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edg3
09-01-2011, 09:19 PM
Results:
The results are in, and congratulations are in order. The judging was difficult and this format of challenge will change with the next iteration of the challenge, mostly because all the prototypes were awesome and the results below don?t reflect how awesome they really were. Please note the judge?s remarks were compiled into single paragraphs for some slight anonymity and to save space, there is a lot of information to go through. This thread will be updated with links and pictures as soon as I get some free time again. (Back to the grindstone I go!)

Best Newcomer:
This, the (obviously) greatest category of all is shared between 2 entries, in no particular order:
? Boogaloo ? WiledBill
? Mine Digger ? DeepFreez

Best Overall:
Having made it to the top in all categories, the sole best for Art, Sound and Overall results, Slice Fight is a slice above the other entries. Well done to BlackShips and Luke Viljoen.

Best Realisation:
Translating your ideas into simple lists of things to get done, and then actually getting through them is no small task. This category has two games that shone, in no particular order:
? Boogaloo ? WiledBill
? Slice Fight ? BlackShips and Luke Viljoen

Most Fun:
Calling a prototype fun and judging it as it turns out isn?t the fairest indication of how great a game is, or will become, but still worthy of mention, the following 2 games stood out in terms of how fun they are, in no particular order:
? Deus X-Com ? Gazza_N
? Slice Fight - BlackShips and Luke Viljoen

Judges Choices:
The judge?s choices of the entries were the following, in no particular order:
? Boogaloo ? WiledBill ? for a great all round entry
? Infinity Combo ? Fengol ? for the quality of entry compared to the amount of learning during the time limit
? Slice Fight - BlackShips and Luke Viljoen ? for the amount of polish and effort put into the game

Community Choices:
The community has spoken! The following games were chosen as the favourites, in no particular order:
? Mine Digger ? DeepFreez
? Slice Fight - BlackShips and Luke Viljoen



Finally, the games, a short bit about them, and their scores for each category. Please note that games without an element will not have a score for that element.

Boogaloo ? WiledBill
What the world needs are not only clones of old games, but also advancement of the gameplay from these old games. One of two snake tangents that arose during the challenge, Boogaloo went for the novel idea of adding only a simple additional mechanic to the game, another snake. Now many people probably felt the same as me, although many more probably feel differently, snake 3 (or 3D is may have been) was a disappointing sequel. This game is worthy of being called a decent sequel, not only is it well executed it is fun to play .The game unfortunately may feel to some people like it is innovating for the sake of innovation, even though it fixes older unplayable mechanics.

Realisation: 4.3
Art: 2.6
Sound: 4.3
Fun: 3.3
Overall: 3.3


Deus X-Com ? Gazza_N
X-COM: UFO Defence sucked, you had several thousand things you could do, all accessible from a single grid of buttons, and you had to study the manual like you were going to write tests on the game. Deus X-COM fixed that. The context menus make everything so much simpler that instead of having to spend years honing the art of the right button combinations. At times I must say I managed to click on the wrong things, but being a prototype being niggly about small issues would be a bit petty (I think). The idea is functional, and you can see how the improvements add to the attraction of the game, it would be great to see a continuation of this project.

Realisation: 3.3
Art: 3.3
Fun: 4.3
Overall: 2.8


Galaga Combat ? pieterator
An interesting choice of game and expansion, Galaga Combat puts you in the place of what usually is the AI in a game, and it is up to you to work out how you will best the player. If the method for control was through buttons it may have been a little easier to pick up, but the game did a good job of improving the original in an interesting way. The game needs some balancing, with you being able to win just by spamming fighter ships it needs some more challenge.

Realisation: 3.3
Art: 2.6
Fun: 3.3
Overall: 2.6


Infinity Combat ? Fengol
It is always difficult rating things as being fun as prototypes, but you can already see that this type of combat would be more fun and interactive than the game that this spawns from (Infinity Blade). Ignoring that, the idea is easy to grasp, and could easily grow into an amazing combat system for a game. While the style of control would work better on touch capable devices, the implementation is actually sound enough for it to be fun using a mouse, and that counts quite a lot in its favour.

