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Week of Awesome IV - The after party/judging thread

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125 comments, last by rodolfodth 7 years, 9 months ago

Before I forget again:

If you want to advance to the next stage in Forbidden City, press N.

I started to play other entries but only want to do a write up once I've played them all.

Fruny: Ftagn! Ia! Ia! std::time_put_byname! Mglui naflftagn std::codecvt eY'ha-nthlei!,char,mbstate_t>

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The screen is very busy and very dark, and the enemies seem to move very fast, and as a result I seldom have much idea of what is going on--or what just then killed me. It's not even entirely clear to me where, precisely, my shots are going.

I'm a little surprised by this comment, as the enemies move very slowly, and bullets fired are illuminated - so there should not be a problem to see where shots end up...

Also, while the game is dark to set the correct mood, at my monitor (works on my computer! :lol:) I have no problem seeing what's going on.

Maybe adjust the gamma/brightness of your monitor and give it another try?

Gamedev journal: http://darkdroid.com

Homepage: http://www.kodingnights.com

Follow me on Twitter: https://twitter.com/kodingnights

As to the controls, I found that the tyrannosaur would sometimes get stuck on objects (zombies included). Additionally, the T-Rex only moves to the point at which the player last clicked, making movement feel perhaps a little discrete. Perhaps it might have felt smoother if the player could hold down the mouse-button to keep the dinosaur moving--or perhaps better yet, if the dinosaur was moved via WASD or the arrow keys, and interacted with whatever it bumped into.

The getting stuck bothered me too and is my main issue with the game (which I made). I didn't use gravity, and without going into detail I had to use cubes instead of spheres for bounding block ...blah blah .. so yeag I understand this.
WASD was pretty much out of the question If we continue to make this game it is going to be a android/IOS so single taping is what we wanted. However I do think you may be onto something with the holding down to keep moving. That would work well on a tablet.

Thank you again for reviewing the game.

My game does not require the installation it simplys asks if you want to. I use substance designer to make the games art in some of my games so it goes to all UE4 engines. I couldnt figure out a method to remove that so it was left in. Just say no to install and it will run from there.


I don't think that it's the Substance Designer that's missing, but simply the Visual C++ 2015 runtime; selecting "no" to installing this simply ends the program, under both Windows and WINE, I believe.

Apparantly i need to start compiling with the redistributable embedded, it seems msvc 2015's redistributable isn't as widely installed as i had hoped by now.


Eh, it's entirely possible that I'm an outlier in this; I suspect that I install these frameworks and runtimes somewhat sparingly

Edit: i've created a linux build that i'm hopeful well work for you: https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B7OCTMofiWbhTWZPWGNFaGpjZU0/view?usp=sharing


Ooh, thank you! Presuming that this works, I may have a mini-review up a little later. ^_^

Push right to walk the blob off screen and fade-to-black. I was going to put some kind of arrow but didn't have time.


Aah, I see--think that, when presented with a cutscene (i.e. a passive element) I'm unlikely to guess that there's interactivity available without some prompt to that effect.

Great review and I'm pleased you played it through to the end!


It was a fun game! ^_^

If you want to advance to the next stage in Forbidden City, press N.


Ah, I didn't know this--I might go back and play a little more, now that I can get past a particular spike-and-herding puzzle in which I found the spike-collision to be a little frustrating.

I'm a little surprised by this comment, as the enemies move very slowly, and bullets fired are illuminated - so there should not be a problem to see where shots end up... Also, while the game is dark to set the correct mood, at my monitor (works on my computer! :lol:) I have no problem seeing what's going on. Maybe adjust the gamma/brightness of your monitor and give it another try?


Hmm... I just re-played the game, and it wasn't as difficult to control as I remembered, nor as difficult to make out. Perhaps it was just residual grogginess from the preceding end of the competition (and the associated all-nighter), or a transient result of changing the game's resolution. Come to that, I think that some of the lights might have been acting up yesterday (unless I'm remembering another game), seeing how they behave today... Odd.

