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Playing TAGD: The Texas Aggie Game Developers' One-Week Game Competition Because We're Hungry, That's Why! People who worked on game: Greg Fagan (programming) and Kyle Fagan (art)
Hungry is perhaps the simplest game of all the entries - two gorillas are invading a city and eating all the people in it. Why? Because they're hungry, that's why! One gorilla, perched on the top of an office building, tosses a steady stream of humans out of a window down to his compatriot on the street below. Press the mouse button or space bar to open your mouth and consume humans, and let go to close your mouth. The gorilla on the building also tosses bombs he grabs by accident, and if you eat one, you'll lose. Also, if you miss five humans, you will lose. That's it! A very good example of a one-button game! Greg wanted to make a "game that I could complete in less than a week; in other words, not a 1 week game, but a less than 1 week game." The game itself is based off of a remake from a minigame found in Kirby's Adventure for the NES. This game demonstrates that even a concept that has been used before can have new life breathed into it through good presentation. The theme definitely makes the game a lot more fun to play, and the sound effects are especially cute. As for what didn't work out, Greg says, "I didn't get to add in all the graphical finishing touches I wanted, such as an explosion when you eat the dynamite, or having the people and dynamite rotate as they are thrown out the window." Greg mentions features he would have added a high score saving feature with more time, but not much else. Hence the "less than a week" approach he took for the contest. Greg mentions "The hardest thing for me to do with any of my projects is staying focused and completing them. Luckily, I had set an achievable goal this time, and was able to finish We're Hungry. I got a significant boost of energy when I saw my brother's artwork, because my programmer art was pretty lame." He was especially surprised by how "simple and easy to use Python + Pygame are for getting small projects up and running. I had significant progress with hardly any time invested." This game is a great example of how an audience is easily won over (and rightly so) by a great presentation and theme, which makes a basic mechanic a lot more fun to play. Hungry easily took the Audience Award. Pandovan People who worked on game: Brandon Green
Game Concept: Pandovan is a very simple game - the basic gameplay is a one-on-one reaction time competition. Each player has a 3x3 grid, which corresponds to the player's numpad. When an icon appears in the grid, the player must press the corresponding key on the numpad, which will make the icon disappear, until it reappears in a new position. The winner is the player with the best reaction time after the clock runs out. The game can be played single player for a high score, or against a human opponent over a network connection. Thoughts: From the author: "The goal was to make a fairly simple game that was simple to play but had the potential to be fun. The main idea behind the fun part of my game was... competing directly against someone else. I had plans for more gameplay, such as the ability to earn power-ups by not missing any and then being able to use those on your enemy to slow them down, but naturally didn't have the time to add that." The game was a success in that it was a finished, completed game. It had some usability issues, but compared to the numerous games that were not even finished enough to be officially entered into the competition, Pandovan at the very least runs and has some gameplay in there. In terms of what didn't succeed, the "common use of firewalls and NATs makes the game's one advantage (networked multiplayer) also... it's Achilles' heel." SharkPong People who worked on game: Lars Doucet and Sean Choate
Game Concept : The idea is the basic game of Pong, but with sharks! Two players control their shark with the keyboard, and can swim left, right, and jump out of the water. To score points, the player must bounce the fish into his opponent's goal. Also, the player can time it right and eat the fish for bonus points. There is also a Baby Seal which occasionally falls into the water, which is worth two points, but will distract the player from paying proper attention to the fish. This is my game, so I'll try to remain objective. Unlike most other TAGD guys except Landon, I am not a computer science guy - I'm an architecture major. Programming and game design are my hobbies. I feel Flash was exactly what the doctor ordered for this competition, as one can make something simple, fast, and good-looking with little pain and little time. For more complex projects, Flash falls short, but it's a joy for prototyping, and for fast, little games. Sean Choate, the guy who helped me design this game, will speak on my behalf for SharkPong. Thoughts: Says Sean: "Our first goal was to make a game that was polished. This is why Shark Pong was [a perfect idea.] It had few elements, but a strong theme, so we could finish the bare mechanics early and work on ironing [out] the little details. Beyond that we wanted to do something slightly original. Obviously