Garage Zombie* High Score Contest!

Garage Zombie* beat out 34 other games for Overall and Graphics!

To celebrate Garage Zombie* winning first place in mini-LD 40 for both Overall and Graphics (thanks to Ariel - an amazing artist!), I went back and added a Mochi High Score board to the game and am kicking it off with a contest!

Whoever has the highest score at the end of the contest (11:59pm Eastern time on March 31st) will win 20+ Critterverse games AND every game we make from April 1st, 2013 to April 1st, 2014! This is a purchasable prize that's set at $20 on the website, so it has a $20 value!

As this is entirely download-based, the competition is open to anyone from anywhere in the world, and you're welcome to play it as many times as you'd like (the game is very largely based on luck, so it will most likely take numerous tries to get 1st place and keep it!)

The ONLY RULE is that you MUST use one of the following as your name on the high score board, so that I know who to contact once it's over:

• Your Twitter Handle (@Whatever)
• Your Facebook Name (www.facebook.com/Whatever) without the www.facebook.com part
• Your email address (Whatever@Where.com)

If you don't, I'll have no way of knowing who won!

And one last thing: if you enjoy the game, please consider preordering it! It's only $1 and you'll get every version of the game as it's made through development, so you can even test it and leave feedback! If you preorder the game and win the contest, I will give you your $1 back! And you get an immediate download of the game if you preorder - one with ads and high score board and one without ads or the high score board (the two are tied together, so I can't make a version with the score board but without ads).

Oh, and if you want to give the game a shot, CLICK HERE TO PLAY GARAGE ZOMBIE*!

Good luck! :) 

Escape from the Afterlife: Game Jam Postmortem

Before I say anything, you really should try the game out! Even if you only play it for a couple minutes, it'll give you a great feel for the game and what happened with it. Play Escape from the Afterlife here!

This weekend (January 25-27) was the #1GAMCRUNCH - a 48 hour game development challenge. The theme was golden gun/1 hit point. I admit that Escape from the Afterlife really didn't fit the theme very well... I was actually joking in the #1GAM IRC channel about 1HP being a goal instead of a limitation, and then it becoming like golf - the lower the HP, the better... And THEN it became "A ghost would LOVE to have 1HP because it'd mean they're alive again, since a non-living thing should technically have 0 or negative HP, even if games don't play it that way!"

So that's how 1HP fits into the game. Since it takes a whole paragraph to explain that, I think it's safe to say it really doesn't fit the theme too well...

What Went Right

1. Testing from Fellow Developers on Twitter
I love having people test my games, but typically what I get is "it's great!" or "not bad", etc. I DO love to hear compliments, trust me, it's like fuel that keeps me going! But this time especially, the game is FIFTY floors! Seriously! When I hit the point that it would be fully playable, there were less than 6 hours left in the jam and I still had to add a few things before it ended, as well as add as much icing to the cake as I could after that! "It's fun" wouldn't cut it, nor would testing it all myself...

Several people jumped right on the game and played it for me, letting me know what they thought, giving some great feedback and ideas and compliments for the game, as well as letting me know specific stats about where they ended up ("I have $2,000, 15 of this item, 12 of that one, this max courage on this floor", for example). This made it SO much easier to try to balance things out than trying to do it myself!

In fact, I'm going to list them right here! A big, huge thanks to these people!!!

@DarkestKale
@IndieGameHQ
@DreamWinterLab
@Playvue (who also hosted the jam!)
@Sara_coisa
@HollowSpecter
@chris_killabi
@Paddyzab
@MLautz
@CaffeineViking
@SudoRossy


2. Coding, WHEW!
Coding a new game ALWAYS scares me because there's a very long point where you can't run the game at all to start testing. Once a foundation is set, you can easily change things and test it, or add a new feature and test it, but at the beginning you're stuck waiting until enough foundation is complete to do so. I end up coding hundreds of lines of code, making all sorts of functions that work from different places, linking together, responding to one another, etc... And then when it's time to hit "Test Movie" (I use Flash)... Either it's crash and burn time, or it's "WHEW!" time...

In this case, I didn't even hit that stage until almost 24 hours into the jam (a 48 hour jam!!!!). I had about 500 lines of code total... And... It didn't work. Anyone who's a coder will know that's not a surprise at all, but it's still always sad. Luckily, it took less than an hour or so of fiddling around to make it work! Once that happened, most everything else added in quite easily code-wise, which is very unlike a jam for me!

Oh, and: I'd never made any sort of RPG before!


