Discovery. And restrictions:

   1. GameMaker 7 or 8 only
   2. Fixed screen size 480×272… no bigger… no smaller
   3. Game must start in a window, though a full screen option is allowed (menu/option item only, no key shortcuts) – full screen size is limited to 480×272
   4. Final EXE must be no bigger than 8Mb
   5. EXE only no ZIP files
   6. No DLL’s or other extension packages can be used.
   7. No installation packages
   8. No use of the registry
   9. Game controls that can be used are UP, DOWN, LEFT, RIGHT – for movement, SPACE, Z, X, C – as action keys and P for Pause.
  10. All games must be tagged with Competition06, anything tagges incorrectly will not be considered.
  11. 2D or 3D can be used but it must be standard Game Maker features, remember no extensions.
  12. Contest finishes August 31st  2010 at Midnight GMT

I'm not so interested in doing game with that resolution and file size though.

YYG just announced a new game competition with nice theme and I have two active projects already

[Graphical style]

I'm currently designing a puzzle platformer with code name "Bodiless". For more information and screenies about the game, check it's

or devlog. Anyways, I'm stuck with graphical style and theme and I'm looking for suggestions and ideas.

Graphical style
I'm most adept with high resolution graphics, like hand drawn etc. while pixel art is not my thing really. Problem is that while that kind of art could IMO play very well with game, game contains also very small sprites, for example floor sprites are just 16x16. I wonder how I could fit these two different graphics neatly together, without making it look like pixel art thrown above vectors/paintings?

Graphical theme
Along with style, I'm bit lost with graphical theme. Game's concept is pretty surreal/abstract since it involves player without torso. Problem is I can't invent any good theme to link with this concept except overall surrealism. So question is how you think one could make good looking and feeling surreal graphics? Or alternatively just throw other themes or suggestions.

I'm really stuck with these and would appreciate some comments or ideas to give some thoughs how I could move my project forward. Any idea and tip is welcome so don't be afraid to comment

Well, my friend though you were swedish 

Just thought to announce that I'm currently developing a level editor for the game as suggested It's coming together quite nicely though there has been some problems too as software programming is bit different than game programming which I have mostly done before. Anyways, here is a screenshot from current editor:


Uploaded with ImageShack.us

I have only coded the basic interface and three basic tools, Pen, Rectangle tool and Zoom/quick jump which shows whole editing area and allows jumping to any location with single click. Soon I will probably start coding the selection tool, which will probably be pretty big feat compared to Pen and Rectangle tool. After basic tools I'll probably code the saving and loading level core which should be big, but fun part

Oh no, first humble bundle and now Portal! Someone really tries to cripple my game development by offering huge load of great games at once when I have so little time for gaming and development

Definitely downloading though

Edit: Now when I looked into my Steam account I noticed that my list of games seems to be even large: Indiana Jones The last Crusade, Indiana Jones The fate of the Atlantis, WoG, Penumbra, Lugaru, Aquaria, Samorost, Gish and now Portal  I guess I have to preserve most of them to summer as now I have to study to get in college

One million dollars, buhahahahahahaa

Seriously, I'm really happy that this kind of thing pulled this well. You seldom if ever see this kind of stuff going on in mainstream/non indie game industry.

I have this feeling Bill Gates is going to wait until the last minute before he dumps a billion or couple and makes Windows look better.

Haha, I wonder how much that would raise the current Windows average ($7.89) :D

Uh, only one hour and half time

Three hours left. Hmm, could they raise a bit over 50 000 to reach one million dollars? Probably not without some quick massive press trick  

Still ~950 000 is quite respectable amount. I hope they will release data about how that sum is broken between charity and developers.

Trying to make a level editor with feature which shows the whole level in the view and allows user to transport to any location by clicking somewhere. Thing is that room's size and shape can be anything between 1024x768 and 20000x20000 and it should zoom correctly. Thing is that it seems like I can't get it work right and it always misses with couple hundred pixels. And I can't seem to find equation or something which would work with all cases... Damn my crappy math skills.

I'm still glad I work with GM as I would probably be in real trouble with more demanding language  

This has taught me a lesson: I'm never cleaning again!

How about spiders and their webs?

Roasted banana is quite delicious especially with some marshmallows.

Try to make cut in the peel of banana, stuff some chocolate inside and bake it in folio in campfire or whatever you prefer. Yummy.

I myself prefer first three gens most. Of course there is those lame ones in each gen but IMO first three had mostly good creature designs. Fourth gen brought new forms for old ones which were mostly nice and had some cool new creatures too. However, like already said many of them seem to be indulged in small details which somehow make them harder to remember and distinct for me. Or so I think.

Oh, and I agree with natural to engineered observation. It's kinda sad IMO.

Oh wow, Samorost 2! Another game I have wanted to play Sweet. I wonder how I can even develop my games now when I have so many good games to play  

@Dataflashsabot
Same here :D Though my honesty prevents me to try that in case it would actually work...

Now played everything except Aquaria yet. WoG is really amazing. Penumbra was interesting though I got bored for not finding any save points. Played to the office. I played Lugaru's tutorial and for now seems like it's controls were bit hard for me. And I had to shut down my computer because I accidentally killed my keyboard response due Windows constantly bugging me with Alt, Ctrl, Shift popups and game was fullscreen. Gish seemed nice too but I didn't have time to play it much for now.

What filesizes are we looking at here? I'm a little strapped for bandwidth...
And - anyone know how long the download links stay live for?

Aquaria is around 200 Mb, Penumbra 292 Mb Gish 53Mb, Lugaru 33Mb, World of Goo 64Mb.

Soon I have downloaded all of them and I have to face the dilemma which one I should play first
Or maybe I run all of them at once   Except my 1.3 GHz, 512mb ram computer probably wouldn't like that idea...

Thanks guys. I'll take look at those

Finally decided and bought it with little higher than the current average. Now downloading WoG I like how there isn't limit for downloads (timewise) since I doubt I can download them all at once or anything I'm happy I found this since I remember being a bit frustrated by finding out that I had missed Machinarium/Samorost2 bundle by couple days 

Sounds very good deal though I fear my current near zero income won't allow me to pay as much as I'd like to leaving me a bad feeling afterwards  so I'm not sure if I'll take the offer

Recently I got my first touch to podcasts by pure chance and though that I should take a look if there is any interesting ones. I though about indie game development (well in some cases game industry as a whole too) would be interesting to hear more and train my english listening skills.

After quickly browsing itunes store I found some podcasts about indie games but I'm not sure of their quality or content. So do you know any good ones which have topics about (indie)game development you could recommend?

Not sure of the definition of art film but I would say Space Odyssey 2001 and couple Miyazaki films. At least those are movies I consider as art films.