Christmas Wish Contest (We'll make your game for you)

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Spoonweaver
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Post by Spoonweaver »

TMC wrote:On second thoughts, I won't count one sentence descriptions as entries. Spoonweaver's is very short, but "exactly like this existing game but with these changes" is actually pretty specific. However I'd never heard of Neko Atsume, and can't install it on my phone, so that's not so good.
I was afraid of this. You'd really have to have played the other game to understand the idea.


I do have another idea. I call it 9d. It's based off Brian Greene's 9th dimensional theories.

The game starts as all black. Then, the hero appears in the middle of the screen. After a few seconds, a build up of energy begins above the hero. As it does, white tiles appear to the right and left, forming a line across the screen. Controls are shown, and the player is able to move left and right. The message 1D appears on the bottom of the screen. The energy build up shoots down and tries to kill the player. At this point, the game plays as the old game, avalanche. energy builds up above the player and they must avoid the shoots. After a minute or two, energy builds up to the right. As it does, white tiles form above and below the player, forming a square. The message 2D appears on the bottom of the screen, and controls allow for up and down motion. Now energy shots are fired from all for sides and have to be avoided.
After a few minutes of this. The whole side fills with energy. As it does, a 3d grid appears, with the message 3d. Controls allow for 3d dimensional movement and energy is coming from all sides. (The controls would be past just the arrow keys, so the space bar would control Z axis movement. Holding it down goes away and not holding it causes the hero to come towards the player.) Then the whole top fills with energy and a clock appears at the bottom right of the screen. Pressing a or d now moves you through time, to were the energy has already past or has yet to appear. This would basically be a series of 5 maps that you could jump to with the a or d buttons. With each map being a different point in the series of the energy blasts. After a few minutes, only full screen energy blasts would be occuring, making only time jumps needed to avoid the blasts. Minutes later, the screen would change to show the hero as now very small, and in one of 5 small boxes each representing one of the 5 layers in time. Soon, starting from the right, each of the 5 boxes would fill with energy, and lines of boxes would appear above and below the line of boxes. W and s would allow you to skip to different lines. Then they would all fill and boxes would appear behind the current ones. enter would switch between them.
Then, it would happen again, allowing the player to switch to up to 5 new screens of boxes. And then up and down from there. and then back and forward from there.

The object would to last as long as possible. All 9 Different play modes could be made available to have different score attack modes after the main game is completed up to all 9 levels.
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kylekrack
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Post by kylekrack »

Castle Defense Game

Ok, so I've drawn out some shoddy HUD for what this game might look like, and I will use it to explain each facet of the game. After I explain each portion of it, I will explain the overall game structure, how battles fit in, and what happens outside of battle.

Game View (Center Left)

This is where the action is. If the player is controlling a unit, they will be centered in this box. If the player is in "Camera Mode," they will control the view in this box. The game view is essentially a zoomed in portion of the map.

Mode (Bottom Left)

This mode toggles between the control style of the game view. In unit mode, the camera focuses on the selected unit, and the player controls their movement with the arrow keys. In camera mode, the player controls the camera with the arrow keys, in order to get a view of the castle and see what is happening without interrupting unit actions.

Map (Top Right)

The map shows the whole view of the castle. There are 5 sections of the map: North, East, South, West, and the Gate. Units can be placed in these 5 areas, and will defend whatever spot they are placed in. Canons and other defenses can be placed along the walls for units to man, and enemies will charge different sides of the castle at different times. For this reason, the player must distribute soldiers proportionally as to not give the castle any weak spots. On the map, the player can check where units are, where enemies are approaching, and what damage has been done where.

Units (Far Left)

Here the player can see the active units. In addition to numbers, there are icons showing what type of unit that number is. There are 3 types of units: Swordsmen, Archers, and Builders. Swordsmen fight intruders and man certain equipment and machinery. Archers fire at enemies outside castle walls and man certain equipment and machinery. Builders assemble defenses and repair machinery and defenses.

