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Giggs
Jan 4, 2013

mama huhu

awesomeolion posted:

TheOrange, Supernorn, and I have each chosen a word in secret and then combined them to create our team name: VEG BOY REPUBLIC



Logo by Supernorn

Great name/logo, even better (and impressively annoying uncomfortable :v:) phonetic misuse of Cyrillic characters.

I'm looking forward to another big dang jam with all you talented people!

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Giggs
Jan 4, 2013

mama huhu
I put forth the nomination that the theme be " 'Axl Rose: Gimme Some Reggae' ", please and thank you and please.

Giggs
Jan 4, 2013

mama huhu
I figured out a game to make earlier today but I thought I'd share some of the ideas I'm not using in case anyone else is still struggling and needs help brainstorming:

1. Game about selling bootleg/fake goods wholesale, choosing the amount and price to retailers and then having that factor into difficulty in the "action" stages between sales stages

2. Marketing/Shopsim haggling game of selling stuff to people, inspired by this KITH sketch

3. Pirate themed smuggling game, fighting through authorities to deliver goods (Could use alt setting like Canada/US border in the 80s, running cocaine through the forest a la Fire Walk With Me)

4. Bootleg game design game where limited resources cause design choices (enemies / movement / music / art), playing the game after designing it

5. Cosplay bootlegging game, like a dress-up flash game from the mid 00's, but resource management stuff included in materials/practicing the voice or dance or something, attracting photographers?

6. Make an NES or Master System which runs on an emulator, like a real bootleg

7. Game about a bootleg character trying to find their place/game, meta story like Wreck It Ralph (I assume that's what it was about)

8. Game based around mashups of popular franchises but bootleggy and especially weird (Halo/Mario, Fez/Solitaire, Gears/Minecraft)

9. Bootleg for isolated countries/areas (ie. Crazy Taxi in Pyongyang -> Sensible Taxicab, obey rules, no one around/can afford taxi etc)


Hope this helps someone come up with something or at least formulate some general idea of where to go.

Giggs
Jan 4, 2013

mama huhu

Drone posted:

I'm doing something similar to this. The player is a fisherman-turned-rumrunner in 1920, bringing booze to the East Coast from Canada/Bahamas/Europe. I've got a neat resource management mechanic that I'm working on for it that I hope is actually fun and not total poo poo: the booze you have on board can be used as ammunition, at the cost of cutting your profits

I like the sound of that, and I'm absolutely sure you can get it to be not-poo poo.

Giggs
Jan 4, 2013

mama huhu
4 days in, got my idea, spent some time writing stuff down.



And then 25 solid minutes of doodling in photoshop wha-wha-whaaaaaaaaat heeeey look at those heads. Thought of animating it in Graphics Gale but couldn't figure out why it wouldn't "play" so instead I recorded it with gooncam and manually changed the frame. Good start.

Giggs
Jan 4, 2013

mama huhu
day 5:
collision, movement, couple mechanics and unnecessary polish dust effect thing for some reason.

also decided all the music I'm doing for this game is going to be SOUNDFONTS so that could be fun.

Giggs
Jan 4, 2013

mama huhu
Day 6:
more like a game, added little crowds, shadowy hiding spots, a vignette, barely got started on AI and spent some time messing around with LMMS and soundfonts.


ALSO TOILETS. gif is zoomed in to make smaller gifs, it's not so claustrophobic really.

Giggs
Jan 4, 2013

mama huhu

Lemon posted:

Crowd dynamics! Vision cones! Terrible placeholder art!





I think we might have vaguely the same idea for our games! I was surprised that no one else seemed to have thought of the third popular meaning of bootleg besides Games & Booze.

Giggs
Jan 4, 2013

mama huhu
I've had a couple days of actual productivity, luckily.

Game

AI is in, things can go places and do things and lose the player

Adding a mechanic to the little groups whi--

Meant to flip sprites via x_scale * -1, but instead flipped them by x_scale * -x so they exploded.


BETTER.

Also added Volume control, bystanders, disabled seeing-through-walls, and other boring junk. The amount of artwork I'd like to do for this game might be unrealistic, going to rely on repeated tilesets probably.

Music
Game is set in the early/mid 80s, and I was listening to a lot of music from the era for ideas/inspiration, and the songs are supposed to sound like those things but eventually just turn into parody/close-enough-without-copyright-issue songs.
I don't know if I like that or not.
Managed to fiddle with a couple songs I wrote last week and wrote a few new ones.
Lounge type song
Uhhh.. Enjoyable Separation?
Moody brits love A Minor

Giggs
Jan 4, 2013

mama huhu

This looks great! I want to try that batman bat-slinging.

Giggs
Jan 4, 2013

mama huhu
If it's an NES cart-like you can justify unusual fidelity out of particularly deft use of the Namco 163 chip which allowed for a max of 8 FM channels, each with their own editable waveforms which can result in surprisingly full and "high" quality sound from an NES. Here's even an example of the 163 with a DKC song cover that's pretty nice, though not necessarily indicative of the breadth of stuff you can do with it. I don't think this is that important but hey, I wrote sentences about it for some reason.

I'm simultaneously excited and demoralized by the quality of everyone's games. I really want to play Afal's game right now but I'm probably not going to have any time until after the jam is over anyway, stupid responsibilities...

Giggs
Jan 4, 2013

mama huhu
Fast Forward Record Rewind is done and up and ready for public consumption!



It's a stealth-ish game. It's got music, and running and sprites of drums as seen above. I'd describe it more but I'm typing 3 words at a time between shooting down carts in Bootleg Miners. I'm on level 12 and can't tell if there's and ending but I'm going to see if I can't find out! Level 13!

All the games I've played so far are good!

Giggs
Jan 4, 2013

mama huhu
Here's some thoughts about 7 games.

Bootleg Bernie and his Album Making Journey
Same general idea for the jam! Yay! Great minds etc etc. A simple top-down stealth/punchy game about recording live shows for money. The mechanics work well and guards/touts behave predictably, and the text components are funny. I would have liked to play more levels, at least of the stealth part. I like the idea of passing out your card before the show, but it does go on a little long (on subsequent playthroughs I skipped it at least partially). If you were to expand the game I might suggest adding more obstacles/features to the time-killing stages. My only negative opinion is that during the recording stage, guards’ vision cones are removed after a long enough period without suspicious activity. This can make it difficult to predict how safe you are as guards who are nearby might instantly turn to see you and shut off the speaker without you realizing how close they were. Also it would be nice if the garbage cans blocked the guards’ vision. Good solid little game! Well done.


DMCA Takedown - Seize and Desist
Supernorn did a great job on the design and animation of the characters. The music is nice, and the VO in the opening is as well. Two hits is too few, though. The windup of the attackers is a little short and so it’s pretty difficult to CRIT SHIELD them reliably. Unfortunately the background is a bit blurry too, making Supernorn’s very pretty art a little less very pretty. It’s a shame you all didn’t have more time to flesh this game out, it woulda been nice to see more of all the things! And then punch them.


