Heart of the OHR Contest 2020

Make games! Discuss those games here.

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The Wobbler
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Post by The Wobbler »

I've uploaded a new version of the Walthros: Renewal demo that fixes one really nasty (but rare) bug that could force players to have to close out of the game. I've kept this file separate from the Heart of the OHR entry version, in case anyone wants a "pure" version of what was built for the contest. The files are marked accordingly, use 2.0 if you want that version, 2.1 for the bug fixed one. You're very unlikely to trigger these bugs!
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RMZ
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Post by RMZ »

I'm planning on downloading whatever version of the games are online this Saturday and will try to stream 2-3 of them a night on Twitch. I think I'll be limiting myself to 30 minutes each so that I can actually get through all 15 entries. To make it more fun for myself and possibly others who might want to watch, I'll likely do a randomizer to pick which game to play until I've gotten through them all.

https://www.twitch.tv/redtrianglegames

Looking forward to playing everything, especially the stuff I've not tested for other people.
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kylekrack
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Post by kylekrack »

Katja's Abyss: Tactics is no longer available for download on the Slime Salad games page. If you haven't gotten it yet and would like a copy for hotohr voting, PM me and I can send you a download key.
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Nathan Karr
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Post by Nathan Karr »

The Wobbler wrote:Nathan - I'll send you a Kaiju
Pepsi Ranger wrote: Nathan, also make sure you don't already have it. I know you were on the list to receive a free copy for placing 7th in last season's contest. I can't remember if I'd finished supplying the top winners with the game, but I thought I'd completed fulfilling that prize back in May of 2019. Let one of us know if you don't have it. You should have it.
Oh, sorry if I wasn't clear enough, I have the full version: I've just not played it much. I completed the demo, got the full game, and only played about 15 minutes of the full game. I honestly can't remember the last full-length RPG I completed, actually, no matter how much I enjoyed it at the start.

I haven't fully completed any version of Vikings of Midgard since the characters were given names and personalities yet, and I think my file is still sitting at like 40% completion on Hati's Bizarre Adventure. Despite calling it my favorite OHR game I've never finished Spellshard either (I'm still on the desert chapter, like I was four years ago). For all I know I might actually never finish playing these games.
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RMZ
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Post by RMZ »

For what it's worth, at 8:30 EST I'm going to start streaming the games on my twitch channel. I have a random spinner wheel programmed to make the choices spontaneous and hopefully entertaining. I won't be playing Nathan's TutOHRial game on stream, but all the others are loaded in. This should be fun if anybody wants to hang out in the stream. We can have drinks and toast a good contest together.
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Post by Fenrir-Lunaris »

It has just now occurred to me that I released TWO games in 2020 - Vikings of Midgard, and Puppy Adventure. I'm not actually sure if the latter counts though?
Last edited by Fenrir-Lunaris on Sun Jan 24, 2021 3:02 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Post by RMZ »

We had a lot of people in the stream tonight. Because these games aren't my own intellectual property I don't feel comfortable uploading the video to youtube.

So for those who are interested, here's the video, I think it lasts about a week before Twitch phases it out.

https://www.twitch.tv/videos/885759197

I do hold this contest to a very high standard and I do go over the scores I've been logging so far, and even having open discussion about them with the people in the chat. I think we all had a great time in the stream discussing each game and the highs and lows of each. If you do choose to watch, I created a scale for myself to keep myself honest with scores. Presentation (includes music and art), Innovation (what does it do to use modern OHR effects), Fun (was it enjoyable?). All games get a default value of 1 and I give up to 3 in each of those categories.

If you want to watch your specific game and see the notes myself and those in the stream had, the order in the stream is:
  • AAA
    Katja's Abyss
    Walthros Renewal
    Axe Cop
    Tim-Tim 2
    Vikings (will pick up and continue with that next Saturday).
Thanks for everybody who stuck around for the full stream!
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kylekrack
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Post by kylekrack »

Thanks for recording it! I wasn't able to make it to the stream, so I'm glad I get to at least see it.
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Post by Spoonweaver »

Your twitch play through of Tim-Tim was hilarious
take away notes : I'm a lazy developer and my art is terrible in every way.

