Global Game Jam 2011 Retrospective

This past weekend I participated in my second Global Game Jam. This year the theme was “Extinction”. Zach, the pogrammer I worked with, and myself, both managed to come up with a similar idea that was essentially instead of extinction of a species, or a planet, we came up with the extinction of the entire universe. Thus, we made “Big Crunch”

Made using Flixel, Big Crunch is a platforming game with a very simple premise. The universe is collapsing around you. You must run through the collapsing universe, dodging pits and falling blocks smashing into platforms in order to reach a warp in space-time known as the nexus of the universe. This will allow you to escape the dying universe and enter another one. Unfortunately that universe is also collapsing, so you must run again. It’s kind of like “Sliders” only everyone dies at the end.

Gameplay is very simple, only involving running and jumping (and occassionally double jumping) but that’s mostly due to how hectic the game is.

In the background, tiles are coming off revealing static beneath. In front of that are more objects and particles flying through space, and in the foreground tiles are smashing into platforms, creating holes and debris. So really you have enough to worry about with just running and jumping.

The game randomizes between 5-7 different tilesets to keep things visually interesting, and also randomly determines if you’re going to run left or right to get through the level (indicated helpfully by a pointing hand at the start of the level). We also had planned to have the player possibly have to ascend or descend through a level to escape, but descending would be too easy and ascending would be too hard we felt, so we left it out.

We also weren’t able to add more background elements to make things more interesting, which is really the only thing I can think of that we could have put in had we more time. Well that and maybe me making a walk cycle for the player character that doesn’t look really silly, and a screen explaining the controls.

If you’d like to play the game you can download it from either the Global Game Jam page for Big Crunch here, or just download the standalone executable from my dropbox here. Since we omitted info about the controls, I’ll repost them here to help people.

Run: Left and Right Arrow Keys
Jump: Up Arrow Key
Double Jump (half power of regular jump): Up Arrow Key while in the air.

I hope you enjoy the game as much as Zach and I enjoyed making it. Personally I can’t wait until the next Boston-area Game Jam, whenever that may be, and I’m definetely looking forward to Game Jam 2012. I just hope the theme isn’t “The Apocalypse” for that one.

Not Much to Look At: Slush Fund dev blog

So slush fund is slowly taking shape. I have the basic geometry from the BLU spawn to the first capture point mapped out. So here are some screenshots. There’s not much to see really, especially since there were some nodraw surfaces i hadn’t properly edited out, but I figure I should at least show something of a progress report.

Basically the map is evoking the feel of a small alpine town, with a bank serving as the first capture point. Like i said, not much to look at now, but that will change. currently I’m sculpting the displacement cliffs since I’m running into a bit of a creative block in terms of what the interior of the RED base will look like.

Contesting and Testing

Just a quick little progress update. I have most of the floor plan of my new control point map for the contest (code-named “Slush Fund” right now) plotted out. It’s not much to look at so there aren’t going to be any screenshots for a bit. I do plan to have at least some preliminary screens by the end of this week, however.

Possible Changing of Gears ahead

TF2maps.net is holding a 5 month design contest for a control-point map in TF2. I am heavily considering entering it (it only started a week ago). I’m seriously considering entering the contest since I’ve had a couple ideas for Control Point maps rattling about in my mind. As such of course this would mean I’d have to put Server Farms on the backburner. So ultimately that means I’ll have to leave Server Farms as-is and come back to it later, while starting from square one with a control-point map.