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[Perrin]

Given the treatment you gave Critical Bypass, Perrin, I'd be excited to see your take on Megalonia. Just my 2 cents

Yeah but to be honest I'd be much more interested in NOT doing another shooter. ^_^

[unsilentwill]

We may already have to many shooters already. There's always the important option of changing gameplay completely but keeping the same fever-dream universe , if not expanding it.

There's still so much untaped potential and I want to see more!

Also, many games are at their 2 week mark, woo!

[Perrin]

Think I'd like to take a crack at Alfredo actually. Though will need Mr. P to mark Critical Bypass as done before the system will let me reserve another game.

[mr. podunkian]

Your Bits and Pieces is pretty cute! I played it for quite a while, but I find it too difficult and frustrating to get very far through...

Sorry about the difficulty. I guess player movement is extremely hair-triggerish. After spending a long time fooling around with the basic locomotion, I decided that these wild, slightly floaty and ultra-responsive leaps make for the most interesting gameplay, supportive of my vision of steering through clouds of enemies. But it's extreme. I might try globally slowing down the game. Do you think that might help?

I'm not seeing a lot of resemblance to the original game though, could you clarify that for me?

As a gamer and developer I'm very abstract and analytical, so for me the remaking process was naturally more about analyzing and expanding on the gameplay mechanics than developing the original's story, setting, or visuals.

Playing the original, the only faint hints of fulfilling gameplay that I encountered were the moments when the player needs to not just blindly jump forward, but actually steer his jumps backward to avoid a crowd of marching enemies.

Strategic jumping in crowds.

I took this concept and expanded it as far as I could. For more complex jumps I made the fov much larger, gave the player crazy powerful jumps with precision controls, and added enemies to fill up the sky instead of just the foot soldiers. The original vision was a platformer bullet hell, where you're jumping through patterned clouds of enemies.

Visually, the original had two level palettes, the gray rocky dismal one and the green grassy happy one. I went with the same two paradigms, starting happy and green, and getting progressively darker and less colorful and more ominous as the game goes on. (The original goes the other way, from grey to green, then it loops back to level 1.)

Story/setting, well, I tried to maintain a creepiness in the atmosphere. Instead of the scary purple and green monsters, I made creepy little mysterious things.

Also I riffed on the game title. The game is all about the bits and pieces that make up our bodies and our souls. Those of humans and those of the hive.
As the bird consciousness puts it, "Your bits are neurons and muscles; my bits are bird brains and feathers."

sorry bro. this isn't bits and pieces. this is... not bits and pieces. i'm gonna free up that slot.

[mr. podunkian]

Think I'd like to take a crack at Alfredo actually. Though will need Mr. P to mark Critical Bypass as done before the system will let me reserve another game.

i've marked you as done.

[Saker]

Since apparently there's no deadline anymore , I'm going for "Evil Empire" , Thought I won't be able to finish it before 1/7 because of me being busy with exams and stuff , is that ok ?

[increpare]

Progress goes (absurdly) slow on my end, but I'm one step closer to having something fun. 

[Dragonmaw]

Given the treatment you gave Critical Bypass, Perrin, I'd be excited to see your take on Megalonia. Just my 2 cents

Yeah but to be honest I'd be much more interested in NOT doing another shooter. ^_^

Yeah, I totally know what you mean. There are a LOT of shooters in Action 52, haha.

[Neonlare]

Progress on some music, still very WIP like, and not sure if I'm gonna stick with the current iteration of the Fire Dungeon theme, depends on the reaction to it.

Metal Dungeon WIP - http://kiwi6.com/file?id=7eir2p745l

Fire Dungeon WIP - http://kiwi6.com/file?id=84x9az5cgc

[hamburger]

In Bits and Pieces it's a frankenstein-type (I think) figure being attacked in a graveyard by werewolves, skeletons and swamp things.  

sorry bro. this isn't bits and pieces. this is... not bits and pieces. i'm gonna free up that slot.

Again, it's an interesting contrast - to you, games are stories; to me, they're game mechanics. To you Bits and Pieces is a game about a Frankenstein figure and monsters; to me Bits and Pieces is a game about jumping strategically to avoid objects.

So, as I described a few pages ago, I took the strategic jumping idea and ran with it. Obviously I took a lot of crazy liberties in my interpretation. But that was kind of the point. Bits and Pieces is where I came from; this is the way I as an individual cover Bits and Pieces. Remakes and covers, to me, are most interesting when they bear very little resemblance to the original, instead showing you the unique way someone else experienced it. Sometimes they can go too far and bear no resemblance whatsoever--but they're still remakes, if honestly inspired by the original.

For this reason, in a festival of remakes, it makes no sense to dictate the limits of interpretation. This would be so obvious in most creative contexts that it seems bizarre we even have to discuss it.