it's a derivative work, but our particular movement for the paddles, alternate means of scoring, and the fun factor of being a shark ... it turned out to be more than the sum of its parts." What succeeded? Sean: "I think we nailed the theme. Lars did a great job on the art and sound to pull this off. We got the controls spot-on as well. It was really a feat to get six buttons working simultaneously on a regular keyboard, but with a quick prototype and some feedback on control schemes, Lars and I were able to come up with a system that worked great." "Also, I think we got the balance pretty good. Obviously that can only be borne out through more play-testing than can realistically happen in a week, but the fish is just difficult enough to eat, we got some fair rules for serving, and the baby seal is a great distraction. All in all, we were able to accomplish the major goals of polish and theme." And shortcomings? Sean says, "I would have liked to get some better animation in the game. Realistically, that would have posed a lot of issues with timing and that was a very crucial part of the game mechanic. We wanted the player to feel like they had enough control, and that wasn't going to happen in a week if we had several frames of animation between different states of play." Perfectionism was an obstacle, too. Says Sean, "No matter what we did, we wanted it to be excellent. Too often, especially in the commercial world, we see ideas that are simply too ambitious for their time allotments. Games suffer [from] being overly ambitious, and while I respect ambitious goals greatly ... that was why it was so tough just to keep it simple. Hand-in-hand with that is design by subtraction. Any time you do that, you come up with some really great ideas that you just can't fit within the game concept and make it fun. I mean, we wanted some sort of spear-fishermen or something. But we couldn't find a way to keep that from hindering the fun of the existing game, so it was scrapped." Jacob apparently liked what he saw, because he awarded SharkPong, "Most Fun." Final Thoughts The competition was a lot of fun and the awards were great. The four big awards were F.E.A.R., Black & White 2, The First Season of Firefly on DVD, and a $75 gift card to Best Buy . All participants, winners or not, also received a “friggin' sweet” Nerf gun. I asked the competitors a few questions about the competition. Here are their responses: How would you use what you learned from this competition in future projects? Danny Dyer, Fortitude: "I learned that most of your time should be spent designing or testing and very little time should actually be spent developing. I think a strong design makes any project infinitely easier to implement and makes issues of scalability minimal... Also I think that being able to make prototypes like this quickly will help us assess whether the gameplay we want to make for larger projects is really as fun as we think. It is probably critical to designing something that is fun, innovative, and of significant quality." Brandon Green, Pandovan: "I gained some more experience in using DXUtil and DirectX, [which] will make future projects easier that use those technologies." Landon Gray, GravShot: "Early planning helps. Creating an agenda for the programming and planning [the] artistic style would have saved me time. During the week, half of my time was consumed with school, so the remaining week was devoted to the game, in which the scattered hours nearly burnt me out. I had almost no time for World of Warcraft." Sean Choate, SharkPong: "I learned that the simplicity of a feature does not always imply the ease of implementation. Taking into consideration time for development also affects what level of polish the game can achieve within a given set of features. I guess the bottom line is not only do you have to consider audience and purpose in design, timetables are equally important." What did you learn about design in general, and how do you feel about the competition as it relates to TAGD's overall purpose? Danny Dyer, Fortitude: "TAGD's turnout this year surprised me and I think we are doing really well as an organization and a lot of us are really advancing individually. The organization has helped many of us to come together and share our knowledge so that things like this are possible. And a little competition always makes projects more fun, and pushes the developers to do a little better." Landon Gray, GravShot: "The contest was fun in the end. I saw many great and creative games and was able to see what I could do with my first game. In the future though, I'd rather work with a group and plan ahead. " Lars Doucet, SharkPong: "It taught me the necessity of going out and learning things on your own. School is not going to teach you the things you necessarily want to learn in life, though it will give you an education. Education is not job training. TAGD is a great place for those of us with a common interest to come together and learn game design and programming on our own, and the one week competition is exactly the sort of thing this club needs to be doing to work towards that goal."_____________________________________________________ |
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