The Daily Click

::.

TDC Christmas Competition 2010 RESULTS!!!!

News posted 14th February, 2011 by The Chris Street

Hey everyone, sorry it's taken so long to finish the judging, but we are now finally at a position to announce the results of the competition!

Twelve games were submitted, and all entries received were of a decent standard and showed the capabilities of the Clickteam products. Speaking of whom, I, on behalf of The Daily Click admin team, would like to thank Clickteam once again for their generosity for the prize fund of $250.

So, without further ado, here are the overall rankings from the three judges:

1st Place: Christmas Time Heroes, by Strife

2nd Place: Tukky's Christmas, by Duncan Fenn

3rd Place: Hatman 2, by Bibin

4th Place: A Not So Christmassy Game, by Jacob

5th Place: Santa's Magic Sack, by Studio_Pina

6th Place: Santa Doesn't Love You, by HorrendousGames

7th Place: Santa Vs The Ghost Of Christmas Presents, by Lobot

8th Place: Santa Dog 2 (Lite), by Tropik

9th Place: Santa Teaches Typing, by Pixelthief

10th Place: Santa Claws, by Arkhaor

11th Place: Snowman Panic, by YOMAMA722

12th Place: Mark McCauley's 12 Days Til Blooming Christmas, by Mark McCauley

So, there you have it. Strife wins the TDC Christmas Competition 2010 grand prize of $250, so heartiest congratulations to you, sir. Commiserations to the rest of the users who submitted their entries. The standard of games was higher than ever before and judging was quite difficult, even if we did all have to download TGF2: Newgrounds Edition to judge properly! (thanks Duncan!)

So thanks once again, and if you click HERE you will be taken to the results page at the competition website, where you will be able to view a detailed analysis of our judgings, as well as comments!

Posted by HorrendousGames

14th February, 2011

After reading that review, I realize my game did suck something fierce. Congrats to Strife.

Posted by s-m-r

14th February, 2011

Congrats, Strife!

Posted by Hagar

14th February, 2011

Bourbon biscuit for Strife!

Posted by HitmanN

14th February, 2011

Congrats Strife.

Posted by Eternal Man [EE]

14th February, 2011

Congrats to you, saucy game maker!

Posted by Shiru

14th February, 2011

Congrats man !

Posted by Pixelthief

14th February, 2011

At least my compo entry wasn't a repeat of Leonard's Fantastic Adventure! I made that in a single sitting for an educational games course at a university so I'm very glad it didn't win
Amazing pixel artwork on some of these entries!

Posted by Wackyjackie

14th February, 2011

Yeah! I'm not the last one ^^.
Shame that I've ran out of time, so the game is "pretty" unfinished ;-P. I've posted slightly better and easier version on TDC like two days after compo BTW

.
And of course - congratz for the winner(s)!

Oh,and sorry for my English.
Comment edited by Arkhaor on 2/14/2011

Posted by OMC

14th February, 2011

HWAT? COMPO RESULTS?

Nice job guys.

Posted by HorrendousGames

14th February, 2011

Yeah really great job everyone. I know I did a terrible job, but the rest of you did great. I enjoyed playing all of your games.

Posted by Tropik

14th February, 2011

Good work, guys!

Nice competition. I'am looking foward next year! : D

Posted by MasterM

14th February, 2011

The standard of games was higher than ever before and judging was quite difficult, even if we did all have to download TGF2: Newgrounds Edition to judge properly! (thanks Duncan!)

what a prick. we should ban him

j/k

nice stuff everyone

Posted by Jacob!

14th February, 2011

Congratulations Strife!

Personally, I'm a bit surprised that none of the comments about my game were about the water. It was the sole source of amazement to everyone I demoed it to while developing

Posted by Hayo

15th February, 2011

Congrats dudes!

Posted by UrbanMonk

15th February, 2011

So why isn't there download links on the competition results?

Srsly?

Posted by Assault Andy

15th February, 2011

Well done everyone

It was fun to judge the entries. Congratulations to the winners.

Posted by The Chris Street

15th February, 2011

Because the users had the opportunity to submit their entries to TDC and I don't think everybody did.

