In general modern design philosophy shies away from memorization, for which I am grateful, so a reasonable step might be to color-code components: if you have a specific factory selected, tint everything that can't go into it in red and everything that could go into it green. Or perhaps more colorblind-friendly alternatives. Make it so the player can't possibly overlook the information you want them to have, but don't shove it down their throats or stop them from doing what they want to do. Too often, tutorials are perceived as holdups to the fun part. Most of the time they're right -- I almost didn't click on the tutorial button at all even though I'd never played your game nor Factorio. Tamale and others: You're welcome! I definitely enjoy thinking about and discussing game design in abstract, so providing feedback and receiving responses on it yields interesting insights and mental trajectories for me. Plus the whole unprepared & unedited thing means it doesn't take me much more effort than the time spent actually playing to create the videos. It's not the most information-dense medium (well, the signal to noise ratio is poor), but I'm keenly aware that content creators have vested interest in this kind of feedback and are willing to put up with a less-than-tight package. One really good idea I learned from a UI class long ago was to find testers, sit in the same room with them when they're using the product, and make absolutely clear to them that you won't answer their questions or respond in any way during the session. I keep failing at that last part, but it's a fantastic way of figuring out what actually happens when someone uses your product. Of course, none of us have time to do that when we're busy developing our games. Both for others and for ourselves.
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Aug 4, 2017 22:41
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I did not see it posted, but the gong show has started like the schedule said. https://www.twitch.tv/awfuljams?no-mobile-redirect=true
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Aug 5, 2017 01:27
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how that OBS check work? i googled for C# check if process is running and then just tried to make the existing stuff work a little better. here is a github gist -- it does a little more than that like test the literary aptitude of whoever is reading and a side effect of the screen was intended to be an opportunity to adjust the capture volume as that screen plays music. some parts of it are kludged together to go with the title crawl sequence our game had and other things but the spotlight of the code is IsOBSRunning. I also tested the image names of all other software mentioned on twitch's broadcast page on windows, just in case. but as the source outlines, if someone plays a 32bit build, with 64bit streaming software, it will not be detectable by image name unless you go the extra mile and make IPC with a 64bit pre-launcher or something crazy.
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Aug 5, 2017 01:33
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VOD for Day 1 of the Gong Show https://www.twitch.tv/videos/164480542
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Aug 5, 2017 05:17
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My Very Personal Game Reviews For Block 1: Welcome Treasureman A fun, solid little Metroidvania. You go around collecting gems in a temple while you navigate around tricky enemies and obstacles. I think the level design is very good, especially for a Metroidvania game jam. There’s like two power ups that you can find, and there are pretty easy signifiers in some of the rooms that let you know this is a place worth backtracking (e.g. the breakable walls and the out-of-reach ledges). The game is small enough where it’s not too much of a chore to backtrack, and with a tiny bit of patience, it’s not too hard to complete. I think the number of lives you start off with is forgiving, though I agree with the stream that there should be some invincibility frames so you can’t be juggled to death by an enemy. Otherwise, the enemies in general are not to difficult to maneuver past and are pretty well designed. This game uses the “bootleg” theme in the sense that it’s really a homebrew NES game, which is actually pretty cool. The character controls similarly to some platformers on the NES like Ducktales or Megaman, and the controls themselves are very tight and easy to use. Overall, this game is very well-executed and is worth playing to completion. Red Planet IV A Gameboy-inspired shoot-’em-up. The overall gameplay is simple, but it is actually fun and challenging in the sense that it requires the player to constantly keep moving in order to avoid enemy shots. However, you will almost always keep you finger on the shoot key, as there is no reason to stop firing at enemies unless maybe you don’t want the screen to be cluttered with bullets? There are two big things that really kill this game though. First, every time you die you ALWAYS have to restart from the first level. That being said, there is an upgrade system in place that allows you to improve your ship to make dying less likely. However, the upgrades themselves are only accessible depending on the amount of enemies you’ve killed. This means you’ll find yourself constantly dying on the first level repeatedly until you earn enough kills to get enough decent upgrades to actually have a chance at winning. This is made worse by the second problem of this game: you have one hitpoint, at least initially. A single shot from an enemy at any time is enough to make you lose. Now, there is the upgrade system that allows you to gain some abilities to mitigate this; specifically, the shield and cloak. Shield essentially provides an extra hitpoint, up to