3H-GDC m.V: Something Special (winner: BeanDog)
Author
guys, I don't want you to think that I forgot about the judging. It's just really freaking hard this time to pick 'the best'. This has been the most successful 3H-GDC yet, never have we had this many submissions, let alone complete submissions. Good work everyone, and hopefully I can make a decision shortly.
If it's that close then maybe you should call in a few additional judges, both to make it easier and to ensure it's a fair decision.
Author
Okay, my comments, in alphabetical order (not in order of rank)(still waiting on a judge):
BeanDog:
The sound is great, and the gameplay is pretty unique -- herding stars into a vortex. The ship is a little hard to control, and the levels don't really seem to get any harder.
d000hg:
Very much like Missile Command, I think. I liked all the little features of the game, the sky gradient, the falling stars, the buildings that slowly emptied out, the buildings that exploded into rubble. Some sound would have really been nice, but oh well.
DrPetter:
Very smooth gameplay, very suprising for an ASCII game. The idea is really neat, though a little buggy (I fell *through* the platform stars a number of times). The lack of color really makes the game bland. As an aside, I never made it past level 4.
Endurion:
A little bit of Freelancer in the works here. Pretty neat concept, and the upgrades are a nice touch. However, it's just too expansive, space is too large and things to do are too few.
GroZZleR:
The flickering was very distracting, and it was very difficult to line up the shots properly. There wasn't much use of color, and no sound at all.
matt_j:
No sound is kind of dissapointing. Everything ran nice and solid, but there wasn't much variety to the gameplay. It didn't feel like there was much of a progression. The theme adherence felt like it was added on at the last minute.
nagromo:
neat little game, very difficult to get all the starstuff. I cheated and dropped the number of random enemies and stars to 0 but the game didn't finish after collecting all the stars.
scgrn:
Perhaps the smoothest gameplay of the group. I liked the title "Lactose Intolerant Space Monkeys Must Die." I think you used color very well.
ToohrVyk:
Definitely needed the walkthrough on this one, the commands were very difficult to figure out. Lacking color, it's a little bland. I think you could have gained a lot from having stuff come into color as you prayed to the stars for light.
BeanDog:
The sound is great, and the gameplay is pretty unique -- herding stars into a vortex. The ship is a little hard to control, and the levels don't really seem to get any harder.
d000hg:
Very much like Missile Command, I think. I liked all the little features of the game, the sky gradient, the falling stars, the buildings that slowly emptied out, the buildings that exploded into rubble. Some sound would have really been nice, but oh well.
DrPetter:
Very smooth gameplay, very suprising for an ASCII game. The idea is really neat, though a little buggy (I fell *through* the platform stars a number of times). The lack of color really makes the game bland. As an aside, I never made it past level 4.
Endurion:
A little bit of Freelancer in the works here. Pretty neat concept, and the upgrades are a nice touch. However, it's just too expansive, space is too large and things to do are too few.
GroZZleR:
The flickering was very distracting, and it was very difficult to line up the shots properly. There wasn't much use of color, and no sound at all.
matt_j:
No sound is kind of dissapointing. Everything ran nice and solid, but there wasn't much variety to the gameplay. It didn't feel like there was much of a progression. The theme adherence felt like it was added on at the last minute.
nagromo:
neat little game, very difficult to get all the starstuff. I cheated and dropped the number of random enemies and stars to 0 but the game didn't finish after collecting all the stars.
scgrn:
Perhaps the smoothest gameplay of the group. I liked the title "Lactose Intolerant Space Monkeys Must Die." I think you used color very well.
ToohrVyk:
Definitely needed the walkthrough on this one, the commands were very difficult to figure out. Lacking color, it's a little bland. I think you could have gained a lot from having stuff come into color as you prayed to the stars for light.
That's an awfully big obsession with color use for a compo that was supposed to not be about graphics... imho ;)
Anyways, you actually got scgrn's entry to run? Now I _really_ want to play it :)
Also, did you ever fall through an upward-facing "platform" in my game? That's not supposed to be possible, but otherwise you can pass through all parts of a star if you enter from the side for instance. It's a bit quirky but that's what you get for pushing us so hard! :P
Anyways, you actually got scgrn's entry to run? Now I _really_ want to play it :)
Also, did you ever fall through an upward-facing "platform" in my game? That's not supposed to be possible, but otherwise you can pass through all parts of a star if you enter from the side for instance. It's a bit quirky but that's what you get for pushing us so hard! :P
Yeah, I'm aware my gameplay is pretty boring. I wanted to stay away from making a space-based game, and the falling stars idea was a mutation of some missile command idea, which I also wanted to avoid. The end result was... that.
What I wanted to do was have some repair drones fixing the "walls", and some cannons firing back at you, but I didn't have time. I should have made the damage stars more lethal.
