jholopainen – Page 7 – Lincoln Games Research Network

GameMaker Challenge #1: One Button Games 2012

jholopainen / December 10, 2012 / Teaching

“Just go make something. But really you want to do more than that. You want to create something, then you want to release it, you want feedback on it and you want to keep getting better.” – Chet Faliszek (Valve) to budding game developers.

Throughout their studies of becoming successful game-scholars, 1st year Games Computing students at the Lincoln School of Computer Science are being thought about game design tools to quickly develop and extend original game ideas into fully fledged playable games. The use of game developing challenges is one of our favourite approaches to the introductory of game studies. The rules of the challenge: Make a game based on a given theme, within the available time scale. Volunteering students present and discuss their game in front of a playful crowd made out of their colleagues and university staff members. The given theme for this challenge is “One Button Games” – games that use a range of mechanics based around the idea that a player may only use one button only. Such games are fairly popular amongst casual games such as “B.U.T.T.O.N“, “Super Action RPG” or “Canabalt“. Recently, Gamasutra wrote a rather extensive article about the game design recommendations for One Button Games.

We are very pleased to share with you some of the submissions for the 2012 One Button Game Challenge. Feel free to have a look at the video, download and play the games!

Furthermore you can find the results of the 2011 Game Challenges using the following links: One Button Challenge 2011 / ASCII Challenge 2011. Enjoy the games, and feel free to share them with your friends and family!

Legend of Groomp by Alex Saye (Contact)

A tower defense game where you must defend against hordes of soldiers using up to nine different spells. Spells are cast by either tapping or holding the Space bar. Get experience by killing enemies to unlock more spells. Spells can be stacked on top of each other and combined – for instance, fire spreads easily to other enemies if used with the spell push!
Download (PC Windows)

Volley Orange by Jamie Bloor (Contact)

Collect all the gold apples using the oranges to proceed to the next level! Can you find the optimal way through all the levels?
Download (PC Windows)

Balloon Button by Mike Thompson (Contact)

Control a hot air balloon through a vast and rich environment! Collect the sheep to get more points, and grab the fuel to fly even further!
Download (PC Windows)

Preparations for the ULCS GameJam 2013 have begun

jholopainen / November 23, 2012 / Announcements

Get excited folks, as we are most pleased to announce that the ULCS GameJam will return on the 9 and 10 March 2013.

This will be the second major video-game jam organised by the University of Lincoln Computing Society in cooperation with the Lincoln School of Computing. The ULCS GameJam 2012 was a major success and attracted over sixty competitors, regardless of their background, knowledge, experience or ability – they were all willing to develop a video-game based on the themes of sheep, viking, and 2012 in less than twenty four hours. Judges from Rockstar, Crytek and LiSC evaluated the games based on their originality, juiciness, fun-factor and the use of the given theme. Over £500 worth of prizes were awarded to the winners of the different categories. Furthermore, the ULCS GameJam 2012 helped many to form their own Game Developer Group, for instance Team Nigel. Check out the pictures of the ULCS GameJam 2012 either here on the ULCS FaceBook page!

Preparations for the ULCS GameJam 2013 have begun – keep tuned for more information over the following months. If you have any comments, ideas or feedback for the upcoming ULCS GameJam 2013, feel free to leave a comment here, or contact the organisers here.

Computing Society Annoucement – Talk about Portable Office Cloud

jholopainen / November 19, 2012 / Announcements

Peter Anderson, President of the ULCS (University Of Lincoln Computing Society) is pleased to welcome you all to a presentation given by Peter Melhuish, who is the CEO of Portable Office Company (POC).

Peter will talk about his new innovative company and the remarkable product that is being offered to students countrywide, coupled with computing career prospects. This talk is opened to anybody, and would certainly contribute to anyone who is interested in Cloud Computing. Furthermore, you may leave the presentation with a free copy of the cloud desktop application alongside a copy of Office 2010.

The talk is scheduled on the 21st November, 4PM, in Computer Lab B, on the 3rd Floor of the MHT Building. Attendance is free and opened to any student!

