Comp F: Building Beats Breaking
Games tend to be about breaking stuff. A system is set up and we challenge our players to smash their way through it and reach the end, surrounded by the remains of a simulation that no longer really does anything useful. This is mostly because decreasing things and destroying objects is pretty easy: Health - damage = new health. If health is less than 0, enemy dies. *yawn*
Make a game about building something.
Games that challenge us to construct things instead of destroy them are these amazing evergreen fountains of creativity! Yes, I'm obviously talking about Minecraft and other sandbox construction environments. But there are others too: Manufactoria, SpaceChem, Infinifactory, TIM, Pontifex, Kerbal Space Program, Incredipede, Fantastic Contraption, The Sims... These games somehow grab people and allow them to do that most magical of things: Create.
We need more games that do that. So let's, as a community, spend some time figuring out how. Maybe we can get good at it? Maybe some amazing things will come out of this? Start off by trying to imagine something that might be fun to build: A house? A car? A time machine? Then think about why someone might build that thing: To hide in? To rescue kittens? Then figure out the simplest way someone might be able to build that: Stack odd shapes to build a house to rescue falling kittens.
Whatever you choose to build, there's usually always a way to make it fun.
But wait, there's more!
While chatting to @creative630, it became clear that we needed ways to entice art magicians and sound spellweavers to enter as well. So, starting with this competition, we'll be testing out ideas.
Our first idea is to have separate judging for art and sound entrants: All you need to do is provide a graphical or audio re-imagining of any existing Comp F entry and you'll receive feedback and be judged as part of the relevant sub-competition. The hope is that people will form teams and work on a game together, but it's totally possible for people to enter the sub-comps without doing that: Just enter painted-over screenshots or dubbed video footage of the entry that inspires you :)
Rules:
To enter the design competition, start a thread titled "F : NameOfYourGame" and post your design ideas and game releases there. As you release files, edit your first post to point to the most recent versions available.
To enter the art sub-competition, start a thread titled "F : Art : NameOfRemixedGame" and post your concepts and mockups there. Re-painted screencaps are the best entries, especially if you want to team up. Post early and often. If you do team up, please edit your first post to indicate this and link to the game's thread so that your final art can be examined.
To enter the sound sub-competition, start a thread titled "F : Sound : NameOfRemixedGame" and post your compositions, SFX and ideas there. Capture and re-dubbed video footage of your chosen game as needed, please keep your first post edited to point to your most recent video. If you do team up, please edit your first post to indicate this and link to the game's thread so that we know where to find your final sound.
Other people WILL reply to your post with their feedback and ideas. Any offensive comments will be removed, that said please do your best to take any and all feedback as positively as you can and use it to make your game better. Repeated rude and defensive responses to comments will disqualify you from the competition. Consider releasing your source code and/or original files, it helps us pinpoint problems that you might be having and benefits the community as a whole.
Advice:
Building systems don't have to be complex. Bridge construction games are much simpler than you'd expect.
If you're having trouble making your system fun, try adding a single simulated interaction. It can even be a lone object: Armadillo Run is just a bridge-building game with a ball that rolls through the construct. See what else you can do similarly.
Be weird and sarcastic: What would a reverse Arkanoid game look like, would it be a blockbuilder? Can strange things be built, like hairstyles or pillow forts?
Sometimes a toy is enough.
...
Good luck and enjoy the competition!
* (Downloading and using Game Maker is recommended for beginners or if you've never prototyped a game before.)
Games tend to be about breaking stuff. A system is set up and we challenge our players to smash their way through it and reach the end, surrounded by the remains of a simulation that no longer really does anything useful. This is mostly because decreasing things and destroying objects is pretty easy: Health - damage = new health. If health is less than 0, enemy dies. *yawn*
Make a game about building something.
Games that challenge us to construct things instead of destroy them are these amazing evergreen fountains of creativity! Yes, I'm obviously talking about Minecraft and other sandbox construction environments. But there are others too: Manufactoria, SpaceChem, Infinifactory, TIM, Pontifex, Kerbal Space Program, Incredipede, Fantastic Contraption, The Sims... These games somehow grab people and allow them to do that most magical of things: Create.
We need more games that do that. So let's, as a community, spend some time figuring out how. Maybe we can get good at it? Maybe some amazing things will come out of this? Start off by trying to imagine something that might be fun to build: A house? A car? A time machine? Then think about why someone might build that thing: To hide in? To rescue kittens? Then figure out the simplest way someone might be able to build that: Stack odd shapes to build a house to rescue falling kittens.
