Hi all! My name’s Jordan, I currently live in Korea, and like Vede, this is my first ever LD entry. If you’d like to know a bit more about me, I’ve got a little bio over at my website. I’ve been out of game creation for a long time, but am excited to be back into it, and I had a lot of fun with this mini LD. I collaborated with a friend in the States via Skype, who contributed  ideas, and created the graphics. We kind of mucked about most of Saturday trying to fix on an idea, but then spent Sunday through Wednesday working hard. We completed and posted the game yesterday, just making it in under the “Wednesday weekend” radar, but I was too tired to post anything else at the time :).

Anyway, the game is sort of a platform rts, kind of, with rabbits. You can get it from the LD entry page, or via direct download link (Windows exe).

Tools: Game Maker 7, Photoshop.

If you’d like to know a bit more about the game and the creation process, and how the heck it fits with the theme, just hit the break (you may want to try playing the game first, as it’s a bit spoilery):

So basically, we decided to go pretty literal with the tragedy theme, and try to make a game about exploitation, racism, and genocide. Wow, that’s a mouthful. We also wanted to try to work in the humor angle somehow (crazy, I know), which is one of the reasons we went with cute bunnies exploding. There’s nothing about the game that’s “haha” funny, but there is kind of a black humor there, I think.

The idea was to make a game that started out looking like a basic resource management/rts kind of thing (and cute, to boot), but then gradually became more and more sinister, ending with the player complicit in genocide. I’ve wanted to do something like this for a long time because genocide, racism, oppression of minorities are very real problems in places I’ve lived, and I want to see games that speak to issues like these. I’ve also always thought that something like this would work well as a game, because so many games are actually already about genocide, but the games are abstracted enough that players don’t really consider that what they’re being asked to do is wipe out another race of people, or robots, or whatever. So in a way, the game is a critique of gaming, and game playing. No so much saying that games like StarCraft or Total Annihilation are bad (two of my favorite games of all time, actually), but just asking people to think. I also wanted to get away from the classic idea of “balancing the sides,” by pitting the player against a game where the sides were clearly unbalanced. I think a two player game where one player played the aggressor and the other played the victim would be great.

Anyway, this is all mostly theoretical mumbo jumbo, and I’m certainly not claiming to have accomplished any grand goals with the game we managed to produce in five days.

About that. Here’s a little timeline:

As the game stands right now, a lot of necessary coding work is in place to make something decent, I think, but a lot needs to be polished up, and balanced out, etc. etc. We had very little time, at the end of the process to make the actual levels for the game, which would have ideally had more time set aside for them. There’s a lot to be done! But I would love to get any feedback anyone is willing to give.

I think that’s about all I have to say at the moment. It’s been fun, and I am looking forward to playing the other entries!

Game-crashing bugs for 5 Colors fixed, readme expanded, hints added.

You can get the new build here:

http://necessarygames.com/5_colors_pandora.zip

For the record, I changed one line of code, and inserted two small objects… amazing how small yet game-destroying some bugs are.

If you’re having trouble finishing the game, this walkthrough should get you there.  (Otherwise, don’t watch before playing, as the video contains MASSIVE SPOILERS!)

YouTube link:  5 Colors: Pandora – walkthrough

Okay, so I was baffled by some of the comments on 5 Colors that indicated that some of the structures in the game were partially invisible for some people (when people compared playing the game to watching the walkthrough).   I was completely unable to reproduce the bug on my system, and the really puzzling bit for me was that the background sprites used in the game are one-piece sprites.  So it seemed that random bits of otherwise visible sprites were invisible for some people.

The mystery was solved when I was finally able to reproduce the bug by playing the game on my wife’s netbook. It turns out that non-dedicated graphics cards have a hard time handling textures that are longer than around 2000 pixels on one side, which some of my background sprites were (my laptop has a low-end Geforce 8400 GS, and there’s no problem, but I’m assuming some people were playing the game on laptops with no dedicated video at all).

I chopped the larger sprites into bits (a process that is going to make any changes I want to make in the future incredibly painful), and the game now plays as it should on my wife’s netbook — and I’m assuming it will work on everyone else’s laptops as well.

So you can see that the bug was not entirely my fault, at least, not in the direct sense that my programming caused it  — though I will take responsibility for  it, since my ignorance did cause it 😛 .

Thank you very much to everyone who has commented on the game so far: I wouldn’t have found this bug without your help! I would be incredibly grateful if some of you who were experiencing this problem could try the game again, and let me know in the comments if the it is now working for you properly. Incredibly grateful.

