Ridiculous Games Contest 2019

Make games! Discuss those games here.

Moderators: Bob the Hamster, marionline, SDHawk

TMC
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Post by TMC »

SDHawk wrote:(you don't have to be good at drawing, I won't bite)
It's been so long since I drew any graphics that I actually forgot what I'm capable of, not joking. Better than I can write an RPG plot anyway.
My psychological thriller idea is unworkable, no one is going to take that inner-monologuing seriously, I mean I never take it seriously in other games, so I need a new RGC project. Plus I've gotta work my way up to Motrya Artist.
Sorry, you might end up making a game afterall.
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SDHawk
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Post by SDHawk »

Oh, dear. Never play chicken with making Contest Games, folks. You'll always lose.

Thanks for the offer by the way, Nathan, but looks like I won't be needing it.
TMC
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Post by TMC »

I'm having too much fun designing the technical principles guiding how I will design my master palette. Never understood how people could spend so much time obsessing over their master palettes until now! A unique system of ramps, loops, and interchanges.
TMC
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Post by TMC »

Dev log! Where's yours?

Sat down to start mocking up graphics. Had to replace my mouse: faulty right button. Been ignoring it. Took a mouse from a box of spare parts and removed the BROKEN sticker. Mislabelled?
Next, replaced my keyboard because I couldn't see what any of the keys were. About 5 years ago I swapped the keys to Dvorak layout, but never learnt it. When hitting shortcuts in grafx2 with one hand I want to look at the keyboard.
I always use inputtest.rpg for testing my keyboard. I have a loooot of unlabelled broken keyboards to avoid.

Spent ages deciding which game resolution to use. Chalk Flower was discussing it with me anyway; he started it. He went for 560x320, I decided on 560x340. Looks good (filling most of the screen without looking like a mismatched aspect ratio) at 2x zoom on a 1280x1024 (older monitors) or 1280x800 (netbook), and 3x zoom on a 1920x1080 (decent widescreen LCD). gfx_sdl2 and gfx_directx do fractional zoom levels anyway, and I'll implement the same in gfx_sdl.
Higher res means smoother gradients. It's all about the gradients. Mocked up some gradients.

Drew a hero sprite! It's the wrong size for my resolution.
Hawk is all doom and gloom already. So I tried to help him out by telling him how to do his job.
Last edited by TMC on Fri Mar 08, 2019 4:59 pm, edited 7 times in total.
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SDHawk
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Post by SDHawk »

Dev Log #1

Tried to talk TMC out of doing this to no avail. It seems I've fallen into another contest game, and there's no way out. On, hm, Tuesday I had a pretty strong concept (structure, setting, theme, etc) in place that I was pretty excited to do. By Thursday it seemed like a terrible idea. That's game making in a nutshell right there.

I've been tackling the outline from two angles: what are the major plot points, and who are the characters that can fit into those points. The characters are where the trouble started, I suppose. The first list I came up with all have a lot of pre-established relationships with the protagonist. My concern is that there's going to be a lot of early heavy lifting to establish all of them at once to the player, in a game that doesn't have much run time to spare. It also means the player is going to be more distant to them than the protagonist. What I'm trying to say here is that there is a reason that every JRPG protagonist's home town gets burned down (or shipped to a new school, or warped to a new world, or orphaned, or whatever): it puts the player on the same level as the protagonist with the rest of the cast. They develop their relationships in parallel.

So I toyed with re-arranging the setting so the protagonist is a newcomer. And that actually made creating characters for the plot points much harder. I had come to depend on those pre-existing relationships to really be able to affect the protagonist. So I'm starting to think I was right the first time around. I'm definitely asking for trouble by going for it, but it's not like heavily established protagonists never happen in stories (admittedly it's more common in novels since the author has the advantage of being able to expose character's mental processes to the reader). I don't think I'll have to resort to internal monologues, though. The relationships are pretty straightforward, and can be established in but a few lines.

The other key blocking issue is heavy doubt about... how do I put it. Where the story is going? I have 3 possible endings and I'm not happy with any of them. And this gnawing doubt in direction is dangerous with this concept because if I don't execute carefully, everything will fall apart on itself. At the same time, I know exactly what the arc of the protagonist is going to be. I just don't know why I'm doing this to them. Sometimes ideas come with the ending as part of the package. Those are my favorite ideas because they don't put me in exactly this awkward position.
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Feenicks
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Post by Feenicks »

Devlog #1

My development of this game has so far been focused on graphics and making obnoxious UI-centered mechanics.
Story/content-wise, I've been in a state of constantly cutting down stuff; turns out having multiple full dungeons isn't really viable for a month-long contest. The vague story beats and character introductions been rearranged a fair bit, but I'm still going to at least attempt to keep all of the six I've sprited up so far in there.

