"Acts prohibited under law in any national, state or local jurisdiction in which The Escapist website may be viewed."

Isn't ballet illegal in Turkmenistan, and as a result no ballet would be allowed in any of the games?

I am mildly depressed at how much this thread has slowed down. I've noticed that most of the forum threads around here tend to keep up a rather quick clip. I suppose most people's answers have now been satisfied in regards to the contest. But working on an entry in an apparent vacuum can put you off your game. I would have expected a bit more conversation vis-a-vis the nature and progress of entries.

Surely I'm not the only one still working on an entry for the contest. (crickets)

Here is an update for everyone about the Stonking Great Game Contest. 13 new industry elite judges! http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/94935-Stonking-Great-Game-Contest-Update

Wow! such a heavy-hitting judge lineup!

Richard Kain:
I am mildly depressed at how much this thread has slowed down. I've noticed that most of the forum threads around here tend to keep up a rather quick clip. I suppose most people's answers have now been satisfied in regards to the contest. But working on an entry in an apparent vacuum can put you off your game. I would have expected a bit more conversation vis-a-vis the nature and progress of entries.

Surely I'm not the only one still working on an entry for the contest. (crickets)

I feel your pain Richard. I am also still chugging on my entry. The 2 month dev period is taking its toll on my some what short attention span. I will probably go in to cram mode a week before the deadline. Right now I am coasting, adding little features but not tackling the main elements like I should.

I am afraid if I post WIP screen shots and the like, my entry will loose its novelty prior to judging.

Spinwhiz:
Here is an update for everyone about the Stonking Great Game Contest. 13 new industry elite judges!

Holy stonking crap-on-a-stick! That is a very impressive list. A lot of big names from serious development studios. I can't help feeling that a lot of these developers are hungry to finally get a little payback for the many years of criticism that they've had to endure. At the same time, having my work march before such prestigious game-dev eyes definitely sweetens the pot, win or lose. I'm actually glad that I recently began devoting even more time to my entry.

If you guys can get Jeff Tunnell to judge, I promise I won't sleep until my entry is finished. With just under a month left, that is obviously an exageration. But seriously, Jeff Tunnell is one of my favorite developers of all time. If you get him to judge, I will cut back on sleep significantly and devote most of my free time to this contest. He currently works at PushButton Labs... http://pushbuttonlabs.com/ Since the company he presently works for develops a Flash game engine, I would think him a natural fit for the judges bench.

hamster mk 4:

I am afraid if I post WIP screen shots and the like, my entry will loose its novelty prior to judging.

I had actually asked about this earlier, and Spinwhiz had advised strongly against it. So you made the right call there. Apparently they don't mind if you show off your game to a few friends locally. But they don't want you pimping screenshots on-line, and posting the game itself on-line mid-development can get you disqualified. (issues with copyrights and such) It can be a lot harder to work this way, but I'm afraid that's the name of the game this time around.

And yeah, it is a bit of a danger to give away too much of what you are working on. I'll use any edge I can get to improve my title. (without violating the rules of the contest)

In fact, it would actually be a bit of a help for anyone who ISN'T working on an entry to throw out ideas. It doesn't matter if they are actually good ideas, sooner or later something will stick. All you looky-loos on the sidelines could lend a hand just by telling us competitors how you would have done it right.

Reeper0278:
Could a game be from a group of users?

I have to ask this to because I'm no coder.

also

Can it have a movie theme?

Will the community get an opportunity to play / rate the games that are submitted?
That would be pretty fun. Understandable if it isn't ALL of them, and understandable if its after the judging and submitting is completed... but it would be fun to play at least a couple of them to see what people did.

Well, it's that time of the week again. The time of the week where I post an update on my current progress in an attempt to intimidate and demoralize the competition. As per usual, I'll be keeping everything fairly generic, no crucial details will be divulged.

The weekend was fairly productive. I got a fair amount done on Friday and Saturday. All of the graphics for the Intro Sequence were completed, and the scripting began in earnest. Sunday I was visiting with family and had to go to a party, so that was pretty much a wash. I got a little coding done, but nothing serious. I was able to get a custom button class I had designed earlier working, so there is that.

