Once more, Team Quadratics will be participating. This is our third time and we’re hoping to do better than the last two.
We’ll be using Game Maker to make the game itself and GIMP for graphics. Everything else is kind of in the air at the moment. Stay tuned for more progress, and best of luck to everyone!
The game so far 😀
Finally getting this to work! With our new graphics from our awesome artist, things are even starting to look good! Here’s a video, though the recording is quite laggy.
Hello, we’re Team Quadratics and this was our 5th Ludum Dare Jam. As the results have just come out, its seems like a good time to give some final thoughts on the game and the ratings we received. Thank you to everyone that rated our game, and if you’d like to try it out you can do so here.
Well Rick Rodo’s Rival Restaurant Rush really sprung from one idea in particular, how to create a game with an unexpected use of the theme. I had the idea even before the final theme was announced to use 10 seconds as meaning 10 seconds (helpings) of food. From there the obvious choice was to just make a really funny and ridiculous game. Essentially for those that haven’t tried the game, you’re a buffet owner that must put a rival buffet out of business. To do so, you must eat all of their food, 10 seconds (helpings) to be exact. It’s basically a sidescroller where you run to the other side to get to the buffet line while avoiding waiters, customers, and tables.
Breakdown of the Results
#61 Humor(Jam) 3.52Humor was definitely the main goal of the game, and we really went all out on it. The gameplay itself was meant to be pretty ridiculous, and we emphasized all of this with some…interesting voice acting. Everyone really seemed to be happy with the humor in the game, and so we’re really happy with being #61! That being said, I do feel I would have liked a slightly higher score for this category, especially after all of the effort that went into it. I guess you all can try it and be the judge of that!
#200 Audio(Jam) 3.11Wow, this is actually bit higher than I expected. We’re lucky enough to have a music guy on the team because none of us can do it to save our lives! I guess the inclusion of voice acting probably helped. I’m quite happy with the audio score to be honest, and definitely higher than it was last time!
#355 Mood(Jam) 2.72Umm… I’m not really sure what the mood is in this game, but I’ll take a 2.72 I guess 
I suppose this is lower than I would have liked, but I’m not surprised. The gameplay itself was a little lacking. I don’t really know what else to say about this category in particular.
#443 Graphics(Jam) 2.71For this game we returned to sidescroller graphics from the evil world of top down graphics. I think this really helped our score, and according to our graphics guys was easier to do. Interesting fact: it took about 5 tries to spell the name right in the title screen, and even now the title screen is still wrong. Only after we posted the game did we realize that we included “R”s in restaurant and rush ha ha.
#477 Fun(Jam) 2.44From the comments, I could tell that this is where the game lacked, and I agree. We attempted to do a more combat based game, but that kind of got shoved to the end and never really worked out too much. I think if we spent a couple of more days on it we could have gotten this to a much better place. I’ll have to practice making combat mechanics before the next jam I guess!
#516 Innovation(Jam) 2.34I’m not really too sure what my thoughts are on this. Looking at it one way, our theme interpretation seemed pretty innovative, but for the most part it was a fairly typical sidescroller. I guess our score kind of reflected that.
#549 Theme(Jam) 2.35Too be honest, I’m very disappointed in this. The original goal of our project was to go with an interesting and original interpretation of the theme, and I don’t feel that this was reflected well in the score. I’m not sure if the raters didn’t understand our use of the theme, or just didn’t like it, but I personally feel this should have been significantly higher, and definitely not one of our lowest scores! I guess you guys can try it and see if you agree or not.
Well, I guess that pretty much sums it up. I’m certainly looking forward to the next Ludum Dare, and the results have been both exciting and disappointing. I hope you try out our game and give us some feedback here. Thanks everyone, and keep making great games!
So, in our early brainstorming sessions we came up with a very… interesting idea. Basically you play as a “differently cultured” man used to having multiple wives. Upon arriving in America, he is forced to choose only one wife, and would be a dating sim. Unfortunately, this idea was vetoed by one of our team members. Like to save the idea!
Well, my Game Maker license just failed for no apparent reason and I am now filing a help request on the website. Hopefully this can be resolved soon and doesn’t delay any work. If you have any advice, let me know!