three max. Cloak gives the ability to become invincible for a short period of time at the push of a button. The thing is though is that the cloak functions exactly the same way as the shield, only the player has to manually activate it, so you’ll always prefer taking shield upgrades over cloaking. The other two abilities are better projectiles and increased speed, which are pretty helpful as well. I was able to get to the third level before being overwhelmed with a bullet hell (and accidentally restarting). There are bosses at the end of each level, or at least the first two levels, and they’re pretty fun to fight against. They have more health than other enemies, but there are no other enemies on-screen, which make for a satisfying breather compared to the rest of the level. The game also features cutscenes between levels that have nice and apt pixel art, and I think the even the fade in/outs were in Gameboy-style, too. I never really pay attention to the story in most of these games, so it’s nice that they also added the ability to skip cutscenes. Finally, the music is really well-made and fits the aesthetic perfectly. Overall, on an aesthetic level, this game is really polished and feels like an actual Gameboy game. Though there are a few gameplay features that make it incredibly difficult to play, they shouldn’t be too difficult to correct and I’m sure once they’re fixed this game will really shine. BBA SLAM This game has a lot going on, though I’m pretty sure I beat it at some point. You play as a team of basketball players, and the goal of each level is to find the backboard and make a shot. The game starts off simple enough, but then each level after the first offers a zany challenge to overcome before you make a shot. The controls are simple enough once you learn them. I think the main things you have to know are how to shoot/pass the ball and how to switch teammates? Aside from the main premise(?) there are a lot of other things going on this game. Apparently there’s this HORSE mechanic where if you collect all the letters in a level, you get a special “lose” screen because I guess like in the actual game of HORSE, if you get all the letters you lose. There’s also a pretty difficult level in the game, and I don’t know if it’s exclusive to that one level, but the game cleverly allows you to skip it, so that’s pretty nice. The entire game climaxes at the end with a really bootleg-y final level that’s pretty entertaining to play through. Overall, this game does a lot of stuff, probably too much stuff than it really needs. It’s actually reminiscent of their previous game DDAFPST. It has these insanely interesting and entertaining ideas and the games themselves are incredibly eclectic and rife with non-sequiturs, but it can be pretty challenging to get a sense of what’s going on, kind of like a Jackson Pollock painting. I think there should be a little more direction as to what to exactly do in this game, but I also think that this shouldn’t overlook the fact that there is A LOT involved in this game. I’ve seen the funny little easter eggs just in the options menu alone, and there’s a lot of varied sound clips that play depending on your actions. Speaking of sound, this game has really nice sound design. The main theme is really nice and crisp with its (I want to say) Sega Genesis styled music. The voice clips themselves are modulated to have that old-school Genesis quality sound as well, which is pretty neat I think. A fun crazy game. Awful Runners An open-world game based on exploration and money-making(?). You play as a ship that travels from port to port selling and buying goods to (I assume) make a profit. I’ll start off by saying that this game has a really nice aesthetic going on. The game uses pretty simple 3d geometry and flat-shading and, intentional or not, is pretty easy on the eyes in terms of knowing where things are. The background music consists of ambient ocean music which contributes to the theme of sailing on the open seas. The game itself is pretty ambitious, but also pretty difficult because of this. I’d highly recommend starting in windowed mode since you’ll definitely need to reference the controls on the main page in order to know what to do. The seas are vast, which makes it very pretty-looking, but it also makes ports seem very sparse. It can take a while to sail from one port to another, and you’re pretty much blind trying to find another one. The game does have a map, but I don’t believe there was ever a marker indicating your current location, so you’ll end up having to guess destinations based on what port your currently at. Once you arrive at port, you have the ability to buy and sell goods. So the bootlegging theme comes in here, in that you can purchase alcohol as a good, but you run the risk of running into the naval police, where you may be subject to fines, imprisonment, and a game over to boot. Ironically, the best strategy is to probably buy and sell non-bootlegged goods in order avoid the police entirely. That being said, even trading legal goods is pretty difficult in this game as certain ports will only buy certain goods. You may end up buying sugar at one port and try to sell at another, but they’ll only accept corn and gin. I think the game would play better if ports bought all types of goods at any times, but vary the rates to make it more profitable to sell at certain ports. Sailing itself is pretty easy going once you understand the sails system. I’m not sure if this was a bug, but throughout my playthroughs, I always seem to be getting winds from the south (as indicated by the red line from the compass). This makes it difficult to sail north since the boat stays still when facing the wind directly, though the mechanics are pretty forgiving in that you just need to angle just a bit away from north to pick up speed. Overall, this