SyntaxBomb - Indie Coders

We have our winners

Congratulations to everyone that took part

The top three winners are :

		1st place winner :   Title : Axonite   Author : iWasAdam   Link : Take me there   Vote points : 1st = 5 | 2nd = 0 | 3rd = 2 ( Total = 550 )
		2nd place winner :   Title : The Running Van   Author : STEVIE G   Link : Take me there   Vote points : 1st = 3 | 2nd = 0 | 3rd = 5 ( Total = 425 )
		3rd place winner :   Title : Tommy Gunn   Author : Xerra   Link : Take me there   Vote points : 1st = 2 | 2nd = 3 | 3rd = 0 ( Total = 350 )

How was the scoring done :

1st place awarded 100 points
2nd place awarded 50 points
3rd place awarded 25 points

Complete voting breakdown :




Winners, PM me your PayPal address and I'll magic over your winnings ( Many thanks to Qube, Xerra and GarborD for their donations )

Xerra has very kindly donated a brand new C64 mini to the winner ( or 2nd / 3rd place depending ). Please PM Xerra to arrange delivery.

There was only one prize money donation ( thanks GarborD ) ( excluding Qube ) which makes a total pot of £200 + C64 mini

Comments about the games ( if sent with voting ) :

iWasAdam :

1. TommyGunn
This was the game I had the most fun with. maybe a bit sparse but it was engaging both visually and sonically. Not long, but what was there was well used. I would like to see what could be done with this as a concept piece, and made into a full game. Very enjoyable \o/

2. CandyPop
Absolute superb presentation. in some ways the game itself was the let down. although visually is was stunning, Definitely NOT a candy crush clone, but maybe could have been reworked to give it a slightly different feel and better gameplay.

3. RunningVan
Another stonker from StevieG. Sonically the music and sound all went together with the visuals. I was expecting some chatter with the babes and presenter but didn't get any ;( A great game if you like this sort of thing. in some ways I would have liked to see something slightly different as this is very close to StevieG's other games. I know he's got the chops... I want to see what else is hiding in his cold cabinet...

4. Starblock
Yep a solid entry. nothing I haven't seen or played before. music was hyper annoying so i quickly turned that off. Game play was as expected. a suggestion would be to go back to basics and find some form of gameplay that really hooks you and use all the graphics skills to flesh it out well

5. Treasures
Although well presented and played smoothly. There were a loads of controls which sort of spoiled things pushing a solid entry into the 'should have thought more about simple controls first'. The amount of control just ended up getting in the way. a suggestion would be to look back at classic arcade games like bubble bobble and especially solomons key. They show how to use 4 directions and 1 or 2 buttons to maximum effect.

my thoughts in general were graphically every entry really stepped things up a notch. sonically was where things didn't go too smoothly. particularly some badly chosen music that just didn't do the games any justice. StevieG used music that fit with the game the style and the story. Xerra chose to use effects and not use a music track - this worked very well.

It does point that more care should be used when picking music for games. just because you can have music playing doesn't mean it's going to make your game better - in some cases it can ruin an otherwise ok game.

I have no idea where people sources their graphics and sound. but care should also taken with any bought in graphics that the whole thing doesn't become some sort of asset flip.

Having amazing graphics and a poor game is a sort of indication that more time should be taken with the core concepts. I know it is a trap that I have repeatedly fallen into.

But great fun was had with all the entries and kudos to everyone who took part


Xerra

Axonite
-------
My game of the competition. I put quite a bit of time into playing through this and moaning about bugs. I bought Xenon 2 way back when I was 21 and had many days playing it all those years ago. I never did complete it though but really loved the game. This was a throwback to those days again. Although I'm too bloody old to ever imagine being that young again. Great fun and this was an easy 1st place choice for me.


CandyPop
--------
I helped Aaron out with testing this game so I'm not voting for it in the spirit of the competition. In all honesty I wouldn't have had it in my top three despite it being a good effort, as I thought the gameplay was lacking compared to the games I am voting for.


Starblock De Pon
----------------
Interesting game name.

Not hot on the title music but like the stars in the background.

Looks pretty enough, even though the colours are pretty garish to me. Then again I'm the kind of bloke who won't wear anything unless it's dark coloured so these kind of colour schemes are never going to appeal to me.

Small window to play the game in. I know - Parallels on Mac running on a stupid hi-resolution. Upscaling the window to full screen width does make it a huge blur that gives me a headache. That's more my poor eyesight and the colour scheme possibly, however.

Game over is too harsh. It's over before you have the top line occupied but I did think the power meter letting you erase a few lines was a cool idea.