Each unit has melee combat stats, but they are different. Swordsmen have the highest offense and defense against melee enemies. Archers have slightly lower melee combat skills. Builders have about half the combat stats of swordsmen. I won't make any number claims for balancing reasons, but let's say swordsmen have an attack of 8, archers 6, and builders 3.

In "Unit Mode," buttons Q and W switch the selected area, North, East, South, West, or Gate. Each area can have up to 10 units, recommended 4 swords, 4 archers, and 2 builders. Each area has a separate list of units. Units can be cycled through with the A and S buttons (or buttons you see fit) or can be selected by number with the number keys, 1-0.

Z, X, C, and Esc (Bottom Right)

These buttons each bring up a menu (preferably with a picture to make it fancy) corresponding to the word next to them. The menus should pause the game, and allow the player to manage their resources and production.

The baker produces food for the units to keep them healthy. He also can produce hot oil for traps on the walls. The blacksmith can make weapons and machines for the defending units. In battle, he must make products one at a time. However, more smiths can be hired to increase the simultaneous production. The carpenter makes barricades, catapults, and ballistas. Each of the shops can be upgraded to produce higher level items (swords, bows, barricades, catapults, etc.)

In battle, all machinery and barricades must be assembled by builders. Only archers can man ballistas. Only swordsmen and builders can man canons. Anyone can man catapults.

Escape brings up the main castle menu. Units can be sorted here, moved between areas, and equipped with different equipment. This menu also has information on the player's status versus warring kingdoms and has options to save, load, and quit.

=================================

Battle Vs. Idle

Once a battle is finished, the player enters a menu where they have full control of the castle without time restraints. The player receives money for winning the battle and metal, wood, and wheat from the town. Money can be spent on units, machinery, equipment, and defenses. Money is obtained by winning a battle, defeating an enemy unit, trading with other kingdoms, or asking for donations from other kingdoms. In idle mode, the player can manage their units, repair the castle, buy and place defenses and barricades, speak with other kingdoms, and upgrade the mines, farms, and foresters in town. When upgraded, the town gives more resources to the castle at the end of each battle.

In a battle, the baker, blacksmith, and carpenter have to spend time creating the desired equipment. In addition, the defenses must be assembled by available builders, which takes a brief amount of time. When units take too much damage, they become wounded. When wounded in battle, they must spend time in the infirmary. This may last an entire battle. In battle, the player can use food produced by the baker on units to heal them. The player cannot speak with other kingdoms while in a battle. Once a battle is won, the player can choose to steal from the remaining troops for bonus gold, or can spare them for a political advantage. A battle is lost if all units are lost. If the front gate is broken, all productions stop.

Idle mode is meant to prepare for battle. Battle mode is to defend and maintain defenses and is not intended for building new defenses.

Politics!

There are other warring kingdoms who are all defending just as you are. Some of them despise you, some of them support you, most of them just want your money. Think Sid Meier's Civilization for this part. I don't know how many kingdoms would be a good number. I say 10. Perhaps the player can choose how many kingdoms there are as a difficulty meter. In addition to the kingdoms, there is a Merchants' Guild. They are neutral and will trade with you regardless of your affiliation. They do not fight.

Relationships can be made better by giving gifts (money or equipment), trading, or sparing the enemy after a victory. Relationships can be slandered by telling other kingdoms to piss off, or by pillaging remaining troops after a victory. The status of a relationship is represented by a number 0-100. 100-91 is excellent, 90-81 is great, 80-71 is good, 70-61 is neutral, 60-51 is bad, 50-21 is terrible, and 20-0 is absolute hatred. The current relationship with a kingdom affects the influence of actions. Sparing an enemy that hates you will add 0 to the relationship. Giving gifts to kingdoms that already like you will increase the relations number.

The player may want to produce extra swords, bows, etc. while in battle to give or trade with other kingdoms.