Posted by Assault Andy

15th February, 2011

I encourage everyone to look at the feedback that Chris and I have given to your games so that you can make better games in future

Here are some general comments that I wrote but aren't displayed on the results page:

For my comments I generally offered "constructive criticism". Please don't take offence if it doesn't seem that I said anything nice - I did enjoy playing all of these games and I'm very impressed with the effort and amount of entries that we received. I've just tried to provide you with tips on how to improve your game for next time. I hope you take my advice to heart.

General tips for everyone:
Tell the player what they're supposed to do. I went to all of the help/tutorials before playing, and once I started playing I often had to restart and re-read the help. I must admit I scanned the help screens just to get a general gist rather than memorising the controls but other players are no different to me and many of them won't even read your tutorials to begin with.

You just need 1 or 2 pieces of text telling the player how to play when they first start. "Press Space to Shoot", "Hold the mouse to shoot", "Don't let Santa get to the Christmas tree", etc. This will help enormously. Every modern game you play will have this. Players don't read large chunks of text.

* Be consistent with your graphical style as well as your sound style. Use pixel art the whole way through or vector art the whole way through, etc., don't mix styles.

* Readme files are great. TUKKY'S CHRISTMAS has a good simple one.

* Put sound in your game or we can't do anything but give you zero.

Posted by The Chris Street

15th February, 2011

Bumhole plop. I meant to add that on the main results page but forgot, sorry! Will do it if I have time tomorrow.

Posted by alastair john jack

15th February, 2011

So where can I play these games?

Posted by Mark McCauley

15th February, 2011

Well done everyone especially strife and fairs fair to the judging- I accept everything said. I simply ran outta time to complete it and coulda done way more on the user friendly side - And stuck to the original Idea (level 1) jump straight into the action - which I personally think offered a great fun way of platforming with a difference , There was so much stuff to do , many different ways of playing it and so on.
Adding the calender, sleigh and other side levels was a big oversteer away from the original idea with hindsight and definitely mustve frustrated a few.
ITs a classic case of too many ideas being crammed into a project in a short time. Like An overstuffed pie. That all said - I will keep the project and take the time to develop it properly with all the ideas implemented in the way I had envisaged - Because I know myself and many people (adults and kids)that enjoyed playing the original level . I'll post it as a download sometime - youll see what I mean..It was definitely 100% christmas though,barring the virgin mary and camels bearing kings with gifts,so and without sounding bitter ,wonder why it only got 7/10 or 8/10 for christmassy content. did you all even get beyond the calender? (which was just a starting base for all the levels no-one gets killed, no-one dies,Never mind, Ill be back (still working on the red dwarf project for now soo all time going into that (had over 31000 views in 6 months and all comments have been nothing but positive -not one negative comment -)
anyway it was fun making it , so thanks for that and I knew it wasnt complete which was unfortunate and hope it hasnt put you off trying a newer version of it.
keep up the good work y'all.

Posted by Marko

15th February, 2011

Congrats Strife

Posted by Assault Andy

15th February, 2011

@Mark - thanks for taking our comments to heart. We do hope that people are able to take what we said to improve their future games. Like I said in my comments, I did play your game, all of the levels, and I did my best to judge what you submitted.

I looked at your game again just then, and it's true that the game is full of Christmas graphics. Everything about it is quite Christmassy, however for me, it is Christmas themed without context. What I mean by that is, due to the other issues with the game, I could not make a connection between the graphics and the rest of the game. At no point did I understand what was going on in terms of a "purpose" - in essence there wasn't a story to explain why the graphics were appropriate to a Christmas theme.

And maybe that's a hard distinction, and perhaps your game should have deserved a 9 or 10 for Christmasyness. But in the end it wouldn't have made any difference. No hard feelings, but somebody has to come last!

So if it's any consolation, I will admit that your game certainly looks Christmassy, but despite this I was unable to feel a Christmas spirit from it due to the other issues with the game.

Your help file also didn't work - it was hardcoded to "C:\TGF\Games\Xmas\XmasHelp.txt".

Posted by Assault Andy

15th February, 2011

If anyone has any other questions about how I judged or their individual game I would be happy to discuss them, but please know that I stand by my scores.