game looks and sounds pretty nice. I think major improvement can be made by adding more content, maybe more ports. I also recall seeing some other ships at some point? But I think they were naval ships. Also, I found the day-night system really nice. It’d be really cool if there was some gameplay stuff revolving around that. Naked Bootleg A football play simulation game. The art direction and gameplay are pretty simple in this. That being said, this is incredibly well designed. There’s only 7 levels I think, but each one builds on the previous to teach the player the basics of getting past the defense for a touchdown. You barely need a rudimentary understanding of football in order to understand what to do, which is moot anyways because the game clearly states what you need to do for each play. The concept is pretty novel and the game executes it pretty perfectly. In fact, I just replayed it while I was writing this and confirmed that there are actually 9 levels, and I also just discovered that if you lose at a level enough times, the game gives you a hint on what you need to do, and that was really cool. I found that the puzzles are still really fun even after playing it before since you can pretty much make up any crazy play you want and you can see if it actually works. Overall, this is a really really good game that I would highly recommend people playing. Especially with football season around the corner, it’d be really cool to see this game made into an a actual app. This is definitely something you could make good money off of. Headphone Hero A Megaman-inspired game leaning heavily on the bootleg theme. It looks like there are two playable levels each having unique settings and bosses. I think the idea here was that you play an original character who is fighting against bootlegs versions of other characters, as well as themselves? This game plays very similar to the NES Megaman games. Some of the enemies are difficult to get hit by, but this was also true for the original Megaman, and like Megaman, enemy attacks don’t do too much damage by themselves and it’s very easy to regain health in the game. The weapon has an upgrade system similar to the one in Cave Story where the more enemies you successfully kill, the better your weapon is upgraded, but if you get attacked, your weapon loses upgrades. The enemies are pretty funny and well-designed. You have knock-off versions of Pikachu, Mario, Sonic, Spongebob, and Simba(?), so there’s a lot of variety. Movement works pretty much works the same way as the old megaman games. I think the works very slightly different(?) but it’s definitely not as bad as was mentioned on stream. Overall, the game is essentially a solid Megaman remake (or demake). I also really liked the animations on the enemies and I remember the music and sound effects being really on point as well. BOOTLEGS A scoring game where the objective is to go as much of a distance as possible. Like Naked Bootleg, it’s a really simple game that’s executed very very well. You play as a spider-thing that uses its 8 legs to navigate a desert-y terrain filled with terrible obstacles like cacti and a snake in my boot (I think it the boot was even designed to look like Woody’s boot from Toy Story, but when I looked up references on youtube, I only got lovely memes). You lose a leg whenever one of them hits an obstacle, and once you lose all 8, it’s game over. The art and music are completely apt for this game; it’s another game that I could easily see doing well in the App Store. This is another game I had to play again to get a better feel for. So, it looks like a level is randomly generated with certain sets of blocks, so even though each playthrough is different, you’ll end up seeing similar sets of obstacles the longer you play. This means there is a degree of randomness in terms of how far you’ll potentially got through a level. It’s possible to get a bunch of easy blocks where it’s just ground or maybe a few bridges over some enemies, but then you’ll come across blocks like the one with the hopping armadillo on a hill that will require you to sacrifice a few legs to get by. The game also gets more difficult the more legs you lose. You technically have a smaller hitbox when you have less legs, but your movement also gets restricted, making it harder to overcome even the easier obstacles. Therefore, you almost always want to keep all your legs with you and prey you get a good level layout for your run. With that said, it’s a really fun and addictive game. The music, I recall, is really easy going and nice to listen to, so it’s really nice to play for while without getting bored. I haven’t played the 2-player portion of this game, but the single-player version would definitely make for a nice game to put on the market, even if it just made money from ad revenue. Block 1 was pretty solid as a whole. I was able to beat through most of the games, and the ones I couldn’t only needed a few changes to make them more playable. I would say Naked Bootleg and BOOTLEGS were the best of this block. One really good things these games shared, and I’ll bring up later on if/when I review the other blocks, is a low level of entry. These were games you could pick up right away and now exactly what to all the time, which is really important when you’re creating something for a game jam, especially for the Gong Show. There were a few games in this and past jams that could seem fun to play, but because you needed to know so much before going in, most people stop playing without even knowing how to play it. Awful Runners is a good example of this. When you start playing, you have to have the instructions up at the same time to get a sense of what you’re doing. Also, it was weird to have a lot of the actions set as hotkeys, but not have UI for it in game. Like, hotkeys are a useful shortcut IF you know where they are. Anyways, I hope people got something out of these reviews. Maybe I’ll do some for block 2 later tonight. Who knows! EDIT: Another thing I wanted to add about this block is that a lot of these games, as well as some in the other blocks, had really excellent music and sound design. It's weird that this jam kind of underplays the importance of music in these games, what with people making music not being technically being counted as members, though it's always appreciated, and having nice (or really any) music can really step up the quality of a game. Harold Krell fucked around with this message at 20:19 on Aug 5, 2017 |
