Their was a Llamatron contest remake at the pdroms site which the site hosts home made games. Well its easier said than done since a few coders went and didn’t do so hot in the comp. The art played a big part since it was more presentable and seems if you had a good design and bad art you would have lost to someone that had a bad design and good art since someone complained about it which I don''t think that statement is fully true. The contest was based on “Music, Sound FX, Graphics, Animation, Game play & Originality”. The game Llamatron was on the Atari ST but you can play it for free off the pc since some people didn’t home made version of it. The game plays like the original Robotron how enemies try to run you over or shoot at you and you are supposed to shot them all down within a room. I know the person that won and helped him out a little but he would have gotten first place without my help because I knew the art was very presentable and I didn’t think that the rest would go that far with the art. Personally I wouldn’t have done the game different. I have not tried other games in the comp so I can’t say how well they are. Too bad GD doesn’t have mini competitions. But when asking here for programmers many find it impossible to make a game within a month, even though I entered an older comp with a game that was made less than a week and did average despite my game not having any sound, art, animation, or variety. I also got a prize which I gave to the coder, despite me going against people that had a sound, art, animation, and a month time to make. If I had more time I would have done something else or completed the exiting game to give sound, art, etc. to be more appealing. Kind of like the saying goes if you have lemons you make lemonade. *************** OK here are 2 questions: 1. How would you improve the game Llamatron in the category of “Music, Sound FX, Graphics, Animation, Game play & Originality”. 2. And if you did make a better remake with your own sprites and code wouldn’t that mean you can sell it? I think the answer is yes in a way and designers should try to first remake old simple games better than want to jump and make something original at their first try by asking people in the help wanted forums.

Bullet-time? Music that speeds up when the enemies get nearer (increasing the pressure)? Power ups? Health? Less difficult? Enemy reinforcements? A smart bomb every 10,000 points? Different shaped arenas?

good points AP

The contest was sponsored by datel http://www.datel.co.uk which they are in game since 1982 it seems. And the winner got around $1000 to just make a small remake which was easy money it seems.

========= One site said about a side contest to it
http://sinistar.sparked.net/gdr.php
"A representative of Datel has expressed interest in minigames for the GameBoy Advance on extremely short schedule, to be completed by the 25th of January 2004, for financial compensation in the potential range $1-3000 US. IRC logs are here (public), here (private, okayed for release), and here."

[edited by - warsong on February 14, 2004 7:35:27 PM]