Tamale Drive
Hatchi matchi. I really enjoyed this. The title screen/main characters art is so pretty, and the music fits very very well. The minigames are varied enough with random distribution, though I got the DVD catching one about 5 times in a row on Day 3. I also got pegged with a strike despite there not being a cop (I think, at least. I definitely didn’t see one afterwards). Despite that though, it’s a fun, relaxing, well made game. There was a thing that was clever and I don't want to mention it in case it spoils it for others, but kudos to you for that thing. Good job!

Note: Rogelio’s needs to shaaaaaave that thing.

b00tl3g kr3w

Again, Krillin makes a fun and good game that is funny. The typing and desktop controls are fun and functional, the games are all enjoyable and silly, the music is well made and appropriate, and I love that god drat hedgehog sprite. I love it. The opening was also very very good. I would have enjoyed some more of it, and if the IRC messages changed depending on your input (I tried a couple and didn’t see any differences). But those two tiny things aside, a job well done!


Bootleg Miners
Duck hunt, Tim Allen’s idiot sounds, NES cartridges being propelled by rockets through the air. It’s like a time machine to my childhood. I got pretty far in but if there’s an ending, I doubt I’ll be able to see it. The light-gun black flash thing works really nicely, and Gus makes a good noise. Good Noise Gus. It’s a little thin, but the increase in speed really gets to be a kick in the butt past level 10. Simple! Clean! Frustrating! Well done.


JUICE
Note: After I beat it I went back and jumped up into the first block repeatedly until I died just to make sure … it would happen? I guess? The audio breakdown around the first transition was well done. I enjoyed the different weapons, though the Tesla gun isn’t as useful and crazy as I was hoping for. It also lags quite a bit when there’s too many bullets or enemies on screen which is a shame, but not that big a deal. The use of sprites/backgrounds from various properties was pretty well done, and the final boss design was good, and also funny. -100 points for the sullying of the ™™™Halo™™™Energy™™™Sword™™™’s image through inaccurate representation of it’s functionality! I liked it.


DüM II: Heck on Earf
Do you like cool art? Cuz this game is for you. Visuals are amazing, flat-out. The music is very very good, as are the sound effects. It’s a bit short, but there’s so much in the components that add to a feeling of … significance? It feels like a big deal, even though it doesn’t last that long. No bugs in my experience, luckily! The floating powerups are a good improvement from mid-jam floor-powerups. Those’ll get your powerups covered in dirt and grim right quick.

Giggs
Jan 4, 2013

mama huhu
I played more games!

Missile Champions
The game started off okay. Some back and forth, jumps, boosting all around. Real sports, like back in the day, before Car Soccer became so commercial. Then it hit. A streak. A 7 goal streak by the CPU, with no small amount of help from my own drat teammates. Were they in on it? Did they take a bribe to throw this game or perhaps they Tim Donaghy’d us. I can’t say. All I can say is that I fought for it, like the best of em ever did. I won god drat it. God drat my teammates, god drat my enemies and god drat the ball, I beat em all. 10-7, final score.

It’s fun! From the nice sprites, to the pretty boost trail to that one song I’ve definitely heard but would never be able to tell where I knew it from. Luckily its name was given in the credits screen, which was itself very nice. It also apparently runs at 3k fps according to Fraps. Huh!

Also well done on the progress reports on your game page. I haven’t read them yet but I gave them a scan and it made me wish I’d kept up with that practice.


Overreach
I think the Controls menu has a typo: it says arrow keys, but only WASD works for me in-game. This looks so nice, the presentation mid-match is slick and colourful and pretty. The audience is surprisingly nice too, you can really tell the Dowel people apart. It’s good that they’re represented! It’s a bit button mashy and since my arrow keys didn’t work I was playing one handed which I was not … great at. It’s quite satisfying to kill the dang CPU after I got ruined in the first couple games. Again, the effects and presentation are so good. I also don’t have anyone to play with which is unfortunate for many reasons, so I can’t attest to how fun that can be. Probably pretty fun. I’m pretty sure it’d be fun.

Unfortunately I have to give the game a 0/10 on my premium videogame review website marioandsonicshouldkiss.com, because it doesn’t support my Dual Shock 1. (it probably would with x360ce or something but I didn’t try, I know)


Legs
I spent what, 20 minutes running around, kicking your unresponsive body into the water. I’d talk about the aspects of the game but they’re going to be pretty heavily tied into actually playing with other people. I am looking forward to this a bunch. Once you get used to the locomotion of LEGS then it all feels pretty nice and solid and usable. The visuals and calm water noise is very fresh and inviting. I want to kick LIVING people into the water with my bunny legs. I’m sure the opportunity will present itself quite soon.


Newer, better image
Welcome Treasureman
I was pretty excited for this one. Wouldn’t work on FCEUX but works on FCE Ultra. It’s frustrating, but in the way that NES games were frustrating. It’s simple, and after a few runs I’m pretty confident in my knowledge of the map but aaaaaaaah dang NES-type controls and physics. It’s fun. It is. I’m not saying it simply because I refuse to not finish it, it is fun.
Also, I’m imagine this was relatively difficult to program. I have to assume you wrote this game in C because assembly is just … unacceptable.
EDIT: I did it! Good game, good megaman shooting and everything!


Naked Bootleg
This is a very unique and interesting game to be in a jam like this. It’s pretty impressive and quite a bit of fun. Some music would probably go a long way, but otherwise there’s tension and planning and the same authentic fury that only a middle school football coach could know. “BLIMPERTON I SWEAR TO CHRIST IF YOU GET STUCK ON RANDAYA AGAIN I WILL DELETE YOU”.

Most surprising game of the jam so far, I’m inclined to say! Good work. I got a little stumped by the last couple plays but I learned to use my players properly, as shown in the screenshot that now, after the fact, is probably completely illegible.

This play failed immediately

Booze Blues
This game was frustrating. It took me several tries to get to the first checkpoint, and then dozens to get to the second. The gap between some of the obstacles, namely the slide -> jump combination windows were a little too tight. I think there might be something janky going on with the transitions between animations where sometimes you can jump or slide almost immediately after letting off some other action, and sometimes you have to kind of wait until the other action’s animation returns to the default run animation before you can do anything else.

The visual style is very nice, the animation of the PC is smooth and pretty and the music fits unsurprisingly well. I'm still going to keep playing it and see if I can't defeat my silly impatience!

ShexEx - ShexEx Classic Edition
Good voice acting quality and performances, a nice variety of bootlegs, though I wish there was a little more interaction in a few of them so that the experience would be a bit longer. Funnily enough, I went to the control options page, scrolled right until I hit some configuration, then accidentally hit the “I’m done here” button and went back to the games screen, no idea how to get back in there. I figured it out though, don’t worry. I also then noticed a reset button for the controls exists.

