Castle Paradox

Moogle1 · Posted: Fri Sep 16, 2005 9:00 pm Post subject: 168hr Contest ends!

The theme for the contest is "Strategy and Tactics." Now, before I go into what that entails, let me define the two terms.

Strategy means a careful plan or method : a clever stratagem b : the art of devising or employing plans or stratagems toward a goal. In a war, you plan out a strategy beforehand. Your strategy is your plan. In an RPG, your strategy is usually limited to setting up your equipment and party for a battle.

Tactics means a : the science and art of disposing and maneuvering forces in combat b : the art or skill of employing available means to accomplish an end. Your tactics are the methods you use while in combat. In an RPG, your tactics are your in-battle choices.

Your games are expected to require the player to use both strategy and tactics. The genre, plot, setting, etc. of the game are yours to decide. If you want to make an RPG, go ahead. If you want to make a dating sim, that's fine. There are no limits on the kind of game you are allowed to make.

With that in mind, voters will be expected (but not forced) to select the games that best challenge the player's abilities of strategy and tactics. Note that strategy is listed first. The emphasis of the contest is on strategy since all games require tactics to some extent!

As has been said before, you may choose to use the OHRRPGCE or any other platform, including pure-programming. As long as your audience is able to play your game, your entry is permissible.

The contest will end in one week; that is, 12:00am CST Saturday 24 July 2005. You have a one-hour grace period before points start being deducted from your game on an hourly basis. The hourly deduction is at my discretion and will be based on the number of entrants (fewer entrants means a higher deduction).

The first place winner will be given a prize, which I will also decide upon the contest's completion.

IMPORTANT! Castle Paradox is not the host of this contest; therefore, its downtime is not an excuse for late entry. This contest is cross-posted to the LiveJournal ohrrpgce community. If you have no webspace to host your game, you may e-mail your entry directly to me (NOT a link, the actual file).

Yes, I am entering this contest. Yes, I'm the host. Yes, that poses a conflict of interest. I'm putting up the prize, so quit your whining. If I win and I'm feeling nice, I'll pass it down to the guy in second. (Actually, I had a good idea that I scrapped this afternoon because I figured there was no way I could do it in a week.)
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Moogle1 · Posted: Mon Sep 19, 2005 9:34 am Post subject:

It's Monday. How is everyone doing?

I can tell already that I'll need to put a lot of time into my project to get it into a playable state by Saturday. I'm hyped, though.
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Ysoft_Entertainment · Posted: Mon Sep 19, 2005 10:51 am Post subject:

um.... is it ok if I submit a classic tic-tac-toe game? it is being created in ohr, I am gonna make a player-vs-computer, and player-vs-player modes, one mode of difficulty if playing against the computer.

progress so far:
Board is done
x and o is done
victory check is done, but untested.
Title screen, done.

I was thinking of making a tamagachi sort of game, but I am guessing it will take more then a week to do it.
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Moogle1 · Posted: Mon Sep 19, 2005 1:22 pm Post subject:

You can submit a blank RPG file if you want.
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Mike Caron · Posted: Mon Sep 19, 2005 9:35 pm Post subject:

I think you can go one better: Submit a blank Zip file, no RPG whatsoever.
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TMC · Posted: Tue Sep 20, 2005 12:29 am Post subject:

This silence had better not mean no one entered. That would be saddening and frustrating because I'm gone to such crazy extremes to win:

I'm undertakening the most ambitious 1 week contest game ever with Jabber, and I also have about the worst track record of handing in games on time or ever. However, I'm doing all I can to ensure this one makes it. Screenshots in a couple days maybe.
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Mr B · Joined: 20 Mar 2003 Posts: 382

I've entered. It's been a bit difficult to keep up. I've never tried something with such a short time frame, so I don't think I've scaled my expectations as well as I should have.

Despite, I think I am doing reasonably well.

Good luck, folks!

Moogle1 · Posted: Tue Sep 20, 2005 11:15 am Post subject:

http://webspace.utexas.edu/perryar/zomg.jpg

If you saw the earlier screenshot, this one fills in a lot of the card data. Dunno if I'll finish this on time, but if I don't, I'll finish it later. I have a million ideas for it.