Winning the Game

This is the one thing I'm kind of stuck on. The way I see it, there are 3 ways to have the game end. There could be a set amount of levels, and after the player wins each level, they ultimately win. The player could win when all kingdoms are either aligned with their kingdom or have surrendered. The player could win after earning a certain amount of gold. I'd say the second one, but it may take too much time to do, so I'll let that be your call.

======================================

I hope this covers everything. Again, I'm always open for clarification, just tell me which parts were vague or not complete enough and I'll work on it. I will post a rundown for the equipment and machinery upgrades later, but I've spent like 2 hours on this already.


P.S. I don't mean to insult anyone's intelligence with the whole "top left top right" stuff describing the HUD, my stuff just isn't very organized and I didn't want to risk confusion.
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TMC
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Post by TMC »

Re: 9D:
Heh, I think you've managed to outdo bullet-hell games to reach the title of 'most overwhelming arcade game'. But I only counted 7 dimensions? You said that the time dimension gets replaced with a spatial dimensional. I think that of the dimensions, the depth dimension going into the screen is actually really difficult for a player to see, so I'm sceptical about that. It's possible to have a lot of dimensions without making it hard to see them. For example, see 2048 in 5D (maybe start with 4D, which is far easier). I've also see 4D Rubik cube games. But the other part of this, the zooming out, can be neat, if it's paired with being able to largely ignore the lower levels. Was that the idea - that as the number of different directions in which you dodge increases, it gets sort of easier to dodge (OK, I don't really believe that).

Re: Castle Defense:
Nice mockup! It's cool to see that level of effort.
You didn't say what the colours of the units on the left indicate, HP? (And I assume the icons are missing because it's just a mockup).
I still feel confused about it though. Especially combat and damage to the castle. So the units and enemies are roaming around and start slashing at each other when they bump into each other until one is dead? Are defenders stationary? Do they take time to walk from one place to another? Do the attackers have ladders or other means of getting on the walls?
You didn't really explain the blacksmith. What are weapons for, aside from trade? Max number of units of each type? How do you change your number of units? What are the "machines" blacksmiths make? Does it cost anything to build stuff? Gold was only mentioned in passing.
I feel like the politics side of the proposal isn't too convincing, it seems like the player doesn't have much in the way of interesting decisions or possible actions. Although I haven't really played Civilisation, I actually found the political side of a lot of similar (commercial) games pretty disappointing, but maybe that's just me. It usually seems to come down to a mix of bad AI decisions and luck.
Last edited by TMC on Sun Dec 06, 2015 11:40 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Pepsi Ranger
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Post by Pepsi Ranger »

This was my idea for the Christmas contest that I have no time to design and compete for this year, and the second half of the idea I had for a game I worked on with Royal back in 2002. If you guys don't do this, I probably will eventually, but if you're interested in it, I'd be interested in seeing your take on it:

Working Titles:

War of the Neighborhood Christmas Decorations
The Yard Wars of Christmas
Holiday Spirit
Dad's Favorite Game
Hot December
Lights, Santas, Action!
The Great Holiday Competition

Concept and Premise:

-Every year, the Sandlewood Oaks community in Anytown, USA, has a Christmas competition where each participant must decorate his front yard, his roof, his porch, and his living room with the best Christmas scene in the neighborhood, and the winner is given a cash bonus for his house or a stipend toward the next year's competition.

-Robert Anderson (Default Name, can be changed) has just moved in, and he wants to impress his neighbors as soon as he can, so he joins the neighborhood Christmas decoration competition in an effort to gain attention and notoriety. But Garrison Hatte already has the market on the competition--he's won the last ten years in a row--and he's not about to let some new upstart take his throne, not without a fight. If Anderson is going to make a name for himself, then he has to outshine in the decoration department and prove to the rest of the neighborhood that Hatte is not the Christmas king around here.

