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The deadline for entries to YoYo Games’ third competition has passed with 285 games having been entered.

Obviously I haven’t looked at each and every one of these submissions, but here is my pick of some of the best games and most played games that have been submitted.

Karoshi Factory

Jump, push blocks and press buttons to open up a path through which you can navigate your characters to the end of each level.

This puzzle game, created by 2DCube who was also responsible for producing Frozzd which won the YYG winter competition, requires brain power and co-operation between the characters you control. Suicide certainly isn’t easy.

Wave Shock

This game is described by its creator as a “fast paced abstract shooter” and it certainly is all of the above.

The co-operation element is made up of a co-operative two-player mode either with the computer or for you and a friend.

Despite being one of the most played competition entries I don’t think this game is in with a chance of winning a prize - it just seems to lack depth.

Visit 2

Visit 2 is a challenging puzzle platformer where you must find the mysterious ‘Dark Tower’.

I think the graphics are particularly well made and suit the genre perfectly. Co-op comes through the addition of an extra character you can control, but I didn’t play far enough to see the full benefit of him.

Invasion 3D

A bizarre yet strangely humorous opening animation sequence gives way to a 3D First Person Shooter game.

The graphics are presented in a fun cartoony style (don’t laugh!) and although they aren’t of top quality they suit the game surprisingly well.

The game runs very slowly - I assume on faster machines the movement would be much more smooth - based on the feedback over at YoYo I think this could be a good game if you can get it to run at a decent speed. Oh - and it is not compatible with Vista due to an audio dll the game uses.

Somehow I can’t see a game of this genre winning any prizes from YYG.

Lost Snowman

By bundling game resources externally RedSystem, creator of two previous YoYo Game prize winning games, has ensured that despite the number of graphical resources this game loads very quickly.

The Lost Snowman is another puzzle platformer where you navigate through the worlds by using a team of snowmen each with their own abilities. As we have come to expect from RedSystem the animated graphics are truly amazing and are complemented with appropriate sounds.

I will be surprised if this game does not get awarded a prize due to its all round professional qualities.

Jumper 3

Opinion seems to be split on this retro platformer in which you must aim to complete each level as rapidly as possible, collecting coins as you go. Created by YoMamasMama, Jumper 3 follows the hugely popular Jumper 2. Personally I’m not a big fan and I don’t see it in with a shot of a prize, but for Jumper 2 fans…

Drop in the Bucket

In this puzzle game by Game Maker Community moderator KC LC you need to guide a stream of water into a bucket. At your disposal are three tools - fans, bars and magnets which can be used to deflect or attract water.

One comment on YoYo Games asks “If pipe, magnet and fan count as co-op, why don’t bone, ligament and muscles? Or eyes, hands and feet?” and I have to say I agree. I don’t think there is much relevance to the co-operation theme here at all - it is a very tenuous link.

What are your favourite games that have been submitted and why?

Although you will still have to wait a bit longer for the official announcement, I think it is reasonable to give the regular glog readers already a little pre-announcement about the theme for the fourth YoYo Games competition. So you can already start thinking about the game you want to make.

We decided this time to go for a green theme: Save The Planet. Of course there are many (environment-related things) you can save the planet from: pollution, rising sea levels, hurricanes, poisonous slime, too much garbage, war, too many people, bad politicians, over-fishing, etc. And there are many ways to save the planet. Maybe you can create new species to make up for the ones that have disappeared, build railroad systems to reduce the number of cars, collect garbage, plant trees, build dikes, protect whales; let your imagination run wild.

A formal announcement, together with deadlines and further instructions will follow soon through the website.

Happy Designing

Although you will still have to wait a bit longer for the official announcement, I think it is reasonable to give the regular glog readers already a little pre-announcement about the theme for the fourth YoYo Games competition. So you can already start thinking about the game you want to make.

