GMC Jam Discussion The Gratified GMC Jam #6 Discussion Topic

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andev

Member
You can try >:DDDD
I've found the technique now ;), just boost everywhere so your health remains at max. Then only take the shot at point blank so there's no stray bullets to crash into.

It's really annoying that this works as a technique because originally I had it so crashing into walls created heat (hence the vibration dial on the right marked as VIB) but it proved to be unreliable and made you explode randomly sometimes, and I didn't have enough time to test it and find out why so I just removed it.

Was that your technique or are you literally just a god?
 

Bingdom

Googledom
Was that your technique or are you literally just a god?
I have a slow computer, which makes the game run a bit slow. I'm able to react to enemies and move better. Occasionally the game would go back to full speed again (that's how I was able to tell).
 

andev

Member
I have a slow computer, which makes the game run a bit slow. I'm able to react to enemies and move better. Occasionally the game would go back to full speed again (that's how I was able to tell).
Ah, yeah, it's not even slightly optimized hahaha
 

Alice

Darts addict
Forum Staff
Moderator
Are you opening Jam Player from a system folder? o_O'

Alternatively, are you opening it from an unpacked archive?

This shouldn't happen on regular folders.
Either way, I suggest copying and pasting what you got so far for later reference. Dunno how much you've got so far; the randomisation means it might take a while to get to each entry you already played, but it's still better than loss of data, I guess...?
 

andev

Member
Ok I got it to open, but 10 or so games in, and I've lost the ability to drag and drop the order :/
It still all works normally, I just can no longer rearrange them. I've tried restarting etc.

Also what are the icons for each game used for?

* * * * * * * * * *

@lazertrax

How come sometimes the bulls can go through the exit tile but other times not?


Also:


Great game! Really enjoyed that (although that 8 second music loop was slowly driving me to insanity).

If you added like 100 more levels, fixed the music, and did nothing else to it other than perhaps minor polish, this definitely could make some money on steam for a couple of dollars.
 
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Timmy O'Toole

Guest
Well I gave it a real shot but unfortunately with having to work all weekend, I simply didn't have enough time to make what I wanted a reality. I'll still work on what I got done and see it through but I just couldn't do it quickly enough over the weekend. Sorry for entering and being unable to produce a finished game. Next year I'll be better. This has become much more than a passing hobby for me.
 

Lukan

Gay Wizard Freak
Whelp, I submitted my game with some debug stuff on, so enjoy using Arc before you're supposed to.
 

andev

Member
Where do I submit bugs for the GMC jam viewer? If you click and drag something but then don't move it, it puts it at the bottom :eek:
I gotta say though, it's made playing the jam games so much better
 

Alice

Darts addict
Forum Staff
Moderator
Actually, the Jam player as it is now has been coded rather hastily, and now has a codebase that's pretty unpleasant to work with. Instead, I'd like to make an improved version of Jam player which, among other things, displays the thumbnails along the entry information, so that the games are more easily recognised. I have been terribly busy and couldn't really make a working version, though... u_u'
 

andev

Member
Actually, the Jam player as it is now has been coded rather hastily, and now has a codebase that's pretty unpleasant to work with. Instead, I'd like to make an improved version of Jam player which, among other things, displays the thumbnails along the entry information, so that the games are more easily recognised. I have been terribly busy and couldn't really make a working version, though... u_u'
Was it made in game maker? Perhaps with the help of a DLL for launching the games?
 

lazertrax

Member
@lazertrax

How come sometimes the bulls can go through the exit tile but other times not?


Also:


Great game! Really enjoyed that (although that 8 second music loop was slowly driving me to insanity).

If you added like 100 more levels, fixed the music, and did nothing else to it other than perhaps minor polish, this definitely could make some money on steam for a couple of dollars.
Thank you so much @andev for trying out our entry! Your review definitely gave us an extra huge motivation to improve BoxBuddy Monsters.

As for the bug in the gif, I have to admit that I haven't seen it during our very short testing period. However, you're definitely right, they should be passing all the time. I'll take a look into the problem and I'll make sure those little bulls behave as expected :)

PS. I'm super happy you enjoyed the game! and totally impressed by your final ranking!
 

andev

Member
upload_2017-11-27_23-41-3.png
By the way, I've cleaned up the scoreboard for Hold Fire! So you should be able to get your name on there a bit easier now!
 

Micah_DS

Member
So far I'm shocked at how my game has ranked. It doesn't really make sense to me. I feel it should be lower, haha. And @Misty your review of Dungeon Crush isn't harsh at all, it's quite fair.