You can download the fixed build here.

A bit late perhaps, but here’s my timelapse video, on youtube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9eYLpt8P0Jk. Enjoy the polka

I used a bad codec, and some of the files randomly disappeared, so the video represents about 24 hours of the 48.

Hey, and if you haven’t played 5 Colors: Pandora yet, now’s your chance! (Or, you know, later.)

Taking advantage of the “bug fixes are allowed after submission” clause, I’ve fixed a few more bugs in 5 Colors, having to do with collision detection. I don’t think you can get stuck in walls anymore. If anyone still has any bug trouble with the game, I’d really appreciate knowing. Thanks!

Clarification:  the collision bugs I fixed were critical, because people were getting stuck in the walls and not being able to continue the game. I did not tweak the collision detection at all in so far as it effects normal movement or anything: the game plays just as it did before, it is not “smoother” or anything like that–you just don’t get stuck in walls now.

You can download the new build from the game’s entry page.

I posted a little while back about a fixing some bugs in 5 Colors. Codexus was (appropriately) worried that I was fixing non-critical bugs, so I clarified that the bugs I fixed were indeed critical: I haven’t made any additions to my game, or fixed any bugs that were not game-stopping.

However, I do have some questions regarding the rules as they apply to bug fixes, because the LD rules wiki is not entirely clear.

On the one hand it says: “After the deadline, we do allow bugfixes. You’re allowed to fix any bugs that stop a player from playing or finishing your game,” which suggests that non-critical bug fixes are not allowed.

But it then goes on to state: “New content however is outside the scope of what’s considered a bugfix,” which would suggest that bug fixes are allowed, as long as you are not adding new content to the game.

So my question is, what is the LD policy/consensus when it comes to non-critical bug fixes? This seems to be a fairly laid-back community, which I really appreciate, but at the same time, it’s clear from peoples’ posts that everyone wants to “play fair,” so a clarification of rules seems like it would be good.

Personally I don’t see why people should not be encouraged to fix bugs, as bugs really aren’t part of the design of a game, which seems to be what LD is about (and even if bugs are fixed quickly, they will still effect some people, and hurt the game)–but others may feel differently. If bug fixes other than critical are not allowed, I think that a “technical” category should be added for judging the games.

Something to consider is that it may be a bit tricky to distinguish between “critical” and “noncritical” bugs at times: what if you have a bug that doesn’t make the game completely unplayable, but which makes it really frustrating all the way through?

Perhaps this is something to vote on?

Replying to comments posted on 5 Colors: Pandora.

TenjouUtena says …

Hard to figure out. Some hint about what keys to press would have been appreciated. Also I kept getting some sort of bug while playing through the game, and it did eventually make it unplayable. Kind of a fun little puzzler / indie style game.

Thanks for pointing out the potential for confusion Tenjou… I updated the readme and added hints and a walkthrough, which should help. As far as the bug, I think I know what it was (getting stuck on the purple room?), and I think I fixed it.

sdnitrasm_cero says …

Weird puzzle logics, I love it

Got to the part with the gradient colors near the dor but got stuck there and didn’t finish the game. I should play it again when you release the walkthrough
(and I think I found a glitch, the first time I entered through the door it sent me down for some reason).

Released the walkthrough, and I think I fixed that glitch.

C418 says …

The puzzles were sometimes a bit too confusing for me. But I think this is a good game. The visuals remind me of Small Worlds. A bit.

Small Worlds was definitely one of the inspirations I had for going super low-res, though my style ended up being sufficiently different to satisfy my need for “originality” :P.

Sos says …

Astonishing, but I’m too dumb to beat it…

Hope the walkthrough helps

Frimkron says …

I finished it! *bows* . Unique and intriguing, if a little frustrating in places – I was glad of the hints included in the readme.

Thanks for the compliments Frimkron!

ippa says …

cool, ultra retro gfx, odd, good combo

Thanks ippa!

Risko says …

This is the best game i have seen in this competition so far in every aspect (except audio) — the idea is great and greatly done, the graphics are absolutely great — mainly the buildings (great combination with that green background) and it was really fun to play (except the buggy part — see below). And naturaly good audio would make it even better, but i just listend to Coil and it fit the game very well

some criticism, though — the loading screen is awful (mainly in comparation with the beautiful graphics in game. And i’m not sure, if i have overseen some kind of switch, but if not, than you have some strange bug there — i had the whole part from 3:20-4:00 in video + the house in 2:00 white(on every try), so i was trying to find some other keys on keyboard to get colors in, or some new strategy to cope this white level, but after 10 minutes of trying to get through this invisible level i was so frustrated, that i watched the video and played just 2 of the colors and let the other to for some other time.

