[JIG COMP] Who's game?

Well, there's only 3 weeks left until the deadline of the 'Casual Gameplay Design Competition #4' (for those that have no idea what I'm referring to, check out this link), and I thought it would be good to find out how many other FK'ers are actually entering (or planning to)??

I myself, plan on entering and have already made fairly good start on the engine. However, the motivation to continue seems to be lessening after each week to the point that I'm probably only still working on it as a personal challenge and because I think my idea is worthy of at least a playable state.

Thinking about it, are the competition prizes really that good?.. From what I've heard, sponsorship can offer more + certain cash than what's being offered (and sponsorship is supposed to be shoddy).

Viza

Always found those competitions good not because of the prizes but because they give good reason to actually finish something.

Was honestly going strong with an out of the box ball-physics/elasticity/kinetics engine, but I started school, found a job, and then found some freelance flash work to eat up every last hour I have. Sucks, I was damn sure this game was going to be nice. Hopefully after this job if things settle down I can get back into it.

I've just started something which I'm already really pleased with. I'm not sure if I will finish it or not, but I hope to.

As for the prizes, they aren’t as good as a sponsorship offer, but there is nothing stopping you from getting your game sponsored after the comp (even if you win). The competition version of the game is non-exclusive and can be played only on JIG, so I think most sponsors would still be happy to sponsor your game afterwards.

Ali

"...some freelance flash work to eat up every last hour I have. Sucks"

Really ? ;)

Yes the comp prizes may not be as much as a good sponsorship deal, but it's a comp, not an offer of sponsorship.
Jay's is a highly respected site with a ton of traffic. Companies like Nitrome have done very well out of the publicity of being reviewed there.

When I was first sniffing out work, I quoted winning the 48hr comp here, it all helps, winning a comp at Jay's will open a lot of doors.

Sometimes you need to put cold hard cash out of your mind when you're trying to get your name known, you'll get it back in the long run.

Squize.

Sucks, in that I don't have time, not that the freelance sucks :p Though I'm getting worn pretty thin about it, but I think everyone in the group is. ;)

I got a great start into the JIG comp because I was unemployed for 11 weeks. I can't quite put cash out of my mind just yet. :p

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Originally Posted by tonypa

Always found those competitions good not because of the prizes but because they give good reason to actually finish something.

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can we expect to see another awesome entry from tony?

I got started on what I believe to be a very original concept, but it got way to complex way too quickly, I'll probably end up revisiting it though when I stat panicking a week before the competition ends.

I never actually entered a JIG comp before...

After re-reading my initial post, I realised that I comes across as though I'm obsessed with the aspect of winning money, rather then competing in a competiotion.
Sorry, to clear things up: I'm in no way making a game just to make some quick cash. Instead, I view the money as really just a nice bonus, and the aspect of competing in such a tough comp and producing a cool game is what's really driving me ;)...but thanks a lot to those who replied.

Anyway, back to the subject:
It's really great to hear that there's a few of you guys planning to enter a game; however, it's a bit of a double-edged sword for me 'cause now my submission is going to get overshadowed :p.

I'm going to have to put my ass in gear if I want to get this thing finished.

Viza

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Originally Posted by Viza

Instead, I view the money as really just a nice bonus, and the aspect of competing in such a tough comp and producing a cool game is what's really driving me ;)...but thanks a lot to those who replied.
Viza

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Nice try, you almost had us fooled for a second. :p

So, the comps over in a few hours, anyone else putting in an entry?

Ali

Imagine the look on my face when I realised that I only had 20 minutes left to enter before closing, rather than 10 hours!.... Well, that really did happen and I just sent it in my game with merely 1 minute to spare. :scared:

I feel like the biggest idiot for getting stuffed up by the time zones (for some weird reason I understood that I had roughly 24 hours 'extra' when really it was only 12), and now my game is suffering from bugs (a huge one being that for some reason the variables don’t update or initiate again after a game, so you have to restart again before everything returns to normal) and ugly beginning + ending gfx. :(

When (or if- depending on whether I didn't stuff up the main menu UI for the Competition) you guys get to take my game for a spin, keep in mind that the last 20-30% is either missing or made in 20 min.

I'm just most disappointed because it has a lot more potential then what is present (so maybe expect a sequel done to the standards that I'd be happy with).

Anyway, enough rambling from me. Best of luck Ali (you probably don't need it anyway) and I hope you walk away with 1st prize. :)

Viza.

EDIT: I take all that back, cause Im an even bigger jack*ass: I've still got a.5 hours left!

I hope I didn’t confuse you by saying "a few hours left" viza! I just couldn’t be bothered to work out exactly how many hours :p.

I hope you got your game bug free in the end. Good luck mate :)

Ali

Just an update for those un-aware: The competition deadline has passed, and according to this link all entries will be available to play by next Tuesday (GMT-4). Believe it or not, but there have been over 40 game submissions ( last years total was 19)!