Game:

Starting-

You start off by naming your hero (first and last name) and your neighborhood. You can also choose a region like temperate, desert, or snow.

Yard Selection-

Then you pick a house to move into. Picking a house comes with one of three options.

Option #1

There are eight houses to choose from, each with a different yard design. You can choose a yard with no trees (or cacti), some, or many. Some yards may have rocks or landscaping already installed. Some houses are single-story, some are double-story. Some have porches, some just have steps going up from the sidewalk to the door.

Option #2

Just like option #1, but more thematic. In other words, all the houses and yards in the neighborhood have a similar design, so the competition is less weighted on base issues and more on actual decoration.

Option #3

All empty lots have a blank slate. You choose which house you want built there (all premade) and you design the landscape.

Note:

All lots share neighborhood space with other competing residents, including Garrison Hatte, so you can only move into the houses that are vacant at the start of the game. The vacant houses and the houses where certain residents live can all be generated at random.

Difficulty:

-Easy: Start off with a $1500 cap and passive opponents; win twice to win the crown
-Normal: Start off with a $1000 cap and competitive opponents; win three times to win the crown
-Hard: Start off with a $1000 cap and aggressive opponents; win four times to win the crown
-Custom: Pick your cap (in denominations of $500 from $500 to $2500), your opponent state, and number of wins to get the crown (up to five)

Cap:

All competitors are allowed to spend up to the cap on their decorations to be eligible for the competition. Any yard that displays over the cap will be disqualified, so it's important to pay attention to how much is getting spent each year. Yard decorations include the porch, the roof, and whatever can be seen through the living room window, so it's important to be aware of all placements and how much they cost.

Competitors:

Passive opponents just work on their yards at a leisurely pace (from 6-8pm). You won't see or hear from them. You could certainly check on them between turns if you want, but you could go the entire competition without interacting with them, and just find out how you all compare at the end of the competition.

Competitive opponents may spend an additional hour on their yards each night (from 6-9pm). They will sometimes show up at your door (at 9:00) to check up on you and give some positive or negative feedback (whether it's true or a psych move depends on their character). Whether they show up at all will also depend on their personalities.

Aggressive opponents may spend two additional hours on their yards each night (from 6-10pm). They will show up at your door at 10:00 to give feedback or taunt you. They may show up again at midnight to sabotage your yard somehow.

Crown:

This is the goal of the game. Depending on which difficulty you're playing, you can win a crown for every second, third, or fourth competition you win. The more crowns (and competitions) you earn, the better your end-game rating. Also, earning straight competitions will win you additional accolades and crown styles.

Normal Crown: Winning the required number of competitions in any order
Bronze Crown: Winning the required number of competitions in a row
Silver Crown: Winning the required number of competitions twice in a row (or earning two bronze crowns in a row)
Gold Crown: Winning the required number of competitions three times in a row (or three bronze crowns in a row)
Platinum Crown: Winning all of the competitions

Duration:

Can be set between 10 - 20 years

Careers:

Your career will determine your annual income and your decorative and social skills. As a rule, creative jobs pay worse, but give you decorative bonus points, while analytical or professional jobs will pay better but negatively affect your decorative skills, with some exceptions. Social skills are job dependent, and are used to determine how well you get along with your neighbors and your family.

The player can select his profession, or let the computer choose randomly for him.

Note: Salaries are determined at random, but should not deviate more than $5000 from the suggested mid-range. Field experts can earn outside of that range by at least double the base (example: a regular artist will earn between $10,000 and $20,000 a year, but an expert can earn a minimum of $30,000). Unless a random event determines otherwise, all careers should implement a 4% salary increase every year.