We decided this time to go for a green theme: Save The Planet. Of course there are many (environment-related things) you can save the planet from: pollution, rising sea levels, hurricanes, poisonous slime, too much garbage, war, too many people, bad politicians, over-fishing, etc. And there are many ways to save the planet. Maybe you can create new species to make up for the ones that have disappeared, build railroad systems to reduce the number of cars, collect garbage, plant trees, build dikes, protect whales; let your imagination run wild.

A formal announcement, together with deadlines and further instructions will follow soon through the website.

Happy Designing

GameMaker Tech have dropped them, MarkUp have never had them, but the smaller and less established magazines love them - I’m talking about word puzzles and games. The kind of things you would expect to find on the back of newspapers or in a young child’s comic. The crosswords, wordsearches, mazes and spot the differences of the GameMaker magazine world.

The irrelevant, pointless, space fillers that they have become. How are we meant to complete a crossword on a static pdf? Screenshot it and draw on it in paint? Print it out?

I do not wish to single out any particular magazine for the puzzles they contain but below is a screenshot of a puzzle included in a recently released GameMaker magazine - a crossword/wordfill with 5 answers.

A bit of fun - possibly, but do we really need GameMaker themed puzzles?

I await the first GameMaker themed Sudoku with anticipation.

The previously inactive and almost dead official Glog has suddenly become the cool place to hang-out with updates and new posts nearly every week. Just three days ago Mark Overmars posted an article explaining methods of using Cyrillic characters and Hebrew, Arabic, Japanese, and Chinese fonts and symbols.

Today however, the Glog post announces the completion of the third YoYo Games competition. The competition, with a theme of ‘co-operation’ had more submissions than any of the previous two competitions held by the company. It’s now up to the site’s users to play and evaluate the 285 participating games to help determine the winner.

The announcement for Competition 04 is expected shortly although it is ot clear when, nor is it clear when the judging for the current competition will be finished.

–

As something completely separate to the Glog, we are conducting a small survey to evaluate the Softwrap registration system used in Game Maker and to gauge whether users are satisfied or dissatisfied with the system. Please discuss and indicate if your experience was positive or negative and if negative were you able to receive technical support or did you have to resort to other methods for registering your software.

ANYone who links to ANY site containing information about obtaining Game Maker ‘Pro’ without using the official Softwrap registration system will be banned from making future comments on GMNews.

The third YoYo Games competition on Co-operation is now closed. We had a record of 285 submissions, compared to 236 for the second competition and 199 for the first competition. Many submissions look great so we look forward to judging them.

We recommend everybody to play many of the submitted games. The creators deserve that. You can find the all here:

http://www.yoyogames.com/browse?tag=competition03

I also hope that many people will rate them fairly. Unfortunately we still notice that competition entries tend to be rated lower than other games. Maybe by (friends of) competitors? This is bad behavior and also completely uneffective as we do not take the rating into account when determining the winners. Please give these great games the ratings they derserve.

We cannot yet say when the winners will be known but we will keep you all posted. Also, you can soon expect the announcement for the next competition.

The third YoYo Games competition on Co-operation is now closed. We had a record of 285 submissions, compared to 236 for the second competition and 199 for the first competition. Many submissions look great so we look forward to judging them.

We recommend everybody to play many of the submitted games. The creators deserve that. You can find the all here:

http://www.yoyogames.com/browse?tag=competition03

I also hope that many people will rate them fairly. Unfortunately we still notice that competition entries tend to be rated lower than other games. Maybe by (friends of) competitors? This is bad behavior and also completely uneffective as we do not take the rating into account when determining the winners. Please give these great games the ratings they derserve.

We cannot yet say when the winners will be known but we will keep you all posted. Also, you can soon expect the announcement for the next competition.

The recently announced GMking blog has published a new post today, shedding some light on the ways their staff collaborates via instant messengers and other forms of communication.

The GMking staff is extremely geographically diverse, which makes communication and decision making processes much harder.  Many of our staff have an 8 hour or more time gap (which probably explains why some of us are such night-owls ;).).

