Another Game in a Day Attempt Thursday

#1 That 10am GMT? That's like 4 or 5am here so I won't be up that early but I might give it a go when I DO get up. I'll probably end up having to limit myself to about a 12 hour game though :p

#2 Its basically a free-for-all with no strict "rules" and all that silly stuff. Just throw some code together and see how it works.

This time I might even end up having something playable.

#3 I was thinking of trying this for the hell of it, since it sounds like a fun distraction.

Problem though, I couldn't program my way out of a wet paper box. ;)
I was thinking of putting this "off the shelf" version of game engine I never used for anything, and make some pretty all original DM board(Since that's about all it can do).

Would that be cool or does that go against the spirit of Game-in-a-day?

#4 Tim,

The whole point of it is to have fun, so if you want to make a DM board, go ahead. If you want to make a "proper" game, you could try one of the point-and-click game maker apps, there's some free ones on the net.

Artists,

Although this is mostly a programmer thing, there's no reason you can't join in too. Just hang around the IRC channel on Thursday and make it known you want to help.

Tom.

#5 Infact if there's artists that want to 'play' it might be fair enough to allow pairs? That at least would save the world from your programmer art Tom ;)

I doubt the specific start / end times are set in stone for those in a more 'inconvient' time zones. Get up by 10.00am? You're kidding right :p

I entered the Ludum Dare 48 hour contest, and it was a ton of fun. But it's also hellishly hard work, and I had double the time!

#6 There are no rules, really. If artists want to they can float round all the games. Nothing wrong with collaboration at all, really. In fact, it's probably required, since as you say, my programmer art is rather bad ;-)

As for times, they're just a guideline. The only important thing is the 24 hour limit.

You're right about the hard work part. I should mention that last time Phil and I did a game in roughly a day the following 2 days were utterly wasted since we were too tired and worn out to do anything.

Another thing that I forgot to mention, we have a place to show off the results of everybody's hard work, but it's not fully setup yet so I'll leave it til after Thursday.

I'm getting really fired up now. Can't wait :)

T.

#7 That's a good idea, making it team based, if there's enough interest maybe there will be a coder per artist and it would make some fun small dev teams... not to mention it could mean the beginning of a nice long relationship... game development wise of course!!

#8 This sounds fairly inerteresting, but when you are done, what do you have ? Bragging rights?

Why not do something constructive with this.
Heres my idea:

Use Torque single player only. Make the time limit a week or better yet a mounth.

fill up a single torquedemo.exe with predetermined code snippets and document whats in it.

All devs must make there own new map/s with storyline, quests,and finaly exit to next predetermined map so the next dev's quest will contiue the game.

Make as many maps as you want just so they run together and finaly exit to the next devs map.

( i have a system hack that aready specifies predetermined exits and a demo already loaded with an asortment of documentented added snippets dynamic4.gamespy.com/~noescape/cgi/forum.cgi?action=THREAD&thread=2&page=1)

I would be glad to copy it and add more snippets and up load it for all.

Using torque would make a contest like this usefull to all on this site, and when its all said and done we would have a single player demo all could use, if they dont want to start with default torque fps or default realmwars team.

Just an idea ( im really into single player)

#9 Ace: Personally, I'm a lot more fond of the "no rules" approach that others are advocating. The only limit is time This isn't a coding contest, with glittering prizes, etc. I'll repeat that again, just so it's understood: It's not a contest. It's something to go have fun with. Turn it into a contest, and I'm out immediately - 'cause they you get into all the rules, rules lawyering for people who did or didn't win, and 10 tons of bullshit that goes along with contests. Yes, some turn out good for some contests, but why bother - just have fun!

As for what you have when you are done - more experience for some. For some, a semi-solid game that with a little tweaking and some non-programmer art will be ready. Take a look at Phil and Tom's results from last time,and what happened with the addition of some artwork and some more tweaking.

As for making it "useful on this site" - while it's Torque focused, not everyone uses Torque (I do :-) and a number of Screenshot of the Day entries aren't Torque based. I don't see why Game in a Day should be Torque specific. Heck, if you want a Torque based one, using the rules you are proposing... why not try and start another one up after this one is over?

Personally, I think I'm going to enter, but my entry may be cheating a bit - I'm going to rewrite Boulder Panic! in Torque using 2D elements for tiles (the cheating part is that it means I already have estabilshed rules, and some usable graphics). (Why in the heck do it in Torque? Well, the original Boulder Panic! series was done in VB - I never bothered to port it over to anything cross platform. Now I can pick up the Mac market, plus enhance the visuals pretty easily.)

#10 Ace,

Quote:This sounds fairly inerteresting, but when you are done, what do you have ? Bragging rights?

Why not do something constructive with this.

When I am done, I will have had a lot of fun, and a nice break away from my main projects. I will also have another large chunk of extremely useful code to add to my already enormous collection. I will also have another prototype for a future game if I so choose. That's just part of what I personally get out of these things. It will be different for others, but there is a lot of point to this, and it's very constructive.

Further more, I know of more then a couple of games that have started life being prototyped in the Ludumdare contest and similar, and have turned into really fun games that wouldnt of existed otherwise.

Quote:Using torque would make a contest like this usefull to all on this site, and when its all said and done we would have a single player demo all could use, if they dont want to start with default torque fps or default realmwars team.

It's not a contest. It's about having fun. Who said anyone isnt going to use Torque ? People participating in the fun can use any pre-existing engine they like, for some that will be Torque, for some it wont.

Edit: ...

@Davis,

Bah! Hate it when people post something I want to reply to when I'm writing one already ;-)

Good to know you'll be joining us. I don't really count using existing stuff as cheating. Pretty much everything in gamedev is cheating anyway, and if you were to start a full dev cycle you wouldnt start from scratch if you had existing assets that you could reuse.

T.

#11 I'm actually going to go with a concept that doesn't require complex art so that I can make do with programmer art :p

#12 Hmm, two things :
- Where is the "party" happening ? in the gg channel on maxgaming ?
- Phil, don't we have a meeting Thursday ? ;)

#13 Okay that makes sence kinda, but dosent interest me. I just move it along now.

#14 Same question as Nicolas (well, not the meeting part) - everyone who'd doing it meeting up in the GG channel?

#15 Davis : yeah, Tom confirmed that in the channel last night, or something like that :)
You in ?

#16 Yeh, at the moment I'm thinking all meet up in the GG channel. There's been a fair bit of interest, so rather then tie up the GG channel it may end up moving into a new channel. Will figure that out tommorow when we see how many people actually get involved.

T.

#17 We actually have the #gameinaday channel, guess tom forgot to mention it. Meet there!