Stencyl Game Jam

Schedule

The jam schedule has been updated accordingly since participation in this particular jam. 

The Jam

I've been spending the week or so experimenting with and learning the ins and outs of a game creation tool called 'Stencyl'. Newgrounds are hosting a game jam that is entirely devoted for developers using Stencyl. The deadline for submissions is the 28th of March, they're giving away a couple of hundred dollars for 3rd, 2nd and 1st place winning game submissions along with a full license of Stencyl.

The Game

Going into this jam unfamiliar with Stencyl was a big mistake which led me to unsuccessfully submit a prototype for the competition. Having consulted the Game Jam Survival Guide further upon the failed attempt of this jam I found a vast amount of pointers towards the reason this jam was unsuccessful. I did not even have Stencyl installed before the jam meaning already starting out inefficiently before I had even begun! “…the wise jammer already has a game engine picked out, installed and ready to go before the Jam begins. Now is not the time to try to learn a brand new engine. Get to know it before the Jam.” (Kaitila, 2012) I went in thinking I would be able to make something awesome in a new piece of technology, but in the end all I had was a buggy tile based tech demo with bits and pieces of my art aimlessly flying around – wasn’t pretty.

“If I could give one piece of advice to newcomers, it would be: Master your technology. Don’t go into a Jam thinking you’ll make a brilliant game on a new tech that you haven’t used before. Know everything about the game engine that you’re coding in, your art tools, and your skill set.” (P. Kaplan, 2012) having read this, I now realise how naive it was to approach this Jam with confidence.

What Went Well?

Minimalism

At the time of the jam, I was really keen to explore the idea of minimalism in games. I thought that this felt appropriate and within the realm of possibility on top of learning Stencyl. The only thing that did go well from participating in Stencyl Jam was that I was able to devote some of my time to learn a little bit about minimalist art in games.

I am a big believer in minimalistic games and admire the idea of "less is more". Making components appear simple and clean cut is often a fairly complex task and is something that fascinates me deeply. “The simplicity brought from eastern philosophy is widely used today everywhere.  We can commonly recognize it from feng shui, but as a more general approach is it known from the design trend of minimalism.  What minimalism states is that less is more meaning that more can be communicated from a simpler message (notice that simpler doesn't necessarily means shorter).” (Lievano, 2009)

Doing Game Jams has led me to become an admirer of minimalism in games. It allows players to become more immersed in the experience, offering them to become more relaxed during states of play. Minimalism strips down a games design to its core, ensuring that the absolute essential design components are included. If you are facing the problem of players becoming significantly confused during your game experience, then I honestly believe that one way you can solve this problem is by iterating your game with focus towards minimalisiing its features. “In videogames this translates as avoiding confusing interfaces, writing stories with bold messages, focusing in the most characteristic features of a games and letting other assets complement these, and finally letting the player have more fun from the game experience.” (Lievano, 2009)

Lievano list his list for characteristics which can be enhanced from using minimalism as a design philosophy are the following:

 

·         Simple Interfaces: interfaces with straight functionality.  Each user interaction should go straight to the point described by the interface.  Assuming the right things is crucial.

·         Strong Stories: stories with a coherent plot.  The main subject of the story should be easily recognized by the player.  Characters have strong personalities and its actions can be associated with the player's expectations.

·        entered Design: the design is centered in special features.  All the game components act as a whole to enhance the most differentiating characteristics.

Minimalism can be very powerful if used correctly. The idea of a character not clearly defined with facial features can make players use their imagination more. I find characters more compelling and relatable when they are a few simple pixels on the screen as opposed to high definition, hyper-realistic characters.  This is because you make fewer judgments towards characters that have less definable facial features – a good example of this is in the game Passage by Jason Rohrer. Arguably, this idea is like watching a foreign film, because you are reading the words in your own head, you fill in a lot of the missing information yourself and paint my own picture of how the character sounds –sometimes leading to not knowing if bad actor is taken place.

“Simplicity is an effective form of communication because it leaves less space for confusion, it transmits the idea more directly, it focuses in particular things exalting them from lesser complements and most important, it lets the individual concentrate in the perceived message better.” (Lievano, 2009)

What Went Wrong?