Viza.

D'oh! I wish I'd seen this about 2 days ago.
http://www.suckatmath.com/personal/fluux.html

Allthough I wasn't going to enter, last week I suddenly made two prototypes, which I didn't finish, so I still don't enter :(

I will watch it closely though, I wish you guys good luck, I'm happy to see you join the competition this time. And I do kinda expect something prize-winning from you :)

I hope Alillm stays true to shmups and designed a billiards/shmup-crossover, if he didn't, I will do it someday :)

So how do most of these competitions work? Are you supposed to only spend a certain amount of weeks on a game? Or are some of these long projects that just happen to finish on time for a game competition?

I know some of these are things like 48 hour game competitions, but how do they enforce that? How do they know you didn't have a game in the pipeline that happened to fit the standards and just had to re-skin it and do some finetuning?

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Originally Posted by walnoot

I hope Alillm stays true to shmups and designed a billiards/shmup-crossover, if he didn't, I will do it someday :)

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Well funny you should say that.... ;)

Ali

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Originally Posted by Alluvian

So how do most of these competitions work? Are you supposed to only spend a certain amount of weeks on a game? Or are some of these long projects that just happen to finish on time for a game competition?

I know some of these are things like 48 hour game competitions, but how do they enforce that? How do they know you didn't have a game in the pipeline that happened to fit the standards and just had to re-skin it and do some finetuning?

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That's why they have a theme:)

@Alluvian: Yeah, as t1ger mentioned, there is a theme to the competition- this comp is based on ball physics.

There is also a time period of 8 weeks to produce something, however if you have something pre-made that's still suitable then sure, no one would stop you from submitting it.

@Walnoot: Thanks a lot! But don't get your hopes up for me (the game didn't even get to the stage of putting any sound in :()-I'm just hanging out for this game from Ali which I'm almost certain will blow the competition out of the water.

Viza.

P.S. Ali, I'm not sure if you're aware fo this or not, but you can update them with minor bug fixes after the initial hand-in (I cleared up all major bugs before hand in, but I've written down about 15 notes of fix's which I need to add to then next version update :p)

The comp is up and running, with a new game being released every few hours to give each entry some time in the spotlight.

http://jayisgames.com/

I'm not much of a FK regular lately, but I did work on an entry for the jayisgames comp this time around. Our entry is already up, here's the direct link to it:

http://jayisgames.com/cgdc4_redirect.php?gameID=4

good work slight, i´m not fully happy with the controls/collision detection but its very obvious you´ve put a lot of effort into it and its all around quite charming :)

Also people check out Ali´s game:
http://jayisgames.com/archives/2007/...c4_kaichou.php
Another one of my favorites so far :)

Thanks for the plug mate :). I feel kinda bad for making a separate thread now, I'm not usually big on showing off my own stuff!

Also loved your game slight, very detailed, and good fun. Nice job.

Ali

Cheers Tom. Is there something in particular about the controls that you didn't like?

Through most of the development it was a lot harder - once you held fire, you could not aim up or down or even turn around.. it just raised slowly, fired automatically at the highest angle, and then once you shot, you could not start another shot until the ball had popped. The game could be finished with those controls, but timing was harder and it felt a lot more like a puzzle game than a platformer that way. The thing is, it probably meant that the testers were very biased toward positive feedback on the new controls when they came in, because they were used to the old way, and suddenly the boss became a lot easier.

Personally, I would have preferred mouse to aim, hold LMB to charge shot and release to fire, but that went against the oldschool feel we were aiming for.

Love your game as well Ali, so pretty! Although you can beat it by sitting in the corner... At 300,000 the screen was mostly black and I started to worry about the damage I was doing to the mouse button. ;)

Thanks slight.

Everyone is finding that trick but when I was testing it I never found it to be perfectly safe in the corner, I always had to move after a bit. It’s really annoying because people are not liking the game because of it, and if I had realised you could do that I would have done something to prevent it.

Ah well, its one of those things I guess.

Ali

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Originally Posted by alillm

Thanks for the plug mate :). I feel kinda bad for making a separate thread now, I'm not usually big on showing off my own stuff!

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np mate, i made one for our game, too :)
i think its good to have all listed here but also have an own thread for each game where people can discuss that one :)

so yeah, to add to that :)
http://board.flashkit.com/board/showthread.php?t=746672

Quote:

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Originally Posted by slight

Cheers Tom. Is there something in particular about the controls that you didn't like?


Personally, I would have preferred mouse to aim, hold LMB to charge shot and release to fire, but that went against the oldschool feel we were aiming for.

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i understand, but yup, mouse aim was one of the things i would have liked :)
Other than that the character could move a bit quicker and jump just a slight tad higher but yup, nitpicking there, great game :)