Posted by alastair john jack

15th February, 2011

So where can I play these games?

Posted by The Chris Street

15th February, 2011

They've been submitted at various places at TDC. When I get time I will link the pages up. Probably won't be until tomorrow.

Posted by Strife

15th February, 2011

Thank you so much everyone! My fingers are shaking.

I want to thank HorrendousGames, DudeHuge, and others for their constructive criticism on the download page. Your insight helped me patch up the loose ends and balance out the difficulty. It's a shame that the judges never got to play the latest version, but hey, that's how life goes.

Speaking of which, a huge thank you to the judges for rating CTH the highest in spite of its shortcomings. I'm really looking forward to making another Time Heroes game in the future, and when I do, I'll be more than happy to share my progress at the Daily Click just like I always have.

I also gotta say that I really enjoyed the other Christmas games that were put up for download, and the effort you guys put into your entries was definitely worth it. I was wholeheartedly convinced that one of the other awesome games would place 1st instead.

Comment edited by Strife on 2/15/2011

Posted by Pixelthief

16th February, 2011

I don't think I uploaded mine to TDC, nor do I think I will, it really wasn't a large enough project to deserve a page. But if you're interested, you can play it in flash here:

http://claniraq.zxq.net/

Its just something I whipped up in 1 sitting for a course on educational games, not meant as a serious entry at all

Posted by HorrendousGames

16th February, 2011

I had a few statements about some of the things that were said, I'm not trying to be negative or complain, I just wanted to point them out/offer my rebuttal to some of the comments.

1) I've never used vector art... in fact, MMF2 doesn't support vector art. I do not use vector art programs like flash or illustrator, I use after effects which also does not support vector art. Smooth animations do not equal vector art, unless I'm messing up my terms, I thought that vector art was non pixelated art that can zoom to any size and not deform. I always spend a ton of time on my animations to make sure they look fantastic, it kind of feels a bit insulting that they we're shrugged off as being inconsistent.

2) AA mentioned that my code was messy? I specifically remember Chris saying that we would not get any points removed for messy code, which is specifically why I didn't organize/comment. Other than the mentioned camera glitch and the cursor glitch, everything worked as it was intended. I noticed the similar comment on Hatman 2, followed by "no bugs" (although I realize you mentioned another camera issue). If the game has no bugs, then how does it not get a 20/20 for programming? CTH had bugs/poorly executed functions (especially when using a controller), but it still got a 20/20 score, I'm not saying it was a bad game, I'm just a little confused on what you guys felt a 20/20 score in programming constitutes.

3) You guys harped on me for the game being difficult, I hope you realized there was a 'hints' option. It is also possible to win each level without setting of a trap.

4) I spent a large amount of time on the unlockables section, it's a shame it was never mentioned.

5) I would've really liked to see what Rikus had to say about each of the games. I realize that he's been having some wicked computer problems, but is there any chance he'd be willing to write something up for later? Other than a few of my gripes, you guys did make some excellent points, I only wish the play testers would've caught them (they did catch the cursor bug but I had no idea how to fix it, now I know), but I will be using them to improve, hense why it can only help if Rikus can manage to find the time and means to write up some comments.

Once again, I'm not trying to complain, I just felt the need to get a few things off my chest.

This is the download link to my game if anyone is interested. Most of the other ones are on the 1st download page currently towards the bottom and maybe a few on the next page.
http://www.create-games.com/download.asp?id=8357

Posted by Dave C

16th February, 2011

why isn't there a download link to each game in the results page...?!?! at least the top 5!? i'm lazy..

Posted by Jacob!

16th February, 2011

Vector art is a style and the method it was created. Generally it refers to computer generated antialiasing (such as created with Photoshop's pen tool.) Vector graphics, on the other hand, is a set of instructions that the computer generates at runtime. This is how the flawless zooms and whatnot work.

If you look at my game, (A Not So Christmassy Game) you can see that while my graphics were just .pngs that I imported, it is still considered vector art.

