@Greg: that would work too! =) Do you have a retro USB NES controller? I'm thinking of getting the snes one (well, an adaptor anyhow)

This game is amazing. Man, oh man. The level design is incredibly well thought out, in spite of the difficulty (well, partly, because of it). For instance in level two, there is this awkwardly placed "cloud emitter" (the big mechanical things that shoot clouds, don't ask me what it really is supposed to be =) If you go in for a normal "close kill" you tend to get destroyed by these ground guns that appear on the screen at a time just when you will have committed. Worse, there's guns that show up above soon, too, so you end up in a lot of trouble (though it can be done).

Instead, what seems to work better is to go ABOVE the rock, get the guns that are up there, then let the lower guns shoot, avoid the bullets, blast them, then bomb the emitter a few times.

A little later on is the colony which you need to avoid shooting, and the designer has placed these saucers who fly in an increasingly spread out/chaotic pattern. This chaotic pattern means you'll tend to deal with them them by holding fire and just sliding up the screen, but this will also take out the colony.

So to avoid the colony, what works better is actually to go right to the top of the screen, which is effectively a safe spot here (there is a single spider gun thing that never poses a problem, but for whatever reason you're typically shielded from any trouble here.) When you do this, you even get a "secret" points bonus.

INCREDIBLE!

That said, I really don't think I will make it past stage 2-2, although the inspirational quotes are... inspiring. Hahaha! =)

Noway it's authentic Indie Game Jam hygiene =)

Well truthfully I thought you guys all looked pretty good, so don't sweat it! (pun intended)

This is fast becoming my new favorite thread on tigs.

I found this review at IGN for Elemental Gimmick Gear:

http://dreamcast.ign.com/articles/159/159988p1.html

Remember how waaay back when 3D first came out, or some such, there were a few small quiet voices saying "but... what about art? fancy graphics are great but really, art is more important!"?

Reading this review, and seeing that IGN gave this obviously beautiful game a 4.0/10 on graphics, makes me go "see? told you so."

I've been watching this game for awhile thanks to pixel prospector but only got to try it tonight (have to boot up a different machine).

Man! This is truly an amazing game, and it oozes love. All I can say, is I really want to go at this with an snes controller.

@Seth that game looks amazing!

Well don't mind me, I just pride myself on design, "the invisible art" and when somebody boasts strong design I go in expecting a LOT. If I feel I can do better, I turn up my nose. I didn't mean to rage out on you with a rant about how terrible the game was... It wasn't that bad, I just didn't care for it

Oh! Heh =) No hard feelings. This was a game I played a really long time ago, anyhow, so I might feel differently with more perspective. He definitely does take the romhacker's "let's make it more difficult" approach, that much I remember. I felt it was clever on a "micro" design level; e.g., the way he twists the tools he is given in interesting ways. On a more "macro" level, the design is maybe not as good (i.e., what story does the game tell, what's the pacing, the overall difficulty or atmosphere, those considerations.)

EDIT: By the way, the first three games that Paul Eres recommended are GOD-TIER in my book... Crystalis, The Guardian Legend, and Seiken Densetsu (Final Fantasy Adventure) are my favorite games of their respective systems, and I daresay I like them more than Zelda even though that was the game that started it for me 

Crystalis is amazing, played it way back in the day on the NES and I think I still have the cart on my shelf. Would be interesting to look up who was the main creative person behind Crystalis and see what else they had done.

I'll have to play SD1 and GL. I think I may have started GL once in an EMU...

I think you over-hyped this, because I ended up being very disappointed with this. I figured I'd check it out since I used to hack ROMs myself and had some pretty decent stuff. I found myself more irritated than entertained with this hack, and it wasn't as exceptional as I was expecting it to be.

The graphics are mostly ripped from other games, and end up looking bland and sloppy (granted, it's an NES game, but still)... Okay, so not everyone's an artist, but a brilliant designer? Really? Running around in Zelda without a sword for the first 5 - 10 does NOT equal fun. Instead, the game went out of its way to be difficult and it didn't really offer any real challenges in terms game design.

I'm not impressed.

