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[RedStar]

will there be a torrent compilation of the games that were finished and eligible like with previous compos?

[Widget]

That's always down to a member of the forums having the time and inclination to create one. I've not kept up with this compo so I'm a poor subject for setting one up, especially factoring in the pitiful amount of time I'm online, so it's a question of whether anyone else is willing and able to do so 

[Fuzz]

  Did you even notice the thread called "Cockpit Competition"? I've put together a list of entries + downloads here- http://forums.tigsource.com/index.php?topic=4823.msg179822#msg179822

[Starflier]

My game: Baloon to the Moon;

Things that went well:
  I got it done!
  No more than 3 hideous glaring errors/bugs
  (Might be wrong here) Challenging, but not impossible to win
  Really fun to play; (To me, my first goal is to have simply moving around as enjoyable as I can make it)
  Atmosphere out the wazoo...
  Creative, wordless 'menus' (Might have just been annoying)

Things that sucked:
  The 'floaty' bug
  I cheaped out and used the default MMF platform movement
  Bullets swung around with the balloon.
  It could have used multiple game modes/difficulties
  I really wanted to add some easter eggs...

All in all, it wasn't bad for 'Invaders meets Battlezone'... I'm a little miffed at how similar the mechanics and gameplay are to 'The Flying Dutchman' (not accusing! I'm sure it was coincidence)

Now I want to explore some more into the world of the puffball people...

[nihilocrat]

Wow, thanks for all the detail! It's cool to see a play-by-play of all the visual effects used. I might go back and add some details like that if I feel any of it is interesting.

I don't mean to degrade any of your accomplishments, but I had to agree it felt like a really well-polished game where the gameplay was overlooked.

[astrofra]

I don't mean to degrade any of your accomplishments, but I had to agree it felt like a really well-polished game where the gameplay was overlooked.

That's the story of my (Tigsource) life.

[Mikademus]

Guys, thanks for the great response to this thread! Since I am still a bit of the new guy around here I wasn't certain you'd write me off as being pretentious for posting this thread...

I have really enjoyed reading your replies! Especially since this compo has been really technical. There has been some really cool games done, and what's been especially cool has been quite sophisticated stuff accomplished with very limited means which reminds me a bit of my C64 programming days! Very cool indeed! 

[EDIT]

Damn, forgot on of the the basic rules of the Intarw3b: the best way to kill a thread is to post a "thank you for your replies" message.

[jph wacheski]

I'll keep it going,. 

Vector Locust :: http://forums.tigsource.com/index.php?topic=4976.0

My method of getting some gameplay roughly working first is something that works well for me,. as I know, I can get sidetracked easily into building some 3d mesh (and endlessly tweeking it) or working on some obsucre system that may not even really be needed in the end.  As well some ideas are great in my head and when I try them on the screen,. not so much,.   So by getting a playable running with stick figures and blocks and stuff,. I can work on what need the attention and in most cases have SOMETHING done for a deadline.  I in fact started on a 6 degrees of freedom flying type idea i had, and quickly realised that I just did not have the math down enouph to pull that off,. although I have learned a lot even wroking on this basicly ground based game.
 I had the idea to do vectors, as well as making texturing a non-issue, this helped with some z buffering problems. Most of the vectors are alpha-blended over each other, as that best gave the look I remember from the old vector macheines (battlezone, the StarWars vector arcade machine, and a bit of Amiga Starglider, and others perhaps) that where largly the insperation for this.  I sorta split my time between adding and balancing the gameplay, and getting the assets looking/sounding the way I wanted,. the sounds where sorta the first things I tried, and not really worked on as much as I would have liked,. the "music" such as it is, (a couple phase samples, randomly played at several pitches) is the weakest element of the sounds,. I did an array of notes for that little tune that plays when you destroy an Orange Node and I would have liked to have had time to work some more with that approach, as i thought it worked best. I will rework the sound design for the next version. The AI for the locusts is simple but effective they only look for their target when they jump,. although they do some self and node avoidance all the time, to keep them from overlaping,. they have two states 1/3 seek nearest blue node, 2/3 seek player,.  the player radar simply reads an array that is only updated when the locusts land,. so in the game fiction, it must be based on the sound, right.  I like self-replicating network type spreading and as well as the Locust droping those mine things that kill the blue nodes (when thay are seeking a node) the Orange Nodes spawn them as well,. (when the max locust is reached) so the more Orange stuff the faster it spreads,. this is the toughest part of the game to try to control/ballance, as when the player is loosing, things get quickly worse,. but such is life,. .
 The bigest problem people seem to have with this game is figuring it out, suppose this could have been beter however I just did not have time to get a level progression in for the compo,. so you are sorta thrown in, and must work it all out.  I really don't think it it too hard, if someone wants to play it, they will work it out, and if not, then likely the presentation just don't grab them enouph to try. so no big loss.  you cant win over everyone. it is what it is.
Thanks to everyone who took the time to give feedback, I have made many changed based on what ppl pointed out,. and some more to come, cheers. Great compo thanks!