Architect ($65,000 base, decorative skill bonus +6, social bonus -3)
Artist ($15,000 base, decorative skill bonus +10, social bonus +10)
Astronaut ($150,000 base, decorative skill bonus - 7, social bonus -5)
Builder ($20,000 base, decorative skill bonus +8, social bonus +5)
Cashier ($18,000 base, decorative skill bonus +3, social bonus +10)
Computer Engineer ($80,000 base, decorative skill bonus +5, social bonus -10)
Clerk ($35,000 base, decorative skill bonus +4, social bonus +8)
Electrician ($45,000 base, decorative skill bonus +10, social bonus +4)
Engineer (Tech) ($120,000 base, decorative skill bonus +2, social bonus -8)
Gardener ($25,000 base, decorative skill bonus +9, social bonus -6)

(You get the idea. I'll list all of the particulars in a separate post.)

Note: Higher salaries can potentially lead to higher expenses, including family expenses.

Obstacles:

You just bought your home (in the first year, at least), so you still have a mortgage to pay. Depending on how your job goes throughout the year, you will either have enough to pay your mortgage, keep up with your house and family needs, and have something left over for the Christmas competition, or you won't. The less you have for Christmas, the less you'll have to upgrade your yard. Don't forget, you still have to buy presents for the family.

Your yard is your sanctuary, but it isn't empty, and it isn't meant for Christmas eleven months out of the year. The state of your yard may effect your mood going into the holidays. More stuff, like swings, patio tables, and pools will make you happier throughout the year, but it will also limit your space for decorating. Likewise, more space for decorating may lead you to become a miserable human being the rest of the year. Balance is necessary here. You may need to spend the first day or two of the competition moving some things out of the yard if necessary.

Your neighbors are just as eager to win the competition as you are, and your relationship with them may determine the mood they put you in throughout the rest of the year, especially as the competition nears. The friendlier you are with them the rest of the year, the less likely they'll bother you during the competition. If the rivalry is already heated during the year, then it'll get crazy during the competition.

Between Competitions:

The game will fast-forward through time the other eleven months of the year, so you won't have too much control over this period. Certain events may pop up during the fast-forward cycle that encourage you to "try for a promotion" or "help Bob with his taxes" or something that can affect your paycheck each month. How you choose will determine how much you have available for Christmas.

Christmas:

The amount you can use for Christmas must be divvied between decorations and gifts. So, if you have $2100 of your salary set aside for Christmas, and you spend $1476 out of a $1500 cap on decorations, and you have 12 family members (wife, three kids, nieces, nephews, etc.), that means you are spending $624 on gifts for 12 family members, which averages out to a total of $52 for each member (with certain percentage weights put into consideration on certain members--example: wife may get 10% over average, and three kids may get 15% over average each, so you might spend $57 on the wife, $59 on each kid, and so on, leaving the people without a percentage weight to receive gifts valued at whatever price is leftover from the remaining budget, in this case $49). The amount of money you spend on each family member for Christmas will affect their relationship with you throughout the rest of the year (thus affecting your happiness). Each member has a threshold of gratefulness, which means spending any value below the threshold will increase the negativity they display the rest of the year. The farther below the threshold, the worse they'll make you feel. The higher you go over the threshold, the happier they'll make you. Warning: Making the wife too happy may result in a new family member the following year.

Note: Thresholds can be negative to the average. Your grandmother, for example, may not expect much from you, so she might have a gift threshold of -20%.

Increasing the Cap:

If you have a surplus of $3000 for the year and you want to spend $2000 on decorations instead of $1500, you'll have to win a competition. The reward for winning is that you can increase your cap $250 x how many times you've won in a ten-year period.

Events:

You begin the game with a specific salary.