In other news, I'm currently in Scotland for the weekend and, uh, managed to discount the fact that I'm moving to a different continent in the back half of this contest, so I'm not sure how much of this will actually come to be. Fingers crossed?
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It'll get worse?
It'll get worse?
curse0014.png (9.9 KiB) Viewed 3929 times
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charbile
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Post by charbile »

Did somebody say DEV LOG

Was spying on TMC and Hawk. Who knew TMC could do so much with broken keyboards and mice? Hawk going straight for characters and plot points, like a real game designer. Toyed with the idea of Wandering Hamster 40k. It wouldn't be enough to defeat them. Feenicks' idea is genius and he's so confident that he has time to move to different continents. Then I hear Gaplan and Kylekrack are in, and Woahpotato has plans. Fenrir sneaking around with the ominous shadow of a possible MEH 3.0.

Then I remembered. A long time ago, there was a Gentleman's Contest in the ohr. I started something but was unable to finish. Maybe I have the skill now. But would anyone have an interest in an 'enhanced' ohr game? Countless spreadsheets of stats and gameplay balancing and lol jk. Time to write some steamy ohr waifu fanfiction.

Hawk, when in doubt I'd clear my head and come back to the main conflict of the story, as its resolution will help shape the one true ending. Am praying it's a lovely home game.
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Idontknow
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Post by Idontknow »

I've only really worked on graphics for my game so far, but here's a hastily thrown together encounter with a cat shopkeeper to prove I actually have a game.
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Fennecs0002.png
Fennecs0002.png (6.66 KiB) Viewed 3899 times
Last edited by Idontknow on Sat Mar 09, 2019 7:59 am, edited 1 time in total.
Working as intended!
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SDHawk
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Post by SDHawk »

Dev Log #2

While in the shower I finally figured out the actual ending. There were still 2 possible versions of it, but it felt much closer than the old ones. I basically took some of the implied pieces of the setting and pushed them up, creating a lot of debris to clean up afterwards. But it still wasn't all the way there, and after chatting with TMC about it for awhile, the real version of the ending finally became clear. To quote him, "seems like a movie could end that way, rather than the typical way an RPG might end an encounter". I'm already throwing away the game rule book of storytelling with pre-established characters, so continuing to do so with the ending seems appropriate. A dangerous direction. Otherwise, it feels right. I know where I'm going now.

Nothing stands in the way of a true outline now, but I'm going to take the writing process slow and get to it tomorrow. Probably.
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Nathan Karr
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Post by Nathan Karr »

My dev log:
Been working late at my job, leaving me sore and tired. Progress slow.

Tried importing some of my sprites; turns out that while the OHR can now read PNGs it hates low-color depth PNGs like my monster sprites. Had to reformat a bunch of them into BMPs.

Gave some stats to a bunch of rats, mice, and the like.

Need to make at least one each of undead and mechanical enemies for player character skill sets to work. Or on second thought, I can just drop the Disrupt Undead spell; not every game I make needs to have that.
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The rodent monster enemies.
The rodent monster enemies.
OHRodents0005.png (5.29 KiB) Viewed 3843 times
This was supposed to be CavernMousey, which consists of light gray, dark gray, and yellow. How it achieved this mess I don't know.
This was supposed to be CavernMousey, which consists of light gray, dark gray, and yellow. How it achieved this mess I don't know.
OHRodents0004.png (3.38 KiB) Viewed 3843 times
Remeber: God made you special and he loves you very much. Bye!
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FnrrfYgmSchnish
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Post by FnrrfYgmSchnish »

Need to make at least one each of undead and mechanical enemies for player character skill sets to work.
The mechanical one should definitely be a mouse.

As in, not the small furry kind, the "used to operate a computer" kind.
FYS:AHS -- Working on Yagziknian NPC walkabout sprites
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woahpotato
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Post by woahpotato »

dev note:
discord deactivated my account, but there is content i'm gonna show once i'm at a point where it's shareable
stay tuned for super secret alt coming on i gues
ArtimusBena
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Post by ArtimusBena »

This is great guys! I'm glad to see people are taking part in contests and stuff.

Feenicks: those environment graphics are freakin' top notch, man.
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Nathan Karr
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Post by Nathan Karr »

FnrrfYgmSchnish wrote:
Need to make at least one each of undead and mechanical enemies for player character skill sets to work.
The mechanical one should definitely be a mouse.

As in, not the small furry kind, the "used to operate a computer" kind.
My first thought was one of the cat toys with a wind-up key, but that works really well too.
Remeber: God made you special and he loves you very much. Bye!
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woahpotato
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Post by woahpotato »

dev note:
got wrapped up in other stuff like an idiot, probably gonna have to wuss out since i don't really have much that would constitute as a "game" let alone a playable demo
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