I do hope the majority of you guys have at least a little fun with my game. I care about that more than ranking. I mainly get upset thinking I might make something that people hate, then I've caused them to lose time to something they didn't enjoy. That's the thing I hate the most about making a so-so game.
 
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ParodyKnaveBob

Guest
I've opened up the GMC Jam Player. I'm confused. Between the highlighted "Next Entry" and front-and-center "Click to continue" I'm not sure where to start, and if I do start, what it'll actually do. Neither F1 nor the README_PLEASE.txt tell me anything, and I don't want a poor first experience with it to tarnish my assessment of the first game (or two, depending how it actually works etc.) I play. Also, I'd like to know in advance if the "Save" and/or "Export" buttons are more about the reviews and such (which I expect "Export" is about reviews etc., and I expect to instead use my own spreadsheet anyway) or about the randomized list of games (which is what I most care about anyway -- it'd be nice to have a saved list of randomized games in case it crashes on me, which it likely will on my hardware).

Could anyone (@Alice?) post some instructions before I feel like I break something? (If not, I could just rebuild my own randomizer from the code I posted on the old GMC, ha ha.)

If so, thanks much in advance!
Bob
 
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Aegirbard

Guest
I downloaded the zip as soon as it was live. It took me a solid 8+1/2 hours to play through each game fairly. The jam player was a massive help in writing my notes and putting them in ranking order.

I was surprised I entered all of the Poor/OK/Good/Great, but it didn't use that information. So if you want me to share that with you regarding your game, drop me a PM.

I wanted to remain fair and impartial in my reviews. I wanted them to be short and explain how to improve where possible. Having no experience in jams before, I approached from the perspective of, "I've just downloaded this from steam". I read every available readme before each game and the afterwords if available after.. because that's what the first post said to do.

Overall I'm really impressed with the effort everyone made, high and low ranking. My top 3 took me by surprise, having thought it would be others before the jam closed.
 

Alice

Darts addict
Forum Staff
Moderator
I've opened up the GMC Jam Player. I'm confused. Between the highlighted "Next Entry" and front-and-center "Click to continue" I'm not sure where to start, and if I do start, what it'll actually do. Neither F1 nor the README_PLEASE.txt tell me anything, and I don't want a poor first experience with it to tarnish my assessment of the first game (or two, depending how it actually works etc.) I play. Also, I'd like to know in advance if the "Save" and/or "Export" buttons are more about the reviews and such (which I expect "Export" is about reviews etc., and I expect to instead use my own spreadsheet anyway) or about the randomized list of games (which is what I most care about anyway -- it'd be nice to have a saved list of randomized games in case it crashes on me, which it likely will on my hardware).
"Next entry" and "Click to continue" serve the same function - randomly picking the next entry to play. In hindsight, it probably would be better to call the latter "Next entry" as well.
The next entry appears at the bottom of "Unranked entries" list. You can drag an entry between Ranked/Unranked entries area, and reorder entries that way as well. Also, the currently selected entry should appear in the area to the right. There are buttons that let you play the game, open its README file (the button is green when the readme file contains crucial information, like controls) and AFTERWORD file. Also, you can pick its category ratings(Poor/OK/Good/Great) and write a comment/review.

"Choose best-ofs" button takes you to the screen where you can pick the best-of games from a dropdown. The entries in the dropdown are sorted by category ratings.

"Save" button saves the reviews/scores/entries/etc. you've got so far. The checkbox next to it toggles autosaving.

"Export" button copies a filled voting post template to clipboard, for easy pasting into the voting post. It makes use of ranking, best-ofs and comments, but doesn't use the category ratings.

"Reset" button clears all data provided by user, leaving only the general Jam data (entries, theme etc.).

Also, since someone else asked: the Jam Player wasn't made in GameMaker. It runs on .NET framework, with C# code and Windows Presentation Foundation UI.

--------------------

Just for the record, in response to comments on my entry so far. It's one of these so-called "joke entries", the sort that people send when they don't have time for something more serious. You can't really interact there, but if you posted in Discussion Topic, posted in Games Topic or was credited in Games Topic (except @GRArthas, sorry ^^'), you might try to spot your avatar. The post/credit must've been made roughly before the Jam ended. So if any of you reviewers don't see your avatar there, it's because I couldn't see your involvement in this Jam on forums (I already got two comments in vein "bad because my avatar is not there").
 

lolslayer

Member
I'm really satisfied with the reviews Reunion has gotten so far, but I just want to have this said for people to see:

Even if I did the majority of the work on this game, the design is heavily influenced by Kazemir and Philipp, so even if I'm the only one credited in the GMC jam player, there are more people that worked on it and I wanted to give them a little shout-out for it.