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Aug 5, 2017 20:10
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Harold Krell posted:
Thanks, I was feelin a bit rough after how badly it went down on stream. I've had some discussions with fellow jammers and some folk outside and I think I got a better idea of what went wrong. Ultimately some questionable design choices, some technical faults, lack of playtesting and the difficulty combined with a lack of check-pointing ended up with a very gong-unfriendly product I think (as well as real rough in general imo). I'm actually making the physics more megaman-like, because the physics used were an attempt at a Mariolike and after talking with people the general impression seems to be it just didn't work for a game like this! I shared a build in the discord with some adjustments and the feedback has been it's feels better. Between that and some other things mentioned I'm hopin over the next week I can have a version of it that's a lot better polished. Some hard lessons this time, but I think in the long run good lessons. The main thing to take away from the gong experience is have your games playtested more! Anyway I'm glad you got something out of it and thanks for the thoughts. But yeah some liked it, some didn't, hopefully takin the negative feedback on board will result in a thing more people like and some ideas of how to do better next time. Raujinn fucked around with this message at 21:43 on Aug 5, 2017 |
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Aug 5, 2017 21:40
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Wow lots of good feedback Harold Krell. One of the best parts of the jam is reading what other people think of your game, and their thoughts on other games too. Really helps to get perspectives on games and get ideas to improve for next time.
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Aug 5, 2017 21:45
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Harold Krell posted:The main theme is really nice and crisp with its (I want to say) Sega Genesis styled music. The voice clips themselves are modulated to have that old-school Genesis quality sound as well, which is pretty neat I think.
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Aug 5, 2017 23:02
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Part 2 Gong Show starting now: https://www.twitch.tv/awfuljams
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Aug 5, 2017 23:57
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Since the Awful Jam always tends to happen before/during/right-after a major Unity release I wrote a userscript that lets you set your preferred unity documentation version and relocates the version switcher to a much more helpful place. https://twitter.com/EntranceJew/status/893974035129802752 direct link
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Aug 6, 2017 00:22
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If you haven't checked out Team Punch fights game, you totally should now because there is a new PATCH With extra cool FIXES!!! http://www.awfuljams.com/awful-summer-jam-2017/games/punch-fight-7-boot-to-the-head
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Aug 6, 2017 00:59
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So I was able to catch some of the stream before heading to work this morning (well, morning for me) and I have to say, I'm surprised how much people seemed to not hate my game. There are a few things I want to clear up though! First, the game is actually not meant to be that complex. I didn't have time to finish two of the games and redid the game with 15 minutes to spare (I forgot the jam was running on central time and thought I'd have a bit longer to test it out.). Several level/game jumps took you to the wrong frames, meaning there's some parts of the game you missed, like Friend Bear's Funny Activity Pack and the coliseum battle against him. So basically, the game you played is a hosed up abomination and should be destroyed. The actual game I was able to submit for the contest was unfortunately not what I'd planned and the public build will have most of the issues fixed. Similarly, the wingdings in Panda Sufferer were displayed that way because your computer was looking and failing to find a Capcom font. I forgot to convert the text to objects in that particular level. Like someone kindly translated, it's "RESCUE PRIESTESS"! And "OHH! Priestess." Next up, the RPG game: the random encounter system didn't work well, and I've since fixed it. That being said though, if you press f, you use the run command and instantly end the battle. Lastly, the scan lines shouldn't be showing up the way they did in the stream. They're definitely not supposed to be THAT annoying! While the game leaves you to figure some stuff out on your own, the public build is much less aimless and complete. That being said, the game show interface is the same. It was much easier for me to use the quiz object than script it myself, and I personally felt that it didn't detract too much from the full package. I'm typing this on my phone from work, so when I get back I'll post the public build. Hopefully you guys will play it!
