I'm starting threads to give feedback to all of the entrants to this year's CCN Speedgame contest. Everyone did some good things this year, and I wanted to make some threads to give encouraging comments and constructive criticism. This week, I'll be making threads for 3 games each day, so as to hopefully not bump all of the other discussions off of the main page, and give everyone some daily-focused-feedback on their games. Feedback is an important part of the CCN contest, and I hope that we can give a big "thanks!" to our entrants by letting them know how they did! I don't think everyone should necessarily give numbered ratings like I did -- just some words of feedback and encouragement would be fantastic.

Finding Adina (by SamW3)
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Clint's Ratings:
Xian: 10 (The story had me blinking away tears at the end)
Fun: 7 (The enemies are a bit lacking, and as such the levels are a bit ho-hum, but you get bonus points for the fun-ness of the super jumps and especially the sling)
Orig: 8 (Very original storyline in a very classic setting.)
Gfx: 9 (The graphics are absolutely stunningly beautiful)
Stab: 6 (The resolution hard-sets my computer to 320x240, and after it quits, there is no physical way for me to see enough of my screen to reset it, and I have to reboot my machine)

Summary:
An indulgently retro side scroller that brings back everything we remember and cherish about classic gaming, and gives us the Lost Chapter of classic Christian gaming. It just don't get much better than this.

Feedback:
Sam da man! I am blown away on so many levels, I hope I can adequately express how good of a job you did on this game.
From the get-go, you did a fantastic job on the presentation of the game. Even down to the retro-animated CCN logo, this game just breathes meticulously crafted care and appreciation for the retro genre, and you pull it off with class.
Ever since I first read the abstract for your game idea, I was immediately hooked. The characters are exactly that -- they are people with depth of character and they have personalities. Not only are they charmingly developed on paper, but the entirety of themselves is held together by a close-knit fabric of designer control. From the hilariously loping gait of the trainee shepherd, to the self-reliant-and-dedicated stride of the protagonist. Despite the small screen size, it opens a huge and inviting window into the world that you have created.
The retro feel is fantastic -- I think my favorite thing to do is just aim stones at baddies across the map. It's an incredibly intuitive interface, and I can't speak highly enough about the skill-based mechanic that is slinging stones.
I'm extremely impressed by the cutscene engine. This year was the first game that I had written a cutscene engine for, and that gave me appreciation to be extremely impressed by the power and flexibility that yours displayed (particularly evident in things like the pasture or tent scenes). Sometime, I'd love to hear more about how you organized this so that I can learn from it.
All of the graphics were thoroughly enjoyable. I really liked the minimalistic pallette -- it really harkened back to the old ROM days of optimized color sets. The baddies were all very entertaining to watch -- I particularly liked the bug-eyed version of the snake.
I liked guessing at some of the passwords -- the only one that I was able to successfully find was "Ofer", though I'm sure there are others. The lack of being able to exit cutscenes was a deterrent to me continuing to mess around with this. I'm sure there were some fun easter eggs planned with this one (if you didn't put them in there already).
All in all, an incredibly fantastic game, and the story had me getting all emotional at the end (and to be honest, a little blinky-moist in the eyes).
While I'm bummed you didn't get everything in that you planned, it's still a complete game. Considering all that went into it, I'm insanely impressed. In that regard, I'm almost glad that you didn't get everything finished that you planned, because that means some of us other contestants stand a chance in the judging.
Thanks so much for this! I can't wait for the Special Director's Cut of Finding Adina -- sign me up for the autographed collector's boxed set.

[This message has been edited by HanClinto (edited August 28, 2007).]

I was extremely impressed with the sandstorm scene. To slowly build up the amount of sand...that was ingenious and was executed very nicely. That was just an extra little touch to add immersion to the game.

I was not able to go fullscreen. It froze my system. I also tried hitting ESC on the Main Menu and crashed the game.

As far as gameplay issues, the only thing I really noticed were the bunched up snakes who just continually flipped around in the same spot. But, I'm sure you noticed it and was probably just something where, "Who cares. This is a two-week game. I'll fix it afterwards."

You and your brother did a terrific job. Maybe we'll see an update with your new Torque Game Builder Pro, eh?