What I wanted to do was have some repair drones fixing the "walls", and some cannons firing back at you, but I didn't have time. I should have made the damage stars more lethal.
Author
Quote:Original post by DrPetter
That's an awfully big obsession with color use for a compo that was supposed to not be about graphics... imho ;)
I do comments seperately from the judging. As for what the judging criterion actually is, that's a secret. I gave some general guidelines in the rules section, but the final tally is a closed decision.
matt_j: Yours was cool, took me a while to get what I was supposed to do (just fired at the falling debris at first), but when I did it was like "Woah, it's Lemmings! sort of..." :)
Not very challenging, true. And not much variety, but it's a cool concept and digging through large objects bit by bit is always fun. Repair drones would probably have been sweet, swarming around the hole trying to fill it in while you blast them with more laser vengeance ;)
Maybe a more continuous beam would have been nice too, so you could "melt" into the wall through short bursts.
d000hg's game was also nice, although it lacked some challenge to make it last. The idea of having to quickly choose which buildings to sacrifice is interesting.
Endurion's entry made me spend way WAY too much time coasting through space gathering money to buy that stupid radar device... and now he's doubled the price of it!! ;)
The game had some relaxing exploration quality to it though and could have been a nice waste of time if it had some soft music and more stuff to buy... and maybe some challenges along the way, although dying after spending half an hour gathering crap would probably make you chew your arms off in frustration :)
Well, those were some of my random impressions... brought to you courtesy of me having nothing better to do and doing everything in my power to avoid going to bed. It's embarrasingly late over here, better sleep now so I can get up in time for tomorrow's 5 pm lecture, bleh :P
Not very challenging, true. And not much variety, but it's a cool concept and digging through large objects bit by bit is always fun. Repair drones would probably have been sweet, swarming around the hole trying to fill it in while you blast them with more laser vengeance ;)
Maybe a more continuous beam would have been nice too, so you could "melt" into the wall through short bursts.
d000hg's game was also nice, although it lacked some challenge to make it last. The idea of having to quickly choose which buildings to sacrifice is interesting.
Endurion's entry made me spend way WAY too much time coasting through space gathering money to buy that stupid radar device... and now he's doubled the price of it!! ;)
The game had some relaxing exploration quality to it though and could have been a nice waste of time if it had some soft music and more stuff to buy... and maybe some challenges along the way, although dying after spending half an hour gathering crap would probably make you chew your arms off in frustration :)
Well, those were some of my random impressions... brought to you courtesy of me having nothing better to do and doing everything in my power to avoid going to bed. It's embarrasingly late over here, better sleep now so I can get up in time for tomorrow's 5 pm lecture, bleh :P
Quote:Original post by DrPetter
...
Anyways, you actually got scgrn's entry to run? Now I _really_ want to play it :)
...
I've been away from my PC the last couple days, but I finally got it running correctly, thanks to Thevenin.
Quote:Original post by Thevenin
...
The problems I found are:The use of sizeof() on arrays! This is a very very bad idea. On VC++ 2005 EE, sizeof was returning a value greater then that of expected. On the field, sizeof() should ONLY be used to determine the size of primitive datatypes; not arrays or objects.
That's the beauty of C, no?
Quote:"%X" assumed to be the size of a 'char' when in reality its the size of an 'int'. Because of this, you were writing 3 bytes outside the boundary of your char array.
This was exactly what was happening. I was loading 32 bit hexadecimal values from file into an unsigned char array, causing the 3 byte overrun at the end. Stupid done of me. Anyway,
LACTOSE INTOLERANT SPACE MONKEYS MUST DIE!!
Really, I was just happy to write a function called shootCheese()
Quote:Original post by DrPetter
Endurion's entry made me spend way WAY too much time coasting through space gathering money to buy that stupid radar device... and now he's doubled the price of it!! ;)
The game had some relaxing exploration quality to it though and could have been a nice waste of time if it had some soft music and more stuff to buy... and maybe some challenges along the way, although dying after spending half an hour gathering crap would probably make you chew your arms off in frustration :)
Yeah, i admit i aimed too high. In the first submitted version there's actually a debug bug left in, the price for the radar thingy is displayed as 2500 but you can buy it with 10 credits already.
The game needs more addons and some more challenges.
BTW, i doubled the price as i shrunk the area of the asteroids considerably, so there ought to be a lot more in close vicinity around the mother ship.
scgrn: Yay, now it works! Indeed it plays smoothly, and it's surprisingly hard too! I can't understand why the cheese beams keep insisting on just barely missing the monkeys, it always causes me to steer right in front of one and end up being hit.
Not the most innovative entry, but it sure is well executed. I must say theme adherence is a bit iffy too... anyways, my record is 730 pts - I shehe! ;)
Not the most innovative entry, but it sure is well executed. I must say theme adherence is a bit iffy too... anyways, my record is 730 pts - I shehe! ;)
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