Greetings to all contestants!
Unfortunately I had no time to enter this contest with anything good from me, but I checked all your demos and here comes my massive feedback list like I do everytime users are forced to vote for a contest
I reviewed them in alphabetical order for no special reasons and I am sorry if some of my reviews seem to be personal. Don't take it so, it just reflects my own personal oppinion and especially in regards to the other contestants and what they did or maybe even not… so, let this long post begin.
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A3 ToolsThis project is really great! No one ever would hit the idea to write a converter for a raycaster engine (A3, rest in peace) to Gamestudio A8 - except Firoball! Maybe he is one of the last men on earth that are delighted by those forgotten A3 pearls and their ravishing beauty. Yes, beauty. Did you ever played Doom 2? Shame on you if you didn't! - All the more suprising that he finally did it. I was partly involved in this project and I picked up on his rants and how he went nuts about triangulizing those meshes. He did a great job and I think even if he says that this was just a toy project for him - the way he creates those entity meshes dynamically and assigns the correct UV maps are of great usefulness for everyone who is interested in procedural content creation, I believe. Especially the tringulization code for arbitrary shapes are of great interest for some of us, I think. After Four Little Warriors I'm glad that you finished the next big one, boy
it is good to know that you sticked to the tried and true!
AssaultA decent multiplayer shooter entry and what I like the most, is that Painkiller chose the 3rd person camera as viewport, this adds a lot to the feeling of the game. The game itself is a bit limited - I had only the chance to create a game with me the only one in the level, so I can not judge the multiplayer component. Remarkable is the setting, some things don't fit together (like the plants and the trees) but the rest is very well done. I really like the lights and shadows of the interior, the light shafts and the halos. Some bugs are present which should be fixed in the meanwhile (halos shining through the player, wrong decals on the blue car while shooting it, z-sorting erros, mesh glitches in the walls) but what bugged me most was the stuttering camera and / or the player collision while running / jumping. This is extremely important in multiplayer games, as well as a high fps - I got some slowdowns while I was running through the inner tunnels and I wondered why. But these are only small things to take care about (though, the collision/stuttering is an issue) and for what it is, it has a high quality, I like it. If you had AI bots in it, you could have scored better in my ranks
My advice: go for it and keep on improving it to make it solid and fun!
Box2D pluginBox2D was always on my horizon. I thought, that if I ever realize one of my rare 2(.5)D-only game ideas, I would port it and use it for the physics stuff. I guess, you can even do everything shown in the demo with the PhysX system now integrated in A8, but, hell, I really like Box2D and it's approach. I am not familiar with the original Box2D distribution, but what I don't like is that you have to put so much effort into creating sophisticated 2D (!) physics models, just look at the source of the ragdoll example. Though, this is not related to the great work Rajoelison Andry Herizo, but this could be a challenge for anybody else, to creat an editor for this! I really like this kind of contribution and I also believe, that Gamestudio really could benefit from a similar testbed with several physics demos for all that cool and new stuff, which is possible with PhysX.
G.R.U.N.T.S.Okay, G.R.U.N.T.S. has been hyped before and it was absolutely logical that it enters the contest, so I expect nothing less than a mind blowing game from ingenious Spike, dude! The starting video sequence was nice, haha… but then, blackout. Only mysterious music and.. dark void, nothing worked (neither ESC nor ALT+ENTER nor the task manager). Too bad! I was a bit annoyed and I tried again… and… it -IS- absolutely MIND BLOWING. I always thought, that it is only driven by the visuals, you see.. all black and white, aliasing, minimalistic assets. And yes, it looks good. But what I like most is that it FEELS good. The whole atmosphere, the sounds, the driving beat in sector 1 and especially the announcements by either the speaker (that woman) and the player fit in very well and create an atmosphere which slighty makes me feel uncomfortable in the one place, creates an adventures environment to explore and, especially the taunts are also very funny, haha
despite the poor enemy design, the whole level design is superb, especially the puzzles. Seriously, I ran about 8 to 12 times in that square-mini-maze until I figured out to run in the counter-clockwise order to get into the next room… very well done! Spike, this is really, really good!!
PathfinderdemoThis should serve as a component which could be integrated into any existing game and the author has put a lot of effort into making a testbed, in which the provided algorithms are being showcased. Unfortunately, I was able to design obstacles in which the generated paths were going through them. I know that Ivan Stummer has put a lot of effort into this, but I don't think that this will be any useful in any game. Especially, because node based pathfinding is for a good reason not used in todays games anymore, newer pathfinding schemes like navigation meshes are more interesting, stable and provide better results.
Rail-shooterThe project's name itself arouse many hopes in me, because I really enjoy classic rail shooters. Then I read the authors name.. Rene Pol,… this is a Realspawn game! DUDE!! That was cool. My expectations were at that point very high. Too bad, that he missed an EXE and a readme, so, I jumped into the game without knowing what I could expect, slightly disappointed because of the above reasons, but who cares, so lets play it… (me playing the game)… OK, I'm back. I'm disappointed, sorry, Realspawn. The camera is just moving on the X,Y or Z axis, some models are moved from left to right and... thats it. Okay, this contest is called "create something"-contest, and anybody is free to submit anything, but… come on. You can do it way better!
SchutzkontaktSchutzkontakt is a game which we have sawn here a long time ago and there was already a superb demo out, Torsten Fock and his team did a great job on this, so I was excited, if I experience a more polished version or new stuff and extras, enemies, whatever or both
I was not able to finish the game due to missing ammo at some point, but what I have seen is what I already saw and for about this contest this entry is amongst the best ones. Too bad, that the communication avatars in the upper right corner were not updated to a speaking or more good looking ones and that the speech was not adapted to english speech, which could have made it more accessible to the english users here. I really like this game and I hope, that Torsten will continue/finish this one sometime in the future. Go for it!!