Yesterday, (Monday) was huge. Solved several problems that I had encountered earlier, and scripted out almost the entire first section of the Intro. I was able to create and modify a text object for throwing up character "speech," and kept it flexible in terms of resizing and changing out content. I still need to play around with the AutoAlign settings, but that is just an aesthetic issue, and can be left for later. It works, and that's whats important. I also found a working solution for the depth sorting. That had me worried, so a working solution was a welcome relief. (it will come into play more heavily later in development)

My team now consists of two. My brother has agreed to compose some music for the game, and already has one theme down. I was very pleased with the product, and am relieved to have a little assistance. He is much better at music than I am, and his contribution to the game is most welcome. It will save me a lot of time that I can devote to the actual mechanics

Now that I have most of the scripted elements and graphics down, I can focus more heavily on the gameplay and level designs.

I am intimidated and demoralized. I didn't do any work on the game this weekend.

Last week I got the game play tweaking variables into an external file so I could tweak them with out flash. Hopefully so I could dup off game balancing on my friends. I realize some of the player options are not very interesting. I am contemplating reworking one of the player's units to add more variety to the game.

So far no intro, no menu, no sound, and no music. The game is playable and I have implimented all the enemies and good guys (minus the one I am planning on reworking).

Here is an update for everyone about the Stonking Great Game Contest. 13 new industry elite judges! http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/94935-Stonking-Great-Game-Contest-Update

I haven't been keeping up with the forums and so I doubt that I'm up to date with all the updates to the contest. Is it possiblt to put links to them from the main contest page?

I have a big question about sound effects. The rules talk about copywrite and interlectual property rights, but doesn't go into detail about free outside material like sound effects. So does that mean I have to creat all sound effects for my game or am I allowed to use free ones? Since they're only sound effect it can't be taken that they'd give me or anyone other contestant an unfair advantage and if they're free they don't come with any copywrite/interlectual poperty rights it doesn't seem like it would be an issue. But I'm just checking first since it would be stupid to get disqualified over something so simple as sound effects.

Black Lord Titan:

I have a big question about sound effects. The rules talk about copywrite and interlectual property rights, but doesn't go into detail about free outside material like sound effects. So does that mean I have to creat all sound effects for my game or am I allowed to use free ones?

It is possible to copyright sound effects. And using copyrighted sound effects would likely disqualify you from the competition.

I generally don't offer assistance to my competitors. But I think I can bend that policy in this instance. Here's a solution to your problem...

http://www.drpetter.se/project_sfxr.html

This is a program called SFXR, and was specifically designed to ease the creation of sound effects. With it, you can make and adjust sound effects for games quickly and easily. Use the randomizer function to toss the dice, or tweak every setting specifically to get just what you want. The sound effects you make with this program are not copyrighted, and can be used in any way you wish. The program was originally developed to help game developers working on a time-constrained project, so it should be perfect for this kind of implementation.

The deadline is 2 weeks away...I can't wait!

Spinwhiz:
The deadline is 2 weeks away...I can't wait!

Eeeeek! I am filled with dread that I may not be able to complete my entry on time. Much progress was made over the weekend. But I still have a ways to go. Gonna have to really knuckle down and put in some serious development time over the next two weeks.

Not a bad little program. Although all the sounds seem like they came from the Atari/Commodore 64 age. I don't think I'll be able to get all the sound FX I need from it, but it will help. Thanks, I'll owe you one.

Good luck on your game.

Black Lord Titan:
Good luck on your game.

And good luck to you as well. I look forward to some solid competition in this contest.

It's time once again for my regular status update. At this point it's more for my benefit, but oh well.

With the deadline fast approaching, I have been working hard to squeeze in as much development as I can, as quickly as I can. The level layouts for all of my various levels have now been constructued. Most of the player controls for several of the gametypes I am using are constructed. Ditto for camera scrolling and control. The biggest ommissions now are enemy graphics, enemy logic, and sounds. My composer has two of the planned four music tracks complete, so there has been some solid progress on that front. I also added an option for the player to skip the initial cutscene. (an essential feature for repeated playthroughs, it's pretty long)

Enemy graphics for the final section of the game were a pretty big issue. But I tackled that last night and got a lot of those graphics hammered out. Still have a little more work to do on that front, but the lion's share is done. I went ahead and coded some state controls into the various levels, and tested out the player death sequence for one of them. Need to do a little more UI programming there, but I don't think it will be a problem. (Mainly just need to add a standard sub-menu for when the player dies) Need to make player "health" meter for each of the different levels, but again, I'm not worried. It will just take a little legwork. The main menu is largely ready to go. I would like to add some persistent data to it, but wasn't exactly sure how. Not a deal-breaker, so leave that feature for later. (could get axed)

For the rest of the week, I need to focus on enemy coding, coding for the last section of the game, handling player death, and the final cutscene. (in that order)

I just hope they release the entries on this site for us to test out and judge for ourselves.