But yea, you came across a lot of the little things I need to work on.
I guess I should work on the beginning of the game more, since that's what people are currently playing.
Not a lot of reason to balance the middle and end of the game when no one gets there.
Your comments on the text boxes makes sense, and I had an idea while watching the stream for them.

The large mushrooms, you're not the first person to mention that they don't look right. they're meant to look like a little chip in the mushroom, which is a pretty common way to portray mushrooms. But if multiple people aren't reading it that way, maybe I should rethink that. thanks
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Post by Feenicks »

Games where 1) you throw rocks, and 2) are made by OHR people who've stuck around for a while

AAA:
This is the most Nathan Karr of Nathan Karr's games I've played. If he wants to take that as a compliment, sure.
Let's count the ways it's a Nathan Karr game:

1. If you had stopped by the half hour mark, you'd have spent 95% of the time on single-screen maps.
2. Textboxes are 90% generic fantasy and meta jokes about such by volume, and they're all of the sort you glaze over.
3. Undead you can only kill with holy attacks are randomly interspersed with regular enemies.
4. Half of the main party has their default skill be something that isn't an attack [stealing for the thief, smiting undead for the cleric; it's not an attack half the time, which makes it useless.]
5. It's a grindfest.
6. It's full of design decisions that make the game feel way too dense for what it is. What purpose does being able to throw some of the weapons give me? Why is there a spell that does nothing? What does the treasure being random give me, other than the feeling that walking all the way to the top of one of the final dungeon's floor was a waste of time?
7. It uses Frnrrf's graphic set.
8. There are some parts that are just incredibly lazy, or at the very least heavily unpolished. Formations in the final dungeon arbitrarily use either the forest background the battles on the overworld use, or a very hastily-drawn brick wall background.

The thing that ultimately kills this game, though, will probably come after that half hour mark. You grind up to the point where you feel you can beat up the main antagonist, only to find out after beating him what the screenwise scrolling script was being used for. All but two of the dungeon floors are aggressively large; largely empty, sure, but that might make it worse. You're inevitably going to either run out of resources trying to get through it, or run into too many enemies that you have to try running from because they're not worth your time to defeat otherwise.

What do I mean by that? Two examples:
1: There's various shade enemies you can come up against. Each of them has the potential to hit the entire party pretty hard, but more critically are undead and so can't be killed by your actually useful party members. Your cleric can do reasonable damage to them with his skills, but those go off Level MP and as such can't be restored while in the dungeon.
By the way, his free smiting skill is virtually worthless against them.

2: Some furry rat warriors do a defensive attack right away. They then become nigh-impossible to hit.

I CTRL-F1'd out of that final dungeon twice. The first time I healed up, stocked up again, and debug keyed my way back to where I was. The second time I got to a save point and gave up.

I gave it an hour and a half and that's an hour more than it deserves.

2/10


Tim-Tim:
This is certainly a game that's been in on and off production since I've joined this site, if not before. The signs of a protracted development are everywhere. Music is missing in a bunch of places. A bunch of NPCs can't be interacted with. The entire final area's clearly not done. I'll try not to knock this down for what's evidently not finished, and will instead try to judge what's here.

As a platformer, it's fine. It's perfectly playable. As a metroidvania, it's a bit lacking, though you do get items and powerups to play with at least. Regardless of which genre you choose to put it in, it's just extraordinarily plain, and I have to judge it harshly for that.

I was going to compare it to something different earlier, but I feel a better comparison to Tim-Tim is Knytt Stories. Both have diminutive protagonists doing very traditional hero tasks [Tim-Tim has a wife to save; Juni's off to save the world in The Machine, the example game Knytt Stories comes with]; both get abilities that help them get to new places; both have enemies with fairly simple AIs. They may be two completely different approaches to the Metroidvania outside these points, but bear with me.