Nevertheless, even today I'm finding it difficult to spot enemies, and discovered that I can't seem to adjust my aim while holding down the mouse-button to shoot. The latter leaves me rapid-clicking to shoot, and overall I'm still not lasting long.

I might give this one a bit more play to see whether I get any better at it, but I fear that it may simply be a little difficult for my level of skill at such games. ^^;

The getting stuck bothered me too and is my main issue with the game (which I made). I didn't use gravity, and without going into detail I had to use cubes instead of spheres for bounding block ...blah blah .. so yeag I understand this

If feasible for the release version, I really recommend switching to spheres; if your physics system doesn't offer them (or they're buggy), perhaps consider implementing basic circle-circle intersection-and-pushing in your own code.

WASD was pretty much out of the question If we continue to make this game it is going to be a android/IOS so single taping is what we wanted. However I do think you may be onto something with the holding down to keep moving. That would work well on a tablet.

Aah, fair enough--in that case, yes, I suggest having the tyrannosaur follow the mouse/finger as long as it's held, and have it interact with whatever it bumps into (so that it doesn't get stuck on zombies between it and its destination).

Thank you again for reviewing the game.

Not a problem! I enjoyed doing so, I believe. ^_^

MWAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!

My Twitter Account: @EbornIan

how odd, normally that stuff is standard on most windows machines. Sorry :(

The screen is very busy and very dark, and the enemies seem to move very fast, and as a result I seldom have much idea of what is going on--or what just then killed me. It's not even entirely clear to me where, precisely, my shots are going.



[background=#fafbfc]I'm a little surprised by this comment, as the enemies move very slowly, and bullets fired are illuminated - so there should not be a problem to see where shots end up...[/background]
[background=#fafbfc]Also, while the game is dark to set the correct mood, at my monitor (works on my computer! :lol:[/background][background=#fafbfc]) [/background][background=#fafbfc]I have no problem seeing what's going on. [/background]
[background=#fafbfc]Maybe adjust the gamma/brightness of your monitor and give it another try?[/background]

yes...this is my fault.... i made a big mistake and included the version i had tried earlier in the week, rather than your final submission in the archive. I reviewed your game earlier today, and realized it was ridiculously familiar to what i played in earlier in the week.
I'm reuploading a new archive, but for anyone that played dk's game from the archive, please redownload his game directly.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0ByvrLHH7mGvpVWlHekEyMTZxNTA/view
Check out https://www.facebook.com/LiquidGames for some great games made by me on the Playstation Mobile market.

All that said, the reviews

Thanks for the quick critique. Your assessment sounds about right.

The scrolling thing is an interesting note, thanks. I gave it a passing thought on the last day as I had managed to track down a bug that was causing the screen to jump to the location of the most recently created skeleton. It wasn't a big deal when the game started as it'd give a bit of a flyover of the world and give an indication of where the first skeleton was. But then when it jumped to the newly created skeletons it was a problem. I was glad to find and fix the bug, as it pretty much broke the game, and thought that some kind of flyover would be nice to have and then promptly got distracted by other things.

The description I have of the controls on the initial screen isn't right. It should indicate that R-clicking (and holding) near the edges of the screen looks ahead in that direction.

I am now starting on writing reviews for all the submitted games.

I will review the games in no particular order. I will write honest opinions and try to offer constructive criticism, but I will not hand out scores.

My progress can be followed here: http://darkdroid.com/


yes...this is my fault.... i made a big mistake and included the version i had tried earlier in the week, rather than your final submission in the archive. I reviewed your game earlier today, and realized it was ridiculously familiar to what i played in earlier in the week. I'm reuploading a new archive, but for anyone that played dk's game from the archive, please redownload his game directly.

That makes more sense!

Glad this could be sorted. I hope all the judges pick up on this.

Gamedev journal: http://darkdroid.com

Homepage: http://www.kodingnights.com

Follow me on Twitter: https://twitter.com/kodingnights

I'm kinda surprised with the level of project fatigue that I've had near the end.

I suspect that--for some, at least--driving oneself harder than usual on a project results in something like mild, project-specific burnout. I recall that with my own entries in previous such game-jams, I've often left my entries behind soon afterwards, barely looking back at them.