Oh, dear! =) Well, it's been ages since I played it but I do remember being really impressed with it... TO EACH HIS OR HER OWN! A-ha!

Hmn. Well, I see your point; I can't see that much supporting a team of much more than 3 people. The money is clearly intended to get the game built, then, and isn't some kind of prize in and of itself. At any rate, I basically agree with you, it's not an incredibly sweet deal but I'd say it's legitimate.

Really from what I understand it sounds like basically, "we'll fund a game up to 64,000EUR and in return take half the profits". 50% doesn't seem like a terribly unreasonable return for somebody gambling 64,000EUR on a game. As long as I'm not investing any of my own money into the development, it seems fair enough.

Romhack:

Zelda Outlands

This is an amazing romhack, this guy is a brilliant game designer (a rare thing.)

Ok I didn't read this in detail, but it sounds more realistic to me.

The delays thing makes sense if you see it from their point of view; they are giving you money to make a game, based on agreed milestones, and if you can't deliver they penalize you Maybe 25% for 3 months overdue is a bit much, but... just be careful what you agree to on milestones, then, eh? 3 months is a long time, too!

If you *really* can't deliver, they just take it over. So in that case you've basically sold them IP and a partly developed game for 65,000EUR (if I understand correctly) which, depending on how good of a job you've done so far is really not such a bad deal for you. I've got a lot of half-developed games with interesting ideas that I'll gladly fork over for 65,000EUR =)

Congrats, Zara!

I am http://twitter.com/psysal

I am not a twitter-hater. I like it for seeing what people are up to. Sometimes I delete people if they are too noisy, so beware... =)

I am afraid I have to agree that the way this is set up is not favoring indie devs. Really what they are hoping for is that young and idealistic folks will bust their asses and submit their absolute best ideas. From this large crop of potentiality the marketing gurus will try and cull a few fabulous ideas.

The prizes seem really big but IMHO it's BS.

Intel recently had a competition something along these lines, they wanted to get some development for their app store. Basically you could be rewarded $500 outright and/or have your app "accelerated" at $2/download. This was run really well and actually benefitted both Intel who got lots of new apps and games (hopefully) and also developers like me. Why?

The terms.

There were no exclusivity agreements, no funny contracts, no catches. Really nothing but goodwill from Intel on it. The only term was that they can use your likeness in promotional materials, which is completely normal for a contest (and seems fair.)

Disclaimer: I won $500 for a game I made, Paradise Perfect Boat Rescue. The money is now spent and I read everything I signed, it was a well-run contest.

Activision's terms of exclusivity, at least by my quick read, are so harsh that basically if you make a game for this contest that game can only be for this contest. I guess if you aren't selected you can use it for something else, but causing you to have to make it in "stealth mode" is Not Very Nice.

I guess business is business, but well, IMHO they are making enough money without our indie heart and souls in the mix, too.

Truthfully the spam accounts can probably be deleted. I once had a website with no captcha and it was attacked by spambots. My web host (dreamhost) detected it and shut it down in a very polite way-- renaming the affected database (amazingly smart response, thank you dreamhost!)

At any rate, the point is that the actual content of the spammy accounts will be similar enough that it can probably be purged through some clever SQL. I.e., anythign with "cialis" or links to some particular website.

HOWEVER the main thing is to figure out if there is a vulnerability in the captcha system (which I feel is more likely than the captcha itself being defeated.) SO the thing for the mods to do will be look at whatever captcha or forum reg system is in place and see if there is a security update.

It really isn't a good idea at all to leave thousands of spammy accounts in place. I also agree it's not smart to delete lurker accounts, but I think the spammy ones can probably be targetted.

(Note: This is a bit of an interruption to my four part series on how my game is structured.)

Lately I've been polishing Texas in the hopes of submitting to PAX10 on June 15. This means I've stopped (for now) adding more content and am polishing up what's there (which is actually quite a bit.)

Prolix Dialogue


One of the things I've been polishing is the NPC dialogue. In a game like Texas, NPCs have a really important role in directing the gameplay flow. In particular:

- The player will understand the world and their goals mainly through interacting with NPCs.
- Story scenes (cutscenes) are used to push the story forward.
- Lots of fun is going to be based around interacting in interesting ways with the NPCs.

