So, since the resource kit was posted earlier today I've been spending time working backwards from a few of the images making "character resources". Individual feet, hands, bodies, heads with different expressions on them, that kind of thing. Really basic, fundamental stuff. Stuff that you would need on their own if you were to, say, animate them in Flash or something. I'm going to try and work on getting resources for the imp next after I'm done with more expressions for Yahtzee and other basic people stuff. In the meantime...

Because I really am that much of a narcissist I created myself in Yahtzee's art style, just to see how it would turn out. Overall not that bad.

Anyway, like I said I'm collecting individual resources for character animation, and if enough people show interest (and if they ask nicely) I just might upload the files together as a "pack" to save you people some leg work.

~Van

Thundarbolt:

scarybug:

You are basically getting a free video game made about ZP, and the developer of the game gets nothing. Even worse, the losers of the game end up working spec.

The exposure from having your game featured on a popular website based on an extremely popular series is a huge help to anyone looking to get their names out there, plus having a published game online looks great in a portfolio.

Yes, work for free in order to improve your resume and get "exposure." That's what all artists conned into working spec are told too.

Work has value, even flash game development. In the world of indie games, the cream actually does rise to the top. If you are a good game developer making a good game is enough to get noticed. Entering contests helps, but you don't have to give anything away to enter.

I totally understand this is not malicious, as I said. I don't think for a second anyone sat down and said "Let's design a contest to take advantage of our dumb community". Like I said, I get this this is a fun community thing. My point is just that you won't get any experienced game developers entering this contest because those people understand how to market their work. You'll only get people who use the contest as a way to get to know flash or programming better. You get what you pay for. That might be what you're looking for, and that's fine. Though it does help contribute to the opinion of people like "GeEom" who think that all Flash programmers are apes pounding on keyboards and aren't cool like them for knowing C++. (Which most of us do, it's just easier to self-market a flash game)

I'm totally with Scarybug on this one. This contest is much like the batman flash game contest held some months ago. A dev spends 2 months (most of our games take 2 weeks tops) and enter into the contest only to have it be rejected. This will be the case for 99% of entrants. I'm not saying boycott this thing at all, but what I'm saying here is that young/inexperienced flash developers should at least be aware of the big picture here.

Spending 2 months on a game like this and then getting nothing for it and not being allowed to do anything with your hard work after it is a _huge_ risk. It's important they're at least aware of that. Alternatively they could spend 2 months on their own game and maybe make a few hundred bucks, maybe even a few grand if it's good.

I'd prefer a bit of a different approach personally, something more like what TIGS does with their compos. They are never IP based and anyone can do whatever they want with the entries. Of course, there are no prizes, the prize is the game you made. I understand you want to make this about the ZPunc. IP, so there are some different things that need to be considered, though ultimately making it strictly about the IP kind of gives anyone who makes a game for this compo a bit of a death sentence for their entry anyway.

Nonetheless, those that are aware of theses fact sand are still interested in making the game I wish them the best of luck, i'm sure they'll have fun with it.

The whole "all your game are belong to us" seems a bit off putting to me. I understand the need to protect your brand, but I don't see why developers couldn't own their code and not the ZP-related artwork/music, while giving The Escapist or whoever some rights to the whole game as well.

GeEom: There are plenty of good Flash games out there, especially if you know where to look. While you may find it hard to "sell" a Flash game, you can definitely earn some income from them. The Desktop Tower Defense guy was earning thousands of dollars a month. (http://gigaom.com/2007/05/27/desktop-tower-defense/) While there are some crappy Flash games out there, Flash is actually a powerful browser-based platform. I'm not sure why you felt the need to flame against Flash and Flash developers, but you are clearly misinformed in terms of their capabilities.

Falmil:
I understand the need to protect your brand, but I don't see why developers couldn't own their code and not the ZP-related artwork/music, while giving The Escapist or whoever some rights to the whole game as well.

Good point. An equitable solution would be to let any contest entrant keep all of their code and do whatever they wanted with the game as long as they re-skin the graphics to something not owned by Escapist/ZP.

I get that its posible to create good games in flash, but if your talking quality you may as well work in ANY language. with the hiugh end merits of all languages pretty much equal, you have to consider the staggering level of tripe that is produced because of flashes common acsesability.
so yes i know flash is great, but for someone great the merits of flash, acsesability, are dropped by the DRM issues, the mountains of flash rubbish which indesputably does exist, and the lack of efficiency and game developer friendly functions!

so to someone making good games in flash, thats great, but on average, someone starting in game design heads for flash, and then they post the dribble they produce online before moving to more able lanugaes or giving up, so if you can already program in efficient, hyper acsessable or hyper compatable languages (delphi, python and C++ in that order) theres realy no motive to go BACK and learn flash

HENCE my lack of flash, HENCE my flash slagg of

the cream of flash is great, and very acsessable to the end user via web based play, but you cannot deny the flaws in the aplication of the language, despite any individual skill or merit.

I don't really know enough about indie game development to enter this competition.

But, so long as the winning game features the floating head of Peter Molyneaux as a boss, then I'll be happy.