Don’t try out new tools:

“It’s hard enough to make a game in a tiny timeframe, but when you compound that with having to learn a new skill set, it makes things really difficult” (McQuiggan, 2012) I am ultimately guilty of doing this and this let me to appreciate going into a Jam with confidence in the tools I know. Often when participating in events and 80% of Jammers are using Unity it is often tempting to do what is cool and use Unity. However, my gut instinct tends to kick in and tells me to jam with the tools you are most comfortable with. Making a game is hard enough, but learning simply adds to the possibility for error. Entering in Stencyl Jam simply re-enforced this idea more clearly to me, it was a unfortunate that my gut instinct did not kick in for this particular development tool.

Go with what you know

I did not go with what I know, meaning that the effort towards participation of this jam was a little wasted. “If you start from scratch or use a game engine that you’ve never tried before over the Game Jam weekend, it is highly unlikely that you’ll finish anything more than a tech demo by the end. The learning curve is simply too steep. You’ll spend all your time learning a new technology” (Kaitila, 2012) it got to a point during the jam where I realised that learning this new technology was meaningless as it achieves similar results to Flash.

Conclusion/What I Learnt?

I learnt some new things in Stencil but I learnt that learning new software should not really be taken place during a jam – with this in mind it was probably silly for me to attempt this competition. I learnt to select entering in jam carefully, as not all jams will suit you as a designer. If you research and look around hard enough you are likely to find one that fulfils most of your Jamming needs. It is important to take the time in discovering the Jams you feel comfortable in. However, one good thing that came out of this Jam was that is allowed me to learn some new things towards minimalism in games.

List of Illustrations

• Stencyl (2011) Available: http://geekyteachers.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/10/logo_500-copy.png Last Accessed: 2014
• Thomas Was Alone (2013) Available: http://gamesareevil.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/01/thomaswasalone1-550x309.jpg Last Accessed: 2014
• Press Any Key to Live (NA) Available: http://pressanykeytolive.com/ Last Accessed: 2014
• Passage (NA) Available: http://venuspatrol.com/oimages/passage.gif Last Accessed: 2014

Bibliography

• Gabriel Lievano. (2009). Less is More. Minimalism in Games (Part I). Available: http://www.gamasutra.com/blogs/GabrielLievano/20090813/2659/Less_is_More_Minimalism_in_Games_Part_I.php. Last accessed 2014. 
• Garstang I. (2013). The Over-scoping Game Designer – The Attack of the Feature Creep. Available: http://www.debugdesign.com/2013/01/12/the-over-scoping-game-designer-the-attack-of-the-feature-creep/. Last accessed October, 2013.
• Grajko, C. (2013). Overthinking It: Minimalism in the Mist. Available: http://gamesareevil.com/2013/01/overthinking-minimalism-mist/. Last accessed 2014 
• Kaitila, C (2012). The Game Jam Survival Guide. Canada: Packt Publishing. pg 10 - 73 
• Kaitila, C. (2012). How to Get the Most Out of a Game Jam. Available: http://gamedev.tutsplus.com/articles/business-articles/how-to-get-the-most-out-of-a-game-jam/. Last accessed October, 2013
• NA. (2014). Stencyl Jam 2014. Available: http://www.newgrounds.com/collection/stencyljam2014. Last accessed 2014. 
• Schell, J (2008). The Art of Games Design. FL: CRC Press. 4 - 450.

Forward Motion & Idle Game Prototyping

During our last session with Dave for our Design Master class session we were discussing idle games, specially the concept of forward motion. Forward motion in writing terms is this idea of the page turner, that special thing that keeps the reader turning the page, ultimately unable to put the book down. We can look at forward motion and begin to understand methods for holding players attention in a number of different ways.