[Will Vale]

Might as well post some trials and tribulations here:

What went right

1) I finished a game in my spare time. OK, it's only teeny tiny, but still...

2) I was able to implement (if not exactly explore) a game mechanic I've been musing about for a while, and picking this limited scope allowed point 1 to happen

3) I got to play lots of other cool entries and see some other relatively hardcore sci-fi fans come out of the woodwork. I like that.

4) My toolkit/library is growing and I got to use some of the entity component stuff I've been mucking about with for a while. It did make things easier!

What went wrong

-1) Not enough time. I didn't start anything really until the flight to GDC, where I took some raycast code I'd layered on top of Box2D and tested the scanning/sensor return mechanics (about 3-4 hours?). Then GDC happened and not much work got done (2 hours). After that I was in Berkeley for a week working for a client, but got work done in the evenings (6-8 hours?). I did a bit more on the flight back (2 hours) and tarted everything up when I was back at home (4-6 hours). For a total of around 24 hours.

-2) Too dry. Indulging my inner sci-fi geek meant not giving instant feedback on correct/incorrect contact identification, and not dressing things up as more of a game. So I'd argue the result is interesting but not exactly fun.

-3) No screenshots for ages, still no video or readme. My thread didn't exactly draw attention, because it was pretty boring, whereas my Space Effort thread was a good source of encouragement for me perhaps because I started with arts not codes.

-4) No sound. Again. Sorry

-6) No UI library. I wrote some IMGUI stuff for Space Effort but decided not to use it again, and my UI this time was minimal so it wasn't a huge problem. But it did mean that things like the difficulty select and play again screen got left until the last possible minute.

-7) It's only tangentially cockpitty. I've been meaning to add a bitmap screen border to make it look more like a display, but didn't get to it in time for the compo version.

Grey area

No Photoshop on my work laptop. Doh! I was sure I'd installed it too... This would have helped the early boringness issue, but at least this it me concentrate on the game mechanic, so I don't know if this is a net win or loss.

What's next?

More interesting (i.e. not just one convex polygon) ship shapes.

I really want to turn Sublight into a proper 2D tactical space combat game. I'd quite like to do a 3D game, but frankly I've been there before and it does make things more complex. I think that most of the same ideas and mechanics can be interesting in 2D though.

I do like the idea of doing the raytracing radar mechanic in 3D - instead of a 1.5D scan section of a 2D ship, you'd get a 2.5D scan of a 3D ship, which you'd draw like a heightfield mesh - e.g. like Toastie's nifty holomap in Landfall.

Hope the above was of interest, I like reading other peoples' post mortems, so hopefully someone else will get something from this!

Cheers and thanks all,

Will

[Crackerblocks]

Excellent thread idea.

For Enviro-Bear 2000...

Went Right:

1. The basic concept worked - turning the inside of a car into a physics world.

2. I'm proud of how messy my code is. The fake 3D stuff is a magic number infested rats nest. Nothing is optimized. I sqrt like crazy. The z-sorting is accomplished by qsorting the world every frame instead of oh maybe turning on the z buffer. Plus with 2 physics worlds updating.. computers are sure fast these days.

3. Rotating sprites didn't end up looking as bad as I feared. Having black borders around stuff made it much worse. I'm glad I got rid of all that.

4. The badger was such a high reward-to-effort ratio.

5. The minimal and obvious interface worked great. I didn't need any instructions.

6. Lots of practice using different box2d stuff. My next physics game will go ultra smooth.


Went Awry:

1. Faking 3d was more work than just using d3D/Ogl. It did provide an interesting aesthetic though. I love how the ground scrolling never manages to sync with the tree movement.

2. Sound design was a big boring slog. And still I'm not happy with a lot of the sounds. Semi-realism kind of sucks that way. Next game I won't do something that can't use sfxr for all sound.

3. People complain that taking a minute off the timer doesn't qualify as a new "level". pshh!

4. Could have used a few more features. The bees and the other bears don't really do anything. I had a cool forest ranger in the plan too.

5. Minimal Tigs updates. Some more sharing, and thus feedback might have saved me one or two mid-project existential crises.

[pgil]

2. Sound design was a big boring slog. And still I'm not happy with a lot of the sounds. Semi-realism kind of sucks that way. Next game I won't do something that can't use sfxr for all sound.

I thought the sound was perfect. Very cartoony... I can't imagine the game without the snorts and grunts of the badger. And SFXR is overused anyway (not that there's anything wrong with sfxr.. it is pretty handy)

[Pixelfish]

Post-mortem for Salvage...

