Hourgame Saturday! - Twist Endings - Wyz Wins!

Rex Mundane · Sat 07/08/2010 01:46:10

Hourgame! Hourgame! Hourgame! Have I mentioned Hourgame? Well... Hourgame! Hourgame! Yep... Good ol' Hourgame... Gotta love it...
What's an Hourgame competition?
The purpose of Hourgame Saturday is to encourage amateur game-making, or to put it bluntly, to make you plant your ass in your chair and finally make something.
In this activity your task is to make an AGS game within a strict and very short deadline (i.e. one hour).

When will it take place?
This Hourgame session will take place on Saturday 7th August 2010. Starting at 19:00 BST (14:00 New York, 20:00 Johannesburg) participants will have an hour to make their games + 15 minutes to beta test / upload (i.e. the deadline is 20:15 BST).

How do I participate?
A theme is set by the previous week's winner and by the contest's host in event of his/her absence. It will be announced on IRC (3 simple steps to IRC) and here.

Why should I participate?
Because it's FUN!
Research shows that Hourgames get the creative juices going and will aid for healthier game building skills.

Additional info:
- While it is not forbidden for the theme-setters to participate in the activity, their games cannot be voted for (to prevent accusations of cheating and to discourage regular participation).
- Instead, theme-setters are encouraged to draw trophies for the contest's winners.
- Making your game from scratch is strongly encouraged, though it is not forbidden to use music or artwork from public sources if you are allowed to (e.g. using public domain music tracks in your game is OK, but not really necessary). It is also possible to use a pre-existing AGS template for your game (e.g. the Verb-Coin GUI template).
- You cannot use stuff you've made earlier, because this competition is about making something new.
- You are allowed to use previous Hoursongs (Should we create a list somewhere?).

Camwhoring:
If you have Camtasia or Camtasia-esque software, it would be great to see your "Making of"! Or blog about it, or just open Notepad, do something! No twittering.

Uploading:
Suggested hosts to upload your entry to are:

Recommended:
TerranRich's ShutUpload
DropBox (Recommended by Magma42, referral link)

Not recommended:
http://www.mediafire.com/
http://www.sendspace.com/
http://www.rapidshare.com/

Or your own place.

Theme:

In honor of M. Night Shymalan's birthday yesterday, this week's theme is...

THE ABSURD TWIST ENDING

Trophy:

Voting:
Just tell us your favourite game. You don't have to enter to vote!
(If you want to tell us what you liked and disliked about all the entries, that would be super nice of you!)
After all games are in you are encouraged to vote, again, you don't have to enter to vote. Voting closes the next Saturday (August 14)

Please post below if you're interested in participating, if the change in time will/won't work for you, or if you have any other questions.

If you are unable to make the scheduled time, but wish to participate anyway, say so in this thread and we can work out a scheduled hour at your convenience to make your submission (Earlier that day for instance).

Hope to see you there!

Rex Mundane · Sat 07/08/2010 01:49:06

Addendum: I realize that this is fairly immediate notification, what with, lets see, 18 hours to go before the competition is supposed to start. As usual if people want to participate early entries will be accepted, but if enough people feel its just too soon the competition can be postponed, say, another week for everyone's convenience. If you'd like it to be held back, please respond in this thread, or otherwise, again, if you're cool with participating as scheduled, please post as much below.

Kweepa · Sat 07/08/2010 02:27:02

As I said in the other thread, I'm up for this, although I might try entering early - say 10am my time (3 hours early).

Rex Mundane · Sat 07/08/2010 02:28:04

I will try to be on IRC for most of the day tomorrow to be in touch, Steve.

Bulbapuck · Sat 07/08/2010 02:29:02

Quote from: SteveMcCrea on Sat 07/08/2010 02:27:02
As I said in the other thread, I'm up for this, although I might try entering early - say 10am my time (3 hours early).

I would be up for approx. the same time. I'll be in the IRC tomorrow, we can chat then.

Rex Mundane · Sat 07/08/2010 02:43:36

Hoursong Playlist

All hoursongs below are eligible for this and future Hourgames, unless otherwise noted, prohibited by intergalactic law, or arbitrary whim prevents it. Some songs are, evidently, lost to the mists of time or the confoundings of ShutUpload and I cannot get working links for them, so if anyone would like to post them here, feel free to oblige us.

Damien's "My Failure" from Hoursong I
qptain Nemo's "Untitled Car Chase Song from Hoursong II
DrWhite's "Surf-Chasing Dr. Doom" from Hoursong II

Bulbapuck · Sat 07/08/2010 02:59:14

All links still work for me:

Wyz's "You've failed me again": http://shutupload.com/dl/d8976a419035/
My "Bulba fails": http://shutupload.com/dl/179b62e2f42f/
Wyz's "In Pursuite": http://shutupload.com/dl/8d9fe6c3b4fa/
Untitled song by Wyz: http://shutupload.com/dl/e62949183110/
Untitled song by Wyz: http://shutupload.com/dl/de8a7e52dc16/
ShiverMeSideways' "Bar Fight": http://shutupload.com/dl/71db6fbb075f/
My "late non-entry": http://shutupload.com/dl/d213eaa815f5/

If people have problems with these links I'll upload a mirror tomorrow, need to sleep now

Rex Mundane · Sat 07/08/2010 05:33:35

It might be just me then, but while those links do take me to the shutupload page, the "Click Here" Link for each says "Link Expired - Your temporary download link has expired. If this is in error, please contact us and let us know the problem."