At the end of the day this is a rehash of Tetris with the difference being changing the blocks colour pattern while it's still moveable and removing the rotation mechanism. I think that takes away one of the most fun elements and replaces it with one that doesn't work quite as well. Triss was a competition game a couple of years back that did something new with Tetris and made it even more interesting because of it. As nicely presented as this is, I do prefer the original game.


The Running Van
---------------
Really like the music for this game.

The multiple chars on the title screen looked a bit odd as they are all talking at the same time.

Playing the game with a mouse seemed alien to me but I tried it anyway and I actually feel it works really well. I'm a bit uncomfortable doing it as I'd never play a game like this normally that way but I was able to last for a couple of mins without issues playing that way on first game. Very nice to see that the game caters for mouse/keys and gamepad. Covering all the bases is always a good idea although when you select keyboard I shouldn't still need to use the mouse for navigating the menu and options.

The vehicles moving around seems to have been done really well. They slide around in pursuit of you but don't cheat, and the rules of friction, slowing down and sliding hinder them as much as you. AI is spot on for this as so many games you feel are cheating as the game gets harder by making them less affected by these things than the player. It feels great when you trick two enemy vehicles into hitting each other.

Procedurally generated levels give the game a random element that makes it interesting each time you have another go, as you don't know what to expect and it's nice to have the option to use the arena you last played in, should you want to.

I dithered and dithered with deciding between this and treasures for second place and I had to go with treasures as there's a bit more variety, with multiple levels, puzzles. It was a tough choice, though.


Treasures of Terphozen
----------------------
Striking graphics on this game. Liked the style of the whole package.

20 levels to play - I think I got to 7 so another game to pick up on later to try and finish.

Didn't like the controls at first but gradually got used to them. I was advised a while back to avoid using control and shift keys for any kind of input as sticky keys can be a pain in the butt, if it's not turned off. As I was playing on Mac it also had the added bonus of shifting screens away whenever I tried to jump a hole but Parallels has a game mode where it disables all that, so I was able to play it just fine in the end. This, of course, is not the fault of the game as it is windows only, but worth mentioning because of the potential sticky keys issue.

I watched a play through of some of the levels of this game before playing it myself because sometimes it's easier to get a good look at what's going on in the game when you're not just focussed on working through it. Frankly I'm boggled at how you managed to get it all done in two months. I really enjoyed playing it as well. And that's the most important bit really.

And about time too \o/  I'd like to thank my manager, my nail technician, my....

No All the entries were of a super high quality and I had a ball with all of them So thanks to everyone who voted - I'll see about another new level now...
Xerra: Press 'P' for pause

Congrats to the contestants for making it so far - and a double congrat to the winner.


Hope we somewhen find a possibility to increase audience for your games ... some nice youtuber let's playing all our games etc.


bye
Ron

Well done folks! 

I have to say that there was a pretty disappointing number of voters this time around ... even Qube & the chieftain critic Derron abstained.   

Some feedback/comments on the games ....

AXONITE
Clearly a lot of effort went into this and it was the game I played the most.  It was dangerously close to the original Xenon 2 in all aspects.  Graphics were good but I felt they could have done with more animation in places - e.g. main ship and some of the enemies.  The graphics would have benefited from more originality rather than an almost direct copy of the original.  The backgrounds were a bit random rather than nicely tiled together but I suspect this was intentional and a time constraint.  The music was great and really catchy but a bit grainy on the 2 pc I tried it on - again I think this was intentional.  I found parts of the game quite buggy - shop items I bought such as autofire and auto zapp didn't work at all.  It's possible I was using them wrong?  When I died at the end of the first level, the death process continued into the next level.  Collisions were a bit imprecise in places and there was no pause button (essential for something this frantic).  The core gameplay was fun though so, minor gripes aside, a great effort and worthy winner.

TREASURES OF TERPHOZEN
Very ambitious effort for 8 week timescale so very impressed with the amount of features/content that he managed to get done in time.  The default speed was a bit too slow for me but there were options to up this.  Main character was great - nice animation (apart from the ladder climbing  ). There were too many keys to think about so would be good to reduce this down (maybe only one key for digging or just reuse the down key or suchlike).  Good effort.

CANDY POP
The most polished game of the lot.  Excellent graphics and menu system and flowed really well.  I think the gameplay let it down though as it felt almost like blind luck if I managed to get past a level.  Maybe it would have benefited from a tutorial level as there seemed to be alot going on at times - with treats exploding all over the place and at other times I was wasting turns on a single treat.  I think it was almost impossible to plan how to complete a level.  Note that I'm not really big on puzzle games so it was probably my lack of skill.  Nail the gameplay and you could be onto a winner with this.

