I am currently in San Jose CA for a business trip. I am going back to Dallas TX on Saturday and I was thinking the flight back is like 3 1/2 hrs and boring as hell. Figured I would challenge myself by attempting to make a game in 3 hours. My python and c# skills are weak, so I figured I would pick either pygame/pyglet or XNA and make a simple game. I have a few of rules. 1. I have the rest of the week to think about the game, game play design etc, but I cannot commit anything to paper or any electronic media it has to exist in my brain. 2. The game has to be original It cannot be a clone ala pong, space invaders,tetris etc 3. I cannot use any of my existing code, that means anything I created before 9am pacific 3/7/2009 ( time of my flight). 4. The game cannot be something lame like guess my number neither can it be as awesome as a hockey MMORPG using html and variables. 5. The game is going to be 2d, or text based. There are a few things I would need would need help deciding 1. Should I make the game assets ( graphics, sound or parser if I decide on a text game ) before the flight? 2. Need major help in deciding what kind of game to make I said original, but it does not have to be my idea. 3. I need a sanity check. I have never attempted anything like this before and I am not sure its even possible (no internet access to research or look for help, no books etc) but I figured it would make those 3 hours fly by which is my main goal. Your thoughts?

Sounds like a good idea.

Search the lounge for GDC 3h. There were a few 3h game competitions for the fun of it.

You could restrict yourself to a certain appearance or theme (ie. when entering the plane choose any object you happen to see and use it as a theme for the game).

Dug up the links:

3h GDC II
3h GDC IV

I think figuring out what kind of game to make would take up more than 3.5 hours.

Also, how you define a "game" will also determine whether you were successful or not. I could make a text based "Guess my number" game in 10 minutes. So yes, you could create a "game" in 3.5 hours. Making a Hockey MMORPG on the other hand...

its very possible. Create your assets beforehand. When I was in college, we had finals where they handed us assets and gave us an hour to write a game. Granted it was frogger, but still ;)

The hard part is having assets, so with that out of the way you should be good to go.

Puzzle game might be easiest.

You could always do something crazy like Number Munchers (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Number_Munchers) meets Bejeweled or lol.

That probably sounds like more fun in my head than on paper.

See my 3H-GDC contest for an idea of what a person should be capable of in 3 hours. Gads, I can't believe it's been so long since the last contest. :(

Remember to take off approximately 40 minutes of your flight time as you will not be allowed to use your computer during take-off and landing.

John

You can! I won a T-shirt here for doing that once :-D

Quote: Original post by Endurion
Sounds like a good idea.

Search the lounge for GDC 3h. There were a few 3h game competitions for the fun of it.

You could restrict yourself to a certain appearance or theme (ie. when entering the plane choose any object you happen to see and use it as a theme for the game).

Dug up the links:

3h GDC II
3h GDC IV

Thanks for the link. That seems interesting. I will review the examples.

Quote: Original post by capn_midnight
See my 3H-GDC contest for an idea of what a person should be capable of in 3 hours. Gads, I can't believe it's been so long since the last contest. :(

Why not start another one?

Quote: Original post by coding penguin

Quote: Original post by capn_midnight
See my 3H-GDC contest for an idea of what a person should be capable of in 3 hours. Gads, I can't believe it's been so long since the last contest. :(

Why not start another one?

I am currently and concurrently: designing and developing three separate software projects (only one of which I'm being paid for), planning a business (which is what the other two projects are about), and researching and applying to grad schools. If there were some sort of pre-built contest module on GDNet *cough*Superpigwherethehellisitalready*cough*, then it would be possible.