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[kavs]

Hey hey,

About 3 weeks ago, a couple of us here at work decided we should all learn gamemaker. We followed Dr. Derek Yu's tutorials ( btw) on the topic (Part I, II, and III), and decided that we knew enough to challenge each other to a duel of epic proportions.

On that fateful day, we decided to give ourselves until... well, today to develop the best side-scrolling shoot'em up we could come up with in gamemaker. We all bought the Pro editions and started developing our ideas in secrecy, not showing the others what we were developing.

We have 3 games to display, and to settle the matter of who's is best, we need YOU to vote! Vote based off whatever criteria you want, really...

Here were the rules:
-No outsourcing of any kind
-No external libraries or extensions for Gamemaker
-Finish by today, regardless of the state of your features

The games!:

Erectron - By: Chryssyxx
www.joesiv.net/games/erectron/Erectron.exe

Critical Mass - By: Joesiv
www.joesiv.net/games/criticalmass/criticalMass-beta1.0.exe

Terrible Jetfighter - By: Kibble
www.joesiv.net/games/TJF/TerribleJetFighter.exe


I'll leave the rest to the posts below.

[kavs]

Terrible Jetfighter
a.k.a: my first gamemaker game :3

Dev Time: 3 weeks (10 Hours)
Software: Photoshop, GameMaker Pro 7, pxTone
Source:   http://www.joesiv.net/games/TJF/TerribleSpaceship.gmk
                (it's pretty unorganized, but if you want to see how I did it...)

I had a totally different idea at the start of this whole competition, but as the deadline got closer I had to start cutting features.

What I liked:
-My upgrade system. That's my crowning achievement coming out of all of this, and probably the most technical thing I've ever had to script/program. I wish I had more time to balance the costs, though.

Known Issues:
-My upgrade UI sucks. It needs to say how much to pay for the next upgrade, or what each one does. FYI, it's 200 to buy LVL2 of any upgrade. It doesn't cost any to undo, so if you want to change your loadout go right ahead.
-The bullets don't disappear when they fly off the screen, so.. don't cheat. :D I know how I could have fixed this.. but didn't make the deadline. SUCKS!

What I would have done:
-Better audio. I tried to learn pxTone this morning and while it worked ok, I think it just came off as annoying. It'll be better next time, I promise.
-Better scheduling. I have a ton of 'low-hanging fruit' bugs I didn't get to fix. That saddens me. ;(
-More enemies: Again, just ran out of time.
-Better sprites and a more unified art style. It's all just kinda random.
-Transitions, for death/respawn/end of game

Hope you guys got some enjoyment out of it, at least. We'll do a round 2 later on and I'll properly schedule myself.

PS: Derek, your tutorials made this all possible. <3

[joesiv]

Critical Mass is my first attempt at a game maker game. 

It's been a good experience, however given the start from the shooter tutorial (which is great btw), by the end of the development process, I now realized that next time, if I start from scratch, things could be a lot better planned out.

If I had more time for this competition I would change the following:
- Better layout of general scripts/objects/interactions.  Basically, I hacked everything in, with very few global variables that would have made tuning much quicker.
- Improved art and sound, everything was pretty "programmer art", placeholder to get the proof of concept there.
- Support for multiple squad leaders on screen at one time
- Improved sprite direction updating for squad mates
- Fix the gravity bug past the first planet.
- Health collectibles

All in all, it was fun, and it's good to finally just get something done.

Vote for me!

(PS, post your highscores! I just pulled a 5736)

[Chryssyxx]

I took a different approach to the game competition obviously.  I wanted to practice level design and attempting to consider pacing.  As it was my first experience with gamemaker and the language it uses, I ran into some trouble late on the project when attempting to script the AI.  So instead I paid closer attention to placement of the enemies rather than how the enemy will act.

Known Issues:

• Re-spawning doesn't work correctly.  There is a collision check before spawning and due to the way this is scripted, there is often a long wait before a respawn.
• Infinite lives.  No, this isn't a design decision.
• No HUD.
• No Power-Ups
• Accidentally made the game way too fun. j/k

Unfortunately, I wasn't able to finish the game which is why the end boss is missing, and a lot of the art is placeholder.  But don't worry, I have a BIG surprise coming.

--
C6

[Moon Goon]

I vote for Terrible Fighter.

It looked like the author of Terrible Fighter learned quite a bit.

Great stuff guys!

[kavs]

I vote for Terrible Fighter.

It looked like the author of Terrible Fighter learned quite a bit.

Great stuff guys!

Thanks! New favorite TIGer right here. :D

I learnt an incredible amount. I had a hard enough time getting things to move around and shoot originally, but at the end I was confident enough to try and tackle the upgrade system and it worked out pretty good (albiet, unbalanced; you can buy the 'good' upgrades for the same price as the worse ones, but hey... its functional. )

We're going to do another one starting next week... maybe a platformer compo, or something procedural.

[Aquin]

You guys should consider signing up for the Blind Collab.  It's pretty cool beans.

[Moon Goon]

We're going to do another one starting next week... maybe a platformer compo, or something procedural.

I'd be interested in either of those themes if you're taking entries for the next unofficial compo/dual.

I'm no n00b to Game Maker but I'm my own worst handicap!