PS:
@Acr515
"I don't get where the theme comes into play here."

It's indeed not very clear from the game, it was supposed to be a game with multiple levels where 2 levels try to get to eachother by solving puzzles together, but I only got one puzzle with 2 players done and 3 for 1 player so that wasn't made out very clear, but I hope that this answers the question. :)
 

chance

predictably random
Forum Staff
Moderator
...I'd like to make an improved version of Jam player which, among other things, displays the thumbnails along the entry information, so that the games are more easily recognised.
That would be a fun addition for the future. But as it exists now, your Jam Player is very useful. So I encourage voters to use it. It makes the process of reviewing and voting much easier IMO. Nice job.

******************
I'm pleased with comments about Asymptote so far. I had fun with it. And it gave me reason to re-write some ideas using the new(er) edge fixtures. And to make physics and non-physics objects interact. Amazing how such simple code produces those results.

On the other hand... it shows the danger of focusing too much on streamlining code rather than focusing on gameplay. A 72-hour Jam isn't the place to do that.
 
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ghandpivot

Member
I think that the criticism "The game is too short" is nice, that means you wanted more. Sometimes games aren't short enough :p

If the next jam comes at a convenient date I'd love to team up for the first time and put all effort into coding or animating, that would allow for sooo much bigger projects.
 
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Misty

Guest
Okay so, what do I do if someone accuses me of not following the rules of the jam, and says I made it outside of the 72 hour timeframe?

Because some guy named OverLogic accused me of taking more than 72 hours to make the Jam, and also accused me of taking more than 3 participants.

I made the game within less than 72 hours, and I made it all by myself. The only truth to his statement is that I downloaded freeware resources from more than 2 artists, but I still made the game all by myself. The rules gave no limit to how many different resources you could use, and they also permitted resources to be used even if they were made before the jam.

I am offended by these wild accusations.
 

ghandpivot

Member
Okay so, what do I do if someone accuses me of not following the rules of the jam, and says I made it outside of the 72 hour timeframe?
I would calmly write a PM to the person in question and explain, which would hopefully result in the person changing their post and everything being fixed.
 
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Misty

Guest
I would calmly write a PM to the person in question and explain, which would hopefully result in the person changing their post and everything being fixed.
Yeah but, if the National Enquirer makes up a false article about someone, the damage cannot be undone. If I don't make it public, in the back of their heads they will be thinking about what he said and believe it is right.
 

HayManMarc

Member
This is probably not related, but I think some trolls need to troll harder or not troll at all. Just sayin'. (Or perhaps I'm mistaken.)
 
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Timmy O'Toole

Guest
Finally have a day off work and now I'm getting stuff done on the game I wanted to enter. Argh. If I only had more time I could've submitted what I have as it's what I was going for. There's not much to it and it never would've won anything but as least I can say I made it all myself. Next year man, I am taking the weekend off and getting something made and submitted. I'm sorry again to have entered and failed to make good on it. I really didn't have the time with how much I have to work as well.
 

andev

Member
Okay so, what do I do if someone says I made it outside of the 72 hour timeframe? Because some guy accused me of taking more than 72 hours to make the Jam, and also accused me of taking more than 3 participants.
I see no reason to be anything other than flattered by their words. It simply means that they didn't think it possible for someone to produce the quality of your work at the speed at which you produced it. If it's any consolation, I don't think it's unfair to assume that most of us here agree that none of the games submitted felt like they had an unrealistic development span.

If these kinds of things really get to you though, maybe next time you could set up a timelapse to capture your progress? I'm sure some people here would be interested to see how your project came to life! I know I would.

if the National Enquirer makes up a false article about someone, the damage cannot be undone.
I don't know where this was posted, but it likely wasn't a massive news source like that ;) I know this sounds condescending but the mainstream media picks up a lot of the kinds of people that just want something to hate on, which can (and does) cause big damage to the people reported on. But this is a closely hosted event of maybe 30 people, that I think will likely have played your game themselves and will have their own opinion.

Besides, have you actually read any of the reviews for other people's games? There's a chance that no one else will even see those words.
 
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ParodyKnaveBob

Guest
Heeey, @Timmy O'Toole, no worries, seriously. We all understand time and life constraints -- and you probably shouldn't have to wait until next year because the GMC Jam comes 'round every season. $:^ ]

---

Thank you, @Alice.

