Notepad only:97-108
109-122
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>>12866508
Having licenses and releasing titles are two entirely different things, as JAST has made very, very clear over the past decade. While it's hard to clearly determine when a company is 'sitting on a license' and 'rushing a game to the market', it is without a doubt related to the pressure the company feels to release games in order to remain relevant. The most obvious example was Family Project's extremely rushed 2009 release to compete with MangaGamer. MangaGamer has similarly been sitting on Cartagra's license for years - it wouldn't surprise me if MangaGamer conceded a bit in negotiations (say, giving IG a better share of the sales) (or if MangaGamer had even already licensed Cartagra but had been sitting on it for a long time) so they could release it in time to stay relevant in the VN market.
Furthermore, it definitely has an effect in choosing which titles to license (and how much to spend on those licenses). JAST's licensing history is a very clear example; you can see their licensing decisions ebb and flow according to the competition at the time (with the biggest peak being their Nitro+ deal, announced when they were being outcompeted hard). MangaGamer announced Gahkthun, their biggest title yet, at AX 2014, after Sekai Project started to become a serious competitor. Do you think it's a coincidence? With my past experiences with VN localization companies I'd say it's anything but a coincidence.
---
My game was
Quiet Life:
I didn't expect my scores to be high, but I didn't quite expect them to be this low either.
Calculating the percentiles, that's my worst ever score (relative to other entrants) in Innovation, Theme, Audio (obvious considering I didn't have the time and added sfxr bleeps solely for feedback), Humor and Mood, with it being second worst ever in two the remaining three categories, Overall and Fun. (Graphics was my third worst score ever, but that's because that score is always low.) As this was my 8th Ludum Dare, this is a bit of a disappointing result.
I was considering developing my game further, but at this point I'm just not sure if anybody liked it. On the other hand, my only LD game appreciated enough to keep being linked occasionally (my LD22 entry,
Hikikomori Manager 2012) is also my second worst rated game (it was my worst rated game until this LD), so ratings don't say everything either. (Meanwhile,
my best rated game, which was top 10 in three categories and top 25 overall, has only been played by around 50 people and never receives any attention anymore.)
One peculiarity I noticed is that my rankings are lower than you'd expect from the ratings, particularly in theme - my Theme score this LD was 3.44, which ranks me 769th among the 1365 compo entrants (percentile 43.66%). However, back in LD23, my theme score of 3.47 gave me 202nd place of 1072 entrants (percentile 81.16%). Though the score was only 0.03 lower, the percentile dropped by a whopping 37.5%. It's not just voting trends changing over a long stretch of time, either; my LD29 entry's Theme score of 3.63 ranked me #235 out of 1492 (percentile 84.25%). I doubt that 0.19 points of difference was worth an over 40% drop in percentile. A lesser effect is also visible in other categories (my LD31 Overall score of 3.20 is identical to my LD24 score, but in LD24 I was at 75.55% yet this time I'm only at a percentile of 60.00%). I wonder if there's been a big influx of higher-rating new users this (or past) LD or if there's some other explanation for this strange change.
While we're on the subject of strange votes, I'm also not entirely satisfied with the ratings voters gave to other games. While I don't mean any offense to Molten, I feel that
SideLands's #95 Fun, #97 Overall and #240 Innovation for a game of which the biggest draw is that the screen is rotated 90 degrees and that practically plays itself for lack of difficulty, in addition to being short, is rather excessive. Meanwhile great games like Tifu's
Deicide (which despite its flaws in lack of player feedback and sub-optimal controls provides a great, fun, rewarding challenge) and Tuba's
Rome's Little Step with its awesome combat mechanics get screwed with low scores like #445 Overall, #610 Fun and #657 Overall, #419 Fun respectively. I get the feeling that voters simply don't take the time to truly play the games and rate them in a shallow manner after playing for a couple minutes at most. (For reference: 2.5Dino Arena, although the score doesn't fully compare due to it being jam instead of compo, beats Deicide in Fun and RLS in Overall.)
(In case anyone's wondering, these were my votes for the abovementioned games, in order of Overall/Innovation/Fun/Theme/Graphics/Audio:
2.5Dino Arena: 2/1/2/2/2/X
SideLands: 3/3/2/2/4/2
Deicide: 4/4/4/4/3/X
RLS: 4/3/4/3/4/4)
And to supplement our earlier discussion on positive/negative feedback, here are some gems from the people who voted on my low-rated game:
only 2days for that ? wow... Good job
Great game! I love this survival setting.
I had a lot of fun with this.
Good Work ^^
Wow! You did this in 48 hours?! That's awesome! Many features for such a small time. I've had fun playing this. So many recipes... It's awesome!
I lost myself at: "Under you: Dead sheep"
Excellent game!
Good job and in 48 hours! I did not live very long but it was fun.
Great game! 1/5
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2.24 Hooded Hydra
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[redacted because it would violate forum rules]
---
Leadership 45
1,545,857
Including Notepad++:Allowed:
- //Comments
- Leading spaces
- Trailing spaces
- Blank lines
Not allowed:
- Tabs
Notes:
- Everything is case sensitive
================================================
[combination] - start combined use script. Define 'target' in script!