The types of events that can affect your end-of-the-year surplus include:

Addition to Family (children, nieces, nephews, in-laws, etc.)
Family Emergency (medical, psychological, minor, life-changing)
Addition to House (new rooms - expensive - or new furniture - cheap)
House Repairs (pipes, electric, appliances, etc.)
Car Repairs
New Car
Promotion (game should track employment level so that promotions don't have weird jumps)
Vacation (most likely triggered in the summer months -- northern hemisphere, TMC)
Scandal (more likely triggered with high profile jobs and low social opinion)
Robbery (can severely impact happiness and moderately impact value)
Financial Bonus (good deeds at work, gambles that pay off, etc.)
Weather (hurricanes in temperate regions, blizzards in snowy regions, and earthquakes in desert regions)
Subtractions to Family (severely affects happiness - children move out, old relatives die, wife walks out if relationship is poor)
Addiction (low happiness can lead to stress and stress can lead to costly dependencies, including alcohol or anxiety medicines)
Fame (a special invention or performance may lead you to fame and subsequent wealth and happiness - will also cause all neighbors to become hateful and instantly aggressive against you)

I can add to this list as I think of new event types. The amount these events affect should be similar to what they would cost in real life.

I'll describe goals, gameplay, and other specifics in a second thread later tonight, or sometime tomorrow. I have to get to other things now.

Let me know if you're interested in this idea enough so far for me to even keep talking about it.

Remember that the core game will focus on a Christmas decorating competition among neighbors and figuring out how to become the winner. I'll explain how this is done in my next post (and clarify any questions about the stuff I've already talked about).
Last edited by Pepsi Ranger on Sun Dec 06, 2015 11:32 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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TMC
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Post by TMC »

Five days is neither a multiple of 48 hours nor one week, unlike the length of all good OHR contests.
Therefore, the deadline is now seven days from the original post. (At least I'm too busy to do anything in the next two days anyway.)
Remember that the core game will focus on a Christmas decorating competition among neighbors
Wow. Kind of hard to believe it after you went into so much detail on the Christmas shopping! You certainly could make a Christmas game about gift-giving and social strife and expectations. I think it would work best if taken completely non-seriously, which I think was your intention when describing that part.

My reaction is definitively that this is really ambitious, and is two to three games smashed together, and you haven't even described the main game yet. So if we selected it we'd likely cut it down, but nevermind, then we have the choice about which parts to cut, which gives us more options, which is like making multiple submissions! (So maybe not totally contrary to asking for detail?) Anyway, it's definitely nice to have a Christmas game proposal.

What was the game you worked together with Royal on?
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Pepsi Ranger
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Post by Pepsi Ranger »

It's actually not as ambitious as it seems (I don't think). Most of what I've described is justification about how to plan for your holiday, or more realistically, how your annual budget affects your end-of-the-year spending. It's a layered system that affects the challenge so that there is a challenge from year to year. But the only thing the player is responsible for is handling choices that might pop up during the fast-forward section. The actual game is the yard decoration and subsequent comparison to the other neighbors' yard decorations, which might still be ambitious.
What was the game you worked together with Royal on?
It's called "Nativity" and it was the game that attempted item limits long before item limits were a plotscripted function on the OHR. I don't remember the details anymore, but the gist of it was that you played either a shepherd or a wise man and you were competing against the other shepherds or wise men to bring the best gifts to the newborn Jesus. I think you had to scour specific locations for items (as many as a hundred to choose from), and then trade them for better items elsewhere, until you had the best combination of gifts (like myrrh, frankincense, etc.) to present. The catch was that you could only carry up to eight items at a time, and you could only offer up to five of them once you got to the manger. The shepherds and wise men were going to have different quests, and I think their competitive natures were also going to be different. Again, I've forgotten my plans for the game, but I think they're written down somewhere. The game has an introduction, a location selection screen, and (I believe) a list of the planned items to find--if they're not in the game, they are in a document somewhere on my computer. Royal got his job with Core in the middle of its development, so production on the game ceased almost as quickly as it started.

I'm attaching the old game file to this post if you want to have a look. Actually, the document was sitting next to the other relevant files, so everything related to the game, as far as I know, is in the zip file.

EDIT: I'll attach to a PM. I can't do it here.

The plan was to have two parts to the game. Part 1, to be released Christmas 2002, was the version I described above. Part 2, to be released Christmas 2003, was to be the game I'm pitching you now.