Giggs fucked around with this message at 03:08 on Aug 3, 2017

Giggs
Jan 4, 2013

mama huhu

awesomeolion posted:

Fast Forward Record Rewind
- Neat premise (I now understand the talk about similar concepts was in the thread haha)
- I couldn't really tell what I was supposed to be doing after doing 3 or 4 levels. Does it only record while that bar is going down? I would set up my recorder and then I was like okay now what do I do and would wait a bit and then go end but wasn't getting good scores I think? A bit more detail on the score screen would really help I think. Like i got a 0 and a 2 and a 3 at different points, I'm assuming more points is better? Maybe you shouldn't be able to pass without a 3 or 4 so that the player needs to know what they're doing? Or maybe you get money for the tape based on the overall quality (score) of the recording?
- Anyways I enjoyed it and it made me smile GOOD JOB!

Thanks for playing! The point of every level is just to get in, place a recorder, and get out. I should have really emphasized the need to get in and out as quickly as possible so that people wouldn't get confused about whether or not they're supposed to try and record for longer, or take the recorder with them or anything that isn't just "Plop it down and run!", which as been a common comment for it.
Also my original idea involved replaying levels as well as choosing/buying equipment, but I ended up scrapping it all to deal with how late I got started.

I played a couple more games. I HOPE YOU LIKE WORDS.

BBA SLAM
Alright, I’m confused. Here I thought we were going to have a nice game of Basketed Ball in the jam for once. FOR ONCE. But then instead there’s rhinos and cars in the street. This isn’t the game I grew up with and loved. Not with this few dinosaurs.

Really though I am confused. I'm sure I collected HORSE in the first couple levels and it’s peachy and then later on it becomes a fail condition, I couldn’t figure out the sewers after several attempts and I somehow always forget some of the buttons by the end of the game. It’s funny that I didn’t notice you could scroll the Control menu until I changed the MENU FOV in the Settings menu. I was working off intuition before that! What an idiot I am.

The glitching, the menus, the screaming, and the music are all quite good. The production is nice here, for sure. Even the exit screen is animated in it’s nightmarish way. The selected target or whatever you’d call it is a little finicky, I’m never quite sure how to wrangle it to the thing I want to destroy/toggle/lovingly pass the ball to. The Larissa announcer legit reminds me of experiences from my childhood I would have been fine without remembering. That sounds dark, but it's not. I went to Ukrainian school and that voice is just ... unsettling and familiar. That's weird. It's weird that that's true.

This was fun, well done. The backboard’s a real piece of poo poo.



SimShine
Okay. I put off playing this because I wanted to give it a whole buncha time, based on what Team Dogpit had been posting. There’s a lot here. This game is a lot of game, which is really impressive. I’ve played it for about 4 hours so far and haven’t bought half the locations (more on this later). The systems all seem to work as one would expect. They show progress, even simply, which is a huge part of not becoming bored with the game. The equipment warbles and shakes, then when it sends a thing down the pipeline, the pipeline flashes. It makes all the difference to be constantly reminded of something happening in these sorts of games. The music and style are both well executed. It all fits nice and snug.

Because I’ve spent more time with this than most games I have more ~*opinions*~, especially because of things like repeated actions which multiply in one’s memory. The limit on some items in some equipment seems a little on the low side. 25 water and 25 grain in the pot on stove is just low enough that it feels like I need to check back in too often. Eventually I hired an employee to save me from this, but the dang dingus just crammed whatever was in the crate into my stove. I realized I needed to buy a crate to move stuff I didn’t need in the stove somewhere else, but giving employees a recipe to follow I think would be a better solution. It could just be a list of things to take from a crate to a machine even, that’d work. I was also confused about rotating the employee. I do like the idea of manually rotating employees. It’s weird. I didn’t know there were recipes until I was told by the game, a couple months in. Unfortunately some of the text is cut off in a bunch of different places, though most often in the recipes menu. The equipment/recipes aren’t very well explained. Bourbon is made with Large Still/Vat/Metal Barrel, but are they all required or are some of those things alternatives for other things? I mostly just picked something cheap from the list of “made with” and goofed around until I got what I wanted. It took me a while to realize “trashing” my equipment meant “sell” instead of just, you know, obliterating it or something.

Near the end of my session I ran into a bug. I was looking at some menu or something and heard a whole bunch of jangling. Cosmo chimed in to complain about the feds, when previously I think my HEAT was only around 20% (btw, how did we both pick variations on such a name?). I noticed my production in one location was all done, then later when I put ingredients back in to keep going this happened. I’ll try loading an earlier save to see if I can keep the game going past that point where I might have done something wrong.

The balancing could use a little tweaking too. I went from Moonshine to Gin for a very short time, then straight to Bourbon. I’m not sure there’s any reason to make anything other than Bourbon as soon as you can get it, and you can get to it pretty quickly. It also kinda feels like there’s not that much reason to buy more properties. Considering mob payments and heat and stuff, it seems like it’s probably better to just stockpile cash, then rush the ending (note: I haven’t tried this yet, I don’t actually know what the endgame is like).

I hope the team decides to keep working on this game. I really do like it, it’s one of the most impressive games I’ve seen in these jams the last few years. You should be proud of what you made for sure! My complaints here are all from a place of love. I like this game and I want you to make me like it even more because I like it so much already. I forgot to mention! The voice acting is very well done. Also I hate Cosmo? Maybe that’s a strong emotion, but something about the character really just… pisses me off. Screw that dingus.

I legit have to not play anything else today because I spent so much time on this, ha! I would have waited to write this later after I finish the game but I've just got so many FEELINGS right now about it. Great job!


e: fixed the youtube link, doh

Giggs fucked around with this message at 23:05 on Aug 4, 2017

Giggs
Jan 4, 2013

mama huhu

Jo posted:

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
Thanks for the kind words and feedback! I didn't make the explanations clear enough in-game, I think. I even went back and tried to make it clearer after similar feedback, but still it's not crystal. Like Hammer Bro mentioned, you just drop the dang thing and leave. It's unintuitive but I thought it made VIDEO GAME sense. Oh well!

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 actually didn't even realize you could leave the recording device unattended.

Fast Forward Record Rewind
https://vimeo.com/228314404

:v:
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!

Giggs
Jan 4, 2013

mama huhu

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!

Giggs
Jan 4, 2013

mama huhu
I've some more game thinks:

Bat-Man and the Sacred Stones
What a neat, enjoyable little package. This game is full of funny moments, it has varied enemies, good music selection and art. The web slinging mechanic is really tight and feels great. There are secret areas, or at least areas one wouldn’t think to go looking for hidden around the place. It’s so cool! Mashing up Batman, Spiderman and Superman is a great idea and fits the theme so well. The bosses are also well done, tight like early megaman bosses with patterns to learn. poo poo. So good. The only negative component to this game is the respawning on death during a boss fight. While I was fighting croc I was holding space and up, and died. When I respawned I pulled myself right into the spikes on the left side of the screen. This is a good game. Good job!