Looking back through my postmortem of my last Ludum Dare #28 entry entitled Channel, its fundamental flaw lay within that of forward motion - players ultimately losing interest rapidly. This is one thing that idle games do particularly well, as designers we can learn a lot from these games. One way that they achieve this is by lots of change and constant rapid movement, this makes players feel like the game is going somewhere. Progress is usually being made at all times, often, without any player input or even when the game is closed. This ultimately holds players attention, they find it difficult to stop playing or even think about playing. (Cookie Clicker, 2013)

Cookie Clicker - Idle Game

By promising players things that they will want and always delivering on those promises we can hold their attention between the gap of promise and delivery for a long time. It is important that you always keep your promises - "It's wrong to make promises you don't mean to keep." (Chekhov, letter to Aleksandr Semenovich) The gap between promise and delivery creates player suspense to occur. Suspense is when the audience and the characters know the same information, if you make players feel suspense then you can hold their focus for duration, once you release that suspense players will feel a sense of relief. If you "Under promise and over deliver" you can surprise players, making them feel satisfied and accomplished.  The way that we can create promises in our games is by carefully foreshadowing specific components. All the components in your game should have a purpose; everything should happen for a reason with relevance - "If in the first act you have hung a pistol on the wall, then in the following one it should be fired. Otherwise don't put it there." (Anton Chekhov).

Stencyl Game Jam - Postmortem

Schedule

The jam schedule has been updated accordingly since participation in this particular jam. 

The Jam

I've been spending the week or so experimenting with and learning the ins and outs of a game creation tool called 'Stencyl'. Newgrounds are hosting a game jam that is entirely devoted for developers using Stencyl. The deadline for submissions is the 28th of March, they're giving away a couple of hundred dollars for 3rd, 2nd and 1st place winning game submissions along with a full license of Stencyl.

The Game

Going into this jam unfamiliar with Stencyl was a big mistake which led me to unsuccessfully submit a prototype for the competition. Having consulted the Game Jam Survival Guide further upon the failed attempt of this jam I found a vast amount of pointers towards the reason this jam was unsuccessful. I did not even have Stencyl installed before the jam meaning already starting out inefficiently before I had even begun! “…the wise jammer already has a game engine picked out, installed and ready to go before the Jam begins. Now is not the time to try to learn a brand new engine. Get to know it before the Jam.” (Kaitila, 2012) I went in thinking I would be able to make something awesome in a new piece of technology, but in the end all I had was a buggy tile based tech demo with bits and pieces of my art aimlessly flying around – wasn’t pretty.

“If I could give one piece of advice to newcomers, it would be: Master your technology. Don’t go into a Jam thinking you’ll make a brilliant game on a new tech that you haven’t used before. Know everything about the game engine that you’re coding in, your art tools, and your skill set.” (P. Kaplan, 2012) having read this, I now realise how naive it was to approach this Jam with confidence.

What Went Well?

Minimalism

At the time of the jam, I was really keen to explore the idea of minimalism in games. I thought that this felt appropriate and within the realm of possibility on top of learning Stencyl. The only thing that did go well from participating in Stencyl Jam was that I was able to devote some of my time to learn a little bit about minimalist art in games.

I am a big believer in minimalistic games and admire the idea of "less is more". Making components appear simple and clean cut is often a fairly complex task and is something that fascinates me deeply. “The simplicity brought from eastern philosophy is widely used today everywhere.  We can commonly recognize it from feng shui, but as a more general approach is it known from the design trend of minimalism.  What minimalism states is that less is more meaning that more can be communicated from a simpler message (notice that simpler doesn't necessarily means shorter).” (Lievano, 2009)

Doing Game Jams has led me to become an admirer of minimalism in games. It allows players to become more immersed in the experience, offering them to become more relaxed during states of play. Minimalism strips down a games design to its core, ensuring that the absolute essential design components are included. If you are facing the problem of players becoming significantly confused during your game experience, then I honestly believe that one way you can solve this problem is by iterating your game with focus towards minimalisiing its features. “In videogames this translates as avoiding confusing interfaces, writing stories with bold messages, focusing in the most characteristic features of a games and letting other assets complement these, and finally letting the player have more fun from the game experience.” (Lievano, 2009)

Lievano list his list for characteristics which can be enhanced from using minimalism as a design philosophy are the following:

 

·         Simple Interfaces: interfaces with straight functionality.  Each user interaction should go straight to the point described by the interface.  Assuming the right things is crucial.

·         Strong Stories: stories with a coherent plot.  The main subject of the story should be easily recognized by the player.  Characters have strong personalities and its actions can be associated with the player's expectations.