3. Graphics Weren't Too Shabby!
So, I spent the first... 4-5 hours coming up with an idea and making the menus... Normally I throw together a cheap, quick menu and call it done, but this time I wanted to make it something special. I had a game idea within an hour, and pretty much all of the details (and blog posts) within another hour or two... But it wasn't for another 2 hours or so that I managed to finish the menus! Why?

I later added a mute button to the bottom-right, once I realized I actually had time to add some sound!

That's why! It's easily one of the best menus I've ever made, and to have made it in such a short amount of time was pretty sweet to me! I'm not much of an artist, and I'd already made that ghost before, but the flashlight and making the menu interactive like this was very new. Yes, I realize the actual flashlight isn't great, but that beam of light was a "WHOA!" moment for me... Those of you who are artists are probably reading this and thinking "Pffft, whatever", but that was AMAZING to me!!!

Also, here's a lesson I keep learning over and over, and contradicts most everything anyone will ever tell you about making games... GETTING GOOD GRAPHICS INTO THE GAME EARLY IS VITAL!!!! SERIOUSLY!!! I started off with bad art and felt like my game was awful... But once I added more, spiffied things up a bit... It suddenly felt like a GAME! I was proud to be its creator! It inspired me to keep going and really energized me!


4. Random Level Layout

Note: Shop button was removed from final version, max courage was added and graphics were changed a bit in the final version. Each square is randomly selected as a type by percentage, and then the specific type of that type is selected by percentage as well! For example: On level 6, there's a 4% chance of finding an item; if it's an item, there's then a 70% chance that item will be a level 1 healing item, a 30% chance it's a level 2 healing item.

When I came up with the game idea, I KNEW I'd have to go the route of random levels... Heck, I wanted FIFTY LEVELS and all... And while I'd never done any sort of random levels before, and knew it'd take a LOT of crazy number jumbling to try to make it work right, Evolutionator (my August 2012 Ludum Dare game) taught me that personally coding each area in 48 hours AFTER MAKING THE ENGINE TOO is just absurd. I had about an hour to test that game out, and while it wasn't bad, it was very easy to make that game far too simple or far too difficult without the right upgrades.

While the game still needs tweaking for sure, I'm very happy to have 50 levels that work out pretty well and takes about an hour or two to fully play (and is easy to get sucked into) from about 35-ish hours of work!! Especially as opposed to Evolutionator, that ended up as maybe 10 minutes of play...


5. I Finished the Game! There's Even Music!!!
Out of about 25 games that I've made, no more than 5 have any sort of sound in them, and I've never, ever gotten music into a jam game before! I managed to get a LOT of what I wanted into the game, and it ended up being really fun to me (I'm always surprised when a game I make is actually fun to me!)

Plus, when it comes to game jams/compos/etc, just finishing ANYTHING is an achievement!!!


What Went Wrong

1. I Bit Off Too Much, Sorta...

Story is one of the main elements I wanted to integrate a lot more of, but all that I had time for was a little bit in the tutorial before the game.

Every time I do a game jam, there are three primary thoughts that cross my mind: come up with something unique, come up with something I can actually accomplish and COME UP WITH SOMETHING THAT WON'T END UP AS ANOTHER FUTURE PROJECT!!!

While the game was certainly finished - it has a sweet menu, a beginning, a long middle and an end - there are a few things I didn't get to integrate. For example, I came up with a list of artifacts to find (items that would only be found once in the game, then would give bonuses or change the game a bit). I actually listed all of them in another blog post, so I won't detail it all again here. There are also no sound effects, which would have gone nicely with the simple background music I managed to find.

But most importantly of all, I really wanted to get more story into the game. Who, or what, was this ghost before death? Why is leaving the afterlife so important suddenly (it's not a bad place, after all...)? If you beat the game, you'll get a few more hints, but they end up leading to more questions than answers! I really want to place collectible items throughout the game that somehow help bring memories about, so that the player (and the ghost!) can learn the truth.

It all boils down to this, though: Now there's another game that I REALLY want to continue and add more to!


2. Randomly-Generated Balancing
Balancing random levels is crazy! I'm sure that most games that do random generation use a much more wild formula, but in this one it seriously all comes down to "pick a number 1-100". Enemy stats, purchase prices, treasure finds, flashlight powers, etc all really make a HUGE difference when edited, it's amazing how vital numbers are in an RPG! This was the closest I ever came to making one, and now I know that...