Kurm Frog Teach ABC
This game is beautiful. The music is also appropriately adorable. It’s funny and fresh and attention grabbing. During the applause I could hear the Kermit scream in my mind, and when it finished I managed to get hit by a vegetable after the text came up and it was interrupted and skipped. I thought that fit really nicely, like it was realistic or something. Some of the gameplay mechanics are a little unbalanced or wonky though. The camera is a little tight around the Mathletic Race thing and final encounter. I don’t remember if it’s possible to skip/miss the second Mupet Show applause section, but it was really suprisingly difficult. Those small veggies come at you so fast that it’s very difficult to avoid them. It took me a couple minutes! Minutes!

Very good writing, it was a treat to read through this game. So many wonderful aspects to it! Well done!


Merioz 20: To the land of flying and to flowers
Well you already got your readme called out for that post morty, so I’m looking forward to it. It’s fun to gently caress around with Mario, flipping around, tossing a hundred fireballs all over the place, being able to jump off the sides of blocks or even the debris from broken blocks mid-air. There’s something to this concept for sure. The audio is a little disappointing, but I get where you’re coming from with it. Maybe you could have relied more on instruments rather than your voice, or at least chosen to record the audio a little more clearly. I think the idea was that it’s bootleg-y so the audio should be too, but it gets a little grating/boring. The lack of other sound effects is also a little let down. Having audio interrupt other audio could alleviate some of the more creative problems that arise with the mechanics of this game and/or any worry of overuse of your voice at one time in-game.

Another cool thing would have been to use some like, home made type instruments. Paper in a comb harmonica, or some kind of janky-rear end marimba, I don’t know. It’s a cool space to play around in though. Nice!


Thriftynauts
The idea for this game is pretty neat, I’m into the idea of scavenging parts off of enemies to build yourself up. If you had more time it would really have served well to work on the balancing of some of the mechanics. For the first 12 minutes any wings I found were needed for recipes, so turning was just molasses and I ended up setting up shop on top of the base and watching the minimap to pre-spin towards the enemies. I read the readme and saw that Brakes are meant to help make tight turns, but it seems their functionality is also tied to your momentum, and if you’re stopped, they don’t function (or I was just so full of poo poo it didn’t help enough :v:). The other main issue is that it’s very difficult to choose not to take on junk when you really don’t want it. The things I mentioned previously led me into having a wildly sprawling ship and so when I managed to finally kill something, they were almost definitely on top of some part of my ship and I took on whatever they dropped.

The enemy variety is good design. Stabby ships, pushy ships, normalish ships, they fit nicely and make use of the physics in a cool way, though perhaps spawning the different varieties earlier would be better so people get more of a chance to see what’s in store.

The music is nice and space-trucky, and the concept for mouth sounds isn’t terrible, but it all multiplies and also makes the talking-bits from the base hard to hear and mixed up. If it were possible to duck other audio groups or something to give the speech more clarity that’d be cool.

Also the explanations of items on your game page/readme would be more useful in the game itself, as the Tips screen is a bit hard to read due to thickness of the brush. There's something in here!



Angry Minion Bird and Shrek
My brother watched me play this one and asked “Mannekin Piss?” when it booted up. I said “Yup” and played for a while. A few minutes later we were both laughing out loud and he exclaimed “I loving love this game”.

The main game is fun enough, though easy to cheese, and I decided at the time of my playthrough not to beat the high score (especially because it would have taken so long) but even when I tried to fail I almost didn’t. The ending is just insane and I loved it. Like IJ said on the stream, that tongue was pretty interesting. Unfortunately the leaderboard seems to be down? I'll always have this to remember Not In My Hakusho, at least. I look forward to your stuff every jam!

Giggs
Jan 4, 2013

mama huhu
More!

Awful Runners
This is another game that I really like the idea behind. Running between ports with contraband, dodging the Sea Fuzz, making a name for yourself, it’s all good. Unfortunately this game is cursed. Or I’m cursed? We’re both cursed? I played this shortly after the deadline and was totally lost, and gave up. Recently I read the awfuljams page and realized what I was supposed to be doing, and took another shot at it. I went across the mainland to try and sell the Rum I picked up at the start, and then continued on to try and get a feel of what each place was looking for. I ended up in Oxford, and then the curse manifested. The wind was heading East. For 3 days, it headed east. Getting out of Oxford and along the coast was a total slog, but I didn’t have money to go south to the islands and buy other cargo to even kill time, I’d just end up in the same place. Here’s one thought that might have helped alleviate this issue, if you can’t move or need to move a bit faster, perhaps you could spend some of the more realistically “spendable” cargo on your crew to row forward or something. No wind? No problem, hold down some key to force feed your crew Apples and watch your ship pick up speed!

Then I make it to Hamilton and drop off some booze and earn those wonderful ducats, and what happens next? Wind is going E. Takes a while to get out and around the peninsula and start heading south, very slowly, to get more goods. Get around the peninsula and halfway to Costa Libre (which didn’t even have booze to sell to me, ironically) and the wind switches North. :eng99: If I was a pirate all this stuff would be useful storytelling elements when I’m at the tavern commiserating with fellow cutthroats and such, but it gets tiring fast in game.
I appreciate the lack of music for the sounds of the wind and sea, though maybe some different audio would help keep up the players spirits through the appropriate and (mostly) relaxing journey. Also the wind indicator on the compass is a bit misleading and would have been better if it mimic'd the boat flag's pointing to where the wind is going instead of originating.

This is a difficult sort of game to make, let alone in a month. I’m surprised how much I enjoyed it when I took the time to actually figure out what I should be doing and how to play it. gently caress the wind gods and nicely done!


The Booze Barn
When I watched the stream and heard this game was 15 repetitions of the same cycle of 4 games I thought, “Wow, that seems like a lot.” But then it turns out to only be 10, and I actually would have been fine with 15. For a first foray into 3d this is quite good. None of the games really take much advantage of it, but that’s a smart choice to have made (assuming it was made consciously :v:). The minigames are all fair enough, though some are definitely more difficult than others. I was a little disappointed to not having been able to afford every upgrade, despite getting perfect scores several times. The corn/bug game really ramps up by the end of it, but before it got too hard, I did manage to pull some Zoro-rear end shenanigans that I was pretty proud of. The boiling minigame powerup actually made it more difficult for me. I didn’t buy it until month 8 or so and I suppose I was used to the very heavy inertia of the blue arrow, so when it was suddenly half as heavy, it threw me right off. The speed of the little yeast thing after the upgrade was really nice. Zooming around tons of fart noises was nice.
The story was adequate, though by the end of the game it sorta just drops off. It started off pretty dramatically, but the end of prohibition kind of takes the wind out of its sails. Perhaps some choices could have been added to the game in terms of how the character addresses his family and their newfound wealth. Totally unnecessary, but hey … it could be cool?