I did some heavy coding/art this weekend for the game. I implemented code to play sounds when ever an event happens. Read "event" as someone getting bludgeoned by a cricket bat. All my sounds are currently placeholders, I hope to get some quality sounds from a sound technician friend latter this week. I also added our beloved Yahtzee to the game as an NPC. For most of the game he sits at the top left corner dispensing insults at your enemies. I also fixed some game play bugs and added some UI fixes.

I still need to do game play testing and refinement. I also need to add a menu screen and a loading screen. If I have extra time I would like to impliment some extra game play dynamics like a boss fight and better resource management. Good to my fellow competitors. But not too much luck I would like to win this thing.

:)

@ Spinwhiz:
Would it be permissible for me to record audio quotes from Zero Punctuation reviews (not provided in the content pack) to give the game a genuine Yahtzee voice?

Currently Yahtzee talks in speech bubbles tastefully !#@% out or filled with suggestive images taken from the content pack.

hamster mk 4:
Read "event" as someone getting bludgeoned by a cricket bat. I also added our beloved Yahtzee to the game as an NPC. For most of the game he sits at the top left corner dispensing insults at your enemies. Currently Yahtzee talks in speech bubbles tastefully !#@% out or filled with suggestive images taken from the content pack.

Whoa! That all sounds really good. It's nice to know that there is some solid competition out there. But I'm not just going to roll over on this one.

My personal weekend escapades included finalizing the game play coding for one of my levels, incorporating music into two levels, sound effects into another level, scripting the end sequence for a level, and creating the graphics for multiple enemy types. (as well as the coding for two of them) The first level is good to go aside from the music. (which is not that hard to implement) Still a ways to go, although I am pleased with the progress so far.

It's the final week, so it's really coming down to the wire. I still need to script out my credits sequence, and refine the beginning sequence for the game. I need to incorporate sounds into the intro sequence, as well as possibly add some "filler" music. I wanted to add music to the main menu as well, so I need to cut that up a bit. I had been meaning to have a "credits" screen that can be accessed from the main menu, so I need to add that as well. I had been planning on having boss battles at the end of most of the levels, but that will probably get cut in favor of a single boss battle for the finale.

I had been a little concerned over getting enemy mechanics and AI working. But I really tackled that hard over the weekend, and got the majority of it finished for two levels. Pretty good for two days of work, especially since I worked on several other elements at the same time. I might lose a little sleep over this one, but I'm reasonably confident that I'll hit the deadline. I'm hoping to submit my entry around Saturday, hopefully no later than Sunday.

6 more days.... i'm working at my game for..... 5-6 days already.. (i think)

looking preety nice so far :D still have to add enemies... sounds . menu screen ETC ETC..

BUT! i have a question.... since we are not allowed to post the game ANYWHERE but here.... can i make a trailer with gameplay footage and upload it on youtube... to show it to my friends and post it over the internet? :D

Curse you feature creep!

I had a plan, it was a good plan, I stuck to the time tables, but now close to the 11th hour I realize my game would be much more fun with this one feature. So like an idiot I am adding that feature.

No! Curse you hamster mk 4!

Don't implement the new feature. You should stick to your time table because... well... um... because I want to win!

Oh and xelubest, it probably wouldn't be a good idea to post a trailer of your game on YouTube. Part of the reason that they don't want early previews of the game is that they want them to be a surprise. Part of the reason is that they don't want any of the judges to be unduly influenced before the actual judging process. And part of it is probably just copyright issues. So hold off on any trailers or screenshots until after the contest.

oh.. thanks for replying kain :P

i was planning on making the trailer AFTER the contest is over :P

hopefully i'll finish the game :(( it's not even 50% done :(

Hmmmm...in hindsight, asking us to develop a trailer for a "potential" Zero Punctuation game might have made for a better contest. A short film about a game that doesn't actually exist would have taken considerably less time than actually producing an interactive game.

Oh well. Maybe the Escapist will consider a "game trailer" contest some time in the future.

question : are the judges Zero punctuation fans? i mean.. have they seen every episode?

cause they might not appreciate some inside jokes added to the games from the episodes... :(

Richard Kain:
Hmmmm...in hindsight, asking us to develop a trailer for a "potential" Zero Punctuation game might have made for a better contest. A short film about a game that doesn't actually exist would have taken considerably less time than actually producing an interactive game.

