Heart of the OHR Contest 2020

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Pepsi Ranger
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Post by Pepsi Ranger »

Fenrir Lunaris wrote:I'm submitting Vikings of Midgard for the (final?) time in Heart of the OHR 2020.
Woot woot.

I think this would qualify it for a Legends Lvl. 2 status if I'm not mistaken. I really hope someone will make us some trophy icons to post under our avatars (or on our game pages) for Legends status games.

I'll make a separate list for the games that should have Legends trophies and at which levels if we're ever able to get the trophies.

Just a reminder, these trophies would be graphics for the game page, not actual tangible trophies (unless that's exactly what Spoonweaver is talking about when he talks about trophies for prizes). If any artistically gifted people out there would like to make a few, please let me know.
Fenrir Lunaris wrote:There's literally too much to go through and make a list of what's changed since the Alectormancy release back in 2012. EVERY thing in the game has gotten a revamp, mainly on account of the reviews and suggestions made from all over the community since that time. As far as 30 minutes of content is concerned, I've had reports of people being able to play through the game in 2.5 hours, while others have been playing for a week. Your mileage will absolutely vary.
That's fine. Eight years since the last big release and I'm sure many of us have either never played it or have forgotten what we did play. I can't call it an original or a remake, but I can say that if enough of it has gotten an overhaul, then starting from the beginning will probably be as effective as picking up wherever the player previous left off. I'm not going to ask you to document anything other than "Many things have been updated since the last version, so it's best to start from the beginning." That'll cover the base requirement in my opinion. You can even copy/paste that statement into the readme.txt for it if you want.

Thanks for entering. Given how the future of Heart of the OHR is uncertain past 2020, having the final(?) version of Vikings in the running is fitting.

[spoiler]And if it wins, I already know one of the "achievements" it will earn as a result, but only if it wins.[/spoiler]

Keep up the good work, everyone. There's still plenty of time to get your games finished this year.
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Spoonweaver
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Post by Spoonweaver »

I mean tangible trophy that will be sent to your house.
Probably this one
Image

Or maybe a heart one
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The heart one is likely the better choice, since it would be able to better match the trophies going forward.
Then again, the trophies might have to change every year based off what the custom trophies shops offer anyways.
So I haven't exactly decided.
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Pepsi Ranger
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Post by Pepsi Ranger »

Just a quick note that I've updated the main post with the latest prize information (from Spoonweaver and Baconlabs) and with a new section on "Approved Games So Far," which lists the potentially controversial titles that I've agreed to allow into the contest (pending their submissions).

If you think your game is controversial to the rules, but you'd still like to enter, state your case here, and if we agree it'll work, it'll go on the "approved" list. This list keeps me accountable to my agreement.
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Nathan Karr
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Post by Nathan Karr »

I still haven't finished making the prizes I promised contestants for 2018. I should probably get on that with some of my free time in the coming week(s). Like Bob emerging from the belly of the Jormungandling, it might come late but it's still coming!

If I get around to it, I might draw fan art for this year's contestants as well; hopefully it won't be a huge flood of games, but a smaller number of very solid entries.

I'm looking forward to getting more feedback on TutOHRial. It has to have had the quickest production cycle of any game I've made aside from Nathan's Halloween (a game thrown together in literally an hour), a true passion project I'd have made when I did and about as fast as I did even if there wasn't such thing as a Heart of the OHR Contest (and how often do I release complete games without a contest theme and a time limit looming?). I'd like to tidy a few things up about it in time for Hrodvitnir stable release if I can, but feedback so far has been sparse.

Two things I found that I decided to very definitely change:
- A user interface colors issue of certain menu highlights not showing up
- Accidentally had two copies of Cave Tower.tilemap instead of one each of that and Cave Maze.tilemap in the folder (my new Cave Maze is better anyway)

Interesting and ambitious proposals I'm currently disinclined from acting on:
- Replacing all the textbox chains with a big menu that changes the text color of the options after they've been read to give "positive feedback" and "a feeling of accomplishment".
- Taking screenshots of every single tutorial textbox, re-importing those as backdrops, and using a script to let players scroll back and forth between them (way too script intensive for me in general, much less a game designed to be a basic level tutorial).



