dragon "shmup" competition
Posted by dessgeega Sat, 01 Jul 2006 02:23:00 GMT
“shmup”, being some ungainly contraction of “shoot-em-up”, is a fairly dumb and ugly word we inherit from the european videogame press. let’s opt to use better terms instead, like “shooting games” or “shooters” or “stgs”.
anyway, the dragon stg competition over at the stg-dev forums is now closed to entries. the goal for entrants in the competition (which offers many fabulous prizes) was to produce a shooting game of any variety, with the one stipulation that the protagonist be a dragon.
all of the finished entries can be downloaded on the competition forum. (you may need to be logged into the site.) my favorite is smark’s lair, which plays the way a game starring a dragon should play: like rampage. smark the dragon endures an assault on his treasure horde by pesky humans. he can unleash flames to fry the meddling creatures or swoop down to snatch them up, then either toss them at their comrades or chomp them for health. munching the (well-defended) princess will restore all of smark’s health, but will also invoke the wrath of a powerful dragon-slayer. a pretty solid shooting game.
Personally, I always thought that the term ‘shoot-them-up’ was misleading, but no one seems to mistake them for FPS’s. -shrugs-
How do I download the entries? Some messages say things like “Download Attached” but I can’t seem to find a place to download anything.
Next time leave the xenophobic comments out of the article.
you need to register on the forum to download some of the games.
also no.
I was confused, Albert Lai. ‘Shoot-them-up’ describes all sorts of video games (FPS, rail, schmup … any game with prominent guns) Why not call them space invader’s children? (sic)
There’s no xenophobia in that article. “shmup” is a dumb, ugly word. Yeah, you heard.
I concur. Also, you shouldn’t have to register on some forums to download a game mentioned on this site.
Xenophobe is an awesome shmup.
It’s probably worth registering as future shooter competitions will be hosted on the same site. …as are previous ones ;)
‘STG’ sounds like some sort of disease.
“Prolific developers could not spend time developing the games they like if the contests keep spawning all over the place.” Hmm … developers aren’t forced to do these contests, ya know. They can always skip if they’ve got better things to do. These help developers *be* prolific, though, by providing a nice pat framework for game development + motivation.
Oh, and I agree about the ‘STG’ / ‘STD’ sound-alike thing.
Tim, hard to say why entries were down in this competition. I tend to think it might be the “Dragon” theme, there was initial excitement about a contest, but the theme limited things after. Maybe. Anyway, it’s not such a bad thing that there are more competitions, kept me motivated and gave me a goal.
Bill
Tim: I never claimed the second compo should draw better results than the first, and I don’t see your reason to believe that. That barely even relates to what I wrote. Anyway, to explain it: Sometimes the timing is off, sometimes the theme hurts, sometimes your favorite developers have better things to do that [timespan]. These can happen regardless of how often you schedule competitions, and if anything having more competitions makes it less of a problem … since then we (devs) don’t have to wait a year to try again.
Shmup is one syllable… While STGS, Shooting Games, and Shooters, are 4, 3 and 2 syllables respectively. Shoot-em-up conversely is only 3 syllables, so I find it baffling why anyone would prefer the acronym STGS. Or even STGs, pronounced plurally, which is still 3 syllables long. I personally love the word shmup, because it’s short, simple and easy to use. As for the Euro Xenephobia comment… I was more offended about the criticism of the word shmup than the actual press themselves. Besides, Europe has EDGE. Nuff said.
Btw, I am not really Jeff Bridges.
Yeah, EDGE sums up everything wrong with European gaming media pretty well.
I know! Hence why mocking comments aimed at the European game press bring a wry smile to my face. :-)
Wow I didnt realize this contest hit tigsource. I just wanted to bring a couple of things to everyone’s attention:
1) All games will be downloadable to anonymous guests when the official dragon shmup web page is designed. You will not have to be a registered member to download the games once the page is completed. It is expected to be ready within 3 weeks of today.
The dragon shmup web-page will actually be seperate from the CMS, and it wil show awards for the good games, etc. The page will also show all of our sponsors.
2) More contests underway, and this is a learning process for me! I was dissapointed seeing not as many entries go through like last time, and my only guess is that the theme might have been inviting at first, but perhaps too much. The next contest should do better, as I do feel that the shmup-dev base community has had some growth. I am only hoping that this growth continues.
3) Shmup-dev will more than likely hold 3 contests per calendar year, rather than 1 contest per year. This IS a learning process for me, and in the long run I think that I’ll have the whole contest concept tweaked and perfected.
Thanks for visiting! Be on the lookout for a PRESS RELEASE when the judges scores are in!
i’m not really convinced that disliking a neologism is xenophobia, but whatevs. i won’t hold it against you folks!