Seems kind of limited making it Flash only, and 'ZP related only', tbh.

MaxTheReaper:

pigeon_of_doom:
As a non-coder, and not one enamoured of Zero Punctuation, I have little to add to this. However, disqualifying Zero Punctuation games on the grounds of it containing:

Excessive vulgarity, lewdness or profanity

seems a tad ridiculous.

Not to mention

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

Don't...all videogames involve murder?
Or at least killing of some kind?

Don't hijack this thread anymore, if you want to hold a separate conversation start a new thread.

just a heads up

tom fulp of newgrounds.com just gave a shoutout to this contest, there are alot of great game developers at newgrounds so expect some competition.

http://www.newgrounds.com/bbs/topic/1090242

Awesome, I might look into entering.

Submissions will be valid from August 5th to October 19th. All submissions will then be judged over a 2 week period and the winner(s) will be announced the week of November 16th.

Here are some items that WILL get your submission disqualified:
Excessive vulgarity, lewdness or profanity
Advertisements
Acts prohibited under law in any national, state or local jurisdiction in which The Escapist website may be viewed.

All games submitted to The Escapist's Stonking Great Game Contest must be the exclusive property of the contest entrant and have never before appeared or been playable in any form anywhere.

You're kidding. So we have to create a new, playable ZP game from scratch? In 2 months? Without any profanity at all? Is this some sort of joke? Some people have lives, you know. And how can a flash game be loyal to ZP without including just a little bit of excessive language?

Edit: Ninja'd by MaxTheReaper. Darn.

I just wish it wouldn't need to work in a browser and that it didn't need to be in flash...

Thundarbolt:
Hey guys.

Canadian Game development student here, a few of us are wondering if we can submit an entry as a team or if the rules state that it has to be one game per person.

Yeah, they stated that you can do so. They just have to know who is in the team so they can be credited. The swag would be distributed to the team lead, and then they'd do whatever they want to in regards to the distribution of the swag.

Man, it's too bad I forgot everything I learnt about Flash. I will need to jog my memory to try to create something. Something that's an adventure game. Starring a guy named Fedora J. Bowler.

L4Y Duke:
I don't really know enough about indie game development to enter this competition.

But, so long as the winning game features the floating head of Peter Molyneaux as a boss, then I'll be happy.

Well damn, you just figured out how one of my levels is going to end :/

... and before you ask, the disembodied head of Molyneaux is going to fly around and shoot lasers out of his mouth. It just wouldn't be the same if he didn't.

Rules page:
Please note, these assets are provided for your convenience but all brand representations must remain unmodified, with the exception of proportional scale.

By "brand representations" you mean just the escapist logo right? Since the art assets provided are not already cut up into sprite sheets we will need to cut up and rearrange the various screen shots provided in order to have something to put into our game.

Also since Zero Punctuation is about reviewing games what is the policy on using assets or characters from games ZP has reviewed? Are ZP caricatures of haze soldiers ok? What about screen shots of haze soldiers? What about the Ubisoft logo with hands and feet running about the game? Should we use not to subtle renaming conventions like Ubicore to allude to other IP without using actual trademarks?

I am sorry I ask so many dumb questions, I will get around to coding one of these days.

I wish I had a clue how to enact my idea.

Knowing me it would take longer than October.

where its says excessive vulgarity, lewdness or profanity it does mean EXCESSIVE for ALL of those sub conditionals, and as such no you dont have to make a game with no swearing, but if you look over some of the best ZPs you can note that the best ones keep the swearing vaugely minimal, its the timing and intent behind the sparse profanity that makes yahtz such a god.

that reply was to a post i read thats up a bit now...

id like to see a ZP space invaders where you shoot the bad games with hurtful words and let the good games go through.

I'm downloading the assets as I write this and I have a few questions:

- Can a member participate with more than 1 game? You know.. in case we manage to manipulate time and be able to generate multiple games in our spare time within the time limit...

- Can it be coded in ActionScript 2.0? Or it only matters if it runs on any current flash player?

- Can the developers include MochiBot code for their own monitoring purposes ?(we have egos, you know.. and I think there's nothing wrong with checking out how many times you guys will play our game to gather enough material in order to bash it without mercy... "Hey! Yahtzee said my game should be considered as a torture device for how bad it was... but at least I KNOW he played it 20 times!!)".

- Can members from anywhere in the world participate? (you know.. because I want that swag bag to reach the infamous shores of Uruguay if I'm lucky enough to win).

If any of these questions have been answered already please feel free to reduce your potential flaming to a bite-site ember and replying with the link where the questions was already adressed..

Thank you very much :P

What's the policy on using pre-existing code? Using some existing frameworks or libraries would definitely make things easier. Also, I'm sure there would be some licenses that would meet the criteria for allowing Escapist/Themis to get the rights they want to the final product.

If we submit, can the code be straight 'Open Source' with some suitable OSS license? It'd be easier to post a subversion repository link than to upload large amounts of code and data to your web site, anyway, especially when patching to fix a 'bug' or make small changes that The Escapist wants. To 'prove authorship', what better than a full version history, anyway?

