Corona Blitz 2017.01 (April 1-8, 2017)

Solar2D General Questions/Discussion
#141

Just wanted to thank everybody involved in making this jam happen.

It was my first jam and I really enjoyed it!

The time frame of 4 hours was perfect. I am so busy these days that this was the maximum time I could afford to spend.

In the end I spent like 12 hours in total to get the game out there.

I learned a lot during the jam, most important: Better not try to use new libraries and templates when you only have 4 hours :smiley:

Altough, in the end it was good, I wanted to have a look at Tiled since a long timeā€¦

The theme was great, no doubt!

I loved the other submissions, all very different and unique. I am pleased to see newcomers taking part, hope to see everybody around for some time.

Hope there will be some more ratings and comments soon. I left a comment for all submissions that I could test (no mac at the moment).

I also would like to suggest a no plugin/assets approach for the next jam. (It might benefit me more than others that are used to work with plugins, though. But as we had one jam now WITH plugins, the next one could be withoutā€¦)

And finally, I was thinking that corona could support the next jam with some special mentions or extra publicity for the winner?

Just to motivate some more people.

#142

Congrats to everyone and their submissions - very well done.

Sadly I havenā€™t been able to submit an entry on my own.

With regards to the rules, IMO, itā€™s simply not possible to make rules that fit everyone, thereā€™s always codes with years of experience and others with only months or weeks, professionals and hobbyists ā€¦ I canā€™t imagine a way how this could be evened out for everyone so itā€™s probably not worth trying to hard. That said, I think itā€™s a great idea to have different jams with different limitations and I really hope, if there will be other ones, Iā€™ll be up to the challenge and be able to submit a creation.

#143

i just wanted to say congrats to everyone who submitted - what a bunch of clever ideas! Ā ā€¦and apologize for not voting yet, iā€™m really hoping to try out each and every one, comment and rate, but my weekdays are hectic. Ā (i had some time off for spring break w kids last week, otherwise iā€™d not have been able to participate)

+1 for a future ā€œ100 linesā€ or ā€œ5000 charsā€ or such ā€œjust from-scratch codeā€ jam

cheers

#144

i rated/commented everyone, and i donā€™t know if ratings become public afterward but my philosophy was to be very generous up to 4 stars, but reserve 5 stars for the single one I most favored. Ā there was such a range of different entries that, looking back, iā€™m not sure my ratings make complete sense across-the-board, because they were hard to compare to each other. Ā (glad iā€™m not the judge!) Ā i also tried to add constructive ā€œwhere you could go from hereā€ type comments, but those were mostly just fyi/fwiw - ie, if i offered a suggestion it didnā€™t necessarily mean i found a ā€œflawā€ to deduct stars for.

#145

The jam is officially over people! Thank you all for joining and voting :slight_smile:

This was not a contest but here are the first 3 (but 4) games according to votes: (Names in parantheses are forum names)

1- Patience by authorwjf

2- Fall From Grace by danisobo (davebollinger)

3- Floss by sporkfin & Jet Jumping Virtues by Dev-Ze.rocks (Felix B.)

For a more detailed look:

https://itch.io/jam/corona-blitz-2017-01/results?

Congratulations everyone!

I think this was a great experience and a good starting point. Hopefully, weā€™ll hold more(and better organized) jams in the future!

#146

Thanks again for organizing this event @bgmadclown. Ā I really enjoyed participating and I think it was great for the Corona platform at large. Ā 

Being a solo developer can feel isolating at times so I appreciate having a vibrant community of smart, creative and inventive people as comrades in spirit. Ā My social circles include several computer scientists, programmers and IT folks but no one I can really talk shop with about app development. Ā I look forward to future jams and the future inspiration I will gain from being part of this platform.

#147

Any of you want to see your games being played?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EaaT7dlg9h8

#148

Status update 5:

  • Kick off! Blitz has started with 37 developers and the theme is announced as ā€˜Virtueā€™

  • Official Twitter account is live @corona_blitz

Status update 4:

With less than a day to go, we are 35 developers strong!

Status update 3:

  • We are now 18 developers strong!

  • Twitter hashtag decided: #CoronaBlitz2017

Status update 2:

We are now 15 developers strong!

Status update:

We are now 10 developers strong!

Iā€™ve also started posting announcements on Twitter(retweeted by Corona), Facebook(Indie Game Promo, Game Dev Show and Test, Corona Indie Devs), LinkedIn groups and many more are on the way.