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Aug 6, 2017 02:24
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SUPER MEGA 256-IN-1's download already 404's
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Aug 6, 2017 03:22
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E: Im dumb as hell; the gong show ruled, good work everyone.
a cyberpunk goose fucked around with this message at 05:19 on Aug 6, 2017 |
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Aug 6, 2017 03:23
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Nalesh posted:SUPER MEGA 256-IN-1's download already 404's Oh for real? Well... not for long!
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Aug 6, 2017 03:37
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Apologies if I didn't respond to anyone, I'm trying to post without reading much to minimize spoilers! I'll get to it! More coming later.SystemLogoff posted:ShexEx - ShexEx Classic Edition by Team Last Second Xibanya posted:SimShine by Team Dogpit WrathOfBlade posted:Kurm Frog Teach ABC by Team Punch The Moon  -based gameplay fitting well. Maybe not the gamiest game but a great experience. Really good job of making everything feel cohesive. I can see this one getting around!KRILLIN IN THE NAME posted:b00tl3g kr3w by 10 jams 50 jams a hundred jams  I'm tempted to change my background, also. And a neat little experience, too, almost makes me want to drag out an old copy of mIRC (with the black theme, natch). The only downside I have is that while I thought the physics tweaks of the games were cool there wasn't one in particular that I latched onto. Maybe Tetris, but it was over so fast! Speaking of, some of us are getting to the age where b00tl3g kr3w could technically be #JustGrandpaThings. Another recommendation!Dieting Hippo posted:Missile Champions by Team Not Sure
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Aug 6, 2017 09:59
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So I just finished watching the gongshow. I'm glad you like BatHyphenMan or at least got a chuckle out of it. The guns give you extra lives, obviously! I thought it would be a bootleggy thing to do, to just use a completely inappropriate graphic like that. But since you really have infinite lives, it really doesn't matter anyway. I didn't have time to put a gun counter into the HUD, because I used the last hour or so to throw together the last two stages. And "fix" some bugs. (And by fix I mean, disabling continues and getting a game over). I wanted to get a proper last boss fight in there, but again, there wasn't enough time left. It was still pretty funny that you killed it with no lives and one HP remaining.
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Aug 6, 2017 12:40
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God drat there's a lot of games to get through. Here are my thoughts on what I've played so far: DMCA Takedown - Sieze and Desist - I loved the sprite work with this game. I'm not very good at brawlers so I couldn't get far in this game (the room with like a million people ganging up on you was too much for me especially with the 2 hit health I had... no I will not use the shield). Some nice music here. Was great to see the progress screenshots with this game. b00tl3g kr3w - One of the things I liked about this game is how each bit felt a bit like Krillin's "140 games or less" project. There's a setup of a silly premise, and then there's a punchline (or multiple). The aesthetic of this is pretty cool and oh god I'm getting nightmares about irc again. I liked the multiple responses that you could put in chat, and that it didn't matter what you were typing it would still type out what you wanted to say. Nice. JUICE - Ok, a Mario hits his head on the block gag with blood particles going everywhere gag, that's nic..... wait what's going on here.... why is the scenery changing.... why is Mario shooting George Costanza? What the fuuuuuuuuuuck. In all seriousness, I liked how this game played. Although I wasn't a particular fan of the pacing (Mario was a little too slow for me and I have no idea if it was intentional or my computer having terrible framerate). I didn't finish this game cause I got killed by the final boss (I believe), which then took me right to the start of the game and I couldn't be bothered to do another 20 minutes to get to the end again. Other than that, I enjoyed this one a lot more than I thought I would. Krum Frog Teach ABC - A wonderful metaphor for the jam itself to be honest. I love waving around krum frogge and having his little arms flail about. The art in this is great. Some minigames I find a little harder than others, but overall it's pretty good. Also, it works on mobile! Krum Frog on the go! Merioz 20 : To the land of flying and to flowers - What if Mario but with unity's weird physics? This was a pretty fun game. I especially liked how the fireflower thing would let you spit out fire infinitely and was almost a manoeuvring mechanic in itself. Liked the game and glad that the game ended before the gimmick got stale. Soul Castle - I have never played a Dark Soul. Wasn't sure what to expect with this game. I liked how it was almost a rhythm-esqe game (I don't know if that