Game Development Challenge #3

[edg3]

The book, courtesy of Microsoft South Africa goes to "Hyper Knights vs Ultra Ghouls", this was chosen by Dave Russel. Congrats.

[BlackShipsFillt]

I've been kind of not responding to this for a while. And I guess that could be seen as rude... But that wasn't my intention...

When I first started making games, about 5 years back, this was the community that greeted me with open arms and helpful advice. There were other communities that I visited, but none of them showed a fraction of the enthusiastic camaraderie that I found here. None of them became my friends.

And the competitions were a part of that. People getting together to make games because it's fun and it makes us better at making games was novel to me then. I know it made me a better game designer. I think it made all of the participants better.

So, it's out of sadness that I haven't responded. I despite Edge and others' struggle to keep this community alive it has been in decline for a while now. If the greatly reduced thread views didn't already indicate this decline then the poor showing of this last competition is an indisputable sign of how near-death Game.Dev has become.

I feel like South Africa has lost something staggeringly important. I think that while there are other local communities, they don't share the same nurturing spirit and don't foster debates as intelligent or as eye-opening as the ones I've found here. And while there are regular international competitions like Ludum Dare and Glorious Trainwrecks they aren't being participated in by South African's with the same devotion as the Game.Dev ones were.

I believe a golden age of South African game development as passed. Fortunately the scene is constantly growing and improving and undoubtedly greater things are yet to come. But it breaks my heart that Game.Dev will not be around to facilitate it.

[D3zmodos]

Maybe new people (like me) will discover the community and being taking part again...Although maybe thats being a little hopeful I'm pretty sure it is possible.

[Konman]

Mmmh, interesting thread. I'm a bit late for the Challenge.

So instead, with Diablo 3 on the horizon...(yeeeeah!) check out my RPG game tech demo here:

www.webapple.net (coded in XNA 4.0 - it's ~47 MB download)

Dynamic cast shadows, bloom effect, A* path finding etc and is a top down 2D.
Chat to the necromancer to see the branching conversation options. ;)

Warning: It is still very rough so don't expect much, the animations need some work on some of the creatures.

I'd love to hear any feedback, good or bad.

Ciao,
Konman

[maleficarum]

Quik Q is there a challenge for this year?

[Bonezmann]

Yeah edge, come on. I'm itching for a challenge!

[edg3]

Alec has started challenges as part of the community meets, this month's challenge is "Dubstep".

[Bonezmann]

Any sort of link towards this edg3?

[Karuji]

Bonez: The competition is run using SA Game Developers mailing list, no official association with the SAGD forums, you can find the group at http://groups[dot]google[same as other bracket]com/group/sagamedevelopercommunity

Please excuse the bungling of the link, we've had some issues with spambots recently.

[Bonezmann]

Thanks Karuji :)