The Good...
1. The raycasting engine turned out remarkably well. It runs nice and smooth and can use static walls, animated walls, doors, and destructible walls without any special code really.
2. I learned a lot about how to control a 'camera' even though it wasn't a true 3D environment.
3. I learned even more about vector math. I learned about it back in school, but never really applied it. It all came rushing back once I started coding the game.
4. The campaign editor was a last minute creation, but made the completion of this game possible. I also like the fact that I can release it and let other people play with it.
5. The Farseer Physics Engine is amazing. I can't praise it enough.

The Bad...
1. Content ... or lack thereof. Only 3 enemies. My original plan was to have 6 enemies, several powerups, static actors (desks, chairs, terminals, etc), and several campaigns.
2. The HUD itself isn't as active or as detailed as I would like it to be. I was planning on including more detail, but just ran out of time and artistic talent.

The Ugly...
1. The red demon enemy is unfinished. While it may be difficult to kill him (nearly impossible) he has no death animation.
2. No Sound. Ugly. Period.

Great thread idea. I hope one is made for every competition from now on. 

[nihilocrat]

2. Sound design was a big boring slog. And still I'm not happy with a lot of the sounds. Semi-realism kind of sucks that way. Next game I won't do something that can't use sfxr for all sound.

I agree that the sound effects were actually pretty fitting. The ridiculousness of the game is well complemented by the ridiculous sound effects.

5. Minimal Tigs updates. Some more sharing, and thus feedback might have saved me one or two mid-project existential crises.

I think a lot of people had those "existential crises". I know I'm not really happy with my game because of its core gamplay, as I mention in my post-mortem, but I feel a little better when I realize it was successful as an experiment. It's good to get feedback to alleviate your concerns, and in reality, what you have been debugging for hours is probably a lot more fun for a newcomer than you'd think.

I think the posting frequency really depends on your personality, I've noticed several projects that showed up out of nowhere, or started a thread but didn't make another post until the game was finished. You might notice I'm the sort of person that likes to release often, not just because of technical issues, to get feedback and such.

[Mikademus]

Excellent thread idea.

Great thread idea. I hope one is made for every competition from now on. 

Thanks! If no-one beats me to it I will certainly make one for the next compo to, especially since I love reading these things!

Anyway, about Pixelfish's game, I for one at least liked it, or more brutally, I liked the concept and execution, though I would have wanted more game in the game. I really enjoyed the Wolfenstein-ish raycasting engine and look (nostalgia but combined with more modern gameplay == winnage) but I agree that missing audio was actually a big drawback. Do complete the game or use the engine for another one, please!

I think the posting frequency really depends on your personality, I've noticed several projects that showed up out of nowhere, or started a thread but didn't make another post until the game was finished. You might notice I'm the sort of person that likes to release often, not just because of technical issues, to get feedback and such.

I think I was a relatively frequent poster in your thread, and that's because of a few things: firstly I really liked your game idea (realistic space flight ), secondly because you used OGRE, but thirdly because I found you easy, responsive and generally sympathetic to speak with, so yeah, personality is important.

[Akon]

yo muthafuckin postmortem for i'm so paid the game

tha good
-got a muthafuckin cool lowpoly look goin on there
-got some muthafuckin shit cool music
-got paid

tha bad
-muthafuckas here don't like autotune
-it's muthafuckin hard to get paid
-no anti-aliasing
-sound effects weren't muthafuckin there

[Ivan]

I don't think that you count as indie then, Akon, if you got paid. Especially, so paid.

[Akon]

I don't think that you count as indie then, Akon, if you got paid. Especially, so paid.

your opinion doesn't muthafuckin matter cause you're not so muthafuckin paid
i can be whateva tha fuck i want
i'm muthafuckin indie, yo
jon blow got muthafuckin paid, you still think he's indie

[Bood_war]

I don't think that you count as indie then, Akon, if you got paid. Especially, so paid.

your opinion doesn't muthafuckin matter cause you're not so muthafuckin paid
i can be whateva tha fuck i want
i'm muthafuckin indie, yo
jon blow got muthafuckin paid, you still think he's indie

Your really muthafuckin' comparing yourself too Jon Blow?

[Akon]

I don't think that you count as indie then, Akon, if you got paid. Especially, so paid.

your opinion doesn't muthafuckin matter cause you're not so muthafuckin paid
i can be whateva tha fuck i want
i'm muthafuckin indie, yo
jon blow got muthafuckin paid, you still think he's indie

Your really muthafuckin' comparing yourself too Jon Blow?

fuck yeah, yo
i'm better than dat muthafucka

[Bood_war]

I don't think that you count as indie then, Akon, if you got paid. Especially, so paid.

your opinion doesn't muthafuckin matter cause you're not so muthafuckin paid
i can be whateva tha fuck i want
i'm muthafuckin indie, yo
jon blow got muthafuckin paid, you still think he's indie

Your really muthafuckin' comparing yourself too Jon Blow?

fuck yeah, yo
i'm better than dat muthafucka

Right