Rubyweekend #2 and Blood Frontier

Ruby

Early Monday. Pioneer rays of light touched my face like golden hair. It was then that the second Ruby weekend game programming competition came to an end.

The results are not impressive, but much more than I had anticipated. The previous Rubyweekend took place only 1.5 months ago, and the weather motivates to spend time outside the reach of game-creation-suitable input devices. Also my humble opinion is that the topic "opposites" was way too liberal.

Many games weren't finished, though are playable to some degree. Two of the submitted games had incorrect-case directories/filenames!!!! /me rages !!!!11!! Well, let's blame the weather, shall we? :D

Me and kiba wanted to create a simple rts called Playground Wars and we failed. No problem, lesson learned (don't try to make an rts in little time.) No regrets but if I'm to participate in a game creation compo this summer again, I will work for it at night so I can sleep in the sun at daytime!

I like Opposite Islands [video]. Here are all the games. You can take a look at the videos of the other contesting games. You can vote too.

DungeonFarmer is pretty freaky because it has to do with farming in a dungeon! O_o Super StarHawks Gaiden is awesomely neo-retro [video], but was submitted too late. o_O

Regarding other short-time game programming challenges: The next Ludum Dare will happen in 2 weeks and 2 days. It's more than a month until PyWeek #7.

I can't find any official PyDay site any more :(

In other news: I recorded another video of TORCS (slightly better synchronized), after finding out that there is at least one map that looks rather pretty (by my standards.)

Blood Frontier recently started interesting me very much, because it is fun to play. It has great maps and a fine, small weapon selection and it's movement style is definitely something fresh. Give the new alpha a try, it's worth it! [video] The fact that most maps are not just very, but too dark, is something I consider a problem for deathmatch games.

I'm currently reading Learn to Program, it teaches via Ruby. I like it because it takes me by the hand without making me feel stupid. Next up will be the Lua Reference Manual. When I'm done with that, hopefully Python 3000 will be ready for use and learning.

I just checked if I covered in this post everything I have to share and realized that this is about 10%. Next post soon I guess.

Back from dusmania, right to RubyWeekend...

Surt's goblin

Surt contributed the first model to OpenDungeons (and it looks good!) The model also was quickly incorporated by Timong into jClassicRPG.

Meanwhile, JackyJ (creator of the cool 3D platform-marble and physics game irrlamb) released the first version of Choria, which seems to be a parody of MMORPGs. It reminds me of the funny (though unfree) Progress Quest.

Word War vi has reached release 0.19! Controls are fine now and the side-scrolling arcade is lots of fun to play. It might be the first game with Xbox 360 controller rumble effects on Linux!

RubyWeekend #2 is happening this weekend. I'll be helping kiba with art stuffs. It's gonna be fuun! As you might have figured, the rules are to use ruby inside the time span of the weekend to create a game. :)

The 3D Ultima Online client remake Iris 2 scored first price (best project) at dusmania (german indie games ...party :) ).

lalalove at dusmania

Part of the dusmania was a overnight games creation competition. Our result (made with LÖVE) is lalalove (working title), a game inspired by Lost Garden's Celestial Music. Basically you connect stars, asteroids and planets, to create musical compositions. The current state isn't polished but playable and fun for some seconds. We're definitely going to make it kick ass!

Also: No more game videos on Vimeo allowed. Not sure if they permit videos of games you did yourself.

RubyWeekend, but also PyDay

Yesterday the first RubyWeekend ended, which is a two and a half days Ruby game creation competition. The topic was "Pirates Versus Zombies!"

Seven contributions were made: kiba's digital piracy parody The CopyPirate [video], atiaxi's tbs Port Town [video], satoshi's console-based footracer [video], jlnr's ZombieSoccarrr [video], ippa's Zombie Horde [video], jacius' Election Year: Zombies vs. Pirates! [video] and trejs' Caribbean Onslaught.

The submitted code had to be released under an OSI-approved license and all media under one of the Creative Commons licenses (alternatively public domain for both.)

The contest is being hosted on the forums of Rubygame, which is a SDL-based Ruby media library. Most submissions are based on it, some use Gosu.

Ninjapix, probably PyDay #2's winner

Another competition ended on Saturday: PyDay #2 - a rather fresh 24-hours Python game making contest and the smaller brother of Ludum Dare, which is the granddaughter of PyWeek.

You can download an archive (.7z) of all contributions. Or pick them individually. Or just watch some of them.

I also seriously recommend two out of the three PyDay #1 games. They're in the video at the end of this post.

While some games turn out terribly (it will be either less than ugly graphics or inhuman controls), gems tend to appear on such contests. I love the idea of brain-storm programming, even though results are likely to be buggy and incomplete, the important thing is that a playable model of a game exists. It allows to see the potential for fun.

Port Town

For example I enjoy playing Port Town much more than I should. It's a game based on boring random numbers, where you get a random number of units and position them in a part of the town, where they fight and win randomly. The tiny detail that zombies will convert humans to their own kind is what makes the game shine for me. Also the zombies start on the graveyard and the pirates start on a ship. It makes so much sense! I see a lot of potential in this minimal Risk-like strategy game. It only needs a bit more complexity and then a bit more graphics.

Another example is The CopyPirate, which is no fun to play at all for me, but which has a cool scenario. You're a pirate, who has to steal some music and escape to the intertubes while avoiding the RIAA's Zombies! How awesome is that? I hope this scenario will find it's way into a decent satirical game someday.

There is one problem with short time game contests' results though: documentation. I think it's a big deal, as many contest contributors won't be willing to spend any more time on their quickie creations while being the ones who understand the game's code best. (The reasons will be "The source is sooooo dirty!!", "I would, but I got this totally awesome idea for my next game!", "I'll rewrite it instead, rly!!", "I don't care if you like it, I don't!", "I'm lazy!" and "I can only work under pressure!") But at least the small size of the games protects against total unsuitability for further development by others.

I'm looking forward to PyHour. Less is more!

PyDay #1 games (the third one is the coolest!).

[Edit] This just in: Sauerbraten has the new release "CTF Edition" for Lin/Win/Osx. There's a changelog. I've noticed following new things: pretty weapons (which have been in the code repository a long time now), new maps, new capture the flag game mode. New models too I think. Fun!

Sauerbraten CTF Edition