SyntaxBomb - Indie Coders

I propose we start a 16 (gasp) week, yes I know, coding competition.

If we go for the 1 Aug, we'll be nearly done by New Years day.

The theme could be up for discussion until the penutlimate day of July, which, I should hopefully be in France watching the Team GB Junior Roller Derby team taking it to the other nations in the world.

So..... I know the consensus is like, who needs 16 weeks...... that'll be me then.

We've a month to discuss - who is in?

16 weeks !!!!!   Damn, we can make the next Zelda or Doom game in that amount of time hehe. j/k 
I'll have to update Nvidia drivers twice before the jam ends haha.

I tend to think that it doesn't matter if it's 4 weeks or 4 months when I'm making a game. I tend to get going, tail off in the middle, and then have to go full metal near the end to get it done. I suspect 16 week game would be just as tough as 4 weeks, and probably not that much improved.

I was thinking about a 10 to 12 week comp? I abandoned posting one early as here in the UK we had some unseasonably long and hot weather and us UK'ers are unable to function when the sun shines for more than 3 days solid

I have time off so i'm ready for action.

..im curious to know, how do you do this sort of things? I mean, do you have some sort of 'ready to go' frameworks for different types of games that appear here, or? How does same thing works for game media?

Tool efficiency I would think ... I tend write and build most of my assets from the ground up.

I use my own kind of framework project and every time I write a new game with it, I strip out any parts written for that game and add them back into the shell project. Over the last few years I've consciously always written anything with a mind to making it re-useable in some way, if it's something useful.

As Gamemaker is object based it's pretty easy to do stuff like different kind of player objects for a platform/shooter, or different kind of games, and then just import them in and make them work for the game I'm writing.

Myself,  I start out with a blank visual code project for each and every game endeavour.  My game projects are always so different from each other it pays to start fresh for me.. I may reuse some basic code like particle emitters and a basic physics player controller etc..  but for the most part it's ground zero each project.  As for media, I'm no modeler so I tend to purchase or use free stuff off Sketchfab and turbosquid etc..   I have tons of stuff I purchased when I used to use Unity, all that media is easily converted to the formats I need now.

The last few months I've been working on some awesomely cool post effect shaders that I can't wait to put to some use.  I think a new game jam is the perfect place to announce them

Quote from: Naughty Alien on July 04, 2023, 01:13:08..im curious to know, how do you do this sort of things? I mean, do you have some sort of 'ready to go' frameworks for different types of games that appear here, or? How does same thing works for game media?

Call me old fashioned, but I don't use any frameworks and write all the code, music, sound effects, mechanics, fonts and graphics myself. I try to re-use as much as I can from previous apps/games and improve those things that didn't work too well previously, but having a working game loop and a way to show screens for lobby, options, settings and high scores etc. all worked out in advance means you can get straight into writing game mechanics.
It's very easy to get bogged down by intricate graphics at the beginning. 9 times out of 10 you'll change them later anyway so speed up your development time by creating basic graphics or use primitives like coloured squares and circles until you get the mechanics working.
Use something like SFXR to create basic retro sound effects and improve them later (or when you find your choice of sound becomes irritating).
As Xerra said, try to write code for re-use. It's something your code should evolve to anyway when you find yourself re-writing the same functions again and again for each game. I find that decoupling is the best way to achieve this and I tend to rely upon the Observer and/or Event patterns to join everything together; I'm sure everyone has their own approach here.
After a game jam, don't be disappointed if your masterpiece didn't do well. Learn from the community comments about what worked and what didn't. Concentrate on improving those next time.

each time i code a game, i first make one code example for each procedure / gameplay mechanic / effect / system, and then i merge everything at the end.
so that i can reuse the code in the future.

my main problem these days is to find the motivation to make a new game...
i am more interested in the technical aspects than in the fictional aspects.

i may try to reproduce the environments / graphics that i have seen in a movie, with a simple gameplay...