3. Too Much Caffeine/Not Enough Sleep?
I have NO idea why I ended up shaky, with burning eyes and completely exhausted by 2pm today, but I sure did! I slept a good 6 hours last night and 8 the night before... I didn't go too overboard with caffeine, although I did drink a bit extra yesterday... Maybe it's just mental exhaustion, I have no idea... But I'm VERY happy that things were so close to done coming into this final day, I was working at about 20-50% strength all day...


4. No SFX
A game based in any kind of darkness/horror, even a very light amount like I was aiming for, needs music. I know that now... The second I started considering adding music in the last two hours, and especially once I heard it in the game, I realized just how vital it is. Unfortunately, just as I was getting excited about what kinds of sounds to use, I realized there was no way I'd find and code in SFX with 45 minutes left...


5. Off-Theme
If this were a Ludum Dare, or any other judged competition, instead of just a jam, this would have been a bigger deal... Like I said, the game really doesn't conform to the themes without a bit of explaining, and even then it's a bit of a cop-out, but once I got into joking about the concept I realized just how badly I wanted to make this game, so I did!

How to Kick Game Jam Buttocks!

Someone partaking in the #1GAMCrunch that I just followed on Twitter (@dreamwinterlab) wrote this article on Surviving a Game Jam. It gave me the idea to write up the lessons I've learned partaking in several as well!

Note that the jams I refer to in this post are all 48-72 hour competitions where a theme is given when the counter begins, and are done "alone" from home. I say "alone" because Angel still helps with coming up with ideas and stuff, but the development is completely done by me. Also note that I'm in the Eastern time zone in the US for times

Pre-Jam

Every jam I've ever taken part in began late at night. The #1GAMCrunch begins at 5pm, and Ludum Dares begin at 9pm (I think? Maybe 10, I forget). Because they begin so late at night, it's easy to think about waking up as late as possible in the day to get lots of work done right away, and I did try that in the past... But DON'T DO IT! Seriously! In most cases, the competition begins at the same time as it ends, so if it begins at 9pm on Friday, it ends at 9pm Sunday or Monday. If you wake up at 2pm and you normally don't, you're going to screw up your sleep pattern AND on the last day, you'll only have from about 2-9pm. In my experience, the last day is the most vital; it's when you wrap things up and fix the last few things that you can. I've never sat there in the last couple hours or so and said 'hey, I'm done, sweet!' It's always 'DOH! I still need to balance these levels out a bit, test some more, fix up some graphics...'

Finally, within the 24 hours or so before the jam, take some time off! Relax, watch some movies, play some video games... In fact, check out other game jam games that did well, play those! They're usually very short so you can play lots and see what they did, and they're usually very diverse in genre/graphics/gameplay, so it'll give your brain lots of ideas as well!

The Announcing of the Theme

So, the time has officially begin, the theme is announced. Wait, what's the theme again?? How the heck am I gonna make a game out of that? Oh I know, I'll make [whatever] with it, that'll be easy!

STOP! Before you run with that idea, how cliche is it? If you Google the basic concept, how many thousands of versions of that game will there be?

For me, pretty much EVERY theme announcement goes like this (seriously, like 75% of the time!):

1. Wait, what? I'm never going to come up with something for that!
2. Got it! I'll just make a 'catch the falling [whatever] as a [whatever]', that fits perfectly!
3. No wait, I've already half-made three of those... How about I take this one awesome idea I've had for years and make a short demo of part of it, that'd fit!
4. Nah, I don't want to half-make another game, I want a full game, and that game would take at least a few weeks to make!
5. [after about an hour and a half of staring at a blank notebook] (said out loud so Angel hears it) "Geez, coming up with an idea for [theme] is tough!"
6. Angel: Why not make a game like [whatever]. Me: [part] would take too long and I've never done it.
7. About half an hour later, with discussion, a great concept is found!

What's the point? Talk to someone! Discussion with someone you can trust, who won't make you feel stupid and who likes games is the most important thing you can do to come up with an idea! I've never done it with someone online, but I'd imagine that would work just as well, perhaps a little slower since you can't sketch things out and just show it to them without scanning, and typing is usually slightly slower than verbal speech.

Making Your Game

Work work work! No breaks, no sleep, no TV, no cooking, no going anywhere; live on energy drinks, sugar cubes and whatever you can shove down your throat while still working with your other hand.

Sounds slightly extreme, but we've all been there... "Geez, there are only 36 hours left after sleeping and getting my idea, I have to make every second count". You're right, but not the way you think. Read the article I linked to at the beginning for much more detail on this, but my way is:

FOOD AND DRINK: Energy drink in the morning. I'm addicted to caffeine; soda will keep the headaches away, but energy drinks help me wake up a bit more (like coffee!). I ONLY drink the one, though... After that, it's alternating soda and water. Snacks are fine, but I don't eat any differently than a normal day. I still spend time eating dinner, I still get away from the laptop for a while to help make lunch and breakfast.