So, segue...

I'll get more invested in the detail later if you're interested in choosing this. If you don't choose it, I may still make it for myself someday. But the gist for the gameplay is like this:

Basic Information:

You're competing against Garrison Hatte and nine other neighbors for the Christmas crown by designing the best Christmas scene in the neighborhood. The Christmas scene takes place primarily in your front yard, but you can also build on your front porch, your roof, your backyard, and your living room. You have between 6:00pm and 10:00pm every night between December 1st and December 15th to work on your scenes. Judging begins on the 16th.

The judges look for creativity, utilization, aesthetics, and freshness of technology, so you want to take into consideration what you display, where you display it, how nice it looks, and how new it is. Some items work well near counterparts, while others may ruin a scene. For example, it might be nice to put Santa in his sleigh behind his reindeer (three different set pieces), but not so great to put him next to Mary in the manger scene. You might get a creativity point for a move like that, but you'll also lose a few utilization points for it, since the judges might find it tacky or offensive. Another example might be placing a snowman in the living room looking through the window. Creative, yes. Well utilized, no. And if that snowman is drooping from age, his aesthetics score will tank. Part of the game might be to decide which points are more important. All four categories would get their own score, so even though the overall score will affect whether you get the crown, each individual category score will affect your end game rating (which you'll have because all of my games have some kind of rating at the end).

Choosing your items comes from two different sources: the stores and your basement.

Buying new items at the store will keep your technology score relatively high (if you buy among the hottest trends, which can get expensive), but utilizing last year's decorations (which you'll store in your basement) will keep your budget intact.

Whether you use items you buy that year or leftovers from years past, you still have to mind the value cap, which is separate from your surplus budget. The cap is an imaginary value that gets deductions for every item used in the display. The budget is the money you actually have to spend, which can be well over the cap, or well under if you planned your year badly.

All items have an attached value, but basement items depreciate over time, so, let's say that plastic yard candy cane you bought for $100 last year will be worth only $90 this year, so even though you're not spending any money on it, you still have $90 going toward your cap limit (as opposed to $100 a year ago). Using leftovers means the possibility of using more items, but it may not be enough to help your technology score overcome your competitors' technology scores.

The stores will sell both new and used items, so you're not stuck with only the latest and the greatest if you go shopping one night. But the basement will always have used items (unless your profession is an engineer or inventor and you win a random event where you build one of your decorations).

Basements have storage limits, so you may have to throw things out or sell them if you hoard too many different items over time.

Putting things too close to the basement heater or under leaky pipes could ruin their aesthetic value the following year.

Actual Gameplay:

You choose your items via menus or mouse/icons, and you place them with either the mouse or a cursor (whichever seems easier on the design).

Setting items will require both placement and rotation, so most items will use sprites or NPCs to represent them on the map.

Living rooms can be selected in the navigation menu (indoor, outdoor), to which the map will change.

Natural landscape can contribute to each scene for free, so having an elf hanging from the branch of a tree over a pool of dry ice will help your creativity without damaging your cap.

Backyard scenes are worth half the value of front yard scenes, and are better left unused unless the scene utilizes a walking path.

Sticking to themes will increase utilization scores. Arranging the themes in an interesting way (using elves instead of reindeer to power the sled) will increase creativity without damaging utilization. Mixing themes will increase creativity, but may damage utilization if the mixture is too off-the-wall or offensive.

Planning a scene requires getting the item (from the store or the basement), placing the item, or moving an item. Each action comes with action points. Only so many action points can be spent per hour of game time. So, if you choose a mode that allows for 40 action points per hour, you can plan for 160 action points a night. Each hour counts for a turn, so your neighbors will make their plans (using the same number of action points) after you make yours.

Shopping costs more action points than scouring the basement.

Placing larger items requires more action points than placing smaller items.