I said previously that I intended to write up some feedback for the game submitted. I've now played most of the games, and here present my mini-reviews.

Note that my focus perhaps tends towards critique, so please don't take it to heart if they seem overall negative; indeed, I had fun playing through this set of games!

I haven't reviewed Relic Hunter, Snake Undead, Light of Felin, or the entries provided by teams "Something Fun" and "7 Day Masochists". Other than Snake Undead, I believe that all require the installation of one or another redistributable, and since these are informal reviews and I didn't want to read through a EULA today, I decided to skip them. I'm honestly not sure of why Snake Undead doesn't run for me, although it's possible that it's similarly a matter of a missing redistributable. My apologies that this means the lack of reviews for these games! :/

Finally, note that I'm not using the scoring-guide given in the first post here, but simply presenting my thoughts on each game.

(Oh, and naturally I'm not reviewing my own game! ^^; )

As an aside, I believe that most of these games ran well under WINE; of the few that didn't, I think that most were amongst the unreviewed group given above, and two ran happily under Windows 8.1 instead.

All that said, the reviews:

[spoiler]

Resurrex

This is a fun idea! The player takes the role of an immortal tyrannosaur, and rampages around eating zombies, regaining lost flesh in the process; this scenario which is introduced in a rather fun little intro. On top of this, when the dinosaur steps into shadow, we see its bones glowing green, in a manner that to me is rather reminiscent of the glow-in-the-dark skeletons that I recall from childhood. ^_^

The first guard that the player encounters quite neatly teaches the player that eating humans is bad: on kicking their way through the door, the player is greeted by a lone security guard (or police officer, perhaps) standing only a few (dinosaur) steps away, firing on them. The obvious thought in a game such as this is (for me, at least) to charge at and eat the aggressor--and upon doing so, the player finds their character coughing up the remains, and their recovered flesh lost.

However, this clashes a little with later developments: In at least one subsequent room, it seemed that I wasn't allowed to kick my way through a door until I had killed the guards that were firing on me. There seemed to be no reason for the door to be connected to their survival, and dealing with them forced me to give up the upgrades that I had earned by eating zombies. Thus eating humans seems to be bad for me... but also required to advance.

Which brings me to my next point: the game seems to be built around grinding. The zombies don't fight back, and so aren't a threat; the humans are a threat, but dealing with them undoes the player's upgrades, and so calls for the eating of more zombies. In addition, it seemed that I lost all of my upgrades when I moved from one level to the next. I believe that there are those who enjoy gameplay based on grinding, so I won't criticise the game for using it, but I am not one such, and so its use left the game feeling less enjoyable for me than it might have, I believe.

As to the controls, I found that the tyrannosaur would sometimes get stuck on objects (zombies included). Additionally, the T-Rex only moves to the point at which the player last clicked, making movement feel perhaps a little discrete. Perhaps it might have felt smoother if the player could hold down the mouse-button to keep the dinosaur moving--or perhaps better yet, if the dinosaur was moved via WASD or the arrow keys, and interacted with whatever it bumped into.

Runic

... I'm afraid that I honestly don't know how this game is played. There seem to be credits and bets, so I gather that it's some form of simulated gambling. One can place "lines", and there's a red button that seems to reset the grid, but I really don't know what is going on. As a result, I'm not in much of a position to review it.

The art is quite pretty, I will say.

Gamut of Blob

This is a really cute game, and a fairly fun little puzzler! The mechanics are interesting (I like the idea of the blobs being too scared to move in the dark, and so being unavailable when left there), and the controls are smooth and effective. The puzzles can perhaps be somewhat brute-forced, but I believe that I found them to be nevertheless interesting.

It might have been useful to have been able to move the screen independently of the current blob's position, allowing the player to identify newly-lit areas when activating switches; if not, it might help to have the camera briefly pan over to such areas when they are activated.

During the introductory text the player can't move, which I think that I found a little confusing at first. In general, I think that I would have preferred to have retained control while text was showing--as was the case with at least some of the texts.

While most of the sounds were cute, I found the sounds for character selection and light deactivation a little grating.