The various sound effects are nice, and the music is calming, though some more variety would go a long way. A job well done.



Soul Castle
I think I get the idea that it’s parodying a type of game that’s self serious and brooding, and dark and mechanically, uh, direct? Decisive? But the really good bits of this game are hidden behind what can be a pretty frustrating first 5-10 minutes. The last 1/3rd of this game is loving great. The first time I played it I didn’t have any trouble, didn’t even die until the boss fight. I just replayed it and had a much more difficult time, but poo poo, that ending.People should see how this game progresses, at least. Ultigonio is still a good good music maker (is the Ending Theme anywhere to be listened to or downloaded?)

“...and the castle … it looks so ominous. As time comes to a halt [snickers], silence starts to overflow my CRIIIES, are inconspicuous… Wooden man, are you punishing me? Is this the price I’m paying for killing all skelet … ons? This is my re .. demption song. I need you more than ever right na-ooow. Can you hear, me now? Cuz I’m the final, knight, and I killed the, ro bot man, and now the castle is in a white void. I don’t know where I am, but… it’s not … I’m alive again but the truth is that I’m only one … finalkniiiiight. After all the laughter dreamk leaving my dreams will come to life… (whispers) come to liiiife”



Crazy Smuggler
Good idea, but it’s just a bit on the wrong side of frustrating. The cops are brutal blues-brothers ludicrous drivers which is fun and funny to see, but when you get bumped and don’t have the time to get back into motion these cops will ram you like you’re a palisade in 15th century France. At that point you’re guaranteed to have your car destroyed which is a bit of a bummer. The hits you can take are pretty limited, and it seems the booze is better at surviving these hits than your car is. I even once had my car destroyed when I went over a sidewalk and managed to have my hitbox just clip it enough to cause a collision which took something like 20% of my car health away.

Balancing is probably the biggest issue with the game. It sounds good, it looks alright (though the mosaic shadow thing is weird, I’m quite curious about that), and the car has a nice sense of speed. The boost powerup is great! The slow mo I could take or leave. The core concept is rock solid, and bootlegging would fit around the gameplay really nicely.There’s the skeleton of a fun game in here but the bones are kinda misaligned, unfortunately. I look forward to ATNC’s next jam submission!



This totally makes sense. People don't give a hoot about the developer's intentions/effort if the game annoys or frustrates them, they can just move on to something else. But you said it yourself, SimShine is a particularly complex game for the jam and it got a whole lot of time, mostly because Everdraed expressed his trademark enthusiasm, support and positive attitude. Many judges over the years aren't so insistent that you follow their instructions and so they let games get gonged. Maybe the game is bad, but maybe it's just different and even the judge isn't exactly sure how to show off it's strengths. The jam is, at least for now, still pretty small, so that's why I was thinking there could be more focus on each game. Also, I'm not advocating for being positive to bad games. I'm pretty sure I didn't say anything like that, but if I did or gave that impression, that's my bad. I don't want the stream to turn into you and the judges trying to come up with ways to say nice things about bad games. That would be terrible. Thanks for replying, Jon!

Giggs fucked around with this message at 19:13 on Aug 7, 2017

Giggs
Jan 4, 2013

mama huhu

TodPunk posted:

I really don't get why this game jam is still not understood, every year. The Summer Awful Jam is about making a game and getting some decent industry level feedback in a real-but-not-shark-tank way. You (to nobody in particular) make a game, you get feedback on design, play-ability, art, and some exposure to how an audience would perceive it.

The Gong Show is that last bit, and ONLY that last bit. That's all it has ever been. You get one promise: your game will be played if it can run at all. (Just watch a stream and see how much effort goes into making that happen on a stream. Even the emulator ROM game was discussed, ahead of time, to make sure it got a shot.) The rest is purely a judgement of how it plays, as is.

It's not a discussion of your intent as a game dev, it's not a discussion of your strengths or weaknesses, it's a display of how well your game is to stream and experience from a new player.

Want it to be something else? Seriously, just go do that on a different stream, or have your friend do that. Post the link in here, whatever. You might accomplish your goal, you might find out your goal is unrealistic. I don't know. Just don't complain that this long-standing thing doesn't meet your specific whims. It's meeting most of its audience wishes. (Hint: the devs are not the entirety or even the majority of that audience). I mean, you can still complain if you want to, I guess. I mean, I'm not going to care, but your road to whatever you call success is your thing, you do you.

If you wanted a happy-go-lucky time, you should probably just make the game and then not pay attention to the rest, assuming you still feel the need to participate in a game jam built around this feedback mechanism.

Always remember, getting validation for your actual games is going to be so very much harder for you than Awful Jams. If you're complaining about how not-catering-to-you the Gong Show is, wow, you have very little hope in games until you get over that. That I can promise: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZTSUxsuo4N8

This is a bit of a harsh response to people voicing their opinions. No one is demanding anything, not that I've seen. When I was trying to encourage cyberpunk goose to share his thoughts and not downplay them, I was hoping that a discussion would take place and it has been. I've been surprised and encouraged by the level headedness shown by everyone involved so far, and so I'm a little confused as to why your post is so dismissive of this discussion.

I've been participating since Shalinor had the reigns, I know exactly what the Gong Show is every time it happens. I love that the organizers and judges take valuable time away from their personal lives to help others try to grow. There are issues to this format that may, perhaps, some day, be addressed that aligns to some participants concerns. Please don't come in and say "You should know what it is, get used to it" or something equivalent that simultaneously makes people who want to talk about it seem like they're being belligerent or petty or childish (e: and that they shouldn't have opinions).

TodPunk posted:

If you wanted a happy-go-lucky time
This is really uncalled for. It's dismissive and mean.

The reason I hadn't attempted to have this discussion before was that I was worried someone would think I was being pissy about someone else not loving my ~*Sweet Darling Baby*~, when I know my babies are stupid jerks that aren't very good babies. People aren't asking to be coddled, they're not asking for special treatment, they just want to have a discussion to see if there are alternatives that can be explored which may be more constructive. The Gong Show is helpful, it is useful, it does what it sets out to do. Could it do more? Maybe. Let's have that discussion.

Gunzil posted:

Since you asked for it, here's the ending theme, it was the last thing I did before submitting the game (also I was drunk) https://clyp.it/hly2eths

Thank you! I was giggling like a goof when I saw you posted it. It's a good song, especially for having been drunk at the time. Well done.

