Blender Game Making Contest 15 | Theme.

Hi all, it seems a lot of people are already ready for the next Blender Game Making Contest.

What is BGMC?

The Blender Game Making Contest is a chance for people to make a Blender game in a week, it’s a good opportunity to try out game ideas which you’ve been thinking about but didn’t have the motivation to try. It’s great for learning new things, and a really great chance to field a finished game (for some people, BGMC is the first time they’ve ever finished a game!). You get to experience player feedback, bug fixing, developing a game to a schedule and many other skills which are essential for a game developer.

BGMC 15 will run for 9 days, during this time you can devote 7 days to making a game. If you like you can use the extra days for either getting feedback and fixing errors (after making it), or planning your game (before making it).

It will run from a Saturday to the following Sunday, final date TBA.

The winner will be decided by community vote, basically, the most popular game wins.

This thread is to find out which of the possible themes are more popular, and to find out if anyone has a particular week during February when they can’t take part. Also to see who would like to join the contest. :slight_smile:

Here are the possible themes:

1.Blender-Beat-em-up. (Not many games like this on blender artists, but maybe thats because they are unpopular. Do we hate em?).

2.*Girl’s Games. (These days many gamers are female, but game developers continue to ignore like 50% of the population. Make a game your sister, girlfriend, daughter, mum or wife would like to play. What do they like? Maybe you need to do some market research, always a good idea for a game developer).

3.Big Stompy Robots (Always popular since the dawn of video games, titanfall, mechwarrior, armored core, etc…)

4.Spectrum 48k (my first computer is about to be rereleased with all its original games. I’m not suggesting any graphics restrictions like the last few BGMCs but rather the type of game from that era. Games like treasure island dizzy or frogger would be great canidates for a week long game contest, of course updated with modern graphics. Commodore 64 games or similar could be included).

Please vote for the theme you find interesting, or have an idea for a game for.

(*When I thought of the “Girl’s Games” category, I had this webcomic strip in mind. What I mean is, if you were going to stick a ponytail on Doom 3, how would you go about it? What I really don’t mean is something likeTHIS! :frowning: )

There aren’t going to be any graphical constraints this time, but as usual you have to make the thing in a week, using stuff you make yourself, or things that have been uploaded in the Blender Artists Resources Forum.

If you don’t have a lot of time you can try out some software that people often use for short game jams, such as:
Auto tracker- a script for automatically generating music.
CFXR - a tool for automatically generating sound effects.
Spritely - A tool for auto generating simple sprites from the web.

Once a date and theme is decided I’ll be making a thread where you can ask any questions, get some more information and find some inspiration for you contest entry.

There’s a poll on this thread, but it might not show up on th mobile site (it doesn’t on my phone) so please check out the thread on the desk top site and vote for your favorite theme. Looks like stompy robots is winning so far. But quite a lot of votes for beat em ups. :slight_smile:

I already have an idea for Big Stompy Robots, and would be keen for that or the interesting-sounding Girls Games.
As for dates, I start uni for the year on the 23rd, so before then would be best.

I hope so games like http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_by_Degrees and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yakuza_2 are counted as Beat’em up!

robots sound very good.

PS:
i image a game with many NPC robots, that want kill the player… the player can be also a tank.

is in theme?

Attachments


Great to see the comp back so soon! :smiley:

The robot theme sounds great, they’re going to be a challenge to model/animate though. Already have an idea of what to make…

I actually ended up voting for Beat 'em Ups, though they’re both guaranteed to be great learning experiences!

EDIT: Answering to the proceeding post, week 3 (as Agoose said) sounds good!
I’m not very busy these days, so any week is fine.

It’s looking like Robots is going to be the most popular.
Which is better for people, the first, second or third week of February?

Of course, for beat’ em up fans, there’s no reason not to make a robot beat’ em up…

The third week is better for me :slight_smile:

Actually, it is hard to desire, anyways, I don’t know when I have the most region olympiades in school… i think, so it’s not metter. However, I don’t thonk so week will be enaugh for me, as I am 14 and my parents limit me a lot(the best way would be to make it like monday, wednesday, thursday, friday, saturday, monday, wednesday, as I am back in home from music school only at 20:00 in tuesdays, but I have been dispermitted to use blender in sundays:D Is that option possible, as it still contains week?

I think I will make a survival game with robots apocalypse, where player should make barricades to protect him self, shoot robots and survive as long as he can.

How about a girl game about big stompy robots fighting all within the constraints of the Spectrun 48k?

Sounds impossible. Anyway, usually girl game means some kind of puzzle game(I am according to my mother and grandmother), altought they also like games like resident evil or tekken:D

Actually, it is hard to desire, anyways, I don’t know when I have the most region olympiades in school… i think, so it’s not metter. However, I don’t thonk so week will be enaugh for me, as I am 14 and my parents limit me a lot(the best way would be to make it like monday, wednesday, thursday, friday, saturday, monday, wednesday, as I am back in home from music school only at 20:00 in tuesdays, but I have been dispermitted to use blender in sundays:D Is that option possible, as it still contains week?

Any combination of 7 days within the time should be permitted. Lots of people are busy, so it’s important to be flexible.
I’d like to increase the time to two weeks and let people choose 7 days within those two weeks, but I fear that many people might become too complacent about the time limit and end up not finishing the game. When you’ve only got a week, it really foces you to knuckle down and get something finished, even if it’s not 100% as good as you would like.

About themes:

Remember, a theme doesn’t have to restrict you you the normal tropes of that Genre.

I’m thinking of making a robot game for my son based on his favorite TV show:

Robots can be cute, and they don’t have to have guns. :slight_smile:

Likewise, a beat 'em up could be a scrolling combat game like streets of rage or double dragon:

Girl’s games don’t have to be candy crush. How about adventure games like the old Lucas Arts games, where conversation and interaction is more important than having a big gun? Or dance games like Just Dance? Or singing games?
In the resources section, Youle has posted some useful tools to bring voice recognition and sound input to the BGE.

Or if you don’t want to do a remake for the zx spectrum, how about doing a demake? Like this one:

Doom128k

Will the competition start at 8th Feb?

Pretty sure the 3rd week would be from the 15th - 21st.


Also, anyone else seeing this?


It’s all white and stuff… even the bar above the reply box is all jacked up.
Is it supposed to be like this?

I think it’s because you have the BA: light theme selected


You can change it at the bottom of the page with the little drop down selection thing.

No! It might be browser fault, but pay attention at edges of the screenshot- it is dark theme. And I tested light theme- all looks good in that theme. I bet so that’s browser or internet connection fault…

I don’t think,there is a difference between a girl game, and a dude game,

My grandma loves Tetris, but I had a girlfriend that loved Teken and Soul calibur

Yeah… My mum like Resident evil, Tekken, Death by Degrees, Worms and others. Actually, theese are also ones of my favourite games!:smiley:

I AM using Dark Theme, not that it really matters though.

On the current topic, I’ve been trying to get my mom into Animal Crossing… hasn’t worked yet.
My grandmother played lots of games though, mostly Crash Bandicoot and Donkey Kong Country!