On a relatively minor note, I'm not sure of whether the final cinematic actually ends (and I simply hadn't waited for sufficient time), or the game simply stops there.

Lab Rat

I rather like the interface to this game: a representation of an old computer, complete with bright-green text. The game itself is an interesting idea: the player controls a living human tasked with navigating dark rooms to an exit, while avoiding zombies. To aid this endeavour the player has a limited use, short-lived light source, allowing them to observe the room and plan a route, and a simple pseudo-ASCII map showing their current location--but not that of any obstacles, items, or enemies.

Overall, it seems to be rather easy (at least up to about level fifteen or sixteen, which I think was as far as I played); for the most part the player seems to be able to avoid the zombies by skirting the outer wall in one direction or the other.

Alas, there doesn't seem to be a means of restarting the level, and in one case I believe that I ended up in a dead-end with a zombie (no pun intended :P) which didn't seem interested in killing me, leaving me stuck.

As to art, the contrast between walls and floor seemed a little low to me: I believe that at first I didn't realise that the former weren't the latter.

Finally, I believe that I saw the sprites being rendered slightly out of alignment at least once--although this is somewhat of a niggle.

Sepulchre

First of all, this is perhaps the prettiest entry in the entire set! The game itself seems to be one of turn-based tactical combat, around which is wrapped an interesting narrative.

However, while the art is indeed lovely, the animations are perhaps a little simple, in a manner that I think that I found a little jarring beside the quality of the still images.

As to the gameplay, it was reasonably fun, but seemed to me to lack much depth: there seemed to be little difference between the summons, and little to choose between their abilities; simply hitting enemies and healing or buffing repeatedly got me through everything. It is, however, very possible that I missed some degree of tactical depth.

I encountered one bug, I believe: during one of the fights, the visual positions of the enemies seemed to not line up with their logical positions, interfering with selection.

Ruins of the Risen

I'll confess that I didn't get very far in this game; indeed, I believe that I was killed in rather short order on every run that I attempted. The screen is very busy and very dark, and the enemies seem to move very fast, and as a result I seldom have much idea of what is going on--or what just then killed me. It's not even entirely clear to me where, precisely, my shots are going.

I have two minor critiques: First, the bottom of the resolution list overlaps text in the options menu, making those entries a little difficult to read without highlighting each one. Second, changing the resolution seemed to result in menu items not responding, or perhaps their logical positions not matching up with their visual representations; this was cleared up by restarting the game, I believe.

Doom in the Shadows

If I'm not much mistaken, this is a reasonably fun little wave-defence game: the player is a lone human stuck on an island with waves of ever more undead; the undead can be defeated by firing shadow-bolts, but those bolts leave a residue that is deadly to the player-character.

I didn't realise at first that there was more than one screen. Once I did discover this, I went exploring, but didn't find much. It's also possible during the first few waves to wander off across a few screens and have no enemies present for a time.

Finally, the collision was a little iffy at times; in particular, I recall finding myself getting caught on trees.

Undead Evolution

In short, this seems to be a multi-character survival game: gather resources and defend against an ever-increasing threat, but defend not just a single avatar but a small community.

There doesn't seem to be an end-game: as far as I can tell, the player is simply tasked with surviving as long as may be. This is fine... save that I found the game to be fairly easily, and after only a few tries managed to build a defence that resulted in no deaths at all.

The player can evolve their human villagers, increasing either health or damage dealt, but with a risk of either killing the villager or turning them into a zombie. However, the chance of a negative outcome is fifty-fifty, and the constructed defences seem quite effective, with no significant disadvantage. The probability of a negative outcome can be greatly reduced by the construction and upgrade of a genome lab--but this only changes the probabilities for one upgrade per turn, after which it resets to fifty-fifty. As a result, I'm honestly not sure of why I would upgrade my villagers.

On the UI side, I have a few critiques:

There's no apparent indication that the control-bar can be scrolled, beyond a mention in the help-text that this is so. I'm inclined to suggest adding either arrows or a scroll-bar to convey this.

It's not easy to see what is selected: the selection cursor appears to be fairly small and pale blue, set against a bright-green backdrop.