Realisation: 3.3
Art: 3.6
Fun: 2.3
Overall: 2.8


Mine Digger ? DeepFreez
In remembrance of a similar style game that came up in Ludum Dare 19, this game fits the discovery theme very well! There is a certain skill involved in minesweeper, and this game holds true to that. The combination of digging down as opposed to just digging in certain places, and being able to build platforms to move on leaves this game in the perfect state for expansion and for the author to try new twists on the joint concepts. Having to play the game in your browser was also a stumbling block, but one easily remedied if you provide an offline version

Realisation: 3.6
Art: 2
Sound: 2.6
Fun: 3.3
Overall: 3.3


Pac Snake ? UntouchableOne
This being the second snake "sequel" of the challenge can also be called a decent sequel. If snake was a strategy game, it would be along these lines. While at times the controls are a bit difficult, and the next safe to eat ghost being impossible to get to, you found yourself going slowly but surely around the map in a quest to find the best routes and the best ways to get points. This game is probably one of the simplest strategy games to be played. The mechanic of always moving around could also be adjusted slightly to be less punishing to slower players.

Realisation: 3.6
Art: 3.3
Fun: 3.3
Overall: 3.3


Slice Fight ? BlackShips and Luke Viljoen
I havent played House of Dead, but from game play videos I have watched, there is definitely a big improvement by making it up close and personal by giving you a sword. While guns are great in games like this, I have to admit having a sword is even better, especially because touch interfaces just arent that great for first person shooting. The team that made the game pulled off an awesome game in the 48 hours, so lots of kudos to them!

Realisation: 4.3
Art: 4.6
Sound: 4.6
Fun: 4.3
Overall: 4.6


Stratesphere ? SkinkLizzard
Not having heard of stratosphere before, or having much of an idea what this prototype would be like I can see the mechanic is one of those that will just be fun. From a technical perspective if you added enemies (or if I just wasn?t finding them) it would be a game already, but true to the goal of the challenge the prototype shows that a variant of the mechanic as a strategy game could have a really good thing going for it.

Realisation: 3
Art: 2.5
Fun: 2.5
Overall: 2.5



Following this prototyping challenge there will be a second challenge in March; the poll for the date will be posted along with the rules early February. As part of this challenge various weak points have been noted to do with the format, and adjustments will be made for the following challenges to increase the fairness, as well as to combat various shortfalls of having a small judging panel. These will be announced and discussed soon.



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You thought the challenge finished there? Hah! Crazy, the lot of you! :D

Your next challenge is the biggest one yet! Thankfully there are several easy to follow steps to the challenge, so it should be easier for you:

Step 1: Try out every game
Simple enough, easy to do, and while you're at it, let the author know what you think!


Boogaloo - WiledBill (http://www.nag.co.za/forums/showthread.php?16139-48H-1-Boogaloo) - Download (http://www.box.net/shared/4eqn6sulz1)
Pac Snake - UntouchableOne (http://www.nag.co.za/forums/showthread.php?16136-48H1-Pac-Snake) - Download (http://www.rhurbans.co.cc/downloads/pacsnake_v004.zip)
Infinity Combo - Fengol (http://www.nag.co.za/forums/showthread.php?16140-48H1-Infinity-Combo) - Download (http://www.box.net/shared/b8s44jsity)
Deus X-COM - Gazza_N (http://www.nag.co.za/forums/showthread.php?16138-48H1-Deus-X-COM) - Download (https://sites.google.com/site/gazzagamesrepository/Home/DeusX-COM.zip?attredirects=0&d=1)
Mech-Maths - Somebody (http://www.nag.co.za/forums/showthread.php?16150-48H1-Mech-Maths) - Download (http://uploading.com/files/92m25942/Mech-Maths.zip/)
Stratesphere - SkinkLizzard (http://www.nag.co.za/forums/showthread.php?16148-48H-1-Stratesphere) - Download (http://www.box.net/shared/ob5yvv1egs)
SliceFight - BlackShipsFillTheSky (http://www.nag.co.za/forums/showthread.php?16137-48H1-lt-SliceFight-gt-%28Working-Title%29) - Download (http://www.blackshipsfillthesky.com/SliceFight/SliceFight!!(Windows).zip)
Mine Digger - DeepFreez (http://www.nag.co.za/forums/showthread.php?16146-48H1-Mine-Digger) - Play (Web/Unity Player) (http://harsi.com/games/MineDiggerPlayer.html)
Galaga Combat - pieterator (http://www.nag.co.za/forums/showthread.php?16144-48H1-Galaga-Combat) - Download (http://www.mediafire.com/?i8jjp7g8w7fefec)

Step 2: Vote for a game
Vote for the game on the poll of this thread that you liked best.
The poll will go up tomorrow morning some time.

