And the winner of our supremely awesometastic Procedural Generation Competition is nenad, with Rescue: The Beagles! I can say without hesitation that this game is destined to be a classic – I love traversing the three-tiered abstract landscape and mapping out the best routes. Every part of the game feels very thoughtfully put in place. (Plus, I get fuzzy feelings from rescuing those cute beagles and hearing them yip with joy.)
In a very close second place is Dyson, the stunning “life” and colonization game by Alex “haowan” May, Rudolf “Borsato” Kremers, and Brian Grainger. And in third place is Self Destruct, a fast-paced procedurally generated shoot ‘em up from the indie gaming dream team of Terry Cavanagh and Annabelle Kennedy.
But as always, all of the (60!) entrants deserve a hearty round of beer and ‘grats. There were so many great ideas that came out of this compo that we should have called it the “Great Idea Competition.” But then it would be so hard to distinguish from the other TIGSource competitions… seriously, you all are blowing minds!
Thanks again to everyone who made a game, played a game, gave feedback, voted, provided mirrors, and/or devoted any small amount of time to making this happen. See you next compo! It will be a doozy.
I know what you’re thinking… the Sims, Electronic Arts… is it the first of April again so soon? But no!
The Sims Carnival is a newish online community based on the Sims universe that allows users to make their own games and share them. At the heart of the community is the Game Creator (shown above), a simple Flash-based program that mimics the higher-level functionality of Game Maker and Multimedia Fusion. Users can use pre-made or original art and music assets, and define the “behaviors” of in-game objects using if-then statements provided by the software. Once you’ve made a game, you can upload it to the site after registering an account. Games made with Flash itself are also accepted.
I’m always excited by new tools that lower the barrier for people (especially non-developers) to make games and generally be creative. Even though the current games on The Sims Carnival are pretty primitive, I had a lot of fun browsing around – the enthusiasm of the community and its eagerness to improve is actually really inspiring! I especially enjoyed the games of Kid Akkade, like Akkade and MotorBike Mania, an Excitebike clone. Pick your own Adventure and IRON MAN VS THE HULK AND SUPERMAN also wrangled quite a few chuckles out of me.
The site was recommended to me by Rod Humble, who developed The Marriage and Stars Over Half-Moon Bay, and also works at EA. He also mentioned a competition they’re throwing where you can either win $1000 or a Nintendo DS (2nd and 3rd place). Both Game Creator and Flash entries are accepted.
Oxeye Studios shows us that TIGSource compos are serious business. And so is being Swedish.
The Procedural Generation Competition has been going on for three weeks, and now there’s only one left! But it’s still plenty of time to implement a fancy new algorithm or two (or three hundred). There was an awesome turnout for this compo, natch. I’m happy to announce that you people hit the giant enemy crab for massive talents (what?).
It’s Memorial Day in the U.S. today. Happy it! Enjoy life!
Procedural content generation has been applied to video games forever to create random content and to reduce the space requirements for games. Roguelikes are a genre that generally depend on procedural generation for level creation. And recently, Will Wright’s Spore has put this idea in the spotlight, since the game is mostly procedurally-generated.
But all in all, I think this is a concept that is still relatively unexplored, and it could be applied creatively to every part of a game to do some really neat stuff! The focus of this competition is to develop a 4-week game that uses PCG to create compelling, new content every time the player starts a game.
The results are in! Voting for The VGNG Competition is now over, and our buddy Farbs caught 16% of the vote with his really-rather-brilliant ROM CHECK FAIL, followed close behind by Farmergnome’s excellent My First Skydiving Academy. All in all, the VGNG Compo was a huge success. It’s been said before, but all the entrants should be really proud of themselves for participating, and making some really good shit!
Regarding the next competition… keep your eyeballs peeled. You never know when or how it’s going to hit. But you can expect that it’s going to be a lot of fun!
Wow, amazing turnout for the Video Game Name Generator Competition – we have 48 hot hot entries for you to rub up against! A new record!
The quality and variety of the games is really just inspiring. I had a blast watching the development goin’ on, and the results met and exceeded expectations. I’m alternately excited and fearful by the prospect of later competitions – on the one hand, you guys are obviously honing your game-making skills like crazy… on the other hand, that means I’ll probably have to spend the rest of my life compiling the great games that are going to come out of the next compo!
I was also really happy to see so many new faces in the forums. Even if you joined just to participate in the compo, it was great to have you guys around, and I hope you stay!
Well, my blathering on isn’t really doing anyone any good. Just check out the games. And for everyone who participated, you should give yourselves a hearty clap on the back. This is legendary stuffs.
Special thanks to the creator(s) of the VGNG, ‘cause that thing rocks, and also to moi, who compiled the final list of games and made my life a lot easier.
EDIT: Fixed Time Shark’s link and added BaronCid’s Super Mario Versus Programming in China to the list (it’s a pen and paper game!). Sorry about that, guys!
The results of this year’s Seven Day Roguelike Competition are in! There were 23 entrants in total, 9 of whom successfully completed their roguelike.
Some of the games are really interesting and well-executed, like Fatherhood (pictured above), a RL which has you damming up floods while taking care of your three rambunctious children. There’s also Numbers, an educational roguelike where you solve math problems to defeat monsters like the Pithon and the Minussaur.
Thanks to Slashie of Rogue Temple for the info. And be sure to check out his entry, MegamanRL, which I believe is the first side-scrolling platformer roguelike ever made?!
IndieCade is calling for submissions for their 2008 independent games festival in Seattle. The festival goes from July 10th to the 13th. The group also makes appearances at various gaming events around the globe (like E3 and PAX). Games chosen for IndieCade are also considered for those showcases.
The submission deadline is April 11, 2008, and the fee is $25.
I thought to get people’s juices flowing I’d let the people decide what to make a secret, hidden boss. What you have to do is think of something completely awesome and then give that idea to me and I pay you absolutely nothing, but you get a credit at the end of the game (if you really want to).
Sounds like a pretty fair deal! But in all seriousness, it’s for the fun... what more reason do you need? Hit up Joakim’s site for more info. We’re also discussing it on the forums.