Thanks for the praise Risko! Yeah, the loading screen is pretty terrible… Game Maker default, which I should have taken 10 seconds to change :(. Regarding the crazy “invisible” bug that you ran into, I posted about that a little while back. Anyway, it’s fixed now :).

philomory says …

A “game about colors, and their consequences.” Absolutely brilliant. This absolutely embodies exploration, like towlr but good.

This game needs only three things to make it absolutely perfect: first, it *cries out* for some sort of ambient soundtrack. Second, I’d have liked it if at the end, after Blue, you made your way back to the Color Room for some final room before the credits. Third, motion could have been smoother. Sometimes it looked a little jerky when you moved around. Those three things aside, this game is still pretty much 5 stars all around (I dinged one graphic point for the jerky motion rendering).

I liked this game so much that, when I accidentally quit the game by hitting escape trying to pause when I got a phone call near the very end, I played it all the way through again just to finish.

EDIT (Beware of spoilers): I have to come back and note, after watching my girlfriend play this game, and watching the video walkthrough… there are a LOT of bugs in this game. In town area, for instance, several of the buildings present in the video walkthough manifested only as invisible walls when we played it. We also occasionally got stuck in walls, and in the last room, where you’re supposed to go through the ceiling, neither of us ever figured that out, but we didn’t have to because if you just exit the room and enter again, it puts you in the top half with the colors.

I’m not going to subtract any points from the score I gave, because these things honestly didn’t detract from my enjoyment of the game… at the time I thought they were intentional, and took them in stride. None-the-less, it does make me wish there was a ‘technical’ category to vote in.

Thank you very much for the compliments philomory! You ran into the same bug that Risko did (a product of a non-dedicated video card), which is now fixed :). I do hope to add a soundtrack to the game, and maybe some sound effects.  I’m a bit puzzled about your comment regarding “jerky motion,” as it seems fairly smooth to me, but maybe we just have different standards. In any case, the resolution would probably have to be bumped up to make the motion any smoother than it is… something to think about.

Maple says …

This is pretty awesome.i like the transform thingy XD and the puzzles were kinda hard for me.

Thanks Maple! Sorry if the puzzles are too hard

SonnyBone says …

This game is deceptively deep. I had no idea what was going on at first, but EXPLORATION brought me knowledge. Great use of theme!

Thanks SonnyBone, for the encouragement, and for understanding my use of theme!

dertom says …

Yeah,…good job! Keep on rocking…

Thanks dertom!

Hempuli says …

The idea was nice, but it was slightly too buggy to be enjoyable; I got stuck several times and pressing N teleported me weirdly around.

Hm… sorry to hear that your experience wasn’t enjoyable Hempuli . Could you maybe provide a bit more detail regarding what bugs you were running into? I think I have fixed all critical bugs in the game, meaning that you should no longer get stuck in such a way that you can no longer continue.  Pressing “N” should just take you to the next level, which is what it seems to do for me… I wasn’t able to reproduce any “weird teleporation.”  Perhaps if you explain the problem a bit more I’ll be able to fix it.

gimblll says …

Nice complete game with a good idea supporting it. The controls were a bit too “fiddly” for my taste though. I didn’t have the patience to continue after I would’ve had to start backtracking the levels. (Thanks for the youtube footage so I could actually see it played through!)

Hm… could you explain what you mean by “fiddly” controls gimblll? Are you referring to moving around with the arrow keys? Or transforming? Or jumping? The controls don’t really seem to give me much trouble, so I’m a bit uncertain what you mean here.

sinoth says …

Thank you for this beautiful entry. I may be a bit biased because I had Sigur Ros – Takk going in the background The slight spin in flying mode is perfect. My favorite entry so far.. if only it had some audio!

Ah, Sigur Ros! Yes! I’ve tried playing with Takk in the background myself, and it seems to fit pretty well — though I’m not sure about the first track. Anyway, thank you very much for the encouragement!

Thank you again to everyone who has played the game, and especially those who have provided feedback! Much appreciated! I hope I can be as helpful when it comes to your entries!