Count how many different areas are visited in the first 10 minutes of this playthrough. 5! And each has distinctive sub-areas that help you orient yourself within them! Compare this to Tim-Tim's repeating biomes of mushrooms and rocky ares, the first few of which could probably be swapped around and nobody would really notice. Sure, there's eventually a tall room in the middle, a forest area, and a towns and ruins, but those all come after the first boss, all but one use the same music track, and by then you've lost your chance to make a good first impression. The dungeons have their own music, gimmicks, and looks, at least, but even getting to one 10-15 minutes in feels like too long before a change, especially when the area the first one's in has no background music.

Thinking about it, though, that good first impression may have been hurt by the actual intro of the game: that is, Tim-Tim being asked to pick up rocks by his wife, who then gets captured by some sort of evil thing. These rocks are far from good weapons; they have an arc [fine], immediately vanish upon hitting any wall or ceiling, and don't even have the courtesy to do as much damage as the far easier-to-use electric spell you also start with.

I played this in two chunks. I got through the spider dungeon on the first play, and then through the other three and through as much of the final dungeon as I could be bothered to on the other. Seeing newer stuff helped my mood on the game a bit, sure, and at least one of the later bosses was genuinely neat and impressive. Unfortunately one of the other bosses was a guy floating around over a pit of spikes, but you take what you can.

Back to the Knytt Stories comparison. One of the things that bugs me a lot about this is how there's no real backgrounds, in addition to the overworld areas being really scattershot in design. Knytt has an easier time due to being a game of singular screens, sure, but its backgrounds do wonders to differentiate areas. Some of the latter comes down to Tim-Tim not really being that mobile a character [again, something Juni and virtually every other metroidvania character has is increasingly good mobility], but any sort of gradual shift in the background would be nice, and a sign I'm actually going somewhere.

2, maybe 3 bugs:

1. If you hold up while buying things, you can easily pass by the 25 item inventory limit with a single item. Why's that there anyway?
2. I got the cyclone spell, and it didn't appear in my inventory. Paging around let me access every single spell, despite not having acquired them yet.
3. The treasure chest in the underground area with the worms gives you infinite money. Not sure this is a bug or not since it's a pain to get to and that seems like a reasonable just-finish-the-game-now sort of reward.

Last thought: I keep on instinctively trying to type the Tims in Tim-Tim as Time. It's obviously impossible to show here, but that's as good a direction to go in as any if you ever decide to do a Tim-Tim 3.

5/10



Vikings:

It's Vikings, another game that's been in on-and-off development since before I signed up here. It's been in two HOTOHRs before, which gives it seniority beyond anything else here, but more critically gives me prior versions to judge it against. And against those older versions...

Let me give two examples of these changes.

1: In prior versions, the intro shows Cthulu being menacing and references the secondary antagonists, then has Odin briefly tells Freki about what's going on, finally tasking her with finding a hero. In the new version, you have some bard beat around the bush for a while, then have Cthulu pop in and just tell you what's going on. It tells you *less*, takes more time doing so, and to top it off immediately makes me feel less involved in the game as a whole, as it's telling me it can't be serious for 5 minutes.

2: Surt's temple got a few changes. It feels like every single tile got glowing lava cracks drawn over it, the opening pool of shallow water got converted into a lava one, and, most importantly, the pillars leading into the temple got converted into dead trees. I liked those pillars! In a game where the maps don't necessarily lead into one another perfectly, that was a good transitional segment, a sign that after traveling through 2 largish areas you're at a dungeon proper. Now you don't have that, and now the dungeon's visually way too busy as well. Meanwhile the dungeon walls still don't have unique graphics for their edges and the whole pit gimmick is still bizarre.

There's a bunch of other changes from the original. A bunch of terms enemy names got changed around. There's a hint menu now, which is neat even if it spoils what the elements animus are. The new battle backgrounds are fine, but the conversion to 256-color, 320x200 images made them rather blurry. Red Shift was nerfed to the point of being kinda pointless. Bena's remastered music is good and all, but there's some cases where I have to question some aspects of it [the battle theme kinda loses the original riff for a while].