The blog also has a few other posts to date detailing development of their projects.

Image via Wikipedia

The GMking staff is extremely geographically diverse, which makes communication and decision making processes much harder.  Many of our staff have an 8 hour or more time gap (which probably explains why some of us are such night-owls ).

How do we all stay in touch?  Easy!

• Google Chat, we all love it, and you should too.  If you have a GMail account it’s that poor little-used widget on the left side of your mailbox.  It also lets you talk to your AIM and ICQ buddies, should you have any
• Yahoo Mail has a similar feature, but for YIM and MSN contacts, which you could probably use if your team mainly used those services instead of Jabber/AIM/ICQ.
• Meebo is the all in one online instant messenger.  It supports ICQ, AIM, Jabber (GTalk too), MSN and YIM.  I use this quite often since I have a lot of contacts spread over many different networks, and I don’t want to suck up 2GB of ram with a dozen different clients (no one mention trillion!).
• Email comes in handy too, for when we need to reach someone who isn’t online just then.
• Staff Forums keep us all moving in the same director toward the same goals.

Overall, we don’t use any fancy silver-bullet solutions for our communication needs, we just apply what we already have, and use it to furnish our team environment.

Related articles you might find interesting…

• Slick IM for Windows Mobile
• Google to Connect to Other IM Networks Using Jabber Transports
• Google Talk And Windows Live Messenger 9 Get Friendly

One week after the launch of his first issue, Darren Poole has released the second of his GameMaker Weekly pdf magazine - on time and on schedule.

As well as community news the short newsletter style publication also features a review of puzzle game Elimod + Dagros.

Download GMWeekly issue 2 (left click).

Or - yet another attempt to flog CDs of GameMaker created games.

The team/person behind the project have rather aptly decided to name themselves “Pure Evil Productions” - bound, I’m sure, to inspire confidence in both game makers and game players.

The plan is for 100 GameMaker created games to be sold on a CD, with each game creator earning $0.35 (AUD) a sale.  This would mean the total minimum retail price of the CD would have to be at least $35 AUD (around 30USD, 20EUR, 17GBP), plus of course postage.

Or you could just download them, or very similar and probably more professional games, for free from numerous online freeware websites.

The fonts in Game Maker do not support Cyrillic characters or Hebrew, Arabic, Chinese or Japanese symbols. For users of the Pro Edition of Game Maker there is a rather easy way to achieve this though.

First you need a sprite that contains all the characters that you need as subimages. To this end go to the Windows Start menu, Choose Accessories/System Tools and start the Character Map. Find the correct collection of symbols you need and create a screenshot of them using some drawing program. For example you could create the following image of the hebrew symbols.

.

.

Now use the option to create a sprite from a strip to create a single sprite containing the symbols as subimages.

Next you need to use the function font_add_sprite(spr,first,prop,sep). This function creates a new font resource from a sprite. spr is the sprite that contains the symbols as subimages. first indicate the index of the first character in the sprite. For example, use ord(’A') to let the first character symbol correspond to the capital letter A. prop indicates whether the font is proportional. In a proportional font, for each character the width of the bounding box is used as the character width. Finally, sep indicates the amount of white space that must separate the characters horizontally. A typical value would lie between 2 and 8 depending on the font size. The function returns the id of the font.

To draw a text with the symbols, set the font, and next draw a text. using the correct letters. For example, here is a possible piece of code. (Of course normally you would only create the font resource once and use it at different places).

globalvar hebrewfont;
hebrewfont = font_add_sprite(spr_hebrew,ord('A'),true,2);
draw_set_font(hebrewfont);
draw_text(100,100,'ACGFEDS');

I hope this helps.

The fonts in Game Maker do not support Cyrillic characters or Hebrew, Arabic, Chinese or Japanese symbols. For users of the Pro Edition of Game Maker there is a rather easy way to achieve this though.