There is no visual indication (that I noticed) of the upgrade status of either buildings or villagers without selecting them and checking their information in the side-bar. This means that if the player forgets which buildings have been upgraded, they can only find out by clicking on each one of interest.

Finally, the game doesn't seem to like having the window moved, ceasing to respond when this is done--but this may be a result of some interaction with WINE.

Forbidden City

A fun, exploratory game with some light puzzle-solving (in at least two senses ;)). The graphics are simple, but sufficiently retro and sufficiently reminiscent of games that I remember from childhood that I found them somewhat nostalgic. The gameplay is similarly simple, but nevertheless interesting and enjoyable.

While at first oil seemed plentiful, it later became sufficiently scarce that venturing into the darkness could be a little tense, and some thought was given to how far was safe to go before turning back to for a refill. I quite liked this mechanic!

The "herding" puzzle--in which the player uses their light-source to drive little photophobic blobs towards a purple... thing--was interesting!

I did find the spike-traps to be a little unforgiving--just a bare touch can result in instant death, making them feel a little awkward to manoeuvre around, to me.

On a minor note, I believe that I found the level-transitions to be a little sudden, and thus jarring.

Stellar Salvager

Of the games that I played for these reviews, this had perhaps my favourite interpretation of the "ruins" theme: instead of the usual broken stones, the player is seeking out the ruins of derelict space -craft and -stations! The shadow-mechanic is interesting, with the intention seeming to be to encourage the player to be careful about how quickly they advance, and by what route.

The camera-views are perhaps a little problematic: While there are several, between which the player can change at will, I found few to be terribly useful. Only the "sun-chase" view seemed to provide me with the all of the information that I wanted--the position of the shadows and the ship's orientation relative to nearby objects and the distant sun--but that view was close to the direction of travel, making distances a little difficult to judge, and I believe that the camera pulled away (perhaps with increasing speed?), exacerbating the issue. On top of this, the camera sometimes ended up with an asteroid between it and the ship, hiding the latter.

I like the shadow-mechanic. However, the ship's temperature seems to drop fairly slowly, which left me at times inclined to simply park my ship behind an asteroid and let it cool off--which wasn't terribly fun. Perhaps this might have been ameliorated by either increasing the rate at which the ship cooled or removing cooling altogether; in the latter case, the ship would only increase in temperature, but perhaps more slowly.

Finally, I found that the distinction between valuable salvage and harmful debris was perhaps not immediately clear to me.

Prometheus

This was rather fun: a tower-defence game in which the player discovers and upgrades various ruins (the "towers"), while at times taking part in the combat themselves. Upgrading the ruins costs bones, which are collected from the undead that are felled.

I rather like the Greek flavour to the game; in particular, I like the use of the term "vrykolakas" instead of the usual "zombie", "skeleton", "revenant", etc.

As to the UI, I don't see an obvious indication of the cost of each action. Similarly, there's no UI conveying the various powers available: the player is expected to remember them. A set of icons, one for each power and showing the cost of each, might solve both issues.

Finally, I found the business of collecting bones to be a bit of a nuisance--but then I generally don't like resources that despawn.

[/spoiler]

Thanks for the review! I should have done the pathfinder of the zombies a little more "angry", but decided to cut the extras and do the basics in order to have a viable delivery. As for the sprites being rendered: before it was worse. At the moment they are in size 32x32. I was using 64x64 and out all wrong, with huge black borders.

how odd, normally that stuff is standard on most windows machines. Sorry :(


*shrugs* This machine is fairly new--perhaps it's a regional difference? My machine will be an EMEA (Europe, Middle-East, and Africa) machine, I imagine.

However, this is hardly your fault--it's not even a terribly long EULA, I believe. My apologies that I'm not providing a review!

Thanks for the quick critique. Your assessment sounds about right.


My pleasure! ^_^

The description I have of the controls on the initial screen isn't right. It should indicate that R-clicking (and holding) near the edges of the screen looks ahead in that direction.


Ah, I see--that makes rather more sense than the description given, I think!

I am now starting on writing reviews for all the submitted games.