Step 3: Report Back
Share with us:

Did you have difficulties?
What did you learn while prototyping?
What can you teach us from your game (like implementing button combos for example!)?
What was cool about developing what you did?
What would you like to learn from the other entrants (like particle effects in Unity for example!)?

The more you share the better!


And finally:
Step 4: Wishlist and Polish
Those wishlists? Features not implemented yet? Suggestions that were cool but you didn't have time to try? Do them! In a month's time (more or less) how polished can your game be? If it will take too long to implement something cut it! Dont be afraid to leave something cool out, rather focus on having something "finished". We are all looking forward to that most!

Your game should by now be in some state of working (in some way playable), now is the time for you to fix the little things, and finish the game (if you havent done so already!)




Thank you to everyone that enterred, hope you enjoyed it, and best of luck to you all!

edg3
10-01-2011, 08:22 AM
The poll is up, if you noticed Mech-Maths is missing from the list, that is because it is (until I get a reply from Somebody)

edg3
10-01-2011, 10:12 AM
Fixed the link for Galaga Combat download

DeepFreez
11-01-2011, 08:48 AM
Should the feedback be on our entry threads or on this thread?

edg3
11-01-2011, 08:52 AM
Wherever, but just add a link to it wherever you put it here, just so it is easier to find.

Fengol
11-01-2011, 10:23 AM
When does the voting close?

dislekcia
11-01-2011, 11:01 AM
Quick note, if anyone wants to have their game running on Mac, send me the gmk and I'll use the recently released GM for Mac to create a working application for you :)

edg3
11-01-2011, 12:54 PM
End of the week, but I can extend the voting period

WiledBill
13-01-2011, 07:45 PM
Some feedback (as you asked)

I enjoyed the competition, and will prolly do it again. It was great to see the initial ideas develop into playable protos. I hope I'll see some of these prototypes develop into more complete games.

The dev I did was not complicated. I have not actively been developing games for quite some time, so I decided to downgrade myself to 2D. And I used a library that I haven't tried before. It turned out that the library did not get into the way, and it helped a bit with the sound and timing issues. So I will continue to explore GTGE (http://www.goldenstudios.or.id/products/GTGE/index.php) for a bit. Also the scala language (http://www.scala-lang.org/) is less finicky than java, and I think this helped me to finish the work a bit quicker.

The unity engine is something that I would like to give a try at some stage (does it work on the Java VM?). But, for now I plan to explore more 2D games. I think, the other 2D entries in this competition proves that there is still some scope there :-).

Anyways, well done to every participant. I hope to "see" all of you in the next competition.

Fengol
14-01-2011, 07:00 AM
You can use JavaScript, C# or Boo in Unity3D. Unity compiles all scripts to .NET (http://unity3d.com/support/documentation/ScriptReference/index.Script_compilation_28Advanced29.html) dll files. Unity iOS (http://unity3d.com/support/documentation/Manual/iOS-DotNet.html) supports two .NET API compatibility levels: .NET 2.0 and a subset of .NET 2.0; documentation for Android is not yet complete.

BlackShipsFillt
16-01-2011, 08:30 PM
Any results yet?

edg3
27-01-2011, 10:02 PM
Bump, for results. And fail internet and all that jazz.

xyber
28-01-2011, 01:23 AM
sweet :D

Fengol
28-01-2011, 06:58 AM
Congratulations to everyone, that was an awesome competition!

Gazza_N
28-01-2011, 08:07 AM
Congrats all! Looking forward to March's comp. :D

BlackShipsFillt
28-01-2011, 02:12 PM
Congrats! Looking forward to Game Jam this weekend!