The IGF cometh

The IGF main competition entries are up, bigger by a third than last year (which was bigger by a third than the year before apparently). Will it be bigger and badder though? Such remains to be seen, but there definitely were some that caught my eye:

7 Nights: “”7 Nights” shows that a quality AAA-style 3D first person shooter can be deployed on the web and could be created in about 7 MB.

This is also the first videogame in the world that was created and tested while on public transportation (Seattle Sound Transit Routes 545 & 577)”. Represent!

78641: “Saluton!! GZ Storm is now proudly to present – 78641 – the classic Esperanto-language adventure game now playing first time in Language English!!!”

A Slow Year: “A Slow Year is a collection of four games, one for each season, about the expereince of observing things. Played on the Atari Video Computer System (aka Atari 2600), the game invites sedate observation and methodical action.

A Slow Year is a kind of videogame chapbook, a set of “game poems” that attempt to embrace maximum expressive constraint and representational condensation. The game will be available for PC and Mac in a custom Atari emulator, and for Atari as a limited edition cartridge and poetry set.”

Achron: “Achron is the first “meta-time strategy” game. It is a real-time strategy game where all players can simultaneously travel through time, change the past, preview the future, and send their forces through time to when they are needed.”

ARGH: Augmented Reality Ghost Hunter: “ARGH is an augmented reality game that lets you use your Ghost Goggles to discover ghosts in your actual environment.

Players collect different ghosts located in physical locations all over the world. Explore the REAL WORLD and experiment with the time of day and time of year to discover the phantoms that share our space.”

Good lord I’m not even out of the a’s.

edit: Too bad, no parser IF this year. Looks like a few games you could call IF though.

pong #2

PyWeek just wrapped up and with it my second game, open. There are some amazing looking entries there. Between this and Ludum Dare I’m probably set until 2010.

People say that when you start making games you should make games with the scope of Pong or perhaps Tetris. I feel that’s where I’m at right now with these last two (well, probably not to Tetris yet). I’m happy though not to have made an actual Pong or Tetris (OK, I have made Pong, but it was basically a type-in). I feel like I’ve learned a lot making abandon and open, that I wouldn’t really have learned making a clone of some existing game. So, make your Pong and your Tetris, just understand what that means for you.

who dares, plays

Last weekend I participated in Ludum Dare #14. Forty-eight hours later my first game was born. While it was a great time I didn’t really get everything into the game that I wanted to, it was more of a prototype of the concept. I had worked about 16 hours on the game altogether but also got a normal night’s sleep on Saturday, which probably was a good thing.

Too busy to both start playing the other (121!) entries and do a post-compo release, I chose to start playing games, and worked only about an hour on the game during the week. However last night after another eight hours or so I got things to a point where I was ready, and this morning I managed to bundle some executables.

So here it is. I can’t say I’ve cut the umbilical cord or washed off the amniotic fluids. There aren’t really any instructions. I had an idea and I hope I expressed it in the game. The theme of LD #14, by the way, was Advancing Wall of Doom.

the post-compo release

recommended (Windows .exe in tar.gz, about 4MB)

the post-compo release (Windows .exe in .zip, about 9MB)

the post-compo release (.zip, you will need Python and pyglet installed, about 1 MB)

the original compo release (.zip, you will need Python and pyglet installed, about 1MB)

what am I getting myself into

sheer folly