Whatever you choose to build, there's usually always a way to make it fun.
But wait, there's more!
While chatting to @creative630, it became clear that we needed ways to entice art magicians and sound spellweavers to enter as well. So, starting with this competition, we'll be testing out ideas.
Our first idea is to have separate judging for art and sound entrants: All you need to do is provide a graphical or audio re-imagining of any existing Comp F entry and you'll receive feedback and be judged as part of the relevant sub-competition. The hope is that people will form teams and work on a game together, but it's totally possible for people to enter the sub-comps without doing that: Just enter painted-over screenshots or dubbed video footage of the entry that inspires you :)
Rules:
- Competition starts on February 4th, 04-02-2015.
- Deadline for entries is March 9th, 09-03-2015.
- The use of copyrighted material will not be tolerated. Do not steal!
- Use whichever language, tool or development system you are comfortable in. *
- Ask for help when you get stuck.
- Your game's core verb must be "build X".
- Your game must contain all files needed for it to run and should not require other bulky systems to be downloaded or installed, exceptions are browser plugins like Flash and self-contained dlls distributed with the game).
- Your final game entry must include a readme.txt that EXPLAINS THE CONTROLS, RULES and any other information you want to get across to your users. If you have web builds, make sure the page serves as a readme.txt!
- Your final art entry must either consist of a game screen mockup (bonus points for animated gifs) or a finished game entry.
- Your final sound entry must either consist of a video showcasing your audio or a finished game entry.
- Competition is open to entry for South African citizens, current residents of South Africa and South African passport holders.
- The judges' decision is final and no negotiation will be entered into. All risk or liability in case of copyright infringement or other legal issue resides with the entrant, MGSA takes no responsibility for entered games. (Other legalese included, implied and not intended to hurt)
To enter the design competition, start a thread titled "F : NameOfYourGame" and post your design ideas and game releases there. As you release files, edit your first post to point to the most recent versions available.
To enter the art sub-competition, start a thread titled "F : Art : NameOfRemixedGame" and post your concepts and mockups there. Re-painted screencaps are the best entries, especially if you want to team up. Post early and often. If you do team up, please edit your first post to indicate this and link to the game's thread so that your final art can be examined.
To enter the sound sub-competition, start a thread titled "F : Sound : NameOfRemixedGame" and post your compositions, SFX and ideas there. Capture and re-dubbed video footage of your chosen game as needed, please keep your first post edited to point to your most recent video. If you do team up, please edit your first post to indicate this and link to the game's thread so that we know where to find your final sound.
Other people WILL reply to your post with their feedback and ideas. Any offensive comments will be removed, that said please do your best to take any and all feedback as positively as you can and use it to make your game better. Repeated rude and defensive responses to comments will disqualify you from the competition. Consider releasing your source code and/or original files, it helps us pinpoint problems that you might be having and benefits the community as a whole.
Advice:
Building systems don't have to be complex. Bridge construction games are much simpler than you'd expect.
If you're having trouble making your system fun, try adding a single simulated interaction. It can even be a lone object: Armadillo Run is just a bridge-building game with a ball that rolls through the construct. See what else you can do similarly.
Be weird and sarcastic: What would a reverse Arkanoid game look like, would it be a blockbuilder? Can strange things be built, like hairstyles or pillow forts?
Sometimes a toy is enough.
...
Good luck and enjoy the competition!
* (Downloading and using Game Maker is recommended for beginners or if you've never prototyped a game before.)
Comments
Also, I realise there were several opportunities for feedback on this point, sorry I wasn't there for that, but why the crazy legalese restrictions on being South African? There are no prizes at stake, so I'm very much hoping that's just a copy paste from the game.dev compo rules? From the bits I was reading on the discussion thread it seemed we were aiming to be more internationally inclusive - I know from experience how disheartening it is that I can't enter an online competition just because I'm accessing the internet from South Africa. I would hate for other game devs in Africa (or wherever) to get the same feeling. ;)
The South African thing is purely there to stop the comp getting swamped by international devs and new locals feeling afraid of entering. Yes, we do want to be more inclusive, especially to African devs, but one of the core things people seemed to want about the comps was that they be limited to MGSA in some way so that it would be safe to experiment and they didn't feel exposed to risks. I don't think this is a huge thing and I'm sure it can be changed if there are devs from the rest of the continent that would love to join in (and hey, there's nothing stopping them from making a game right now and posting it here anyway!), the passport stuff can go for sure... Alternate wording would be appreciated! "Competition is open to anyone from Africa" sounds a bit silly.