I know that you were attempting to lighten things up a bit with this, but a lot of it is just... questionable? Cthulu popping in to summon the elements animus sucks out a lot of tension, and makes one particular detail of the setting immediately less ambiguous in a bad way. I know it's not from this release, but the chuck norris jokes were tired back in the Alectormancy release and now they're downright fossils. Same goes for a lot of enemy attacks coming along with some sort of quip; the mushroom's 'leaf me alone' wasn't great back in 2012 and it certainly isn't great now.
You're also pointing out the jokes, starting from the first joke older versions had. Don't do that!

I don't know. Am I being old and crotchety about the changes? Maybe. The underlying RPG meat of it all still seems fine, but I can't give full marks to a rerelease of a game that I played to completion nearly a decade ago and whose changes I don't like.

7/10
Attachments
I'm counting this as throwing stones.
I'm counting this as throwing stones.
viking0010.png (92.78 KiB) Viewed 2754 times
This guy's neat. Good job on having a boss-feeling boss in this.
This guy's neat. Good job on having a boss-feeling boss in this.
Tim-Tim2demo0003.png (6.66 KiB) Viewed 2755 times
Nathan, I think you have an extremely different view of how much time people want to put into your games if you think this is reasonable [also I sold off the kite shield, so I can't get this anyway!]
Nathan, I think you have an extremely different view of how much time people want to put into your games if you think this is reasonable [also I sold off the kite shield, so I can't get this anyway!]
aaa0003.png (5.13 KiB) Viewed 2755 times
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The Wobbler
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Post by The Wobbler »

I'm keeping my scores to email but I've played every Heart game for the first year ever and I think that overall this is the strongest batch we've had. My favorites were the unconventional games but there's a lot of great stuff of all kinds, and then a handful I didn't understand at all.

My top three picks are Katja, Xoo, and Forget Me Not.
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RMZ
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Post by RMZ »

I'm glad nobody is taking my opinions offensively, as that was not the way I intended. I think, all of the games I played last night had outstanding merits and prove why this contest brings out the best in our community. I've never played an OHR game more innovative with the engine's features than Katja. I just suck at it, but it's easy to get lost in the beauty of it's presentation. I'd be happy to have larger conversations with people if they would like on their games.
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Post by Hedera »

Since there're no dev threads for several of the contest games, I guess this is the place to ask questions and/or report bugs.


AAA-

In the fight against the three spirits, all the characters save for the warrior were killed, and so was one of the spirits. The remaining two just spammed insanity illusion, which did nothing, and the warrior was completely unable to hit them, softlocking the game. You gotta make it so that things like this can't happen...


Christmas Stars-

There's a minor bug in the screen where you meet Pollux, as you can walk off the trail into the starry void just left of where he is. It's only a couple tiles into the starscape, though.


Gay Savage-

After getting the keycard for Suck Mart HQ, the door in the employees-only area is still locked. That's where it's supposed to be used, right?


Katja's Abyss-

After completing Sector 8, if I try to play the campaign mode again, it locks up on a black screen. Is this intended, and should I just start a new campaign?

Additionally, does Sector 4 have a win condition? For that matter, does Level 4 in infinite mode on normal difficulty have one, either?
Last edited by Hedera on Mon Jan 25, 2021 10:52 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Post by Eonhetwo »

@Hedera Helix

MILD SPOILERS BELOW

The Suck Mart HQ key, obtained from Fren in the antenna control room, opens the door to Suck Mart HQ, which is deeper inside the Suck Mart than just that initial area where Gary is.
The Key to the Locked door in the room with Gary in it, is in the sewers. If you can't find the sewers, or have been there but can't find the keycard, hmu in PM plz.
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kylekrack
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Post by kylekrack »

After completing Sector 8, if I try to play the campaign mode again, it locks up on a black screen. Is this intended, and should I just start a new campaign?
Uh oh. At least it lets you get to the end of the campaign first. I'll check that out. No idea why it'd be happening. Unless... it saves the game during the credits...

Edit: Yep, that's definitely a black screen! Looks like it did, in fact, save during the credits and then load you back to an empty map. My bad. Unfortunately I don't think your save file will continue to work if I fix the game. If you want to keep your data, compress the folder called "savedata.saves" in the same directory where the game is and send me the compressed file in a PM. I will find a way to get it functional.
Last edited by kylekrack on Mon Jan 25, 2021 9:16 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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