BREAKS: Take em! Some people say every hour, some say every couple hours, or every half hour... I take breaks when it makes sense to me: after finishing the menu, after completing something tricky, etc. Nothing throws me off more than working on the first 10 functions that make the basics of the game work, juggling variable names and all in a notepad file, then having to take a break in the middle of it.

SLEEP: DO IT! Seriously! I need lots of sleep to function properly myself... I can work all 48 hours of the competition if I really want to, but the last 28 hours or so are going to be garbage. When I'm awake and can focus, I do work about 10 times faster than when I'm sleepy, and it's much easier to create needless bugs when you're sleepy by misspelling something. MAKE SURE TO KEEP A NOTEBOOK, PEN AND LIGHT SOURCE NEAR YOU WHILE YOU SLEEP! Especially during a time like this, all sorts of awesomeness will come to you while you try to sleep, while you sleep and the minute you wake up. You really need to be able to write these down or you'll lose clarity of the idea, or the idea altogether! I suggest doing this every night, but particularly during a jam.

MAJOR BUGS: During every single jam, at one point I've run across some kind of major bug. It makes absolutely no sense that it exists and no matter what I do, it won't work properly. Just like any other bug, give it some time to try to fix it, but if you can't within, say, half an hour... Turn off the computer and walk away for a while. Take a shower, go for a walk, play a game, watch a TV show, whatever. I seriously had a bug during one game jam that I spent HOURS trying to fix late at night; I gave up, shut the laptop off and went to sleep. In the morning, when I woke up, the game worked fine. Computers can be really weird sometimes, and Flash is no exception :)

VERSION CONTROL: Regardless of what you use to make your game, once you have it functioning, save it as something different and leave it alone ("AwesomeGame-WORKS"). Once you add a feature and it works for sure, do it again ("AwesomeGame2-AddedLevel2"). Do this EVERY time, especially as time is running out; you never know when you'll add something that randomly breaks the whole game that can be fixed with a half hour of bug hunting, but you only have 20 mins left. Also, you never know when some sort of personal emergency will come up. Sure, you have plenty of time, but maybe some sort of emergency happens where you're gone for a while and now you're not sure if you can fix everything up to where the game is playable again.

Summary

There it is! That's how I kick some rear end, and I hope that it helps you do the same! Here's a quick summary:

• Keep your current, consistent sleep pattern going; don't throw it way off just to have more hours awake at the beginning.
• Take time off before the jam if you can, you're going to need it!
• Talk to your equally-significant other, a friend or loved one about the theme. Bounce ideas back and forth, and don't go for something too cliche or too complex.
• Eat and sleep like you normally would; a reward of some kind of special snack, drink, etc is fine, but don't live on sugar or caffeine the whole time!
• Take breaks when they make sense to you, your body, mind and fingers will thank you!
• Sleep! Keep a notebook and pen within easy reach for any thoughts.
• Step away for a while if you get stuck, it's better than randomly messing with things til something works.
• Save different versions of the game as you go, so that you don't accidentally break everything and have nothing to go back to late in the competition, or if some sort of emergency comes up.

And, above all, just have fun and be proud of yourself! Even if you end up in last place, even if your game isn't terribly fun, or is partially broken, or anything else... You made it through and you learned a LOT in a short period of time! Be proud of yourself for your accomplishments!

Ludum Dare 24 Theme Voting: Round 2

Here's my voting on round two!

Castles are awesome, but I voted them down because I don't want to try to draw one, let alone more than one :P

Loneliness and Companion are both fun topics that would really let a person play with the art value in games...

The Impossible is kind of redundant, since a good game in 48 hours pretty much IS THE IMPOSSIBLE!

Some of the others could be fun or could be really rough... We'll see in a few days!

Today's question: Which of these themes would you most want to make a game about? If you aren't a "real" game maker, just think up a fun idea around it. Everyone is a game designer to some extent, be it video games, board games, party games, mind games... Life is just one big minigame collection!

The 48-hour FGL Game Development Challenge!

Wow, it's been a year and a half since I did all of this? Good grief!

This last weekend was the FGL Name Change competition. It was my first 48 hour challenge in quite some time, and I rarely have anything playable after this amount of time. The challenge was also particularly rough because the theme was something that the developer had to pick! Normally when the theme is announced, it's something crazy like "enemies as a weapon" or "darkness". This time, there were TWO challenges:

1. MOUSE-CONTROLS ONLY!!!! Wow, that was rough... I almost ALWAYS require both mouse and keyboard. It's a flaw, sure, but it's true.
2. Create your title using the initials FGL. For example, Flying Goat Lizards or Figuratively Great Lightning. Not only was this to be the title, it was also the main theme the game had to center upon!

