We are now 18 developers strong!
With less than 4 days to go, how is it going for you all? Are you getting ready for the challenge?
I wanted to add an important detail. The Twitter hashtag for Corona Blitz 2017.01 will be #CoronaBlitz2017. I’m not pretty sure if I should start a new Twitter account for this but if we get enough participation on Twitter end, I may open a new account for Corona Blitz and share all the games made.
What is the submission format? Windows .EXE, macOS .APP, Mobile, or a project runnable in the simulator with source and assets?
I’d recommend the simulator option, since that’s what everyone can run.
Also it would be worth clarifying that the time to setup your itch.io account and to package and submit the app can happen outside the four hour development window (or does that time need to be budgeted into the four hour window?)
I was excited to enter (my first) jam but will have to pass now… the allowing of existing libraries, plugins and especially assets is the show stopper for me as it skews it to the “haves” and not the “have nots”.
A jam is supposed to be about " what you can create" and not " what you have already created".
No ones turns up to a music jam with pre-recorded material. Or an art Jam with a partially painted picture. This is not in keeping with the ethos of what a Jam actually is… shame
@Rob, since it’s a ranked event open to all itch.io users it will require participants to submit .exe, .app or .apk files so players can easily test out the games. Also, submission deadline is when the jam is finished and then the voting phase begins.
@adrianm, you see, we are a band of musicians jamming like there’s no tomorrow and right in between passages, I’d like to add a Deep Purple flavor to the jam and start playing the main riff from Smoke on the Water. I wasn’t sure, I wasn’t even thinking that it was possible to play something I have known before but it fit right there. After playing the main riff for let’s say 5 seconds, we keep on with our jam. In the end, we spiced up our jam song with a little bit of a classic but it’s still the jam that matters.
If you don’t want that, I’m willing to be that “vanilla jammer” to jam with you. I won’t be playing any Smoke on the Water or anything I’ve known before. Let other jammers play what they want, I’ll keep it simple and only improvise. I’d really like to see you jamming and making great stuff. Hoping you’d change your mind.
@bgmadclown I make great stuff (as others here can testify). I feel you somewhat trivialised my point…
I’m pretty sure you can make great stuff, I’m not questioning or challenging that. I just want you to jam and make great stuff with us.
I’m sorry if you feel this way, it was never my intention to do so. I’m just saying that I don’t think it is against the ethos of a jam. It’s still a jam but without strict rules so you can add a little bit of flavor to it but not set your jam on pre-made stuff since it’s highly unlikely to fit into the current theme and context. You still have to improvise to stay in the game.
Again, I’m sorry if I sounded like I disrespected you. I just want you to join the jam, that’s all.
To stay with those analogies for a second, you may not turn up to those jams with pre-recorded music or half a painting, but you will show up with a guitar or paintbrush. To me, plugins are tools much like those.
You may have a point about pre-existing art assets etc however.
I figure, if you want to jam without anything, that’s great. Do that. And if people want to jam with a plugin, that’s also great. It’s a jam for some fun, so let’s all have some.
As much as I agree with you, and would rather see what people can do with a ‘vanilla’ Corona, I understand others want to use the tools they use every day to work. I simply think this is not a contest but something fun to do. For me, it’s just a way to see what can we do with 4 hours in Corona, as opposed to what we can do with 4 hours in Unity.
We used to make 1-hour code golf sessions every week, but I haven’t organize that for quite a while [now we have a ModNation Racers league ;)] so I decided this will be cool for us to participate in.
Honestly, if I would treat this as a contest, we wouldn’t take part in it, because it’s simple to spend 8 days on this and say ‘it was done in 4 hours’. The only reasonable way to make it a contest would be to:
prohibit premade code
provide a set of libraries to use and provide the list upfront
provide a set of graphic and sound assets upfront
have a specific start date
have a specific end date 4 hours later where users are required to have code pushed to github/bitbucket or other public repo
1 hour later a deadline for a working APK [so we allow 1 hour to adjust some settings to make the code “releasable”]
This would be a contest.
What we do, is just having fun, so getting upset because someone can use premade libraries simply makes no sense [to me ;)].
Regards
Krystian
I have to agree with krystian6 on this one. This doesn’t seem like contest material, there is no way to enforce the rules. Most hackathons that have any sort of reward or competitive element hold to a specific time frame and ensure users can’t develop beyond the provided time and scope.
Also, considering there is a voting for the theme, and its easy to see the current results, most users will know the theme in advanced, so they could submit within the first 4-6 hours and still have days of lead up time.
I’d recommend in the future, if you are going to do a theme survey, hide the results and start with more options.
Sounds like fun. I’ll have a bash.
Probably on the 7th.
Haven’t done any corona stuff in a while.
Is this a competition for individuals or can we work in teams?
Maybe a future Corona Jam could be create a game in 500 lines (or some max line amount) or less using only standard Corona libraries - no ; allowed obviously. Just an idea as this would be quite challenging.
We could also do a demoscene jam, create a project under a certain file size (5mb or less), then share results w/ source.
@tyler, we changed how the theme is selected. I will announce it right before the jam starts and it’s nothing related to the ones in the poll 
Also, demoscene jam is a great idea. I’m writing it down so we can make it happen in one of the next jams.
@rob, welcome aboard!
@adrianm, great idea! Jonathan Beebe used to do this years ago. We should make that happen in the following months.
If you need any help running the jams, let me know! I have plenty of experience hosting jams :D
@tyler, I’ll keep that in mind. Thank you
With less than 24 hours to go, we are 35 developers strong!
Hey everybody… I pushed out a very lightweight framework that makes it easier to get started with CoronaSDK for a game jam. Most of this stuff lived in our free templates, but I ripped almost everything out (except for the structure) and put a simple text based menu on the front.
Released under the MIT license, and it should be within both the spirit and letter of the CoronaBlitz rules.
https://github.com/ponywolf/ponyblitz
This is a lightweight skeleton that is intended to make it a bit easier to get a game jam entry up and going with CoronaSDK. It has a simple text based menu scene, a game scene where you can choose from a simple “world” organization of displayObjects or easily load in a tiled .JSON map as your world.
It also includes a pre-made HUD layer for score and a few open source libraries that have been released in various places by ponywolf.
Also, I’m going to at least screen record my attempt. I may try to twitch it, but that could take me longer than the 4 hours to figure out how.
Hi to everyone, i just have one quick question, is the 4 hours limit just for coding or for the entire process of building the game? I use to spend more than 60% of the project time doing the analysis and design and then i can code in lets say 30% to have an additional 10% for testing. Having this clear i will be in a better position to plan and compete in the same conditions.
Im thinking on doing a time lapse of my analysis/design/development process so i can share to whom may be interested
Best regards and good luck
…and the theme is?