We hope to see you all there!

Seven Day Game Challenge #7DGC – 4/4

jholopainen / November 15, 2012 / Announcements

We previously reported about the Seven Day Game Challenge. On the 9th November, teams gathered in the Lincoln School Of Computer Science Computer Labs and each of them presented their submission. Fifteen teams registered, however only eight teams have managed to survive endurance of the week-long game developing rush.To be eligible to enter the competition, teams had to develop and present a game which includes the themes of Vegetation and Space. As we were quite dazzled by the range, quality and originality of the presented games, we decided to make the submissions available for download:

	#7DGC Main Winner AD-JAM (Contact) Alex Saye Jamie Bloor Mike Thompson Adam Cane David Ridout Download
	#7DGC Honorary Mention Team Nigel: Sapphire (Contact) Kieran Hicks Download
	Team OxyOxSpring (Contact) Sean Oxspring Download
	Team Nigel: Ruby (Contact) Martin Smith Nathan Darling Daniel Frost Download
	Team Juicy (Contact) Courtney Benjamin Nick Bull Download
	Gecko Mafia (Contact) Ashley Black-Hood Geejoy Jumba Matthew Moore James Taylor Joss Packman Download
	Super Hypothetical Imaginarium (Contact) Brett Knights Matthew Housley Bryan Malcom Jack Broughton Nathalia Sgroot Download
	Team Thomas (Contact) Thomas Fisher Download

Seven Day Game Challenge #7DGC – 3/4

jholopainen / November 10, 2012 / Announcements

“it was a triumph, I’m making a note here, huge success!” – McLain

The Seven Day Game Challenge (7DGC), as organised by the Lincoln School Of Computer Science and Sean Oxspring has had a most successful conclusion. To recap, the 7DGC is a week-long short marathon style Game Jam event opened for anyone willing to develop a video-game, either on their own, or in small teams. 7DGC provided a strong, motivating and friendly atmosphere in which developing, presenting and discussing video-games development is fun. The event started on the 2nd November at 04:30PM and finished on the 9th November at 04:30PM. Throughout the week, course related units, workshops and seminars were reorganised to provide 7DGC competitors enough time to work on their submission and to allow them to contact staff members for support and critique.

Over fifteen teams have registered their interest to partake in the event, however, only eight teams have managed to survive the endurance of a week-long game developing rush. On the 9th November, teams gathered in the Lincoln School Of Computer Science Computer Labs and each of them presented their submission. To be eligible to enter the competition, teams had to develop and present a game which includes the themes of Vegetation and Space. During the presentations, a panel of judges evaluated the games on their fun-factor, their juiciness, their originality, and their use of the theme.

The judges were quite dazzled by the range, quality and originality of the presented games. Clearly participants deeply thought about incorporating the themes in varied and fun ways. There were games about bees conquering flower fields in an RTS style, mutant vegetables trying to help the moon landing in the 60’s, Space travelling jump and runs, farming simulators, carrot and cabbage collecting shooters, ant sized scientists trying to escape to the moon through resource gathering, multiplayer co-op space potatoes collecting shooters and mind controlled mash potato exploring games. Furthermore, event-organiser Sean Oxspring presented his submission, which he classified as an arts-ish experience, a parody of what is believed to be an overly pretentious ludo-logical experience.

It was most arduous labour for the judges to decide on a winner as all submissions were most astonishing considering the short amount of time that students had to develop their titles. However, after some intense debates two submissions were chosen. Many congratulations go to:

7DGC Main Winner:
Team AD-JAM – Alex Saye, Mike Thompson, Jamie Bloor, Adam Cane, Dave Ridout – for “Buzz Kill”.

7DGC Honorary Mention:
Team Nigel Sapphire – Kieran Hicks – for SHKAMFSVATG.

All the submissions were collected and will be made available for download. In the meanwhile, have a look at the presentation stream or the few pictures that were taken:

Once again, congratulations to all the participants. Keep tuned for more Game Jam related news!