Though multiplayer is an awkward thing unless going the couch multiplayer route and really not sure how to do so...
nonetheless.. I'm a filthy art man with no confidence in code so not sure what I'm to do in this scenario.
(Edit: Also this is meta discussion not helping the competition. Happy to move it over to the previous discussion thread)
But hey, I'm just a squallid indie scrub, the hell do I know.
Terra Tech
I truly wish I had the time right now to throw an entry at it :(
Maybe next time, but I'll be keenly watching all the entries
Very keen, I didn't have an idea but now I do. Maybe. Let's see how it goes :)
Actually a lot of game development does. Besides all the masses of Minecraft-influenced games, there's a ton of development aimed at young kids (particularly on mobile and portable gaming, and everything Nintendo does). It's just invisible to most of us here because we consume media that doesn't focus on games for young children.
I'm not saying we shouldn't be interested in making games for children. In fact I think it's a REALLY interesting design space (because young childrens' brains work differently to adults... I really liked this article recently: http://killscreendaily.com/articles/tinybop/ ).
All I'm saying is: Don't make a game for children because you think the market is undercatered.
Otherwise, it sounds like a really cool concept. I'd say prototype it with local multiplayer, and test the concept, and invest in online multiplayer if the concept works.
my point is that younger audiences aren't treated with a heavy amount of respect and usually (with definite exceptions) treated with worse, dumbed down versions of current game standards. at the same time the more 'adult' games fall into this trap of insisting that if you aren't a kid, and are ALLOWED to see blood, violence and boobies, They fill their game with blood, violence and boobies, because that's what adults want right?!??!!
My intrigue does indeed lie in the area of 'how the mind of a child works' and I personally love the idea of creating interesting ideas. and there's intent with the idea of introducing children to competitive multiplayer from a blank slate. We have a really bizarre competitive culture, wherein there are a few giants, CoD, Dota, Acronym: the game, and if a young player wants to enter that world they are told THEY MUST PLAY AND ACT IN A PARTICULAR MANNER!!! complete with specified metagame that you are swiftly abusively forced to abide to... and the aforementioned. Acting and Playing by specific rules is simply not how children function, and not how you promote creativity as well as ambition.
This is why I adore Smash, as it was founded on a 'go mad' metagame, which in competitive mellee, still has never been nailed down. Now inputting the logic of construction over destruction: that's an interesting area to explore.
Alternatively: all children interested in gaming PLEASE play Carcassonne.
(In the category of games involving construction targeted at children that have been released in the last three days)
Your game's core verb must be "build X".
Build X. Replace X with anything, it's a variable.
(Unlike the Home Improvement SNES game, nobody should play that, gah)
The reason Home Improvisation works so well, in my mind, is the lack of a simulation aspect. The devs didn't have to construct a complex simulation that would "run" people's constructions. You just slot a thing together and the "sim" is in your head: That's not how a lamp looks! Sure, there's a physics system that's always on, but the whole aesthetics part that makes people laugh and try harder and get sarcastic and give up and troll and scream and laugh more isn't a thing that had to be coded. It's genius.
And I think this also emphasises that HOW you build stuff, the interaction itself, can be a very strong part of the game. The 2-axis rotation going on in Home Improvisation is really smart because it's a constraint. Getting stuff lined up how you want is tricky. Then, once you get better at that, you have to deal with the "invisible" constraint of stuff being a specific heights based on how they were picked up. That can make constructing larger things a different kind of spatial problem - OR you work as a team and that turns it into a social/communication problem. All of that is fun. More genius :)
Sorry for the mis-understanding.
All the threads marked with F: are for this comp, I see six :)
I'm kinda sad about that because it means GDC is over :(
Is anybody keen to help with the judging, the sound entry judging in particular?
Game Entries:
Splice - @Manikin
Planetary Reconstruction - @Zaphire
Anything - @Bernard
BuildX - @SebastianS
Protection - @dINGLE
Wazoo Tanks - @Boysano
Platform Builder - @vintar
Morpher - @Actrox
Babel - @Tuism
Why Did The Doomsday Prepper Cross The Road? - @FanieG
Sound Entries:
Why did the Doomsday Prepper cross the Road? - @The_Sired_Ward
Splice - @MexicanOpiumDog