First you need a sprite that contains all the characters that you need as subimages. To this end go to the Windows Start menu, Choose Accessories/System Tools and start the Character Map. Find the correct collection of symbols you need and create a screenshot of them using some drawing program. For example you could create the following image of the hebrew symbols.

.

.

Now use the option to create a sprite from a strip to create a single sprite containing the symbols as subimages.

Next you need to use the function font_add_sprite(spr,first,prop,sep). This function creates a new font resource from a sprite. spr is the sprite that contains the symbols as subimages. first indicate the index of the first character in the sprite. For example, use ord(’A') to let the first character symbol correspond to the capital letter A. prop indicates whether the font is proportional. In a proportional font, for each character the width of the bounding box is used as the character width. Finally, sep indicates the amount of white space that must separate the characters horizontally. A typical value would lie between 2 and 8 depending on the font size. The function returns the id of the font.

To draw a text with the symbols, set the font, and next draw a text. using the correct letters. For example, here is a possible piece of code. (Of course normally you would only create the font resource once and use it at different places).

globalvar hebrewfont;
hebrewfont = font_add_sprite(spr_hebrew,ord('A'),true,2);
draw_set_font(hebrewfont);
draw_text(100,100,'ACGFEDS');

I hope this helps.

It is time to give out awards to the Shade Prototyping challenge!

Every prototyping challenge I release is a grand exploration of a particular gaming system. The concept often sounds coherent on paper, but in reality it is composed of a series of small experiments involving movement, pacing, emergence and more. After every prototype, it is worth sorting through the experiments and seeing which ones are worth investing in further and which ones should be left behind.

Game design is a process, not a bolt of lightening from the blue. You build an experiment, reinvest in the things that work and try to fix the things that are broken. After iteration upon iteration, the game emerges. In this spirit, these awards are not the end of the Shade project, but instead are an opportunity to identify the next steps.

Even in these simple prototypes, Shade shows promise as a game concept. It just needs pass upon pass of polish to turn into something glorious.


Bronze awards
First, the bronze awards. These go out to the wonderful souls that made a game.

Of great interest was the fact that most people attempted 2D implementations of the concept. This makes sense considering the wide availability of 2D tools and skills on the market. Now that I have a better understanding of the dynamics of the game, I may release an updated version of the challenge in the future that includes a set of 2D graphics and a tweaked design that allows for an easier 2D implementation.

• Mobeamer: http://battleforcesonline.com/shrooms.php
• Lubos: http://img110.imageshack.us/img110/7751/img0001ma5.jpg
• Leonardo: http://prdownloads.sourceforge.net/apocalyx/MushRide-lua-0.9.3.zip?download
• c berube: http://www.thewasabiproject.com/shade-and-shrooms/
• ben: (I'm having difficulty with this one since it keeps telling me I have a corrupt zip) http://www.myfamilyline.info/programming/Shade.zip

Silver award
We had one Silver award this time around.


The silver goes to Aras Pranckevicius for his lovely 3D implementation of Shade using Unity. I got a solid 5 minutes of fun out of his prototype and lots of ideas on what to do next. You can play it here:

• http://aras-p.info/projShaduShrooms.html

Without further ado, let's get into a critique of the game as it stands now. I'll be use Aras's prototype as the baseline since it include a large number of interesting experiments in action.

Moments of genuine fun
First we'll start with the elements that were distinctly enjoyable. These are seeds that can be extended much further. You always want to try to identify these dynamics early since they can act as a focal point that guides the project. When you start cutting experiments, knowing where the core fun lies can help prioritize your culling.

1) Searching for the perfect mushroom is exciting: I had a surprisingly enjoyable time finding a good sized mushroom to take back to the drop point. Scarcity emerged as a major theme of the game. Potential improvements that can focus in on this include:

• Increase the types and varieties of mushrooms. The act of finding something valuable in the scarce wilderness has all the hallmarks of a hugely addicting activity.
  
