Carlo made the music for Task Manager (my versus compo entry) and he's currently working on the soundtrack and audio for The Swapper. He has often exceeded my expectations by perfectly interpreting and carrying out even the most vague ideas. He's been very open to feedback and suggestions while also being able to keep up with deadlines.

He's generally been a very nice person to work with and I can definitely recommend him to anyone looking for a talented musician or audio designer.

Thanks for the feedback! I'm sorry for the error which I guess is related to the way I detect the directory from which the game is executed.

C# code:

Code:

string workingDirectory = Directory.GetCurrentDirectory();

I did some research and apparently the correct way to do that would be:

Code:

string workingDirectory = System.Reflection.Assembly.GetEntryAssembly.Location;

I've never seen the old method cause any problems before even though I've used it on tons of computers.
I'll try to fix the problem as soon as possible.

<div style="padding: 5px; padding-bottom: 0; float: left"><img src="http://facepalmgames.com/projects/task_manager/task_manager_screen_s2.jpg" width="300" height="200" /><p style="margin-top: 0"><a href="http://forums.tigsource.com/index.php?topic=18051.0">Task Manager</a>, by Olli Harjola</p>
</div>




Task Manager, by Olli Harjola

[here is the download link]

Ok, the game is basically finished. I'm quite satisfied with what I could come up with in about five days and the musician I worked with created just what he was supposed to.

I'm pretty much done with the concept but there's surely still room for improvement. Maybe some day in the future I'll add more tasks and customization possibilities to the game but for now here is the download link.

[TASK MANAGER]

TASK MANAGER
Desktop minigames



Hi,
yesterday I brainstormed and came up with an idea for a Versus Comp game.
The game is a stupid multiplayer "minigame" collection with tasks like: "Set the computer's time to X", "Minimize this window" "Create a file called X to Y" etc..

Edit:
Grab the finished game here

I'm actually surprised Super Crate Box didn't get nominated after all the aggressive marketing on JW's behalf.

It's one of the nominees in Excellence In Design.

I enjoy most exploration games but I think the greatest problem with some of them is the way in which player is forced to find all X things before being able to progress or finish the game. At some point the exploration starts feeling pointless if there's no idea of where to go next. It feels a bit like reading the same chapter in a book again and again or watching a movie scene repeatedly over and over.

I'd almost call Link Dead (the Soldat creator's new game) a stealth game. It's not about avoiding violence but the other faction is really weak if it doesn't keep hiding most of the time.

I use an equation like this in a post-processing shader:
grayscale = 0.299*color.r + 0.587*color.g + 0.114*color.b;

Also look here

Related to all the discussion of game length vs value, a compo about making games that take longer to complete on average than it took to create them. It'd be interesting to see if we'd have 5 hours consisting of some mindless filler or totally impossible and unfair games or whatever.

I think lots of people (including me) would take the easy way and turn it into another PG compo. But it's still a cool idea.

Thinking about it I guess PG is the almost only (and still hard) way to actually create something enjoyable out of the theme. I'd probably be going that way too..

Great application and made me appreciate Escher even more.

Related to all the discussion of game length vs value, a compo about making games that take longer to complete on average than it took to create them. It'd be interesting to see if we'd have 5 hours consisting of some mindless filler or totally impossible and unfair games or whatever.

[Title:]

Title: Polonez

Genre: Arcade shooter

Description: Polonez is an abstract arcade "shooter" with a twist, made to test what can be created from scratch in a few hours.

Controls:
Arrows: Move
Esc: Quit / Return to menu

Platform: Windows, might work on wine

Authors:
Olli - Design, programming, art
Luke Thomas - Music






Download the game
Size of file: 4.3 MB

I was also wondering the same but I don't use XNA. If anybody knows any (non)free installers that check for the existence of .net framework and place a shortcut for unistallation I'd be happy to hear about them. Otherwise I guess I'll just have to interpret Add/Remove as an automated routine.

I finally fixed my physics based character movement code which used to produce way too random responses. That's something I've wanted to do for over one month now. In the end it took six hours.

[P.S: I've been checking out Steam, and there seems to be no contact link or faq for developer. Any one know how I can get to them?]

P.S: I've been checking out Steam, and there seems to be no contact link or faq for developer. Any one know how I can get to them?

http://www.valvesoftware.com/business/

I'm waiting for someone to post "Clay." 

I half-do! 

Not really related to sprites but.. First I create normal maps for different body parts from models created using clay and then procedurally animate them by using a physics engine and custom animation tools.

I once used to use an app called Anime Studio. It might be something you're looking for.

http://steamcommunity.com/id/facepalmgames

SFML.

Portable, uses OpenGL and is free and open-source.
It allows you to easily scale, rotate and blend graphics, and has a built-in view system.
It's object-oriented and very easy to use. It even has support for custom shaders written in GLSL.
It also plays sound and provides threads.
Oh, and networking.

If you want something simple but powerful I'd also recommend SFML. Compared to SDL I found it much more intuitive and nicer to use. Last time I checked it out it had some limits like only supporting GLSL shaders, having render-to-texture that didn't work on older comps etc and that's basically why I'm writing own engine at the moment. But I think SFML still knocks out many other options. Just think about rotating sprites in SDL..

Game Maker is one option but making anything more complex (Cortex Command) in it you're pretty likely to face performance problems.

This one happened when I was working on a physics based animation system and gave too much force to the limbs. The joint constraints couldn't resist it anymore.



Another good one was earlier when I tried to make the characters walk/stand using an evolutionary algorithm. The algorithm was on it's early stages and the fitness function was just evaluating how far the character could get on the x-axis. I left the program alone for a while and came back. What I had on the screen was a guy who apparently wanted to be a bird. The character (which was floating and vibrating midair) had no max force he could use to rotate the limbs so the algorithm had decided that the best way to move was to wave one's arms like crazy. Later that day I decided to create the animations manually..