Lots of services provide free Subversion hosting for open source projects. Lots of free GUI versions of Subversion tools, too. It should be a no-brainer for ANYONE to set up.

Besides it can serve as 'examples' for those wannabes who want to learn Flash/Flex/AS3 and don't know how to operate a search engine.

And what of Flash source-level extensions? For example, I like using the C preprocessor with my Flash/Flex code. Failing that (and some won't let me use it) I end up using ANT's regular expressions to 'tweak' code (and get at least SOME useful debug instrumentation), instead of make & some common shell tools. Failing that, I just pretty-print the preprocessed code and tell them it's 'the code', and they never know the difference, even after seeing the same token-pasted string and numeric constants and flawlessly copied and permuted and even unrolled code repeated ad-nauseam throughout the source. You'd think a 60,000 line render function (built of macros - function call overhead in Flash is ruinously expensive) would be a dead give-away... nope.

Vanguard1219:

L4Y Duke:
I don't really know enough about indie game development to enter this competition.

But, so long as the winning game features the floating head of Peter Molyneaux as a boss, then I'll be happy.

Well damn, you just figured out how one of my levels is going to end :/

... and before you ask, the disembodied head of Molyneaux is going to fly around and shoot lasers out of his mouth. It just wouldn't be the same if he didn't.

Obviously. Mind you, eye-beams work just as well.

invorta:
Awesome, I might look into entering.

You wouldn't be able to enter your game would you?

I mean the exsisting one since it exsisted in a playble from before the contest.

Well a use to use Flash MX 2004...Sadly I don't even know how the hell you work it...

it'll be interesting to see the outcomes of it though.

@evilfeeds, use your brain for half a micro-second. the purpose of this ISN'T for business, its merely for entertainment and fun. You think "The Escapist" are billionares sitting on a pile of cash made into a chair that are willy-nilly going to toss a few grand around? think again. Besides, those clowns at newgrounds take property of your creations also, and unless you have your name in the game, you get ZERO credit.

I didn't read to 'em all but I'm letting you know where to get the right tool, for free. Flash development, does not imply Flash CS3, there are several completely free offerings, if you know where to look.

I recommend the following tool (it might be for experienced to advanced users, but it shouldn't stop anyone from at least giving it a try):

FlashDevelop (open source Flash IDE)
http://www.flashdevelop.org/community/viewtopic.php?f=11&t=5086

Please read the instructions carefully, you will need to install several other software packages (specifically Adobe Flex SDK, if you don't intend to buy [or already own] a Flash CS3 copy).

evilfeeds:

Making a game takes time. Making a good game takes more time.

I can probably throw together a space-invaders clone in a couple hours, but making a game that isnt a steaming pile of poo will likely take 4 or 5 days.

If Im spending 4 or 5 days on something, I'd better get something out of it.

The prize isn't just a swag bag - read earlier in the thread. The swag bag's nice, but the game will be up for review not only by Yahtzee, but possibly other well-established game developers. If you have the skill to make a game that's worthy of making several thousand, then I'd say you have the skill to get recognisied by the judges, and if they're high-standard industry professionals, that's worth a lot.

evilfeeds:
I think, on the whole, Id rather be playing games, or reading, or working on my physics engine. Now, if you are quite happy to work for someone else and not get paid, go nuts.

Also, I think you massively underestimate how much money a website can make. $4000 is not a lot of money for a business (and the escapist IS a business, its not just 2 guys in their bedrooms who decided to post a bunch of funny links). They might not be billionaires, but they're not penniless hobos either.

Also, from the newground terms of agreement: (http://www.newgrounds.com/portal/agreement_submissions.html)

1. Newgrounds will not claim ownership over your work. You are free to sell it and show it wherever you want.

Finding that took all of 2 seconds. I guess using your brain for half a micro second is a lot harder than not using it at all, Zidaine.

Addendum:
Unless Im massively misinterpreting the rules, the escapist is allowed to do whatever it wants with your entry: That includes submitting it to Kong, Newgrounds, etc. If they win the $1500 monthly prize, you get zip. That seems fair to me.

You're making out that the Escapist will be using your game to make themselves some money, with a slap to the face as your reward. That's not true. The contest is for fun, (as someone said earlier) to celebrate ZP. The only reason they claim ownership of the game you'll be producing is because it uses their intellectual property, which they have a right to protect.

The contest, as I see it, and as they put in the rules, is for a range of rookies and experts alike. The reason the experts will be doing it is for the realistic chance of doing well, and having your game recognised by a lot of people (Yahtzee and any other game developers they get to judge included). The reason for the rookies to consider doing it would be to develop some extra skills they did not have before, and to see if they can produce something that's worthy of getting published to the site.

Summary: it's for fun, don't take it so seriously.

Hey guys

Got a few questions, bear with me if they have already been answered.

Are we allowed to upload it to our own personnel portfolio site?
Is there only one winner? I would be amazed if the dear Yahtzee could use a whole episode to review a game that took 14 business-days to make.

Anyway, already working on mine and I'll be sure to snag that swag pack and have my heart teared out and devoured by the greasy monkey man.