AI, as you stated, could use work. I'd end up just waiting at below the edge where all the critters gathered and picked them off from a safe distance.

Still, captured the retro feel perfectly. I still have a hard time believing it was done in 2 weeks.

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"The generation of random numbers is too important to leave to chance."
Soterion Studios

First I would like to say that I owe it all to the Lord. At the beginning of this I prayed that God would give me an idea and the strength to apply the skills He has given me to produce something that would bring Him some glory. He really was the project manager on this and deserves the credit

Also, a *lot* of research went into this! And it really has made me think about how important research is to creating a good game. The things I researched were: anime expression(just googled it), 8-bit animations(castlevania, megaman), tiles from various games, music (little nemo, willow). I used the itchy light tutorial and learned a lot about shadows, the excellent colordb tool for balancing colors, FamiTracker for an authentic NES sound, and I used an old copy of Macromedia Fireworks which I love and used for all my web work at my day job.

@ssquared, I researched the effect planes of a couple of SNES games to figure out how to do the sandstorm and mire fog. The effect is amazingly simple. I used Fireworks' "grass" texture to create a large rectangle of "blowing sand" (really light orangish brown grass turned sideways). Created three planes(sprites) that moved to the left, one moves up slightly, one moves down slighty and one doesn't move vertically. The "intensity" of the storm is controlled by the alpha(opacity/transparency) of the three sprites tied to the x coordinate of the player. The level is 3200 pixels wide, so, spriteAlpha = x / 32. This same principal was used in the mire, except I used a single intensity and a swirling texture.

@Arch, The tent scene was a miracle. It started with a googled image of bedoins, then vector traced in Fireworks, again simple built-in textures applied(the sand of the outside desert is actually a wood texture scaled differently. The miracle was in the color reduction and color balancing. The original looked actually quite ugly.

@Clint, about the cut scene engine. The scenes are located in FindingAdina.Game.Sequences. Each are based off of the Sequence class. Here's how it works:
A sequence is activated by its start() method. This creates a new thread which executes the play() method while start() continues to implement a display and input loop. This tracks the states of the sequence, and deals with the input appropriately.
At the end of the loop you'll notice frameLoopSet.process(frames); This frameLoopSet is a list of FrameLooper objects which contain delegates of methods in the sequence that should be executed every n frames as specified by frameLoopSet.addFrameLooper() (see line 54 of Intro.cs).
However, as this loop waits for sequenceActive to go false, play() is also running in a different thread. This really made it easier to code the actual sequence since it could run sequentially in parallel with the display loop instead of on a per frame basis. I made some support routines for transitions like cutToColor, fadeToColor, fadeFromColor; a sprite moveTo (I think SpriteCraft had this but I couldn't figure it out); showDialog which activated the dialog system; showMenu to display a menu and wait for response; and a few others.

The Dialog system relies on the Phrase object which is constructed like this:

new Phrase(RonanFaces.sad,true,new string[]{ "Kish, one of the sheep is", "lost. I need to find it." })

Each Dialog object takes multiple phrases and creates the dialog from it. showDialog() automagically openes and closes the dialog using Dialog::showDialog() and Dialog::close() (The naming conventions are horrible throughout the code.. another speedGame consequence)

I guess that's the basics of how the cut scenes works. Was there anything in particular anyone would like me to explain further? (even of a different system) I would be glad to!!

God Bless!

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Sam Washburn

Check out my CCN SpeedGame 2 Blog

[This message has been edited by samw3 (edited August 28, 2007).]

EDIT: Oooops, yeah. I have a question. How'd you come up with Ronan? Fan of Stargate: Atlantis? Child's name?

[This message has been edited by ssquared (edited August 28, 2007).]

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Sam Washburn

Check out my CCN SpeedGame 2 Blog

[This message has been edited by samw3 (edited August 28, 2007).]

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"The generation of random numbers is too important to leave to chance."
Soterion Studios

Still, I appreciate how your music was created originally for this game, so no worries about it if you're not interested in using it, I just thought I'd pass it on.

--clint

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Sam Washburn

Check out my CCN SpeedGame 2 Blog

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