can be said for other souls-like games) where you have to time correctly when to swing your axe or dash across. I loved how the game got weirder and changed style as it went along (this seems to be a theme in a lot of games this year). A really good endboss that requires you to think about your moves rather than straight up mashing towards their face. A good game. Red Planet IV - Ok the first thing I did was I went to the options. I then noticed that it was in "hard mode" so I thought "I'll just move this to easy because I suck at SHMUPS". After 5 minutes of going through every one of the options (which assured me wasn't an easter egg) I then decided to play the game and got owned instantly because the screen was filled with enemies. Well gently caress. I didn't get far in this game. Partly because I suck at SHMUPS but also it felt like an awful grind to get any upgrade. I liked the music though I probably only heard the first opening notes. BOOTLEGS - A good video game. Didn't try multiplayer, but singleplayer was great. It surprised me when I saw a bootleg falling off the first time, but I liked how the walk functions differently the fewer legs you have, adding a little bit of challenge and skill into the game. A nice little thing I've gone back to a bunch of times Smash-em Randall - This was a wonderful allegory of being trans. The world in which the main character lives in, forces the main character to live a life of being male. This is a destructive life that forces them to brute force through life in order to get to the end. However in doing so, they don't live life to their potential and therefore get the "bad end". By changing over to a woman the main character is free to live up to their full potential and reach up into new heights until you reach the "good ending". As a man, the main character in unhappy, and a lot less colourful than they are when they're a woman who's more happy and colourful. The game is short but then again that's reflected onto life itself. Life is short and if you were to live your life to the fullest then surely you'd prefer to live a more colourful and happier life living to your full potential rather than being unhappy and grey and destructive to yourself and things around you. A good video game. PUNCH FIGHT 7: BOOT TO THE HEAD - I never seem to get any luck with Unreal Engine games in these jams so I can't really say I get excited (like some people) about playing any game made with it. That being said, this game looks pretty good. I was unable to do the first jump, firstly because I failed to realise that you can change the camera view with the mouse and fell over; and then after the second time when I tried to do it but only missed by I whisker i gave up and closed the game because I had such a hard time navigating getting back to where to make the jump because moving around is pretty hard with terrible framerate the first time. Someone please buy me a new computer that can run video games thank's The Smash Boys vs. The Nerdy Boys - Harold Krell does it again. Man the animations in this are great. The selection screen is a highlight in this. The boss fights and the build up towards them are also great. Oh god those blood smears. Oh god the thrusting. Yeah this is great. The only problems I found were that rounds took ages to complete and nerds somehow need like a million hits to get killed by buff boys but there we go. --- Anyway it's time for the Other bounty I have. Guessing who will win each category The google form is here: https://goo.gl/forms/9nTcfOAn2INU4NZS2 The form will close sometime before the 11th so get your entries before then. Winner with the most correct guesses (which if there is a draw I'll be first name from a hat) wins Glittermitten Grove. --- Anyway, sorry if I'm being a bit slow with this. I have like a post mortem to write as well as playing the rest of the games. Lates
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Aug 6, 2017 16:25
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a cyberpunk goose posted:E: Im dumb as hell; the gong show ruled, good work everyone. Don't do that! I'm glad you voiced your concerns because I've been struggling to compose mine into a readable and constructive format to help make the jam better. I also disagree with your original statement that it was somehow your fault. It's not your fault that your game doesn't get the same leeway that other types of games get on the stream. There are issues with the Gong Show that I think should be addressed in future. Everyone wants to make the jam better, and everyone wants it to grow, and it doesn't happen if you diminish your feelings and opinions. Share them! To your original point, there's an unfortunate side effect to the format that discourages games which are more complex, require more attention, or skill to show off their strengths. As it stands, this will probably keep happening and it makes me feel really uncomfortable when I see a game get gonged before it gets it's point across to the streamers. I know everyone involved wants to help the teams grow and get feedback, and in general they do accomplish this goal, but I think that it can very easily leave a team with the feeling that their work is being dismissed or ignored. I