I clicked "Continue" on the Player, and I see that it's really more of a "Begin" button since it goes away after the first game's fetched. I clicked "Next," next, and I see it start to build a list in Unranked. Overall, I can see how this is tremendously helpful for people to organize playing and get some thoughts together. Very cool. Now let's see how useful I in particular can find it... (I mainly want a one-time randomized list, although the easy-access TXT files would be a nice bonus!)

I got it to auto-save, added another entry or two to the unranked list, quit the application. Restarted it, and similar to @andev's popup, I got this message, which concerned me:

upload_2017-11-28_15-2-28.png

(No, it's not in a system directory: %USERPROFILE%\Documents\Games\GMC Jams\GMC Jam 6 ...which is where jamdata.json actually exists. Using Windows 10 fwiw. Looks like your lookup has issues.) Well, after clicking OK, it came up with the unranked list still populated! Now, added to the fact that I can drag from Unranked to Ranked, neat-o, even with my own in-depth spreadsheet voting/reviewing, the Player should make things easier on me (as opposed to my fear of fighting convenience against convenience and making things harder on me, ha ha ha).

I have some errands to run, but once I start playing/reviewing, I'll make a Voting post with my spreadsheet presented live via GoogleDocs.

Regards. $:^ J
 

The M

Member
That message usually shows for me as well but I've never had any problems with the actual program so far so I'd say you can probably just ignore it. If you're worried then just copy your current rankings to a text file before you close the player, that way you've a backup just in case.
 
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Timmy O'Toole

Guest
How do you upload videos on here? It keeps telling me MY URL can not be embedded. Just trying to share a video from my Facebook of the game I'm working on. Sorry for the late question but I can't find anything that explaining what's wrong with my URL.
 

2DKnights

Member
Created this one for the jam it s in the games topic, i ended up getting sick and only had bout 8 hours to work on it, so its short, with no sound effects and, only one music track ( which is superb by the way) I wish i has more time. amyway if anyone wants the project code let me know

upload_2017-11-28_16-19-40.png
 
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2DKnights

Member
Terestia by 2dknights. Great story, music, and visuals. After the game was over, I kept listening to the music. Sadly no credits were to be found of this great musician. The problem with this game, is it only has four levels, but since they had the flu, I will cut them some slack. More levels should be made, and it should be made into larger levels like a metroidvania game.
Glad you liked the music I made the track I can send it to you if you like.
 
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Misty

Guest
Glad you liked the music I made the track I can send it to you if you like.
2DKnights, you are a genius. Also, you can send me the track, if you like.

I see no reason to be anything other than flattered by their words. It simply means that they didn't think it possible for someone to produce the quality of your work at the speed at which you produced it. If it's any consolation, I don't think it's unfair to assume that most of us here agree that none of the games submitted felt like they had an unrealistic development span.
I suppose that's one way of looking at it, the other way of looking at is, the rumor turns into fact, next thing you know everybody is downvoting my game because of some made up myth. That is why, it is best to nip things like fake news in the bud, before they blossom into something extraordinarily terrible.

If these kinds of things really get to you though, maybe next time you could set up a timelapse to capture your progress? I'm sure some people here would be interested to see how your project came to life! I know I would.
I don't have the time to set up a timelapse, since I was obeying the rules and creating the game within the allotted 72 hour time span. But maybe next time maybe.
 
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Timmy O'Toole

Guest

Hopefully this works. This is a bare bones version of what I wanted to try and make after hearing convergence was the theme. Supposed to be molecules colliding to form heavier elements.

Guess not. I don't know how else to get the URL. Oh well. Just thought I'd try and share stuff after posting on here for a while and never having done so.
 
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ParodyKnaveBob

Guest
I got to watch someone play "GMC Jammin'" tonight. There is a bug after all. $:^ [
After you get the Motivation meter, if you lose all Motivation and try again, for some reason the meter doesn't come back. It appeared the player couldn't lose after this, too, but I haven't investigated yet. Therefore, not only did the game suddenly get easier in the last 30mins or so because I had to swap out my difficulty formula for a hard-coded data table I couldn't test very much, but also this bug might've made it un-lose-able. Meh.

To respond in general to the 3-4 mini-reviews I've seen so far:
Had trouble getting the core engine, or never even got past that part?
~salute!~ $:^ ]
(Actually, this started even harder, but I realized I needed to bring it down some notches. Easier to get successes. Give more explicit hints on successes. Etc.)

