Mar 23 2005, 2:47 pm
In response to WoePoet
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Dession
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Would you automatically divide the prize money? Or do you want us to do that on our own?
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GokuDBZ3128 wrote:
Sorry to disappoint you, but usually the BYOND staff hosts competitions such as this when necessary. The prizes are usually much, much better than this, such as a free BYONDscape subscription. Actually, $10 a pop is on a par with a typical BYONDscape contest. We usually throw in a subscription or article credit or something, too, but that's because they don't cost us much. :) I do not know how you can judge/rate the games when you cannot view the source code and can only play it. The point is to send you the source code to see how it was coded, worked out, planned out, and how the gameplay is. To tell you the truth, I do not think you have the skill/experience to judge games at this point in time, so you are most likely just wasting your money. You're probably at least partially right -- if nothing else, WoePoet, being fairly new to BYOND, might have a hard time finding a lot of people to commit to a contest sponsored by an "unfamiliar face." On the other hand, you never know! WoePoet, if you go to BYONDscape.com and search for "contest," you might be interested in checking out some of the rules we came up with for past contests -- obviously not all of them will be useful to your particular contest, but some of them were written based on experience with previous contests, and might help you avoid various questions and problems. | |
Hmm, is there any restriction on the type of game? Like Simulation/RPG/Driving/Action etc?
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Kunark wrote:
Like Tiko said, you should narrow it down. Agreed. Make it too open-ended and the contest will go nowhere. Probably the section suffering the most from lack of good games would be RPG (which of course is open for interpretation, this is my oppinion), but those would take too long to make... So probably the best bet would be an action game contest. Our number of decent action games is quite low, and don't give a very broad range of different styles. I'm not so sure RPG would take forever. In theory you could build a really great RPG quite quickly, provided you had some good generators for random content. (Of course, there's the real rub.) But look at Lexy's RetroQuest. It was simple, and had missions you could complete to build your character. The problem I've seen with many RPGs is that they're not built for extensibility. It'd be nice to see someone start from a skeleton form that could accept most of its additions (monster types, terrain, etc.) as files. If someone did that they could quite possibly build up a game very quickly, especially with other people to chip in maps or monster/item types. Looking through it now, there are quite a few decent games, but there is still more sub-genres to be claimed within Action. Also agreed. There's a lot still to be done in Action. Lummox JR | |
Quick question, do you have to send you the source code for the game? If so, I'm sitting this one out. I've got a game planned, with which I've been toying with the idea of for weeks, but have yet to start on anything other than experimental bits to see if things work. Nothing that I want to put in the game is done, though, other than theories and design docs.
And as for the "all by yourself", bit, and the "all done after today" bit, I like those. I think that you SHOULD narrow the genres a bit, but at the same time, a "who can make the best game" is still a decent idea. Who's to judge an RPG against a board game, as someone else said. I'd like to know the exact license you give yourself with what we do send you. Will you be giving yourself hosting access to the best project if we don't want you to be a host of it? Will you be listing it in your games portfolio? Will you be posting it anywhere on the internet? Or are you simply just going to announce the winner and let it be? | |
There usually aren't as many as 10 entries - most contests get 3-7 entries, depending on the contest.
Don't let that put you off, though - the more contests, the better! =) Good luck. | |
I do not want to see the source code. As I said before, I have guidelines by which I will judge the games. I will announce these along with the winner. Also, If you read my original post, it clearly stats that you must make a hub entry for your game upon submission. Or at least I think it does. I have to go, I'll post a longer message later.
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COOL! =D
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Another quick question, I've actually been working on my game for probably, if you count all the time I tried to make other games in the same image, years.
Basically, I've been designing this game for a few months. I mean THIS GAME, not just A GAME. I only actually started any code or icons on the 23rd, am I still qualified? | |
Well, I think I've decided to enter. I started my project on the 23rd. I won't say much about it for the sake of super-uber secrecy, but I'm going to say this: no verbs. And on top of that, I've got a sophisticated HUD system being used...
So far, I've made about 65kb worth of graphics in the time since I started, and written about a thousand lines of code. I've over the last six months probably written about a hundred pages worth of ideas down too... Let's just say I've got a large pool to draw from. What of the completion state of the game? Do you request that all games be 100% finished when they are entered in the contest? If so, I'm not going to finish in time, as I'll probably never be done with this game fully, even when I release the final version. I'm planning on getting this game to a state of playability where about 90% of the features are implemented, but only a small chunk of the world has been finished. Any chance on more feedback? Also, who else is entering? Anyone want to tell the general genre of their game either? I'm entering. Genre is MO"RPG". | |
Ter13 wrote:
I'm going to say this: no verbs. > Whoa, that's makin history right there. I didn't think it could be done... | |
Well, technically, no clickable verbs. The only verbs I'm using are chat based. Any action outside of the administrator panel and chat command is not verb based. Can't say much more. I could make it completely verbless, but that'd be too much hassle to the player. It's just easier to type onto your command_prompt for chatting.
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I have a sackful of RPG style tiles for anybody who wants to use them. I might make some customs for people, but I'm busy with work this weekend, so it might have to wait till Monday.
Anyways, just say so if you need some graphical help. | |
I did it (And still going) in my single player RPG, if you want to take a look:
http://games.byond.com/hub/Kunark/ForgottenMemoriesDemo That's one way of doing it. I do have to say, after working for over a month and a half on systems to make EVRYTHING on-screen, I have to commend a game that even just has no clickable verbs at the least. It can get to be quite grueling. | |
I've found that if you use clickable objects as on-screen verbs, you can do a lot more than I originally thought. I'll outline how my inventory system works.
When you drag an object from a nearby container or tile over your own mob, you try to pick it up. If you are within range, it will add the object to your onscreen inventory. If you click on the object, you will examine it. If you double-click it, it will select the object. Objects have specific actions. Some objects have more than one action, so when you double click it, some buttons pop up above it, and when you click on those, it determines the action you will take with that object. If you drag the object over another object or square in your inventory on-screen, you swap the inventory positions of those two objects. If you want to drop the object, you merely drag it out and down into your tile or, there is a special drop item button at the bottom of the HUD. It's all pretty sophisticated. As for the system I've made to take over for verbs... Well, that's a bit of a toughie. I made a special class of obj that the mob object detects when it's within certain ranges of it. I made the maximum range in the game 1 right now, so whenever the player is within range of one of these special objects, it will call the inrange() procedure to every one of them in range. I basically then, in that procedure manually add the clickable button to the player's inventory Essentially the system works exactly the same as a verb, except in the case of multiple objects in view of the user with the same verb. In this case, the player is supposed to click the verb, and then click the object he wants to use the verb on. As for not having a right-click menu, I've also found a way around that. Remember how the inventory menu had multiple actions for some objects? I did the same thing to these special objects. Essentially, you double click on them, and if you are in range of the verb, the objects apepar in your hud for that object. Then if you move away, the objects disappear. Fortunately, these kind of systems aren't really required too often, as most actions can be handled through the use item action. | |
OneFishDown wrote:
Saying that something is a "good game" is based on what you'd see when you play it. If it is not programmed well, you may or may not be able to tell that just from playing the game. If you can tell that some aspects are poorly coded just by playing, then its detracting from the gameplay, and making it worse. But, it can still be fully-functional and play just fine without being programmed the best way possible. For example, Diablo 2 is not programmed the best. You can tell merely by looking at database tables and running certain (barely noticable) events in the game. It could be a lot more effecient. Either way, it's easily one of the most popular games of recent time, and a very good play. ~Polatrite~ P.S. Most of my BYOND games have had poor code, and I've yet to have a "flop" game. Programming != game design. | |