One of the problems I was encountering to gameplay flow is that the dialog was oversaturated.

I'm not saying that players won't read but that wordy writing is sometimes bad writing. Added to this, I've been mulling over the "less talk, more rock" manifesto by Capybara over at BoingBoing.

Literary Justification
After some reflection I've come to an interesting conclusion:

- In a novel, the author needs to go to a lot of effort to convince the reader that what she is describing is real.
- For instance, if there are dragons, an author will often go to great lengths to "fill in" details about these dragons.
- For example, she may describe harnessing, breeding, etc., perhaps borrowing from real world equine practice.
- Without this detail, fantasy elements in a novel might feel a bit flippant; this detail is crucial in that it justifies the fantasy.

Ludumary Justification
But...

- In a game, you are immersing your player directly in your world.
- The player will swallow whatever you give them, as long as they can interact with it.
- In this way, the game defines it's own reality. It does not need literary justification; the justification is through interactivity.
- For instance, given a blue portal to another world, it is enough that the player can walk through it. The player will not need additional justification that it exists because the game has presented it as a real object. They might *wonder* about it, but this is different.

New Focused Dialogue and Discovery
So, in fact I was killing the game with too much dialogue because NPCs were wasting their time explaining everything. It's just not necessary!

What I've done is reworked most of the "flow" oriented dialogue with this in mind. Rather than explain everything, I just have the characters give a little bit of information that makes sense in the context of the game world, but does not waste time spelling things out. The flow feels much, much tighter.

It's important for the creator to have a coherent vision of the world. However, I don't think it's really necessary to communicate that in gross detail to the player.

Let the player form her own understanding of the game world through observation and all interactions; letters are just one tool in your belt!

I am merely rearranging data before I compress it. Why is this so unheard of and presumably foolish?

Madk, you know I'm NOT one of the naysayers, right? This *isn't* foolish, doing experiments with this sort of thing can be worthwhile.

The only thing that's foolish is not taking the time to understand the proofs available of why you can't have a general purpose compression algorithm that can compress every possible file down to 36 bytes. The mathetmatical proof isn't too hard to understand; the beauty of a good proof is that they are simple enough that you can be certain there are no loopholes.

Best of luck, and I do mean it sincerely!

I hadn't seen this until this morning, just wanted to say it looks amazing. I like the larger 80 x 80 at 4x, looks a lot less cramped.

Your monster and character designs are really interesting and pretty, and way you've described the gameplay sounds like it will be really fun.

Looking forward to it!

Two more videos released by IDF today:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B6sAEYpHF24&feature=player_embedded

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mFGuwUGaI9o&feature=player_embedded

Source/Disclaimer: I read the Christian Science Monitor online for international news and these were in article "Israel releases new videos of Gaza flotilla raid" here:

http://www.csmonitor.com/World/Global-News/2010/0602/Israel-releases-new-videos-of-Gaza-flotilla-raid

I hadn't seen these posted yet so I thought I would add them here.

I'm fascinated by this thread.

Yes, me too. I'm following it with rapt attention.

@_Madk although I do have more faith in mathematical proofs than I do in your current research, please don't consider me a naysayer. I am on your side that you need to pursue this. It will be beneficial because a) you will learn a lot (hopefully), and b) you might come up with something useful in other ways. However, for your own sanity's sake don't be afraid to admit you made a mistake if and when you uncover one. Admitting mistakes is a very important thing in the pursuit of truth and you really will drive yourself crazy trying to force an idea if it turns out to be wrong.

Hey friends and peers, it's good to have a discussion on this. I appreciate that it's been (mostly) civil so far. I do want to weigh in as well:

- What an f'd up situation.

That is all; this whole thing makes me sad. Along with the oil spill failures, ongoing North/South Korean issues (although it sounds like S. Korea is backing down a bit, for what that is worth...), the Guatamala landslides (and sinkhole), this has been a pretty bad week for the human race down here on planet earth.

Peace!