After the core engine level, the game's too easy?
Yeah, it started harder.
  • See my bug spoiler up above. I worked on a difficulty formula, but had to break it and replace it due to certain other features. The replacement difficulty method didn't get as much testing. $:^ [
  • Since I didn't have time to produce the funny audio I'd planned, I dropped the whole "audio level," (indexed between graphics and "more tasks,") which means as the difficulty increased each level, we lost out on another difficulty increase before the end.
  • Those two things meant the auto-fire rate of working Gears also made it not-seriously-hard.
  • On that note, despite adding a hint at the beginning, players may not figure out that holding the Action button steadily sends out your working Gears -- but tapping it rapidly (for a faster rate) actually decreases your Motivation. See what I did there? $:^ ] The difficulty goal was to have you balance your Actions rate with the incoming Tasks rate.

Boring ending?
Agreed.
  • The game was supposed to be on a timer. You had to win before the timer ran out. (This would've made it harder, too, but alas.)
  • The Tasks were eventually supposed to come at angles, bouncing within the allowed area.
  • The debugging level was supposed to get a boss taking multiple hits along with all the increased incoming Tasks. Also, more in-game stuff was supposed to "suddenly break," instead of just the avatar (and the avatar only "broke" in a minimal way just to have something).
  • (For that matter, you were supposed to be able to customize the avatar, but at least I knew in advance that that idea would probably never make it in because time.)
  • Beating all levels plus boss before the "72 hours" ended would give you the bonus round, the polish level, which I didn't get to complete of course. The intent was you'd just try to rack up score in whatever time you had left. Actually in my game: because "your game entry" is "done," you no longer lose motivation (from missing Tasks nor overworking the Gears). $:^ b However, not actually in my game: I even hid the "high score" stuff in my last few minutes because the lack of timer made it pointless. $:^ \
  • Once you would've completed with a nicely polished score, the extra polished features (which you only see one simple one in my actual game, again just to have something) would stay intact on replay! New Game+ ? heheheh However, sorry, that feature's programmed, but you never even see it because (with no timer mechanic) I had to fake an ending instead of giving you the proper funny ending I had planned.
  • Between these things, and the audio I never produced, my art-commentary joke game lost a lot of joke. Aw. $:^ }
 
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0.Bytes

Guest
Created this one for the jam it s in the games topic, i ended up getting sick and only had bout 8 hours to work on it, so its short, with no sound effects and, only one music track ( which is superb by the way) I wish i has more time. amyway if anyone wants the project code let me know

View attachment 14718
This looks so NES, I will try to play it later !

Btw my team was not able to finish the game =/, next jam I/we will try again =p

I am happy to see that the average level of the jam was definetely better than the last jam, congratulations to everybody that joined GMC xD If ludum dare do not waste my time I will try to rate and give a feedback to the games that you guys made it
 

Ralucipe

Member
The people who've played my entry so far, Spacial Convergence, seem to have enjoyed it. I'm thrilled by the positive reviews and high rankings it's getting!

In the meantime, my reviews are going slowly but surely. I've only got like 8 or 10 posted right now. I try to only spend a max of 10-15 minutes playing and reviewing each game, but it ends up being more like 30 minutes each. I can't help but get sucked into exploring the games and getting into greater detail in each review.
 
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ColtonPhillips

Guest
My game is Convergence: Right To Left

I actually didn't submit a README file, so a lot of people are having trouble with the game.

Press space to fire. ;)

It is intentionally a towlr style game demo that doesn't tell you how to play it. So if you do play it, I suggest mashing your keyboard in the following order

Space
R
Esc
Space

doing so will make you realize the greatness.

Cheers.

If you play long enough you'll come to realize the point of the game is that it is a high score game. It's gamed to make some strategies better than others. You'll need to press Escape to reset your score and R to restart the game. It's not that special other than the visuals. I was very sick this weekend so I could only contribute about a days worth of effort.
 
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ParodyKnaveBob

Guest
$:^ I $:^ \ $:^ | $:^ \ $:^ I

I'm just not in the same place I was in old-GMC Jam 15. I super want to give games in-depth reviews with highly specific categorical ratings, but baaaah, my schedule is just too jam-packed (this time, jam pun unintended,) to make any real headway like that. (I haven't even started yet! Ha!) Instead, I guess I'll just use the GMC Jam Player to do what I can, but I'll still try to complete every game that I play. ~nodnod~
 
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ParodyKnaveBob

Guest
ALERT!!!

My machine says "Untitled by @notcreativeEnuf4_1" (Game.exe) has Trojan:Win32/Azden.B!cl with Alert Level: Severe!

I spoiler'd the above for historical reasons, but apparently the "oh no, a game has a trojan!" alert is a false positive we each might suffer (probably somewhere between GM's self-extracting EXEs and the GMC Jam Player's EXE-running-EXEs, especially with uncertified authors running amok, lol). Nothing to see here. ~nod~
 
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