Having said all that, I should be clear that I don't consider my Bits and Pieces to be a good game; it's rough and seriously flawed in many ways. I don't expect that anyone would learn anything fascinating about me or the original game from this remake. I would understand if my game were rejected purely for quality. But I find it unfortunate that you would put limits on how unlike the original a remake can be.

In general, the lack of open-mindedness in the "Pigscene" group has surprised me. The exclusivity, the passive aggressiveness, that a couple guys have been filling this thread up with, is something I associate more with pretentious art students than indie game development. I used to feel like everyone I meet in this scene is not just brilliant, but so cool and friendly. Here I feel like I'm in a group of annoying film students.

Not all of you, of course. Mostly, I love you guys.

 

[deathtotheweird]

It has nothing to do with "lack of open-mindedness". You totally miss the point of this thing. It was to make these games better, in the spirit of the original. Your game does not do this, at all.

the point of this game jam is to create a resultant game that maintains the integrity of the original game intact, while making some allowances for the sake of gameplay/fun. again, i will repeat: PUT EFFORT INTO THESE REMAKES AND MAKE THEM LEGITIMATELY FUN GAMES TO PLAY

there is only one way to interpret this, and you failed in the hardest way possible.

[droqen]

I should be clear that I don't consider my Bits and Pieces to be a good game

we are going to make a GOOD ACTION 52.

There is some disagreement with the very definition of this 'festival of remakes' and your remake! ._.

Also, this is my first post in the thread.

Also also, allen beat me to pretty much exactly what I meant but I'm posting anyway.

To you Bits and Pieces is a game about a Frankenstein figure and monsters; to me Bits and Pieces is a game about jumping strategically to avoid objects.

And I kind of really want to mention, as much as how the game plays is important to me, to me a game is the game itself, not just one part of it. Can't Bits and Pieces be a game about a Frankenstein figure jumping strategically to avoid monsters?

[Radix]

I haven't seen your entry dude but if you think remakes needn't be at least thematic then you have no idea what a remake is.

I know it must be a bit frustrating to have your game outright rejected after laying out however much effort you put into it, but you yourself don't even like your submission, so at least take it like a man, bro. There's no call to start accusing people of being film students.

[mr. podunkian]

make a game that follows the rules instead of writing a pigscene-esque dissertation about how your game took the very vague idea of "jumping" and then interpreted it into whatever. i didn't ask for an artistic statement, nor did i ask for any sort of justification for your game.

and by the way, don't peg any of this on the 'pigscene' group -- we had absolutely no hand in the creation of this garbage, and did not at any point intervene or otherwise interact with you this game's development. but cheers!

[hamburger]

Can't Bits and Pieces be a game about a Frankenstein figure jumping strategically to avoid monsters?

It can be, but my point is, it shouldn't have to be. I'm not allowed to throw anything out?

I haven't seen your entry dude but if you think remakes needn't be at least thematic then you have no idea what a remake is.

My remake is thematic, it's about jumping and avoiding stuff; this was the theme of the original for me. I did put effort into this, and I thought I was embracing the original in an interesting, if not fully realized, way.

Obviously you guys are drawing the line somewhere in the middle; I draw the line at the intent of the creator, and I thought everyone drew it there, but I was wrong.

And sorry about the tirade. This was mainly separate from Bits and Pieces and should have gone in a separate post. I'd been wanting to get it off my chest for a while, after reading some of the earlier posts in this thread. I don't really know what pigscene is, and I have no idea what the relationship is between Arthur and Derek. All I was really referring to is Arthur and maybe some other guys being aggressive and unwelcoming. Be nice, guys.

I'll shut up now. My Bits and Pieces will go to a Flash portal. Good bye and have fun with the rest of these games.

[deathtotheweird]

The game isn't terrible and I appreciate the amount of work it takes to create such a thing. I played it for a minute or two and it was entertaining. I just think you were missing the point.

Anyways, there's not much more to discuss about this..

[Radix]

My remake is thematic, it's about jumping and avoiding stuff;

That's not what that means and you know it.

...And now you've put yourself in a position where all you can really do is play semantics: don't bother.

[ZH8T]

Been working on sprites for the weekend... and there's a title screen ;

[sergiocornaga]

Progress on some music, still very WIP like, and not sure if I'm gonna stick with the current iteration of the Fire Dungeon theme, depends on the reaction to it.

So you've decided to still work on the game? I'm glad.

EDIT: Oh wow, I dig this Metal Dungeon music.

[Pishtaco]

Pishtaco, I really like the feel of the game (though I'm finding it pretty damned hard).

People finding it very hard: how far are you getting? I could put in one or two checkpoints.