can't speak for any participants, but I don't like the idea of someone having to justify their game getting gonged and think "Yeah, they're right, pfft, my game isn't very good, oh well". It's not very constructive, and I don't think we should downplay people's passion or investment into their work, even by accident. Judges definitely put more time into their reviews which is very helpful, but the stream has a certain level of significance where it's by far the most attention any game gets during a jam. If I wasn't determined to play every game during a jam then I would definitely be discouraged to give some games my personal time. I fully understand and approve of many aspects of the format. Jon plays all the games on stream and plays them blind because the alternatives are infeasible, but at the same time, judges could be more insistent to give these more unusual games the time they need. At least once or twice every jam a judge or two will say that they didn't manage to finish a game. This is usually understandable because sometimes people submit near-broken or obtuse games that are very frustrating. But sometimes it happens and I'm watching and think "Wait, really?" when a judge admits to not having finished a game because I did and it took me less than 20 minutes to do so. I'm not very good at games, and it gives me the impression that judges can fail to show some amount of respect for the work people put into these games. I need to reiterate that I don't blame any judges for this, especially not in particular, because everyone has obligations and time limits and it's voluntary which is something to be respected. With this in mind, maybe there are other formats that the end-of-jam stream could adopt to better represent the games. There could even be a longer gap between the deadline and gong show so that judges have more time to deal with games, though I am sure scheduling around everyone's responsibilities is probably a huge chore. I don't have any good solutions as of yet, but I'm sure adjustments can be made. And please don't regret having shared your frustrations. We're all adults and we understand that we get emotionally tied to things we spend a month working on entirely out of passion. You didn't say anything lovely or weird and you should not feel bad about it!
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Aug 6, 2017 16:38
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Giggs posted:... I agree with most of this. I would also point out that sometimes it seems like the judges are inclined to like games with a bigger thread presence (lots of screenshots, progress reports, etc). I don't know how you fix "judges read the thread" though.
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Aug 6, 2017 17:06
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I didn't see too much Gong Show, but the first judge did a good job on advocating on behalf of the games -- giving Jon a little guidance and motivation where he thought it was warranted. It seemed like he spent a lot of time with the games, even the awkward/difficult ones. Obviously we can't demand that of our volunteers, but kudos FirstJudge and anyone else who spent extra effort trying to better understand what we spent a bunch of effort trying to create. I think that kind of judge advocacy would go a long way to alleviating these kinds of complaints. I also got ripped pretty good on the Gong Show, sometimes frustratingly so but always understandably so. I knew people were unlikely to read optional instructions and I don't think mandatory instructions are great game design, so I opted for an audio narrator that would say important things once. I think he was too opaque, but also I realized as soon as I tuned into the Gong Show that that form of instruction isn't going to work well in a group environment where everyone else is talking. Though I did want to yell through my monitor when I got an, "I wish there were more enemy variety." It happens around the five minute mark! It's mentioned in-game and out-of-game! I even put a variety of enemy types fully-engaged-in-combat on the splash screen so you'd know there was more! There's an options slider for upping the intensity! Such is life; lessons learned (or at least noted). On the plus side I got entirely unexpected praise about my end-of-world background image. And a crash that I genuinely have no idea what may've caused it. I spent so much time testing. So much...
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Aug 6, 2017 17:09
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NuclearEagleFox!!! posted:I agree with most of this. I would also point out that sometimes it seems like the judges are inclined to like games with a bigger thread presence (lots of screenshots, progress reports, etc). I don't know how you fix "judges read the thread" though. Not just the judges though. Flick through the reviews in the last few pages of the thread, it does seem like everyone plays the same few games to the detriment of the others. I'm pretty sure there are some games that will get no feedback outside of the gong show.
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Aug 6, 2017 17:35
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