• Create different growing cycles: Have some rare ones grow slowly or only grow quickly in the presence of other plants. If the player harvests them all at once, they are gone. This adds a resource management element to the game the reinforces the sense of scarcity and value.

2) The dynamically changing world is exciting. I didn't know where a mushroom might appear. In an early prototype, mushrooms would grow in the shadow of other mushrooms. The fact that the world was living and growing was immensely satisfying.

• Implement Munchers and Bushes: These will add immensely to the gameplay by creating a dynamic ecosystem.
• AI Seed transporters: Add simple AI driven characters that pick up seeds and move them to new locations will very quickly create amazing patterns. For example, one type of seed transporter might move small mushrooms 2 feet away from any other mushroom. Another might move seeds into the shadow of a smaller object. These simple rules will create all sorts of interesting patterns.
• Vary the sizes of elements: Have some objects the grow very large. These will dynamically change the landscape over time and in turn create a wildly varying shadowscape.
• Add more elements that grow in the shadows: The patterns that came about from mushrooms growing in the shadow of mushrooms was one of the more interesting emergent properties of the simulation. It was cool! Combined with a moving sun, all sorts of interesting hedges should pop up.

Moments of potential fun
The following elements were intellectually interesting, but didn't quite leave me as entertained as I was hoping. This is quite common and just means that you need to invest a little further in the idea.

3) Jumping from shadow to shadow: It was interesting picking my way back through the 'shadowscape' of the level. A journey back to home base where I needed to precisely plan my movements gave the mushroom hunting experience a nice tension. However, in the prototype level there were a lot of sunlit areas and relatively small obstacles. As such the decisions made on the return journey weren't that interesting. Some improvements

• Bigger, more maze like obstacles: I notice that when I'm walking around outside, I often have to make a distinct choice: should I got left around a large building sitting in my path or right? I rarely remember the future shadow terrain on each side of the building so I end up making a short term decision to reach the easiest shade. This often hurts me in the long run.
  
  By adding bigger obstacles that take time to navigate and that block off other options, the player is asked to make movement decisions that have a cost. In the best of worlds, players will find themselves jumping from shadow to shadow only to end up further and further from their goal. Some will heroically find their way back. Others will remember their failure and carefully plot out the terrain the next time around. Either way, it creates more meaningful decisions.
  
• More contiguous areas of shadow: Taller objects would help as would objects that are skinny at the base and bulbous on top like trees. The amount of shadows is something you'll need to balance for.
  
• Hungry monsters: The tension can be ramped up by including shambling monsters that move towards you when you have a mushroom in tow. Normally, they can be quite docile and may not even move. But as soon as you get a mushroom, they turn red and make their way towards you. One touch and your mushroom loses extra power. This adds some tactical and time-based pressure to your shadow picking steps.

4) Mini Map
The minimap solves an important problem: How do I find my way back home. However, it also removes a bit of the tension that comes from wandering and finding new paths.

• Use a beacon system instead: Instead of a mini-map, a directional highlight like the ones used in Shadow of the Colossus or Knytt would do the trick quite nicely. A little glow at the edge of the screen or a compass that always points towards home help orient the player, but don't give away the terrain.
  

Things that didn't quite pan out
The following are things that didn't quite work and I don't see useful ways of making them a key part of the experience.

5) Gathering long strings of mushrooms: Once you start gathering long strings of mushrooms it becomes hard to keep them out of the sunlight. I noticed that as soon as I gathered more than one mushroom, I would simply zip to the goal as fast as humanly possible and ignore all tactical decisions. This is an example of a fun idea that actually reduces the complexity of the rest of the game.

Conclusion
The prototyping challenge doesn't really end until someone creates a game worthy of a gold award. So far gold is still within reach. There are some extremely promising mechanics at play in the shade prototype and I'm open to discussing and iterating on further tweaks if anyone wants to take the design further. Feel free to post to this thread if you come up with something cool. Who is going to grab the first ever gold award in Lost Garden history?