Some items or actions may have point values higher than 40 (or whatever we determine works best). Those actions will roll over into the next hour or hours, depending on how big of a job it is (setting lights, for example, may take all night).

You can check out your neighbors' progress after 10:00, but each neighbor you spy on will take 30 minutes of your time. If you try to spy on all ten, you'll use up five hours of your night, which means you'll get to bed at 3 am, which means you won't sleep well, which means your action point limit will severely decrease the following night. Every neighbor you visit after 11:00 will decrease your maximum action points per hour by a fifth of the limit the next night. On the hard difficulty, you'll only get a tenth of it back the following night if you go to sleep before 11:00, so it would take about four days to get your maximum back up if you don't spy on your neighbors any other night. Easy and normal difficulties would refresh the limit to its maximum any night following an early bedtime.

If you check out a neighbor's display during your design time (between 6:00 and 10:00), you'll use up half of that hour's action points, or more if you didn't get any sleep the night before, so do so sparingly.

So, that's the core gameplay.

I can break down the different items available, their costs, AP, etc. and how they would affect scoring in another post, as well as who your neighbors are and what their personalities are like. But this should give you a stronger idea what the actual game is.
Last edited by Pepsi Ranger on Wed Dec 09, 2015 5:09 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Post by TMC »

The deadline has passed - thank you for your entries everyone!

Hawk, Giz and I are now selecting the winner.
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Post by sheamkennedy »

Darn. I was busy with studying for an intense final. Perhaps someone will be inclined to attempt a Game & Watch style game in the future though, that'd be cool to see.
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Post by TMC »

After many hours of detailed discussion about every way in which each entry and even off-hand remarks in the SS thread could be interpreted, we have agree upon a winner!

...

Find out who won, Christmas 2015!
Last edited by TMC on Sat Dec 12, 2015 11:53 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Post by Spoonweaver »

TMC wrote:...and even off-hand remarks in the SS thread could be interpreted,
well played
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Post by Bob the Hamster »

I am giddy with anticipation :)
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Post by TMC »

And the prize goes to...

sheamkennedy!

After noticing that Mogri wrote "Make a game about football players, but all of the actual football is automated and takes place largely offscreen." and not "Make a game about managing a football team..." we nearly decided to make a strange hybrid RPG about football players. In fact, after many hours of debate, we picked Kyle's castle defense game as the winner. One main reason was that it was one of the game designs which had more effort put into it. However, on close inspection we had found all the designs, even Pepsi Ranger's to some degree, greatly lacking in crucial details -- usually the core game mechanics (how to calculate aesthetic scores?). We proceeded to spend days attempting to write a complete design doc for the castle defense game, but could not figure out the baker role and whether the whole game would fit together. Eventually we switched to our backup, the "simple" Game & Watch proposal. Turns out we spent days debating that one as well. And as the artist I was the bottleneck; in fact I managed to delay the game's release by well over a week. Whoops.
Last edited by TMC on Thu Dec 31, 2015 7:19 pm, edited 3 times in total.
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Post by Spoonweaver »

A+
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Post by Pepsi Ranger »

Wow, this game brings back so many memories--happy ones, of course. Please make the other mini-games. In fact, please make more Game & Watch games. This one's perfect (and as hard as the old games were). Solid job, guys.

EDIT: Oh, and it would be cool if you added the "watch" in the "Game and Watch" component. If you're too young to remember the real thing, each unit told the time when you weren't playing it.
Last edited by Pepsi Ranger on Fri Jan 01, 2016 1:04 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Post by TMC »

Oh, I had thought the "watch" part referred to watching it play itself, like a demo mode. I starting adding the time to the idle screen before deciding it wasn't worth the time... but I guess that's a pretty simple addition

We might actually implement one of the other three minigames, since many of the graphics for it are already done. I don't know when that might happen.
Last edited by TMC on Fri Jan 01, 2016 8:10 am, edited 1 time in total.
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