And so far out of the dozen or so [s]talking animals[/s] online acquaintances I sent the game out to early in production, only two of them actually found or reported bugs in my pre-release beta (one person played around with it but never messaged me any feedback even when he found glaring errors that made the tutorial impossible to advance any further in, only saying this happened after I posted about fixing it; at least two others downloaded it but I got even less from them). Basically, red foxes are the best playtesters. All of their feedback is already implemented (making a couple early lessons clearer and better paced, typos corrected, textbox chains/conditionals fixed).

So yeah, I'm going to give thanks to Gaplan and Bird for playing what they could and giving what feedback they could and extra grateful to Charbile and Joshua Reynard for their thorough playtests.
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Post by Baconlabs »

Just posting a quick thing here to indirectly inform Pepsi Ranger that I'm still here and paying attention - I'll be keeping my eyes peeled near the end of the year for prize discussions.

Also, really looking forward to some of the things you guys are hyping up - I don't think I've seriously played any of Vikings since its initial release in the late 2000s. I tried one build of Minesweeper Tactics recently and I like the idea a lot, can't wait to see it polished and rebalanced with time. And Nathan's tutorial-game is a really nifty idea that reminds me somewhat of an old Super Mario World ROM hack called "Hacks 101" - though that was more of a "Good Idea/Bad Idea" exercise with lots of text boxes and demo levels, you didn't have to actually edit anything. I'm rooting for you guys!
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Fenrir-Lunaris
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Post by Fenrir-Lunaris »

Vikings of Midgard is complete.

I am absolutely surprised that I didn't break Slime Salad like how Bane [spoiler]broke Batman's spine[/spoiler]!
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Post by guo »

Congratulations! I bet that feels good. Its been a long journey!
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RMZ
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Post by RMZ »

Congratulations Fenrir!
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Post by polkakitty »

I've played through the first few hours of the new Vikings of Midgard, and it's amazing how much passion and care comes through in every aspect of it. People will say that all the graphics are awesome, and they are, and I'm loving the music tracks from the 2012 version of Vikings that have been redone with better instruments and arrangements. But what's really making an impression on me is how strong the writing is. Each character speaks in their own distinctive voice, and Hugin and Munin are well worth listening to after each plot event, even if you know exactly what you're supposed to do, just because they're hilarious.

And as someone who loves reading folklore and mythology from all parts of the world, I love all the callbacks to Norse mythology, not just in things like item names, but even in incidental dialogue (when Olaf first joins your party, Kitt says he could drink half the sea if he wanted to, which is an allusion to a story where Thor and his companions are challenged to perform in various contests by a giant king. After saying he can beat anyone else in a drinking contest, Thor is challenged to empty a drinking horn in one swallow, but the giant king plays a trick on him and the horn is actually magically connected to the ocean; although Thor can't drink the entire ocean, he does actually manage to lower the sea level.)

Also, for what it's worth, I can confirm that the Linux tarball works perfectly. (Apparently, when you use the "Export Linux Tarball (64bit)" option in Custom, in the resulting gz file, you just get a stand-alone executable that runs the game, the rpg file with all the game data in it, and the readme and license files. You don't need to go through an install process to run it, and it works as long as you have some basic libraries like libsdl1.2 installed, which every distro has available, and which you can look up and install in less than a minute if for some reason you don't already have them installed.)

I did find something weird when I tried to check the fireplace on the left in the first room. If you stand on this spot, facing to the left, and press Enter:

Image

A strange text box with all the characters in the font will pop up:

Image

Then you'll get a shop that sells items that increase your stats!

Image

I'm not trying to say this is a problem that needs to be taken out of the game. I think it could actually be a cool Easter egg, it's just that the text box with all the font characters makes me suspect this is a testing utility that was accidentally left in the game.
Last edited by polkakitty on Sun Aug 16, 2020 7:56 pm, edited 2 times in total.
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Nathan Karr
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Post by Nathan Karr »

In Vikings of Midgard, I noticed a small flaw with Frey's walkabout, which I was able to fix with use of Mark, Clone, Box, and Flip tools in the editor. Basically, while his feather would stay consistent on both frames of his south-facing sprite, it'd flip back and forth on his north-facing sprite. I wouldn't be surprised if a few other characters throughout the game have similar small graphical quirks.