Shade-C DemoOkay, to be honest: I was never a fan of this super-über-shader-collection-in-a-box. This is not related e.g. to the fact, that I am working, similar to Wolfgang, on a SSAO solution. It is just a matter of principle (that is also why I don't like that those new engine shaders, HDR and PSSM, are so tied to the camera-view.. but that is another story). Other than that: the demo is just awesome! I was very suprised that with all shaders on I have such a stable and high framerate on my notebook, very very cool! It were be nice if Wolfgang had provided the sources (I just think: if the demo is stable, why not showing the source.. or do you want to sell it?) so that we can watch, how easy it is to integrate it, but other than that the shaders are making it plain beautiful - for an indoor scene. If Shade-C provides the same quality (especially e.g. with foliages) in an outdoor or hybrid level, I will maybe change my mind
Many Kudos to Dexsoft for the fantastic artwork, it really looks great.
Simon's GhostThe game Simon's Ghost from Badapple is nice and fun to play. Hmkay, the toy itself is already fun to play, so, the game itself lends from it.. whatever
it's fun, that is important
I think, that this is a good example for many beginners how to do an easy game and expecially doing very first steps with Gamestudio - while creating a game, that is fun. Good entry!
The GurbWoooot!! The game is made with the free version and it is absolutely… COOL! Nice intro, nice beats, nice models, nice levels… and wow, and a cool idea… hahaha!
I really like it. Though, it was too hard for me, I always died! Nothing left to say, this is a great game, though the difficulty could be a less lower!
The Hero BiographyI just was not able to play the game (during unpacking the archive some files went wrong, I think they had chinese filenames or so… that didn't made it), even though I was very excited to play this one! Sorry!!
Transport GeniusIt took a while to compile this list of paragraphs about every game and I read here and there that everyone likes Transport Genius, so my expectations were high. But they were soon disappointed. OK, to be honest: I expected something similar to the game Transport Tycoon.. does anyone know this game? It is really cool, tile based and Transport Genius shares maybe the same thoughts behind it. Though, very bad adopted. First: Even if your GUI is very minimalistic, please don't provide buttons for actions the user can not take. "This function is not supported in the demo"… this accounts for almost all buttons! I can't build streets. What the? I just can build railways and stations. But the placement of rails is so poorly done.. I had two villages (one house, one street per village?!) and wanted to connect them with a railway. So, I build two stations there. First of all: since I was not able to adjust the orientation of the stations I had to build a S-shaped railway from station A to station B, both stations approx. 10km away from each other. The build-mode for rails is so poorly done so that I was NOT able to connect them! It was NOT possible. So, I didn't had much fun with this. I even thought "Ok, lets play a scenario, I saw that in the menu, maybe the missions are so well done that they fit the uncomplete prototype and maybe I will have fun with this"… fail! "This function is not supported in this demo". Come on. But the credits are implemented! Yay!! This is not a game, not even a prototype, it is all messed up. I'm sorry if this sounds to harsh, but you could have done way better. Though, if you would had implemented the "This function is not supported in this demo" message for the EXIT button, I would have been rolling on the floor laughing and I swear I would have given you my vote just because that were be so ironic that it would have made my day. But it didn't. Too bad. Nevertheless: go for it! Look back into Transport Tycoon from MicroProse and see what you can do better. Seriously.
Wicked Starbase DefenseLets analyze the title first. Wicked. Starbase. Defense. Ok, sounds like a tower defense game in space. Could be fun, but how does the author handle the nature of 3D space, or is he going the Star Trek Armada way of arranging everything on a "virtual" plane in space?? And what about the "wicked"… Translating "wicked" to german dict.cc gives me a lot of very mean and vicious word meanings. Hmnn… either the game is evil to me as player (which means I don't like it in the end) or it is so absolutely challenging that it is a really good game. Nah… lets play it… (me playing that wicked game)… Hey, that was cool! It was not a tower defense game in that sense, but it was cool! And not so wicked! But cool!!! Hehe… I think the graphics could need an extensive overhaul (seriously), but alltogether the game itself was complete, offered a nice range of weapons and scenarios with increasing difficulty. Though, maybe you could redo the statistics and buy panels, they offer way too much information, I think
nevertheless, I really like this entry and it shows again, that even such simple game ideas can transform into a great Gamestudio game!
Xtreme DoubleOkay, this is like Assault a multiplayer game which I wasn't able to play since I was a bit alone… and, in comparison to Assault, this one is weaker. Especially because nothing (really, nothing) fits together. The level, the standard.wad textures and the music… brahh… ikes! Also, the movement is also jerky and very... "not well done"… comparing these two multiplayer contestants and under the assumption that the actual multiplayer mode works for both games (as I said, I was not able to play them properly against others), Assault is the better game. Compared to the other (working, hint hint) games, this is maybe also the weakest entry.
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OK, this were my reviews and it took longer to compile them as I have thought, initially, but it was very important to me to give everyone a solid feedback. I was especially impressed by the great amount of contestant. My vote, by the way, goes to one of my good ol' 3DGS fellas here
not just because we like each other, but I think he has done such a great job, so that he really deserves it!
Best regards,
-Christian
They were no hired voters. It's so: My game is very popular in an other forum. The user's there wish me all the best for the contest. So far, so good... but most of them also want to do something active... they like the game, so they want to vote for the game. But I'm not sure, if this is allowed, so I still keep them away from that idea, until I know it surely. I hope thats easier to understand.