The cards in this shot are still missing a lot of their data (e.g. costs on the Thorns and SPAM cards) and the player info in the lower right is incomplete, but this is generally an accurate representation of the finished game. Exciting, no?
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Mike Caron · Posted: Wed Sep 21, 2005 7:48 am Post subject:

Wow, that's nice. Heh, an OHR TCG...

Since it's obvious that you're making it in something other than the OHR, are you making it customizable? Like, so others can make cards?

Sidenote: Alas, I will not be able to participate, as I'm too busy with real life... I believe that I said somewhere (possibly in IRC) that "If I enter a contest or other deadlined event, god will ensure that I'm busy for the duration". It's happened several times... Once, I had to make a game for English class (I did it in the OHR, incidentally). Then, my grandpa died, and I had to go to Quebec for exactly the duration of the project (yes, I was sad and all that, but, this still proves my point)

TMC: Is that the game we were discussing on IRC?
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I stand corrected. No rivers ran blood today. At least, none that were caused by us.

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Moogle1 · Posted: Wed Sep 21, 2005 8:59 am Post subject:

I have no plans to allow card creation. That would make AI scripting really hard, for one thing, and would force the user to learn the inner workings of the game's implementation, for another (or, alternatively, force me to write a parser for the card's effect text, which is just not going to happen).
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Mr B · Joined: 20 Mar 2003 Posts: 382

I'm going to have to pull out of the contest. Not having ever tried to do a contest like this before, I dramatically overestimated the amount of work I'd be able to do (in addition to 17 units and 10 hours of work).

So, yes; I was looking forward to this, but I am afraid I can't complete it. Good luck with your submissions, folks.

Moogle1 · Posted: Thu Sep 22, 2005 9:20 am Post subject:

Announcement time.

My entry is not going to be even close to finished. A lot of other people have said the same thing.

It might be worth your while to submit an incomplete entry, given the small number of contestants still in the running.
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Rimudora · Posted: Thu Sep 22, 2005 3:02 pm Post subject:

My entry is complete.

http://castleparadox.com/gamelist-display.php?game=673

Moogle1 · Posted: Fri Sep 23, 2005 8:55 pm Post subject:

Reminder: Five minutes remain plus one hour of grace period. After that, you start losing points.

So far, Rimudora has the contest.
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Moogle1 · Posted: Fri Sep 23, 2005 9:52 pm Post subject:

As promised, I didn't really finish my game.

The executable in the file I've submitted will let you browse through the cards that I managed to make. It includes a helpful little image to give you a clue as to what all of the symbols mean. I won't go into details about the game mechanics, but so that the game makes a little sense at least, I feel it necessary to mention the following:

* MP regenerates by 5 at the beginning of your turn.
* If your GP is less than 8 at the beginning of your turn, it is reset to 8. Otherwise, it increases by 1.
* Cards that are already in play can be "sold" for their sell value during your turn before your play phase. Selling cards makes it possible to play high-cost cards.
* There are three kinds of cards: characters, effects, and instants. Which is which should be fairly obvious, but there is currently only one instant (Crater, from the Sheep Rancher set).
* There are three kinds of card abilities: attacks, instants, and counters. These are indicated by the icon next to the attack name. Attacks can only be used once per turn during your attack phase. Instants can be used at any time. Counters can be used at any time in response to whatever they're countering. (There is only one counter ability in the current cardlist, which is a counter-attack.)
* Cards that are "disabled" can't use their abilities. All characters and effects enter play disabled.
* At the end of your turn, if you have no characters in your party, you lose one life for each character in your opponent's party. As in any OHR game, you can have at most four characters in your party. You can have up to six effects in play as well.
* There are multiple versions of many cards. If a card is unique, you may only have one version of it in play. You and your opponent may both have the same unique card in play.

There, that's the basics of the game rules (and a lot more than I thought I'd end up writing). Beyond that, if you've played Magic or Pokemon or Duel Monsters or anything like it, you should understand the cards well enough to basically be able to play the game if you had a deck.

http://www.castleparadox.com/gamelist-display.php?game=674
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