If you haven't implemented a game before, this weekend is Klik of the Month on www.glorioustrainwrecks.com. Participate in that for practice, there are people who can help you!

Part Ⅱ of the challenge has begun! In this part, you will be tasked with implementing a game using Part I’s designs and assets. The designs and assets are here! But don’t you start downloading them yet. This is a challenge, we have constraints to make it challenging.

Here are some rules

There’s no “I” in “COLLABORATION”

Part of the fun of this challenge is that it forces people to team up with each other. But that doesn’t work unless we force people to team up with each other! So you’re not allowed to use your own design or assets. You have to use someone else’s if you want to be eligible for prizes.

If we didn’t do it this way, there wouldn’t have been much point to Part I!

i made a picture

If the design you choose has assets to go along with it, you have to use the assets provided before using your own. This doesn’t mean that you can’t create assets, just that you can’t replace existing assets for new ones. If something is in the design but isn’t provided as an asset, you’re free to make it yourself!

Lol, Internet

You’re not allowed to use assets beyond those provided and those you create yourself; no pulling a sweet sprite or jammin’ soundtrack off the Internet.

Team Size

In Part II, you can work with only one other person, because we only have enough prizes for teams of that size. Human assets from Part I don’t count towards that, because technically they’re in Part I.

The best game will net prizes for both the team that made the design and assets and the team that implemented it!

Deadline

The competition ends on April 6. It started two weeks ago, and there are three weeks remaining!

Here are some summarizing bullet points

• Members select one game design from the previous challenge, and implement it, in teams of 1 – 2 people
• Members cannot develop their own designs
• There will be one prize per team member for the best implemented game (the implementing team and design team will both win prizes)
• The challenge ends at the meeting on April 6th
• If the game design includes art, the art must be used, but additional art can be added (same for sound)
• All code and assets must be made by team members

Here are some designs and assets

Designs and Assets

click to get at them

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Just so that we’re clear!

Wednesday at midnight Thursday at midnight is the deadline for the titular current challenge! (It used to be Tuesday at 9:00, we changed it for some reason. And then it used to be Wednesday, but we changed it again! what the heck) If you have stuff on a computer, put it in a zip file and email it to kelseyhigham+gamedevyay@gmail.com (that’s me) by the end of Wednesday Thursday, so that I can put it here on sjsugamedev.com. If you have stuff on paper, either scan+email it, or bring it to the meeting and we’ll have a person with a scanner you can lend it to. If you have stuff made out of clay, man, that’s really great. You should be proud.

Update: Just kidding! It’s Thursday now.

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Oh hey, we have a meeting next Tuesday! There are two important things you should know about it.

GDC Money

If you want to attend GDC with us (about that), you need to bring $75 to this meeting probably. Technically, you need to get it to Cindy by March 9, which is a week later, but she will be at the meeting, so it makes sense to bring it then!

Deadline for the Current Challenge

This meeting Wednesday Thursday at midnight is the deadline for the subtitular current challenge! If you have stuff on a computer, put it in a zip file and email it to kelseyhigham+gamedevyay@gmail.com (that’s me) by the end of the meeting Wednesday Thursday, so that I can put it on this website here. If you have stuff on paper, either scan+email it, or bring it to the meeting and we’ll have a person with a scanner you can lend it to. If you have stuff made out of clay, man, I really admire that.

Hurr

Also at this meeting: we’ll announce the next challenge (you already pretty much know what it is), and we’ll show off any games made during the Intergalacticollabogamesmash! (Which is on Saturday, and which you should attend, because it will be fun fun fun.)

Tuesday, March 2, 2010
7:15pm – 9:15pm (though it probably won’t last nearly that long)
SJSU Student Union, Guadalupe Room
Facebook event details

Update: The new deadline for submission is Wednesday at midnight, not Tuesday at 9:00.

Update update: Haha, now the deadline for submission is Thursday at midnight.

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So far, we’ve only got videos of these games; none of them are actually downloadable. You’ll be able to download some in the future. Look forward to it!

Collaborative Challenge (rules):

Tower Defense Challenge (rules):

Shmup Challenge (rules):

8-Bit Challenge (rules):

Pong Challenge (rules):

This post is way too long! Just read the bullet points at the end.

Our next challenge is a two-parter! In Part Ⅰ, you are tasked with designing your game’s gameplay and assets.

In Part Ⅱ, you are tasked with coding together someone else’s game, but we’ll worry about that in a few weeks.

Does the prospect of making a game without learning to code appeal to you? Well get your head out of the cloud, buster, it’s not as easy as your daydreams make it out to be. There are some barriers, technical and human, which you need to deal with.

The Technical (or: The Rules)

To be eligible to compete, and to be awesome, your game must incorporate at least two of the following keywords: animals, food, future, and snow. How you incorporate them is up to you!

Here’s the tricky part. If you want something in the game, you have to make it yourself. Do you want your guy to be able to run and jump to the left and the right? If you don’t want your game looking like Karoshi, where the main guy is facing forward the whole time, you have to draw all of those pictures! Don’t worry, it doesn’t take as long as you fear. I drew this guy in a minute:  Imagine what you can do with ten minutes.

If you have a grander vision, however, you are welcome to team up with people. Teams can be up to three people in size. Have one person draw the backgrounds and one person draw the sprites and one person compose the music, I dunno! (You can also make THREE DEE MODELS, if that’s your thing.)

That’s one reason you should bring stuff you’ve made to the next meeting: you can see who’s interested in what and team up with people who complement you. Don’t worry if you suck at everything; all of us suck at everything! That’s why we’re in college.

The deadline for this thing is March 2nd. Establish your vision by then.

The Human (or: Protips)

You’ll want to make your game design as detailed as possible. Otherwise the programmer could misunderstand your vision! Make sure you write down exactly what you have in mind. Draw levels on graph paper, specify speeds of things in pixels per second, write down text exactly how you want it to be worded. Coding a game is hard work; the programmer has enough on his plate without having to make arbitrary decisions all the time.

Remember, though, coding is hard. Keep your game simple. If you make your game design too complicated, the programmer won’t have time to finish it all—he might just pick the funnest subset of your game to make, or worse, skip it entirely! Take a look at some existing games we’ve made to get an idea of what a reasonable scope is.

tl;dr:

• Form teams of 1 – 3 people to design a game. People cannot be on multiple teams.
• Design the game, but don’t create the game: describe the game in words, and provide assets (art and sound) for it.
• Game designs must match at least two of these keywords: food, future, snow, animals
• Game design descriptions should be as detailed as possible so that the game design is not misunderstood
• Game designs should be easy to implement, because some of them will be implemented in the next challenge
• There will be prizes
• The design is due in four weeks, at the meeting on March 2nd

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