TOMMY GUN
The graphics were excellent but I found the gameplay pretty bland.  It was far too easy.  The AI was pretty bad in that it just came out of a door and generally ran right past you.  It would have benefited from some different enemies with different characteristics - maybe soldiers that patrolled a platform, guarded the scientists, reacting to sound or at the very least turned around to try to shoot you after they went past.  The tanks were a major disappointment - they looked good but did nothing so an opportunity missed.  Similarly the traps and hazards were far too easy to avoid so didn't really add much.  The intro's / level completion scenes were well put together with suitably cheesy chat but they would have benefitted by some rousing accompanying music.  In game music would have been good too as the sound effects were quite tame.  As all the graphics were done by Blink I expected plenty of time to be devoted to the accompanying effects - muzzle flashes, bigger bullets, more blood, particle effects for hits and jumps etc...  With a bit of added polish and some decent AI there is definitely potential with this.

STARBLOCK DE PON
My eyes were bleeding at the colour choices on the main menu  .  I'm rubbish at these type of games but I felt it could have benefited by being able to rotate the squares horizontally as some of the sequences seemed to give you no chance of winning the level and it quickly became a lost cause.  It seemed to be more based on luck than skill.

THE RUNNING VAN 
I couldn't devote nearly as much time as it needed this time which is why I had to resort to tried and tested graphics style and simplified gameplay.  It was a bit of a mashup of some elements of my previous titles and the gameplay was not nearly as fun as I would have liked.  The concept has potential but there is definitely room for a big improvement.  I'm genuinely surprised it got 2nd place and I suspect that if more people had made the effort to vote this would not have been the case. 

Thought Axonite was going to win it. That game stole the competition.

Well done everyone who entered and Adam for winning. I'll be back gunning for the current champion title again next time

Qube, how the prize system work. Obviously I'm not sending the Mini to myself in 3rd place so who gets it, first or second place?

Congrats guys, good work.   

Congratz guys. Sorry it didn't get time to play and vote. They all looked like great entries and i'm sure i'll get to play them soon enough

congrats guys!

@iWasAdam you've done some impressive work on Axonite, I checked in the dev thread every now and then and was blown away every time.

Congrats everyone. 

Quote from: STEVIE G on November 09, 2020, 11:38:16
I have to say that there was a pretty disappointing number of voters this time around ... even Qube & the chieftain critic Derron abstained.   

Unfortunately I haven't even had time to play any of the games yet as things are just silly busy at the moment I didn't want to shove in a vote based on visuals and just thinking what I'd enjoy the most.

I think *think* things will allow more time to be active here and indulging in the more fun aspect of coding

Quote from: Xerra on November 09, 2020, 17:16:47
Qube, how the prize system work. Obviously I'm not sending the Mini to myself in 3rd place so who gets it, first or second place?

The C64 mini should go to the 1st place and if they have one / don't require one then 2nd > 3rd place etc. Or if no one grabs it off you then perhaps hold on to it for the next game comp?

Talking of prizes... STEVIEG has generously donated his winnings for the next game coding prize fund. The $$$ prize pot wasn't super duper for this comp so would iWasAdam and Xerra want their share sent via PayPal or donate it for the next game comp? ( I'll chuck in £500 for the next one )

Quote from: Qube on November 10, 2020, 07:56:05
Xerra want their share sent via PayPal or donate it for the next game comp? ( I'll chuck in £500 for the next one )

I know ... we should all do it for the fun ... but it might attract more contestants if the price fund (maybe "minimum") is known in advance? Dunno?
If the funding is that "big" you might think of having 2 categories or so - and split fund a bit (didn't we have such a compo somewhen?). Must not be a 50:50 split of course - just an "encouragement" or so.


But yeah - spare time is costly these days for me - and if stuff "works", then I will even have less the next months/years.


bye
Ron

I'm not in the market for a 64 so we can keep that in the prize bin. I'm going to throw my moneys into the prize bin too \o/

I see generous people among you. If you don't really need money, I suggest another useful option. You can give money to other participants in the competition by rewarding them for their efforts (if you want to support those who need money).

Quote
If you don't really need money, I suggest another useful option. You can give money to other participants in the competition

This place is not a charity, we had somebody here regularly begging for money and putting guilt trips on members with his sob stories.  He is now banned for life.  A lot of people are struggling financially in this current climate, but it's not a competition to see who is struggling the most and give them money.  It's a fun coding competition to produce a cool little game for yourself and others to enjoy, with the bonus of earning some prize money and perhaps selling it for a small amount at itch.io or similar.

It seems the prize was smaller this time so the winners have generously decided to add it to the prize fund for the next competition, that's all.

Hi Guys,

Congrats to the winners and the losers. Some pretty good games in there!

Cheers,

Aaron