Giggs fucked around with this message at 00:41 on Aug 8, 2017

Giggs
Jan 4, 2013

mama huhu

TodPunk posted:

No, it is neither dismissive or mean. It is addressing a specific arc which was expressed in several posts. If you're taking it literally, I'm open to rewording suggestions rather than painting antagonism where there is none. Either have the productive conversation you claim to aim for, or argue. I'll join you for one of them.

If you have suggestions for what more could be construed /from/ the Gong Show, I'm all ears and the other judges will attest I am willing to ask these kinds of things, as I often do. They just can't amount to one of the following, because these have been addressed ad nauseam:

- "I don't like it." (Not because we don't want to reach you, but because this is meaningless and unactionable)
- "I want it to do other things outside the aims of the GS" (The goals have been stated. If it detracts from those goals, we all agree that's the wrong direction for the GS specifically)
- "I want it to do a thing that will take monumental effort" (This is the most plausible productive point that has to be dismissed because it is a cost/benefit problem. There have been a few of these over the years.)

Now accepting points that pass this filter. Try me if you don't know if it will pass, I'll let you down easy if you are trying to be earnest. I would advise not throwing accusations of my intent, though. You either give me the benefit of the doubt or I won't extend you the favor back.

No one flatly said "I don't like it" as far as I remember. I could not ask or expect anyone to hear such a statement as a serious thought. It has been suggested that the Gong Show maybe should not be settled on as the solution in perpetuity. Goose tries to open the discussion by asking why this is what it is, and I think people were not understanding this being the main point which led to some frustration from those involved. I think it's clearer now?

Gunzil posted:

I agree. Like it or not, the gong show as it stands is the canonical showcase for awful jam entries.

JonTerp posted:

We don't like that it's this way, since Gong Show was never meant to be a "showcase" and are working toward getting more exposure for submitted games on other popular streams.

a cyberpunk goose posted:

Okay, well some feedback then: it'd be cool if it was this way, or had some room to be this way in some cases.
I thought the discussion was going fine. I don't know why you said the things you did. If the Gong Show's goals are never to change, that's fine. The point was just to ask why not, and to give some reasons why maybe, it should. Those reasons have been given so I don't understand what the issue is. You don't have to take these benign opinions and extrapolate them into thoughts like "You'll never make it professionally if *wow* you can't even handle the Gong Show not catering to your specific needs". I'm paraphrasing and emphasizing not because I'm trying to belittle you or make you sound a fool, but to emphasize what aspects of your posts were phrased in what I think is acceptably understood as dismissive or even condescending.

Am I a crazy person? Did I get this far in life and never realize how bad my reading comprehension is, or that I'm an emotional infant?

TodPunk posted:

I believe this could be solved by putting the gong show after judging has actually happened. This would mean more suspense in time without any information, but would alleviate the catch-22 of intent vs void-filling need we humans tend to have.
Hooray! Discussion! Points! I like it, if it's possible.

Hammer Bro. posted:

I believe the scalable answer is for everyone who wants their game to be reviewed to themselves review the games of others.
this this this

Giggs
Jan 4, 2013

mama huhu

TodPunk posted:

I'm hoping this will be taken well, but to be honest, your posts in this thread before I got here have left me questioning a bit of your intent.

I'm disappointed by this, to be honest. I didn't think I was being negative or harmful and that is, I would like it to be known, the last thing I intended.

I don't remember previous threads having discussion like this. It's been a while, and I don't remember taking part in those discussions before, so I will totally accept that I've just forgotten. I am fully aware that I didn't provide any concrete solutions to the concerns I was talking about, but I thought that at least bringing it up could lead to some kind of progression. It was probably unfair of me to put that responsibility on others, but the alternative in my mind was to just not say anything and that feels like a bad decision to make. My thought process was "If they disagree, that's fine, and if they don't, we can talk about it". I wasn't aiming for some resolution or quick change to materialize from nowhere. I also didn't expect any kind of widespread acceptance or validation. I just thought that expressing my opinion was the right thing to do. Perhaps that was selfish. It just irks me that people who would have negative feelings would also be the least likely to bring up criticism and I wanted to open the space.

I will be honest, after I first posted about it I immediately thought, "Oh no, this could go real bad." but chose to think better of everyone. I didn't think it got anywhere near as toxic as it could have, but I suppose it's not my place to make that decision.

TodPunk posted:

I will just end by reiterating that addressing a group, especially through text, is nuanced and difficult, and I think we've all done well at turning the negativity around this time.
Agreed. I just don't want the discussion to end because of some negative posts when there were also quite positive ones. I hope you can understand why I had issue with those parts of your posts that I mentioned. I don't want to belabour the point, but perhaps in future it could use some consideration.

Hitlersaurus Christ posted:

Things are getting kind of heated here... we should all play some Super 256-in-1 to calm down imho
I am going to do this, along with some other jam games!

Giggs
Jan 4, 2013

mama huhu
I've almost played all the games. Woo!

Red Planet IV
The music is great, and evolves over stages. The cutscene art is really quite nice, and the gameplay loop is equally fun and frustrating. Someone on the Gong Show mentioned Spelunky I think, and it’s an apt comparison from my perspective. Knowing the rules, playing run after run, and momentarily forgetting about them leads to a suspenseful and often disappointing conclusion. I died so many times. I still haven’t finished it, I have the window open and silenced while I’m writing this because I need to not play it for a while before I get back in. The background on stage one has too much contrast and makes vision a little difficult, especially since precision is so important in this game. The first dozen or so lives can be pretty rough, since everything feels so underpowered, but I’m surprised by how quickly one acclimates to the enemies and earns the money to progress.

The enemies themselves could be more varied, though the difficulty would probably ramp up unless the distinctions were minimal, and the first two bosses at least are actually kind of easy. I like that, to be honest, considering how stressful dodging bullets can be with the regular enemies. Bosses don’t have to be particularly difficult to play a meaningful role in games.

The third stage is very hard. Even with cloaking and full shields I have yet to reach the boss, but I’ll keep trying. This is solid!


as you may be able to tell, I've hit a bit of a wall

BOOTLEGS
Well it’s really good, I don’t know what else can be said that hasn’t been already. It’s so clean and neat and contained. It’s cute and a great theme interpretation. One thing I’d like to see considered is the frequency of hazards at the bottom of blind drops, but I guess if you really want to do well you can just learn where they are. It feels tight and about as predictable as can be when your spider has 3 legs unevenly spread out from its body.

I hope you look into the possibility of releasing this widely somehow!


Super Gargle Blaster
“suited blyat” Nice. My only major complaint is that it’s pretty easy to lose track of your direction when you’re flying around the place and your sprite is pretty small, among a bunch of other crazy moving objects. I’m not sure how to fix this, perhaps some visual marker of the front of your ship like headlight beams that trail off? Besides that though, I’m impressed by the powerup selection variety, and really their existence. The audio is nice, though some background music would be cool. The last level also raises the difficulty a bit steep. After a few tries I did manage to beat it and was rewarded quite well. I also liked the opening crawl, it got a chuckle or two from me.