Iā€™m trying my best but I could really use some help to attract more developers. It would really help a lot if you could also retweet or share the jam on your social media accounts or wherever possible.

#149

Hey,

we are joining as a team, some of us have Corona experience, so this should add 6 more people.Ā 

We are going to do it at work, for 1 hour per day, I hope we wonā€™t end up with 6 similar games :slight_smile:

I would like to see how it goes with Corona nowĀ since most of the team has moved to other SDKs where prototyping SEEMS faster.

Thanks

Krystian

#150

On your itch.io page you have this rule listed - ā€œYou can NOT use templates, libraries or plugins.ā€ However, in another post about the jam youā€™ve said that plugins and our own libraries are allowed. Could you confirm which way around it is?

4 hours sounds like a great challenge and Iā€™d love to take part, however, Iā€™d really quite like to use my puggle library if I can.

#151

@krystian6, thatā€™s great! Donā€™t forget to join in to encourage more people :slight_smile:

@GrahamRanson, didnā€™t know you were still around. Thatā€™s good to know :slight_smile: Actually, Iā€™m not sure about libraries and plugins. I was thinking about allowing everything but support and opposition for that idea was nearly the same so I decided to keep libraries and plugins out. Iā€™m still not sure about that rule. Which one do you think would be better?

#152

Hehe yea still around ( Iā€™ve been around here too long to go anywhere else, Iā€™m institutionalised to Corona now. I wouldnā€™t survive in the wild ) however Iā€™ve been a bit quiet of late, Iā€™m trying to remedy that.

Personally Iā€™m all for allowing plugins/libraries ( maybe not actual templates though ). Partially for my own selfish reasons as I would like to use mine, however also because I think reusable code is a very useful thing to get in the habit of creating so more people should do it in general.

I can see pros and cons both sides of the argument though so definitely see where people are coming from in regards to not allowing them.

I know that when we hosted GIGJam many years ago we allowed code/art that wasnā€™t created during the jam as long as people declared it. Judges then had a section in the score chart to adjust based on how much they felt that helped ( i.e. was it a couple of sounds, or all the artwork ). Naturally, this will now be different as the judges are just anyone on itch.io

#153

Well, maybe it would be better to allow libraries and plugins but not project / game templates. This would help speed up the work done but does not provide a foundation to build on. Do you think it would be better?

By the way, if this jam goes well Iā€™m planning on organizing another one in the coming months where itā€™s encouraged to use templates, a template jam.

#154

Iā€™m not sure.

If we allow usage of previously prepared libraries and plugins then within those 7 days we can write a template/plugin and use it. We will still get 4hrs to write?

I would opt for spending 4h on writing the code with what Corona gives you.

#155

Thats the idea for not announcing the theme early. It cuts down on prep time. Frankly it takes just as much time to pop a score module on the screen as it takes to put a display.newText() on the screen. Sure the prepped one will likely use bitmap fonts and look nicer, but itā€™s not going to save significant time over doing Ā a simple text representation.

I donā€™t know that we should fear libraries and plugins. Now full templates might be too much.

Rob

#156

I just tweeted about it and posted it to our Facebook channel.

Rob

#157

I agree with the idea of libraries and plugins, but no templates. Since I got a ā€œreal jobā€ six months ago Iā€™ve done ZERO gamedev, but I think Iā€™ll plan on jumping into this blitz. I think itā€™s what I need about now. Jay

#158

@krystian6, as Rob said I donā€™t think it will provide us much advantage to use libraries or plugins. I donā€™t think any of us will be bothered to add multi-language support to our games but there is a slight chance that some plugins can make way to interesting stuff.

@Rob, thatā€™s great! Hoping for more devs to join the blitz.

@Jay, good to see you aroundĀ  :)Ā 

Iā€™ve updated the rules to allow libraries and plugins. Now, everyone is allowed to use pre-made assets, libraries and plugins. Hopefully, this will lead to some interesting gameplay mechanics.

#159

Weā€™ll use all open source libraries so we can release the full sourceā€¦ Iā€™m also planning on time lapsing if I can find software thatā€™s not too wonkyā€¦

Iā€™ll probably add a few Ponywolf libraries as open source things before so anyone can use themā€¦

#160

Thatā€™s a great thing to do. More useful stuff for Corona developers. Thank you!

We are now 15 developers strong!