·        entered Design: the design is centered in special features.  All the game components act as a whole to enhance the most differentiating characteristics.

Minimalism can be very powerful if used correctly. The idea of a character not clearly defined with facial features can make players use their imagination more. I find characters more compelling and relatable when they are a few simple pixels on the screen as opposed to high definition, hyper-realistic characters.  This is because you make fewer judgments towards characters that have less definable facial features – a good example of this is in the game Passage by Jason Rohrer. Arguably, this idea is like watching a foreign film, because you are reading the words in your own head, you fill in a lot of the missing information yourself and paint my own picture of how the character sounds –sometimes leading to not knowing if bad actor is taken place.

“Simplicity is an effective form of communication because it leaves less space for confusion, it transmits the idea more directly, it focuses in particular things exalting them from lesser complements and most important, it lets the individual concentrate in the perceived message better.” (Lievano, 2009)

What Went Wrong?

Don’t try out new tools:

“It’s hard enough to make a game in a tiny timeframe, but when you compound that with having to learn a new skill set, it makes things really difficult” (McQuiggan, 2012) I am ultimately guilty of doing this and this let me to appreciate going into a Jam with confidence in the tools I know. Often when participating in events and 80% of Jammers are using Unity it is often tempting to do what is cool and use Unity. However, my gut instinct tends to kick in and tells me to jam with the tools you are most comfortable with. Making a game is hard enough, but learning simply adds to the possibility for error. Entering in Stencyl Jam simply re-enforced this idea more clearly to me, it was a unfortunate that my gut instinct did not kick in for this particular development tool.

Go with what you know

I did not go with what I know, meaning that the effort towards participation of this jam was a little wasted. “If you start from scratch or use a game engine that you’ve never tried before over the Game Jam weekend, it is highly unlikely that you’ll finish anything more than a tech demo by the end. The learning curve is simply too steep. You’ll spend all your time learning a new technology” (Kaitila, 2012) it got to a point during the jam where I realised that learning this new technology was meaningless as it achieves similar results to Flash.

Conclusion/What I Learnt?

I learnt some new things in Stencil but I learnt that learning new software should not really be taken place during a jam – with this in mind it was probably silly for me to attempt this competition. I learnt to select entering in jam carefully, as not all jams will suit you as a designer. If you research and look around hard enough you are likely to find one that fulfils most of your Jamming needs. It is important to take the time in discovering the Jams you feel comfortable in. However, one good thing that came out of this Jam was that is allowed me to learn some new things towards minimalism in games.

List of Illustrations

• Stencyl (2011) Available: http://geekyteachers.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/10/logo_500-copy.png Last Accessed: 2014
• Thomas Was Alone (2013) Available: http://gamesareevil.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/01/thomaswasalone1-550x309.jpg Last Accessed: 2014
• Press Any Key to Live (NA) Available: http://pressanykeytolive.com/ Last Accessed: 2014
• Passage (NA) Available: http://venuspatrol.com/oimages/passage.gif Last Accessed: 2014

Bibliography

• Gabriel Lievano. (2009). Less is More. Minimalism in Games (Part I). Available: http://www.gamasutra.com/blogs/GabrielLievano/20090813/2659/Less_is_More_Minimalism_in_Games_Part_I.php. Last accessed 2014. 
• Garstang I. (2013). The Over-scoping Game Designer – The Attack of the Feature Creep. Available: http://www.debugdesign.com/2013/01/12/the-over-scoping-game-designer-the-attack-of-the-feature-creep/. Last accessed October, 2013.
• Grajko, C. (2013). Overthinking It: Minimalism in the Mist. Available: http://gamesareevil.com/2013/01/overthinking-minimalism-mist/. Last accessed 2014 
• Kaitila, C (2012). The Game Jam Survival Guide. Canada: Packt Publishing. pg 10 - 73 
• Kaitila, C. (2012). How to Get the Most Out of a Game Jam. Available: http://gamedev.tutsplus.com/articles/business-articles/how-to-get-the-most-out-of-a-game-jam/. Last accessed October, 2013
• NA. (2014). Stencyl Jam 2014. Available: http://www.newgrounds.com/collection/stencyljam2014. Last accessed 2014. 
• Schell, J (2008). The Art of Games Design. FL: CRC Press. 4 - 450.