The overlay when using the Martini Timespin was also a really nice little touch. Good thinking!



SUPER MEGA 256-IN-1
Alrighty. Yup, sure. It’s a good idea for the theme, and the path is more or less easy enough to follow between games. I hit a bug in Castle of Black Man where hitting space cued the shots, but they didn’t fire until I turned the character the other way, and then they all flew out at once. It was cool, though not super useful. The silly dating game thing made me laugh a few times, as did the ending dialogue in Zodiac Bible III in the coliseum. The inclusion of Honeybee Havoc was really nice. I didn’t play Game Ball 98 my first time through so I went back to see what was up with it, and it was pretty informative.

I’m not big on scanlines and by the end of it I was a bit tired of its affect on the legibility of text, but otherwise everything matched up consistently in terms of visuals (besides Game Ball). It was fun to go around the different games, and though the ending was pretty long it was still enjoyable. I expect things (I don’t know what, specifically) from you every jam and you always bring it, so I’m pleased!


Giggs
Jan 4, 2013

mama huhu
The last batch of games have been played.

Smash-em Randal
It’s very short and simple, and I’m not entirely sure the point of the game gets across. My assumption is that the goal is to avoid the corruptions and make it to the end. To that end, I did it and got the “debootleg ending” which I think is the good ending. I’m sure you’re aware of the negative aspects of the game so I’ll try not to belabour it but I’m going to point things out anyway because I think it’s helpful. The difference between the new and OG character isn’t particularly well built up. Either you can jump or you can’t, you can not break things or you can. This idea for a game is a good starting point, but unfortunately you weren’t able to really capitalize on it for the jam. The controls felt a bit swimmy and the wall jumping was awkward. I think decreasing the time of impulse from the wall you were touching could help with this. The way it is makes it feel like you don’t have control for the period when you jump away is pretty significant for a platformer. If you had more time obviously more levels would have been good to add.

I’m also assuming this is your first jam, so if you want to keep participating I hope you do so.



PUNCH FIGHT 7: BOOT TO THE HEAD
The theme adherence is nice and different in this one. Having a disembodied voice talk mad poo poo was pretty funny, though the ending was the only part that really got me good. Some more exploration into this concept could have been really cool, like spawning weird objects to block your path or shrinking the size of your wheels so you move slower or expanding them to make it difficult to control or something. Making your boosters unbalanced? Uhh… changing the texture of the rover to say “F U” instead of “USA”? Endless possibilities to mess around with pirates! It was fun and relaxing, though if it weren’t for the setting the rover’s speed and maneuverability may have become grating. The music definitely keeps the player soothed though, so it’s all cohesive. Ultigonio is still, still good at audio.

It looks really nice. It’s clean and crisp and colourful in the right ways. The water (is it water? or is it ethanol or something?) is a bit clashy in terms of its hue, but that’s pretty dang minor. The physics objects also get angry at the universe sometimes and try to vent their frustration through wild, aggressive flailing. I had a bit of a buggy audio thing, where taking the long elevator (the one Jon wanted to try experimenting with that box during GS) cued a second song to play over top the song that was already playing.

Your amendment on PUNCH FI6HT came true, and I’m glad it did!



Headphone Hero
This game is really close to being much better which is frustrating. A bunch of small things all add up to make the experience worse than it needs to be. Some of these things include: The gravity is pretty high, especially considering how tight the camera is. Movement in general is just a touch too fast. Losing power in your shots by taking damage feels like odd punishment. The amount lost also leads to an unfortunate average decline since getting hit subtracts 3-5 pips or so, but landing a hit only adds 1. If you have a level 2 og blaster weapon thing, that means a notmario hits you, and you can only hit it once as it dies immediately. The height of platforms necessary to jump on are too close the the peak of your jump and consequently simple jumps are oddly difficult. The earned weapons are too weak to start with and getting them powered up is very difficult. Some of the enemy placements are unavoidable traps which feels unfair. No checkpoints before bosses! (I don’t know if you respawn at the boss fight if you die in there, I didn’t die then). The levels are decently long, but without checkpoints it’s too harsh.

On to the positives. The bootleg characters are great, and they animate really really well. Twerk Lion is my favourite and should win the jam itself. Best game of the jam is just the Lion. I love this lion. The music choices were fitting, the backgrounds/environmental art are nice and consistent. The bosses, while they could use tweaking in terms of tells or how ridiculous a rocket volley they can fire, are good replicas of megaman style bosses. The story idea is interesting, and shooting big walls of energy is fun. Enemies are distinct in both movement and attacks.

In summary, I’m excited to see what you submit next jam, when your jam-legs will be stronger and better able to support your jam brain while it does the heavy lifting. What a stupid analogy. Keep it up!



The Smash Boys vs The Nerdy Boys
The audio was great in a number of ways. The jingle for the Smash Boys was catchy and appropriately rockin’, the noise made by punting downed enemies multiplies by not limiting the number of instances of it being played when doing a combo makes it much more punchy and satisfying, and there are plenty of instances of repetition for comedy's sake which work well (each end of stage). Variety in behaviour or animations or mechanics with the different PCs would have been great, but it doesn’t negatively impact the game with its absence. The inter-level screens showcase the humour well too.

The parallax of the water looks great, and the boss designs are goofy and fun. The introductions are fun and quick which fits the genre. Their behaviour is also simple and effective, though perhaps SHAAAARK could have had a second attack or something. SHAAAARK was also sorta confusing in that it's hitbox wasn't completely obvious. I was only totally certain I wouldn't take a hit if my sprite had no overlap with theirs. I liked the voice acting/singing. The first and last stage feel a bit drawn out, and if there was time for different enemies that may have helped distract me from the length. This may also have been my fault though, because I wanted to see what a high score may accomplish, so I was playing it pretty slow to try and get combos. It's different for a beat-em-up to reward careful positioning afaik, so that's cool.

The ending is real dumb. I barely missed getting 100,000 points.

Another really solid game Krell, nice!



Sherlock Holmes and the Three Mysteries
The fact that you went and made a patreon to support the premise of your game is some next-level poo poo. I can appreciate that.

Since text plays the heaviest role in your game I’m going to focus on it. Musgrave’s dialogue works pretty well, but Sherlock's could use some sort of indication of inflection on his part. Ellipses, or phonetic spellings or something to that effect might help convey how smarmy his character’s bullshit can be. Without something like this to make his statements more evocative, they tend to fall flat.

The flavour text around the game is mostly adequate but it feels a bit inconsistent. The bookshelf talking about how the books are empty is a good bit, but the first door is weird in a way that it hadn’t earned.