Others include Olaf when he's going berserk in the tavern holding an axe instead of a hammer, I'm certain this is a holdover from the days when the various heroes had more than one weapon proficiency apiece. It's not important enough to edit the sprite over, when I mentioned it on Discord Fenrir said none of his testers had pointed it out.

Personally I also think any time a sprite has been made obsolete but is still good, the old version should probably be in the Sprites folder of the engine's Import folder. For example, exporting the existing "Olaf with an axe" first if you were going to make an "Olaf with a hammer" enemy sprite as a replacement to extend the options of people making use of the fact that these are free to use game graphics.






In Katja's Abyss, I can't grasp the way the game is supposed to play at all. I keep completely running out of resources, and it doesn't feel intuitive at all that if I pay to "upgrade" my drill it ceases to be able to dig and so forth. I can't even complete the tutorial level. The tactical battle aspect of building gunner vehicles and shooting space bugs on the map feels alright, but isn't really my style anyway.
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kylekrack
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Post by kylekrack »

Which step of the tutorial are you getting stuck on? You can mark tiles safe/unsafe with left/right click. The game ends up being largely [play minesweeper for 5 minutes > play a tactical fighting game for 5 minutes].

Something I forgot to tutorialize was the unit menu, accessible from the esc menu. It gives an explanation and stats for all of the base units, plus all the ones they can "upgrade" into. I still need to change the word "promote" into something more accurate. "Modify" perhaps? It changes the unit, but doesn't necessarily make it better. It's important to have at least 1 miner, fighter, and medic. A good strategy is to pair a miner with an Artillery (upgraded fighter). That way, if the miner encounters any monsters in the walls, the Artillery can kill it before it has a chance to attack.
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Post by Bob the Hamster »

kylekrack wrote:... I still need to change the word "promote" into something more accurate. "Modify" perhaps? ...
I vote for "transmogrify"

I have only played Katja's Abyss for a little while, but I like the concept. The minesweeper phases play a bit slower than I prefer, but that isn't a deal breaker.

I will definitely be playing more.

The music is fantastic
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Post by kylekrack »

Thanks! The digging is quite slow, and finding a good solution to that has been frustrating. Ultimately, I think it's an issue with the game's pacing overall. I'm trying to lean the gameplay more towards combat and other objectives to compensate. An attempt to work with the slow pace of mining, rather than against it, I suppose. It's definitely the most difficult part of designing this game, because there's no perfect metric for whether it's good.
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Nathan Karr
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Post by Nathan Karr »

kylekrack wrote:Which step of the tutorial are you getting stuck on? You can mark tiles safe/unsafe with left/right click.

I can't tell which tiles are safe or unsafe, every time I dig it explodes and wrecks my mining vehicle, with my backup possibly having accidentally been changed into something else. I shoot the bugs that crawl out in one or two turns, build another mining vehicle, very next tile I try to dig is also a bomb. Eventually I run out of resources to build new mining vehicles in and maybe a single other vehicle will have been damaged by 1 point by an enemy but more likely it was accidentally completely destroyed by an exploding mine space.
kylekrack wrote:The game ends up being largely [play minesweeper for 5 minutes > play a tactical fighting game for 5 minutes].
My experience is more [spend 3 minutes trying to dig and/or build a new drill because I accidentally made another vehicle I have no use for] then [explode my drill and one enemy appears, destroy completely within 2 brief turns].
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Post by kylekrack »

I suppose I need to spend more time in the tutorial explaining how minesweeper rules work, and how to find where Nodes are. There's been a good amount of feedback from people who've never played minesweeper who struggle to figure that part out. The whole tutorial pretty short as is, because I want to avoid making a super long tutorial. Maybe it'll be enough to just force the player to mark more tiles safe/unsafe before the tutorial ends.
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