Bulbapuck · Sat 07/08/2010 11:58:10

That's odd..
The link should expire 5 minutes after you enter the page, if it's not that your connection is reeeaally slow you should report it.

Anyway, mirror:

I decided to just upload everything in one folder, for simplicity. I also added a README file with the names and authors of the songs.

Download *here* (mediafire) or *here* (ShutUpload)

Please let me know if I missed something.

Rex Mundane · Sat 07/08/2010 19:02:52

Alright then, Hourgaming has begun. This week's theme, in honor of M. Night Shymalan's 40th birthday yesterday, is Completely Insane Twist Endings.

Edit: Also I regret to say that due to the fact that twist endings cannot be represented pictorally there will be no trophy for this week.

...or Will there?

Bulbapuck · Sat 07/08/2010 20:18:08

A door and a key:
http://shutupload.com/dl/b12ccab69318/

Wyz · Sat 07/08/2010 20:19:06

The forest of twisty roads
http://shutupload.com/dl/e814347a1887/

Kweepa · Sat 07/08/2010 20:20:23

Here's my entry:

http://www.kweepa.com/step/ags/games/WhatsOn.zip

I should specify that there is one ending, and one ending only, to this game.

Rex Mundane · Sat 07/08/2010 20:37:55

Alrighty then, we have three entries. Here's the Download Link for all three games, and below you'll find the trophy that you totally didn't expect coming.

See, because... because a pigs tail is twisty and it's... it's the end of... know what, shut up.

Kweepa · Sat 07/08/2010 20:40:12

Oh, so it's not because the games remind you of a pig's anus?

Note 1: My game has one ending, and one ending only. Just so you don't spend a lot of time trying to solve it another way.

Note 2: My vote goes to Wyz'z game. It was a close call, but the art pulled it over the top.

Bulbapuck · Tue 10/08/2010 13:04:23

Both your games were very interesting. I feel like Kweepa's game followed the theme best, but I really thought the puzzles in wyz's game were excellent.

Difficult... But I think I'll go with Wyz

Alun · Wed 11/08/2010 01:54:44

So, I haven't created an AGS game of my own yet, and I haven't posted here all that much, so I don't know if my voting would mean anything, but for what it's worth I've played a lot of AGS games...

Anyway, as others have said, this is a hard vote. All three games, I think, had their own strengths.

Bulbapuck's game had a fun sense of whimsy, and I like the fact that custom responses were included for talking to everything. A detail, but a fun detail. The ending kind of came out of nowhere, but well, that was the theme, after all; I guess it was supposed to.

I liked the art in Steve's game the best. It was obviously kind of rushed (of course it was rushed; it was an hour game!), but it did its job well. And the descriptions were great. I did miss having any responses for interacting with objects, but, again, it's an hour game; omissions like that are certainly understandable. (I admit I did restart the game trying to figure out how to avoid the ending I got before remembering he'd mentioned in this thread that there was only one ending.)

Wyz's game... well, I guess it was the only one that had any real puzzles. Okay, Bulbapuck's game sort of had a couple of puzzles, but the puzzles in Wyz's game felt slightly more like "real" puzzles. Now, admittedly, I'm not a fan of the interface (I know it's patterned after the LucasArts Monkey Island-type interface... but personally, I've always found that interface rather annoying), but that's a matter of personal preference, so I won't let that factor into my vote. I don't think it followed the theme quite as well as the other games, though -- the "twist ending" felt tacked on. Still, of the three, I think this was the one that actually felt most like a game.

But anyway, again, it's a very close call; it's hard to pick which one to vote for. They were all quite well done for the very limited time available. Hmm... I think I'll cast my vote for Steve's -- it followed the "twist ending" theme well, and I really liked both the art and the writing -- but it was definitely a tough choice.

Kweepa · Wed 11/08/2010 03:50:02

2-1-0 so far... nobody beats the Wyz!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CjQKFoUdk4g

Wyz · Thu 12/08/2010 13:10:26

Lol!

A door and a key:
Without saying too much and spoiling the twist for others, it was a good idea and M. Night Shyamalan would have been happy with it.

A solid game for the time you had for it as ever. I wished I wasn't that obsessed with any residual pixels, but that's just a left over from my pixel hunting days.

What's on:
The twist was so twisty the real twist was for me that I was thinking to much. The game has a lot of detail and a lot of interactions. I was able to read them all before the game ended the first time, and the game had the intended effect. Until I overheard a conversation, well let's not go there again...

Overall a great effort in the given time.

It's a tough decision but I think I'm going to give my vote to Mr Steve.

Stupot · Thu 12/08/2010 18:59:01

My vote goes to Steve... It was the most unexpected twist for me. And I liked reading all he little descriptions of the objects.

Bulba, I was kind of hoping that:

Spoiler

the 'nah-huh, uh-huh' exchange would go on for ever.

[close]

That might have won you my vote.

Wyz, what is Hotspot 1 supposed to be?