[/combination] - end combined use script
[creature] - open creature attributes
[/creature] - obvious
[namedscript] - start named script
[/namedscript] - end named script
[object] - open object attributes
[/object] - obvious
[properties] - assign properties
[/properties] - stop assigning properties
[spawn] - start script executed when spawning in world (NOT inventory)
[/spawn] - stop spawn script
[tile] - open tile attributes
[/tile] - obvious
[update] - script to call at start of every turn
[/update] - end script to call at start of every turn
[use] - start non-combined use script
[/use] - end non-combined use script
================================================
Properties:
cantpickup - object cannot be picked up
directionalusage - can be used on adjacent tiles
multiuse - variable 'uses' is displayed before item name
solid - object or tile can't be moved through
================================================
Script commands:
--Text macros--
Will only work with the icon special command.
$HELD$ - The sprite of the currently held item
$ONGROUND$ - The sprite of the item on the ground
--Special--
card "<sprite>" - Defines what sprite to use for the action card for this use/combination
icon "<sprite>" - Defines what sprite to use as icon on the action card
name "<name>" - Defines name for named script
target "<name>" - Defines target for combination script
--Conditions and jumps--
BEQ "<name>", "<int>", "<script>" - Short for 'branchifequals'. We assembly now
BLT "<name>", "<int>", "<script>" - Short for 'branchifless'. Also a kind of sandwich
BMT "<name>", "<int>", "<script>" - Short for 'branchifmore'
BNE "<name>", "<int>", "<script>" - Short for 'branchifnotequal'
branchifequals "<name>", "<int>", "<script>" - Exec script/fail if named var is precisely int
branchifless "<name>", "<int>", "<script>" - Exec script/fail if named var is less than int
branchifmore "<name>", "<int>", "<script>" - Exec script/fail if named var is more than int
branchifnotequal "<name>", "<int>", "<script>" - Exec script/fail if named var is NOT int
distancefromplayer "<int>", "<script>" - Exec script/fail if not at least int tiles away from player
groundisfree "<script>" - Exec script/fail if there's something on the ground under player
helditemis "<name>", "<script>" - Exec script/fail if the held item ISN'T the named item
helditemisnot "<name>", "<script>" - Exec script/fail if the held item is the named item
holdingitem "<script>" - Exec script/fail if the player isn't holding any item
itemisheld "<script>" - The item must be held to use, otherwise it execs script/fails
itemnotheld "<script>" - Exec script/fail if the player is holding the item
jump "<script>" - Exec script or fail
nohelditem "<script>" - Exec script/fail if player is holding any item
notdirectional "<script>" - Exec script/fail if used on tile/object not under player
notnearedge "<script>" - Exec script/fail if creature is near world edge
notsolid "<script>" - Exec script/fail if target location is solid
notsummer "<script>" - Exec script/fail if it's summer
notwinter "<script>" - Exec script/fail if it's winter
objectonground "<script>" - Exec script/fail if there's nothing on the ground under the player
objectnotproperty "<name>","<script>" - Exec script/fail if there's an object with the named property at target location
objectwithproperty "<name>","<script>" - Exec script/fail if there's not an object with the named property at target location
random "<float>", "<script>" - If rand() > float, exec script/fail
targetgroundisfree "<script>" - Exec script/fail if there's something on the ground at target position
targetobjectonground "<script>" - Exec script/fail if there's nothing on the ground at target position
tilehasproperty "<name>","<script>" - Exec script/fail if tile at target location does NOT have named property
tilenotproperty "<name>","<script>" - Exec script/fail if tile at target location has named property
--Actions--
createheldobject "<name>" - Create inventory item
createtile "<name>" - Create (replace) a tile at target position
debug "<text"> - Prints debug text to screen
destroyheld - Destroy whatever item is held by the player
destroyobjectonground - Destroys the object at player's location
destroytarget - Destroys the target object
destroythis - Destroys the source object
groundspawn "<name>" - Spawn object at player's location
killself - Makes a creature delete itself
moveawayfromplayer - Moves a tile away from the player
movetarget - Makes a creature move to target position, if possible
reducehunger "<int>" - Restores your hunger bar by the specified amount
sound "<name>" - Plays the specified sound effect
spawn "<name>" - Create object at target position
spawncreature "<name>" - Spawn creature at target position
targetnearby - Changes target position to a random adjacent tile (hor, vert or diag)
--Variable manipulation--
decvar "<name>","<int>" - Decreases var by int (or default one)
incvar "<name>","<int>" - Adds int (or default one) to the named var
setvar "<name>","<int>" - Sets the named var to value int
================================================
World generation:
(Objects will not spawn on occupied tiles.)