For inspiration, I leave you with this simple game that also uses some of the growing ecosystem elements we see hints of in successful Shade prototypes. It was built in 48 hours and easily has more than 15 minutes of game play. If this fellow can find hours of fun in a short prototyping exercise, I'm convinced that you can take your existing Shade prototypes and turn them into something wonderful.

• Breaking the Tower: http://www.mojang.com/notch/ld12/breaking/
  

Best wishes,
Danc.

Peter Hopkins recently wrote an article about the first issue of Nintendo Power in celebration of the magazine's 20th birthday, which can be read...

For a third time in three days, the YoYo Games glog has been updated with yet another post.

It reads,

The deadline for the third YoYo Games competition is quickly approaching. You have only four more days to submit your entries. We hope that we will see a number of interesting additional submissions. Checkout the Competition page for details. Please realize that the deadline is strict. Last time we extended the deadline because of the problems caused by the server move, but that is not the plan this time.

So there you have it, your last chance to submit a game so don’t miss out. For everyone else, click here for a list of participating games for you to check out and rate.

-

In other news, GMSchool, a community forum to help Game Maker users is starting to take a turn for the worse. The previously popular message board, is becoming increasingly bare with some forums having no posts in months. Due to the lack of recent support, the owner of the forum is unable to continue funding the community and therefore will not be able to make the required annual payments for forum licensing and hosting costs to maintain the site.

As a result, the community is going to be moved back to Invision Free (a free forum hosting service) where ShadePlay23, the owner of the board, hopes the forum will gain some attention and pick-up it’s popularity once again.

It seems that after months of complaining about the lack of updates, the team at YoYo Games have decided to act to put a stop to it. With three updates in the space of three days, is this a taste of things to come?

20th August :: Competition Deadline Approaching

The deadline for the third YoYo Games competition is quickly approaching. You have only four more days to submit your entries. We hope that we will see a number of interesting additional submissions. Checkout the Competition page for details. Please realize that the deadline is strict. Last time we extended the deadline because of the problems caused by the server move, but that is not the plan this time…

19th August :: A New Wiki

As some of you might have noticed already, since today we have a new wiki on the YoYo Games website. The new wiki uses the familiar MediaWiki. All existing entries in the old wiki have been converted to the new wiki. The YoYo Games team is still working on some aspects of the wiki (like missing links and formatting issues) but that should all be settled soon…

18th August :: Glogs Have Been Merged

We have merged the YoYo Games Glog with Mark’s Glog on game design. This new glog will be the place where you will find any news you want regarding YoYo Games, Game Maker, designing games, and hopefully a lot more. We plan to post here a lot more often than in the past. We also upgraded to a much newer version fo the WordPress software allowing for many new nice features…

Enjoy the updates. At this rate, I have a feeling that we won’t be seeing as many in coming weeks.

The deadline for the third YoYo Games competition is quickly approaching. You have only four more days to submit your entries. We hope that we will see a number of interesting additional submissions. Checkout the Competition page for details. Please realize that the deadline is strict. Last time we extended the deadline because of the problems caused by the server move, but that is not the plan this time.

If you do not submit an entry you are encouraged to play and rate the games. You can see all games at the page:

http://www.yoyogames.com/browse?tag=competition03

We are currently thinking about the next competition and will announce the theme in the near future.

Mark Overmars

The deadline for the third YoYo Games competition is quickly approaching. You have only four more days to submit your entries. We hope that we will see a number of interesting additional submissions. Checkout the Competition page for details. Please realize that the deadline is strict. Last time we extended the deadline because of the problems caused by the server move, but that is not the plan this time.

If you do not submit an entry you are encouraged to play and rate the games. You can see all games at the page:

http://www.yoyogames.com/browse?tag=competition03

We are currently thinking about the next competition and will announce the theme in the near future.

Mark Overmars

Some people wonder how to make movement in their RPG games. And I'm sure some people would love to make it RuneScape-style. Well, now you can. And by the way, this document is pretty easy to understand.