Posted by Assault Andy

16th February, 2011

@HorrendousGames

1) I know that MMF doesn't support "true" vector art, but when I say that in this context I mean that, whatever program you used, you haven't had to individually place each pixel as you have when you do "pixel art". (As Jacob! said)

In the end, the terminology does not matter and it does not matter how you achieved your graphics. It's that in the end product that counts. What I see in your game is that you have Santa Clause and the snowballs drawn in one style, that is they have anti-aliased edges and you can't make out individual pixels, and the other objects in the game, mostly the backgrounds have been either drawn pixel by pixel, or you left out anti-aliasing. Either way, they are not in the same style as Santa and some of the other objects.

I don't find this visually appealing.

Looking at Circy's comments, and now the comments on your download page, others thought similarly. All the judges came to their results independently, we didn't discuss any of the games before or during judging.

2) I marked the programming section by starting each game with 20 points and then subtracting points when I found bugs (depending on severity) and a couple of marks if the code was messy. So yes I did mark this differently to Chris, and I don't know how Rikus marked it. But you can take comfort in knowing that I took marks off every game for messy code beside CTH. My judging was consistent across all games and wouldn't have had an impact.

I have judged some competitions before, and this doesn't apply at all for this competition, but I can say that: If a game is very long and complicated then, for the programming score, there is more leniency.

For example, if you make a "game" where you take a blank frame and tell the player that the objective of the game is to stare at the screen until they pass out, then technically it should get a 20/20 for programming. There are no bugs. It works as intended. Compare this to a game with 4000 lines of code which works flawlessly for the most part, but then has a minor glitch somewhere on level 12. I would still give the second game 20/20 for programming, because there is a lot more code to debug and so you have to take that into account.

Let me reiterate that this is not related to CTH. This is just how I would judge games generally. Personally, when I played CTH I found no bugs. I didn't play it with a joystick. And so no bugs meant I gave it a 20/20 for programming.

When I played Hatman 2 I did not encounter bugs. I said the camera was bad and annoying, but it wasn't buggy. It was designed like that, and in my opinion that was bad design - that's a gameplay issue, not a programming issue. In your game the camera "glitches" at the start because it does something it's not supposed to do. It appears in one place and then quickly moves on Santa - that's a programming issue, not a gameplay issue.

3/4) No I didn't notice your hints until very late in the game. This is a usability issue. It would have been good if, once I had failed a level, it asked if I wanted to turn hints on - or the first time you play it asks if you want hints. I did look at the options in all the games, as I do in many games before I play them, but most players will not do that. Most players would not have seen that option.

The first time I played I pummeled Santa with snowballs and couldn't win. I tried this a second time and still didn't win, so for me, I had to use traps to beat the levels and it was hard.

Unlockables similarly were not emphasised much. I didn't really check out the presents section (I assume that's what you're talking about?) and I didn't find some of the early presents interesting or useful - like underwear?

It is clear that you put a lot of effort into your game and I think your game had a lot of potential. If you take what we've said to heart then I think it could be a winning formula. It's missing those last bits of polish that turn a good concept into a great game. And that's why I scored it as I did.

Posted by Pixelthief

16th February, 2011

I don't think that was a very good idea to start with. I think it would be better if the "Programming" category for competitions was a judge of the mechanics behind the code. Not a score based on how well commented or clean it is- but rather based on the technical ingenuity that went into it. So a blank MMF application where all you do is view a slideshow would be a 1/20 at best, whereas some ultra high tech RTS game would pull a 20/20.

I think that sort of goes with the semantics of what "programming" is. A game with no programming shouldn't get the highest score in the programming category! Maybe if theres a "buggy" category or something. Maybe clean coding should be a factor (especially if its open source at the end).

Its not to say I don't like the way it was done, I'm just saying that it makes more sense to do it that way in the future. Just a suggestion

Posted by Assault Andy

16th February, 2011

Pixelthief - I agree with you. I do appreciate beautiful code however, these competition entries involve a lot of code and it would take a very long time for us to look through all of them. So that's why I think the Programming category means what it means, or at least to me.

Now the 20 event competition on the other hand doesn't have a programming score... and it's a competition about programming!!!