Team Quadratics is proud to present the first demo of our newest project, A Family Affair, a game about an ongoing Mob War in a small city. Designed for the Stemfuse Spring Got Game Competition, A Family Affair strives to combine the tactical thought of a turn based strategy game with the quick reflexes and skill required for an action platformer. Although this initial release is somewhat unpolished, especially in regards to the AI, we are planning on continuing development over the Summer to improve the game. In the mean time, we’d love to hear your thoughts on the game so far. Also, we’d really appreciate it if you could take a quick moment to vote for A Family Affair in the competition. Every vote counts, and we’d really appreciate your support.
Whew, this Ludum Dare was much more intensive than usual for us! Having less team members than usual didn’t help, but what really did us in was our over ambition. More info below, and please check out the game. Ratings and feedback are much appreciated!
As you can see, the game is the screen in a movie theater. For some reason the artist added Mickey Mouse, Batman, and Baymax to the crowd. Then, just for good measure, made it so you could see the butts of most of the audience. Thanks for that Paul.
The Idea
To be honest, no one on the team really liked the theme. We tried to get around this by discussing alternative interpretations of it. Eventually we came to the idea of using screen to refer to a movie screen. From there, we decided to create a comedic take on modern action movies. All of the levels in the game are based off of scenes commonly found in action movies.
Scene 1: The Car Chase
Inspired by the game Spy Hunter, we created a level in which the player, on a motorcycle, had to blow up incoming enemy cars. Technically not much of a chase, this scene caused some issues when the game sometimes failed to advance to the next level after cleared. Luckily this issue was resolved.
Scene 2: Romance Scene
What action movie is complete without a romance scene that has no bearing on the overall plot. That’s exactly what this fully voiced scene is. Although it offers the player a choice at the end, nothing in this scene really matters and there’s no way to lose. You may enjoy the voice acting though. Kudos to Josh for voicing both the male lead and his love interest.
Scene 3: Shootout on the Train
The actual train battle scene in game.
Based on another common movie scene, in this level the player must dodge enemy bullets and incoming obstacles while on a train. This level utilizes Spine skeletal animation, allowing us to make some very nice ducking animations. The game play for this level changed several times during development. For example, originally the player was going to be able to jump. Unfortunately this was scrapped because it made the game play rather boring. There was also going to be a scrolling background, but this was cut due to time constraints and bugs.
A picture from one of the scenes that inspired the train shootout level. James Bond certainly isn’t the only movie character to fight on a train though!
Scene 4: Rooftop Battle Rhythm Game
Although we knew we wanted some sort of climactic battle with the main antogonist, the idea for the game play on this level was not decided until late into development. A team member first proposed the idea of a Rhythm game, where the player must press the specified buttons, and it turned into this. Although it was my first time trying to make something like this, I think it came outpretty well, and gets pretty intense and hectic near the end of the battle. The animation is a bit choppy, but that’s because the art for this was made around 1:00 in the morning.
The Insanity that is Voice Acting
What movie is complete without dialogue and speaking? After hastily throwing together a text box system, I began writing humorous dialogue for every scene. I also decided to give the player a choice at the end of each level to say one of three “victory boasts”, which were usually some kind of joke about the situation or the enemies. Unfortunately we ran out of time to add voice acting to a few of the scenes. Luckily, in our timezone we still had a school day and several hours after until the deadline for the Jam. Since we all went to the same school, we were able to record all of the remaining dialogue on my phone while walking to Subway. If some of the audio quality is bad, that’s probably why. I’m glad we were able to do voice acting though, because it helped add a lot to the humor we were trying to go for.
So far feedback on the game has been good and we are looking forward to the results. If you want to check out the game and leave us some feedback. Enjoy and thanks for reading!
With less than 24 hours remaining, we have gotten a ton of good feedback on our game Super Action Man, an a action comedy based on modern action movies. We are all very proud of the work that went into making this game, such as recording dialogue while walking to Subway.
If you guys could drop some last minute ratings and feedback, that would be great! Good luck to everyone with their results and see you then!