Ah, I'm glad to read it! I'm eager to see your thoughts.

Thanks for the review!


Not a problem! ^_^

I should have done the pathfinder of the zombies a little more "angry", but decided to cut the extras and do the basics in order to have a viable delivery.


Fair enough. From what I recall, I think that simply making the zombies move more often might have helped a little.

As for the sprites being rendered: before it was worse. At the moment they are in size 32x32. I was using 64x64 and out all wrong, with huge black borders.


Ouch! ^^; Well, that sort of thing can quite easily happen in a short jam, I do believe.

yes...this is my fault.... i made a big mistake and included the version i had tried earlier in the week, rather than your final submission in the archive.


Aha! Slicer's been trying to undercut the competition, eh? ;P

More seriously, I believe that I have the new version now downloaded; I intend to play it and write up a new review sometime tonight. ^_^

Speaking of Slicer, however, my review of Relic Hunter (Linux build):

[spoiler]
This game is fun, somewhat tense affair! In short, the player is a treasure-hunter invading ruins in search of some artefact or another. Alas, said ruins are monster-haunted, and our relic-hunter is unarmed. (Really, relic hunter? :P) As a result, the player is required to avoid the prowling monster, relying on darkness and the warning sound of the monster's approaching feet (hooves?), while avoiding giving away their position by either sight (being seen in the light) or sound (stepping on loose bones).

The shadows are lovely, and rather effective: they limit visibility--and thus information--without doing so to the point of being frustrating. One doesn't know what's just ahead, or in the dark to either side, which I feel made for some engaging exploration.

The controls are overall smooth and responsive. There was one issue that I found, however: the player is required to hold down the left mouse-button to direct their light. As far as I've found, there's no real advantage to leaving it pointing in one direction, so I ended up just holding down the mouse-button whenever the torch was on, which I find a little less comfortable than just moving the mouse. For myself, I'd much rather have the torch follow my mouse-movements without the requirement that a button be held.

As to the shadows and light, I have two critiques:

First, the instructions indicate that the camera doesn't follow the player when the torch is off, and this is so. But... Why is this so? I'm not sure of what it adds, and I find that it makes it easier to get lost in the dark. (Unless that's the point...?)

Second, if the player switches the torch off, moves away in the dark, then switches the torch on again, the light-blob that surrounds the player in torchlight doesn't appear on top of the character. Instead, it appears elsewhere (in the spot on which the player was standing when the torch was deactivated, I'd guess), and scrolls over to the player. The effect is a little odd.

As to the monster, it's an effective threat, I do believe. For the most part it seems that the monster can be evaded by listening for its footsteps--but on a few occasions I've stumbled upon a stationary monster, been spotted, and ended up running from it. Unfortunately, I have yet to escape a charging monster, in either dark or light, as it seems to be faster than I am.

Conversely, in at least one map I found that I spent quite some time neither hearing nor seeing the monster at all, resulting in the tension seeping away a little.

Which brings me to my next point, albeit one more to do with me than with the game: some of the maps can feel somewhat large and mazey, and of course all is rather dark. I fear that I don't have a very strong sense of direction, and can get lost or turned around somewhat easily. As a result, I ended up wandering somewhat aimlessly in one large map; if I recall correctly, I stumbled upon two keys, several doors, the artefact, and eventually the monster.

Perhaps it might be useful to have an "easy" mode that provides a simple map (filled in as the player explores)?

Another thought is that it might have helped to have provided some collectables to the various otherwise-empty rooms, especially things that might flesh out the world and characters involved. This might make the extensive corridors feel more worth exploring, provide short-term rewards for exploration, add an element of risk and reward (having gained the artefact, does the player head for the exit, or attempt to find additional items?), and perhaps to some degree mark areas that have been explored (by virtue of their no longer having collectables).

Finally, a minor niggle: In the level-selection screen, the maps appear to be out of (named) order: map two is first, followed by one, four, and three, in that order, I believe.

Alas, there is a sore lack of Sydney, Nigel, or either secretary. :/
[/spoiler]

MWAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!

My Twitter Account: @EbornIan

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