The main puzzle isn’t as clear as it needs to be. The oak tree can be talked to from 4 different locations, so when it talks about the elm, that’s 4 positions that could potentially be the correct one without being able to be certain. I started from one of the wrong positions and realized when I was stuck against the shed, so I arbitrarily moved upward, continued and accidentally hit the solution space. There’s also a typo that says the elm is to the left, when the oak is almost at the left border, but it’s obvious enough to be a typo.

For some reason the S key doesn’t work on the locations menu, and spacebar didn’t work inside the shed.

I couldn’t tell if there was anything previously given about the chests in the shed, but luckily I started going through all of them near the entrance so it didn’t take too long. If I hadn’t though, I don’t think I’d be able to convince myself to keep playing. You’ve got to be really careful when you design puzzles and riddles and such because there is such a wide breadth of possible thought processes out there and your own mind is so specific and singular. I had this experience recently when I made a big puzzle/riddle event thing for my D&D party even though I knew it might be bad. It ended with me having to spell it out for them almost literally.

I’m not saying to avoid puzzles or riddles in the future, but keeping in mind that there’s a pretty low probability something you write yourself can be solved by someone else and that you should always try to account for alternative solutions is invaluable.

The story is simple but intriguing enough for a Sherlock style mystery, though the ending could have been revealed with more pomp or flair.

I hope you’re not too annoyed by all my criticisms! First jams are the worst jams!


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
After double checking I'm pretty sure I didn't miss any games besides Bootquake which I didn't manage to get a copy of before the show? If I did then please let me know so I can try and give some feedback! Good job everyone!

Giggs fucked around with this message at 21:37 on Aug 8, 2017

Giggs
Jan 4, 2013

mama huhu

NuclearEagleFox!!! posted:

This is actually my fifth jam (SAGDC5 through 7 and an IRL jam InternetJanitor hosted). Anyway:

Welp, that was stupid of me to assume, sorry about that. Unfortunately I was also not the one to email. I'm turning out to be a real dingus!

The chests being in a separate room cut them off in my mind from being a part of the same clue structure thing. With that in mind the prior part also makes more sense in retrospect.

I did mean the reveal of the mystery in reference to the ending, it was given all at once instead of being doled out piecemeal which could be used to build tension or allow clues to percolate in the player's mind. I'm glad to have helped at all.

Dieting Hippo posted:

:toot: The first episode of Jamflix and Chill is up with EntranceJew, Giggs, TomR, and Xibanya! :toot:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GBQ-yutopn0

It'll be live again tomorrow at 6 PM PST, check it out on https://twitch.tv/dietinghippo about then.

This was fun and interesting to hear from EntranceJew and TomR, and Xibanya and Hippo are good hosts and are good at questions.

Giggs fucked around with this message at 03:57 on Aug 9, 2017

Giggs
Jan 4, 2013

mama huhu

NuclearEagleFox!!! posted:

You're not. But it appears I/we have an actual :iiam: on my/our hands.

edit: If you're interested, the email is set up to auto-reply and basically just tells you that Daniel (the translator) got cancer and died mid-translation. It also says to go to the mystery select screen and press 'end', which reveals the "true" end of the game.

Huh. I had looked into the games resources and assumed there was just things cut out. That's unfortunate that it wasn't so obvious to send an email. I just assumed some level of fluff, like you mentioned. What a cool idea!

Giggs
Jan 4, 2013

mama huhu

Doom Goon posted:

Cute little stealth game. For programmer art and whatnot it was pretty charming! I wasn't too into the stealth mechanic (the time and retries thing kind of discourages searching for patterns/setting a plan and rewards brute forcing for speed) and I think the guards would've benefited from some pathing, but I'm always picky about stealth games. And they're hard to develop! I'm glad you tried one, though, always bonus points for stealth games. And overall I was pretty pleased with how the story and setting felt!

Thanks for playing and giving feedback! The stealth genre is made to be picked at, for sure, because it needs to feel right and if it doesn't it's frustrating or feels cheap. You can restart the level from the score screen to reset all the rankings and start that stage completely clean. I figured it'd be a way to allow for experimentation but it also kinda nullifies the significance of the ranking since you can retry endlessly without consequence.

Maybe it's an easter egg?

Yes. It's an easter egg.

Giggs
Jan 4, 2013

mama huhu
My post-mortem is up! I detail a bunch of poo poo (mainly the process) but also how I made the intro logo animations some people seemed to like. Also the music and stuff. It's 4400 words long. I don't expect anyone to read it, but if you want to know almost anything about the game, take a look!


Nate405 posted:

If anybody is interested, I've updated the public build of my entry, Naked Bootleg. I tried to smooth out some of the problems that were highlighted on the gong show. I've also added a passing mechanic, which can be seen in three new puzzles added to the end of the level select screen. Finally, several people mentioned that the game seemed suited to mobile, so I've included a first pass at an Android build. It works pretty well, although I will probably need to increase the size of everything a bit to make it more comfortable with touch controls.

Yeah! I'm gonna check this out right now.

Giggs
Jan 4, 2013

mama huhu

Nate405 posted:

If anybody is interested, I've updated the public build of my entry, Naked Bootleg. I tried to smooth out some of the problems that were highlighted on the gong show. I've also added a passing mechanic, which can be seen in three new puzzles added to the end of the level select screen. Finally, several people mentioned that the game seemed suited to mobile, so I've included a first pass at an Android build. It works pretty well, although I will probably need to increase the size of everything a bit to make it more comfortable with touch controls.

The passing mechanic is really cool. The way it draws the line of the receiver while you're drawing the QB's path is a great idea.
I don't know how I feel about how the pass has to dodge the defenders between the QB and receiver though, perhaps a short "lob" could be applied to the ball so that blocked passes only occur if the defenders are close to either the receiver or QB.


In this instance the lighter gray implies height where the defender can't touch the ball.

Stages could just be designed around/with it too though, so no big deal.

Very cool!

Giggs
Jan 4, 2013

mama huhu

Doom Goon posted:

Another super in-depth post-mortem from Giggs! Great concept art there, so clean! I also didn't realize at the time you did the music and that so much went behind it. I, um, didn't actually know what a SoundFont was!

Ah! Thanks for reminding me! Now all the tracks are on soundcloud and in a playlist if anyone wants to listen to that stuff.

Giggs
Jan 4, 2013

mama huhu

Afal posted:

Fast Forward Record Rewind - Cool stealth game. Liked the mechanics with this one, and I liked that you could easily go through the story without too much punishment for "not doing the job". I couldn't seem to score anything which was odd to me. Cute aesthetics.

Thanks for playing it! If you picked up the recorder before leaving then you don't get any score. You've got to leave it on the floor, despite it making no sense. I didn't explain it very well so that's my bad, but I'm glad you got something out of it!

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Giggs
Jan 4, 2013

mama huhu
I had to miss the stream of the deliberations but I'm caught up and congrats to all the winners! So many teams made such good-rear end games.

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