Whenever a contest like this starts, my brain immediately goes to games that I want to make, that are much bigger, but I can make a small part of for the competition. Then my brain goes to the same types of games every time - moving back and forth catching items as they fall, shooting things from a turret in the middle...

After some time, I decided it'd be smarter to come up with a fun name and make a game around it. Here are some of the games you COULD have played if I would have been braver:

Forbidden Grind Limit: Level up over and over, grinding through enemies, approaching the Forbidden Grind Limit!

Forward, Gassy Loser: A man with a low sense of self-esteem must overcome a horrible enemy, his gas issues AND his lack of confidence!

Flannel Goblin League: Who knows? It's got goblins and flannel, so who cares what else???

Final Giant Lollipop: You have the very last huge lollipop in the whole world, you have to protect it! 

The best of all would be if you were the gassy loser who had to fight off flannel goblins with the giant lollipop, leveling up toward that grind limit!

Anyway, with Angel's help suggestion, I came up with Found: Ghastly Language! Gumshoe must prove herself in her day as a Probationary Grammar Officer, checking various Crittervillian businesses Facebook-like status updates and image posts. See, the world's grammar has fallen so far into disarray that the first move to fix it is to fine businesses for each error. As businesses get better, people will finally have a good example to follow!

You have 8 minutes (one second per game minute) to check 35 randomly-selected pieces. Each has ONE error, you simply have to click the improper word! Get at least 70% correct and you're an official member of the Grammar Police!

I was going to add photos of signs as well (like McDonalds-type signs) and also inter-company memos, but I didn't have enough time my brain was completely fried after creating the Vale monitor and all of the Facebook images and almost 50 posts that I ended up dragging and didn't make it in time.

IF YOU WOULD LIKE TO ENJOY THE GAME, CHECK THIS LINK OUT! http://www.thecritterverse.com/secret/fgl/Found%20Ghastly%20Language.html

Self-Challenge: Game in a Day - ASCIIvader!

Over at ExperimentalGameplay.com the monthly challenge is ASCII. It's actually a very interesting one, and the idea there is to make a game in a week. I'm pushing myself even harder, I'm going to make this one in a day! I came up with a concept that should be doable - simply avoid bouncing pieces and the like as long as you can. Survive a level to move on. Beat all 10 levels and you rock! Don't, and... well... :)

The game is titled ASCIIvader! Get it? Plus it kinda looks like Vader, Darth Vader, so that should be a draw too. I'll be updating this blog as I go. Here goes nothin!

Contests and Experimental Gameplay Jan 2011

One of my challenges to myself this year is to compete in as many competitions as possible! Ludum Dare (LD) and Experimental Gameplay (EGP) are two major ones; EGP is monthly, and LD usually does at least a "mini" challenge monthly, with a "real" competition every few months. I figure that, at worst case, this would mean 24 games this year, right? That alone is pretty sweet! Plus I'll be doing others inbetween...

EGP challenges each person to pick a week of the month to make a game (no more than the 7 days), which has to be based around the theme, which this time around is "inanimate." Quite a broad theme, but I guess that'll be what makes it interesting!

Experimental Gameplay October Challenge: BOYS AND GIRLS

http://experimentalgameplay.com/blog/2010/10/boys-and-girls-in-october/

Experimental Gameplay is a website based around making games in a week. They all did it when they were in school and now they challenge others to do the same. This month is the first month I found out about the monthly challenges, and figured I'd give it a shot! The challenge is a tricky one though: make a game for girls (/women). It's a challenge because in my past, I never really looked at games "for females" or "for males" or "for glowing orbs" as they say, it was always a question of "I don't like 3d so my games end up being the casual fare, and I don't like crazy violence, and I just want to make games I like, cuz I'm sure other people out there will like them too." I guess I make games for Charlie, and I'm not a girl, so it doesn't help anything.

It seems, in my "interviewing" (ie: "you're a girl, what games do you like?"), women like adventuring, they like puzzles, they like quests and checklists and unlocking stuff just as much as we guys do! It also seems cute graphics outweigh badass ones, although I laugh every time I realize that women will construct death traps for their Sims just as often as men do!

Now the trick will be coming up with an idea that's doable in about 2 days (since that's all I actually have in free time, not working...)