Cyberpunk Game Jam - Postmortem

Schedule

The jam schedule has been updated accordingly since participation in this particular jam.

The Jam

From the 1st - 10th of March the online game entitled the Cyberpunk Game Jam is taking place. The theme for the jam is this image:

Theme Interpretation

Cyberpunk isn't something that I would normally be interested in but participating in this would be to attempt to do something different and out of my comfort zone. It is interesting to see a concept art piece as theme for a jam – something quite different from the norm of other events. One thing I already like and strikes me about the theme is the neon pinks, greens and blue colour palette which would be interesting to explore in a game prototype.

We can get an idea of setting and environment from the image by the vastness of build-up civilisation that appears to tower upwards - creating a sense of density and over population. Similarly we can establish a great sense of height through harsh expressive vertical lines, alongside the backwards lean of which the main silhouette figure appears to lean/teeter over. The figure in the scene appears to be wearing some form of leather jacket, with boots, dark trousers and gloves - connotations of rebelliousness and anti-establishment could be associated to the figure, perhaps some ‘biker’ culture or urban free running subculture by the dark clothing and punk hairstyle.

A sense of urgency is presented by the nature of the falling figures in motion below, one could assume that the characters are escaping from something or someone - we can even assume that these figures may have run into trouble with the law of some kind. It is clear that the image is not set in the present nor past, but the future by the nature of the human form being merged with what appears to be electrical components intertwined onto the body - appearing on the arm, face and back of the figure. I am unable to grasp the gender of all figures in the image, so this is unspecified. The omniscient presence of the observing silhouette reminds me of how gargoyles appear to observe from great heights - perhaps giving us an idea of why this figure is here.

I am unable to make out any definable language or linguistics that could give us a sense of culture. I get a very futuristic 'Tokyo' vibe from this image due to the vastness of colour, form of shapes and symbols that run down neon signs and by the way they are presented to peak out of buildings - but this could be anywhere, perhaps even an alien culture located in another world.

The Game

Had a go at making something for the Cyberpunk jam, wasn't overly keen on as time went and ended up eventually scrapping the idea - unfortunately I didn't submit to the site as the build was to a minimal playable state. My goal was to prototype something really simple for this jam but unfortunately wasn't interesting enough to peak my interest for further development. Players simply press spacebar key to stab a sharp object into the area which isn't the flesh of a human hand.

The game is entitled ‘CyberPain’, and is essentially a cyberpunk themed digital version of five finger fillet. A simple animation of a sharp undefined cyberpunk object hovers over the characters hand across a continuous path.

What Went Well?

Deconstruction of Theme

I was able to deconstruct the theme into some potentially interesting interpretation. I attempted to summarise some of the areas in which led me to come to some brief conclusions. Analysis is something I know I need to improve towards as the deconstruction of games/art/film etc. can be a wonderful way of learning techniques that can be applied to Game Design.

Coding

I was able to further develop my some Actionscript 3.0 technical skills. Having a basic understanding of programming is important for any designer as it allows you the open up code, tweak variables and prototype mechanics to get your game feeling fun” Because of this project, I have become an avid prototyper – allowing me to become skilled in technical areas of game development. As you become stronger in prototyping and coding, it opens doors to what is possible for you to create in a jam single handily - often gradually increasing the scope of your projects as you grow braver and become more skilled.

Conclusion/What I Learnt?

Due to external commercial project commitments, the participation in this jam was merely a feeble attempt. Though, write about it feels necessary in that it was a clear attempt at the jam. This un-pursued prototype might one day be returned to if I have any interesting way of expanding the idea.

Tools

The following tools were used during the participation of Cyberpunk Jam, I was able to develop some minor skills in these areas.

Game Engine	Programming Language	Art/Animation	Sound	Paper Prototyping
Adobe Flash CS6	Actionscript 3.0	Adobe Flash CS6	None	None

List of Illustrations

Cyberpunk Theme (2014) Available: http://i.imgur.com/W14RBVt.jpg Last Accessed: 2014

Bibliography

Christer Kaitila (2012). The Game Jam Survival Guide. Canada: Packt Publishing. NA.