Oh well. Maybe the Escapist will consider a "game trailer" contest some time in the future.

My entry is almost going to have to be a trailer. Everything except the coding is looking like it will be done in time. So all content and no code to make it run means all I'll have is the makings of a game with no gameplay.

The idea of a game trailer competition to me seems pretty lame. Sure, two months to make any decent game is on the extreme far side of ridiculous. However, any game can look good in a trailer if it is put together good enough. Besides, Yahtzee doesn't review game trailers, he reviews games.

We should be able to play the other entrants games. Every other competition I've seen has let the audience view (sometimes vote) everything else that was entered. Although, those competitions were far from being run to a decent level. It would be a big waste of everyone else's work who doesn't win if no one can play it as it was meant to be played (with it's ZP theme). The thing I'd most like to see is the style of games that are made for this contest since whether I win or lose, I won't really be in the mood for saying, "thats a nice game" and people's interpretations on what would constitute a ZP themed game.

I find reading the progress updates gives me more motivation to keep going. Not finishing my game is far more frightening than seeing that, your's Kain or anyone elses, is going to schedule. Thanks for the SFXR again btw. Even though the sounds it produces seem like they came from the commodore 64, I've been able to get a few things out of it I can use. I'll probably use that and make the rest myself. Thankfully, one of my friends has Cubase that I've been able to use and mod my sounds together.

Spinwhiz:
The deadline is 2 weeks away...I can't wait!

Heh, the deadline is 5 days away And I just learned how to use other functions besides "int main" in my programming class... -.-;

The Escapist definitely needs to do many more contests like this one in the future. Once I know what I am doing, I definitely would submit something.

It would actually be really interesting if The Escapist had regular contests like these... Obviously they couldn't do them too regularly because the number of participants would drop, they would be unable to attract cool judging panels all the time, its a lot of work, people actually need time to develop the games... but 1~2 game design contests per year might be really exciting and attract whole new audiences to the Escapist...

I suppose it depends on how good this contest turns out in the end though... Ya'll had better produce some high quality games!

Black Lord Titan:
I find reading the progress updates gives me more motivation to keep going. Not finishing my game is far more frightening than seeing that, your's Kain or anyone elses, is going to schedule. Thanks for the SFXR again btw. Even though the sounds it produces seem like they came from the commodore 64, I've been able to get a few things out of it I can use.

Heh, that's actually rather comforting. It's nice to know that someone other than myself is benefiting from my updates. And it's worth noting that despite the positive nature of my updates, it's getting pretty tight for me as well. I've sliced and diced my way across my original design document, tearing things apart. There are so many features and content that will probably be left on the drawing room floor, it's almost sickening at times. So don't feel bad if your game isn't living up to your personal expectations, or if you are a bit behind schedule. Dealing with this sort of pressure, and working under these deadlines is a major component of game development. Learning to deal with this type of situation is just another part of the process, and your future projects will benefit from this experience.

And now it's time for another status update. All of the major musical themes for my game have been completed and integrated. On Monday I coded a function to automatically fade the music in and out whenever a scene transition takes place. I also went ahead and coded up the credits sequence that will play at the end of the game. I took the provided Zero Punctuation theme music / rock fanfare and added it to the main menu. I also caught a bug in the timing class I am using that preserved scripted actions across scenes. I found an easy fix by making a call to delete all current actions at the beginning of every scene. The integration of the music was what tipped me off to this bug.

On the gameplay side of things, progress is a little slower, but steady. I now have enemy coding added to three of my four levels, as well as rudimentary interactions. A basic weapon system has been added to two levels that I hadn't worked on very much previously. I'm expecting to finish off the interactions for those levels tonight, and begin working on the fourth. I probably will cut or truncate any boss battles except the final one, replacing them with scripted sequences. Some more graphics need production, but mainly just one more character, and a few small background elements. I incorporated additional background graphics for one of the levels, and it really adds to it.

Alright! 4 days left! Its time for me to start developing.

Ah, one day left! A fine time to start thinking about making an entry... :)

Not much to lose, anyway, right?

Same here, I said the same 4 days ago but procrastinated until now :p. Nice to see other last-moment fellow game makers. :)

and my game is about 80% finished =))

(and i'm up for 24+ hours) XD GOTTA FINISH!!!!!!!!!!!!

Just about over...well I'm done anyway :)

Finished the Intro! :p