[spawn] - Starts defining a spawn
[/spawn] - Finish defining a spawn and execute it
accept "<name>" - (in spawn) Allows spawn to occur on specified tile
basetile "<name>" - Fills every tile of the world with this
min "<number>" - (in spawn) Sets minimum number to spawn (inclusive)
max "<number>" - (in spawn) Sets maximum number to spawn (inclusive)
outline "<name>" - Places tiles around all instances of the specified tile. See other outline commands.
setoutlineexception "<name>" - Which tiles not to replace using the outline command (beyond the one being outlined)
setoutlinetile "<name>" - Which tile to place using the outline command
spreadtilesmin "<number>" - Fill at least X tiles around the original spawn with the same tile
spreadtilesmax "<number>" - Fill at most X tiles around the original spawn with the same tile
spawnobject "<name>" - (in spawn) Sets object to spawn
worldsizex "<int>" - Sets the width of the map
worldsizey "<int>" - Sets the height of the map
---
[object]
name "Dead Sheep"
sprite "deadsheep"
[/object]
[properties]
cantpickup
[/properties]
[combination]
target "Stone Axe"
card "use"
icon "stoneaxe"
notdirectional
destroythis
spawn "Raw Meat"
sound "butcher"
[/combination]
[update]
BEQ "decaytimer","400","rotaway"
incvar "decaytimer","4"
[/update]
[namedscript]
name "slowdecay"
incvar "decaytimer","1"
[/namedscript]
[namedscript]
name "rotaway"
destroythis
[/namedscript]
---
[object]
name "Block of Wood"
sprite "blockofwood"
[/object]
[combination]
target "Stone Axe"
card "build"
icon "craftingtable"
notdirectional
itemnotheld
destroythis
spawn "Crafting Table"
sound "build"
[/combination]
---
[object]
name "Shovel"
sprite "shovel"
[/object]
[properties]
directionalusage
[/properties]
[combination]
target "Coast"
card "dig"
icon "shovel"
notdirectional
itemisheld
groundisfree
spawn "Clay"
sound "ground"
[/combination]
[combination]
target "Grass"
card "dig"
icon "shovel"
notdirectional
itemisheld
createtile "Dirt"
sound "ground"
[/combination]
---
-----------------
Version 4
December 18, 2014
-----------------
GAMEPLAY:
-ADDED: Radical control change. Possible actions now displayed above
player; Z/Enter to execute, X/Space to toggle between options.
-ADDED: Additional controls. H to hide actions, more alternative buttons.
-ADDED: New item: Goad (pushes sheep around)
-ADDED: Simple lighting effect highlights your initial position.
-CHANGED: Items can now only be used on adjacent tiles when this makes sense
(so no more digging on tiles you're not standing on).
-CHANGED: Grass Seeds can now be used 5 times.
-CHANGED: Meat has been buffed, reducing hunger twice as much.
-CHANGED: Hammer is now crafted with stone instead of metal.
-CHANGED: Scythe can now kill sheep.
TECHNICAL:
-ADDED: Script: New script type, 'spawn'
-ADDED: Script: New condition, 'notdirectional'
-ADDED: New default property, 'multiuse'
-FIXED: Script: Branch conditions can now fail (in addition to being able
to jump), as documented
-----------------
Version 3
December 12, 2014
-----------------
GAMEPLAY:
-ADDED: Music!
-CHANGED: Complete revision of all sound effects.
-CHANGED: You now start with two sheep.
-CHANGED: Sheep now reproduce more slowly.
-CHANGED: Yearly difficulty increase greatly reduced.
-CHANGED: Fires now last 50 turns (was 10).
-CHANGED: Turning grass into dirt with the shovel no longer spawns
Grass Seeds.
-CHANGED: Wooden Floors now produced with Blocks of Wood (was Planks).
-CHANGED: Wooden Walls now produced with Wooden Floors (was Blocks of Wood).
-CHANGED: Roasted Fish, Roasted Meat and Roasted Seed are no longer destroyed
by Fire. (What was I thinking?)
-CHANGED: Slightly decreased raw food decay time, significantly increased
non-raw food decay time.
-CHANGED: Food other than raw meat and seeds no longer decays on
Wooden Floors.
-CHANGED: Unharvested tomatoes (the crop, not the item) now decay. Rapidly.
-FIXED: Tomato Seed now decays slowly on Wooden Floors.
TECHNICAL:
-ADDED: Script: New condition, 'helditemis'
-ADDED: Script: New condition, 'helditemisnot'
-----------------
Version 2
December 9, 2014
-----------------
GAMEPLAY:
-ADDED: New item: Fence
-ADDED: New item: Scythe
-CHANGED: It's now possible to cancel directional usage by pressing Z or X.
-CHANGED: Sheep will now eat grass. If there's no grass to eat, they die.
-FIXED: Fishing nets can no longer be set on tiles with an object on them.
-FIXED: You now need to hold the shovel to use it.
-FIXED: Crops planted with Tomato Seeds will no longer grow in winter.
-FIXED: You will now hear a sound upon harvesting a Tomato.
TECHNICAL:
-ADDED: gamesettings.dat now holds all game start variables, making the
game fully customizable.
-ADDED: Script: New condition, 'objectnotproperty'
-ADDED: Script: New condition, 'objectwithproperty'
-ADDED: Script: New condition, 'tilehasproperty'
-CHANGED: Sounds are now loaded from external files, like graphics.
-CHANGED: worldgeneration.dat: Can now define world size.
-----------------
Version 1
December 8, 2014
-----------------
Original Ludum Dare release.
(continued in next post)
Player