Posted by Pixelthief

16th February, 2011

err I don't think it really requires digging through code, its pretty easy to tell how well coded something is just by playing it. For example my submission was very simplistic but had a few neat effects

Posted by HorrendousGames

16th February, 2011

"I don't find this visually appealing."

That's fine. I also mentioned in the comments that it was based off of a TV show with a similar style, and it is hit or miss, some people like it, some don't. For the few people that recognized and liked the show, they got a kick out of it, although I probably should have conformed on this topic. In the vector vs. pixel art, it's neither...

"and a couple of marks if the code was messy."

And see, this was my issue, since Chris told everyone that there wouldn't be any loss in points due to messy code, myself and I'm sure many others did not worry about making the code pretty. I thought that the source code was only there just to assure that we actually made the game with a click product. That might be my fault in assuming that he was speaking for all the judges, although I also assumed that all of the judges were using the same criteria. In terms of my glitches, I'm not arguing that I shouldn't have lost points for them, that's fine, I agree with you on that.

"I said the camera was bad and annoying, but it wasn't buggy. It was designed like that, and in my opinion that was bad design - that's a gameplay issue, not a programming issue."

Good point, although honestly it could go either way. If he intentionally designed it that way, yes it's a gameplay issue. If he didn't intend it to be that way, but that's the only way he knew how to code it, it might be considered a programming issue, but of course, not necessarily.

"No I didn't notice your hints until very late in the game. This is a usability issue. It would have been good if, once I had failed a level, it asked if I wanted to turn hints on - or the first time you play it asks if you want hints."

That is a great suggestion. I actually had a real issue with deciding how hints were going to be implemented, which ties into your comment about the underwear. Originally, you would have to unlock the underwear to unlock the hints, but during testing I decided that it shouldn't have to be unlocked unless people are really having an issue with it, so I changed it to always be on, but of course I should have taken that extra step. I did emphasize the unlockables quite a bit, although the way I did it, not many people knew that you actually gained cheats and things from them. (well, it was mentioned in the tutorial, but you probably couldn't read it).

"The first time I played I pummeled Santa with snowballs and couldn't win."

More things that I could've included in the tutorial.
Small snowballs are really only useful for setting off traps, large and medium snowballs are more useful for pummeling Santa.

"It is clear that you put a lot of effort into your game and I think your game had a lot of potential. If you take what we've said to heart then I think it could be a winning formula. It's missing those last bits of polish that turn a good concept into a great game. And that's why I scored it as I did."

The hell if I'm doing this idea again. The majority of time was spent on coming up with trap ideas and programming each of them. It might seem like it's easy (like I thought when I came up with the idea), but it's not. It was a gynormous headache, and you can tell with some of the traps, I really didn't bring out the A material. However, if you got Santa with the jack-in-the-box and didn't laugh your ass off, then you have no soul.

Posted by Duncan

16th February, 2011

No programming category next time pls! It's at least a tiny bit unfair on everyone who entered.

You don't NEED to justify the open source requirement. No-one conceives a project based on the potential for technical ingenuity, unless they're Pixelthief. Bugs will tend to affect gameplay and presentation and indeed, most of the other categories. And finally, how are you going to reconcile the work of TGF and MMF users in any of the above?

I'm glad you acknowledged the scope of Strife's project, but again that's reflected in every other category.

Congrats btw Strife, a clear winner and I'm tickled pink to be so close behind!

Posted by The Chris Street

16th February, 2011

We'll take all these comments on board. I was the competition organiser so I hold my hands up and take full responsibility for lack of clarity. When I said that code wouldn't be judged if it was "messy" I was admittedly talking on my behalf only, but I should have made this clear.

All previous competitions have required open source submissions. Its a way for us to observe the technical aspects of the game. Plus we would need to know for sure if it was made with a Clickteam product; Clickteam agreed to the prize donation as long as all entrants were created with Clickteam products, which I think is fair enough.

Posted by Shiru

16th February, 2011

Is is possible to download the games ??

Posted by The Chris Street

16th February, 2011

When I get a spare moment I'll put links up to the games submitted already to TDC. For those that were not, I'll find somewhere to upload.

Posted by Jess Bowers

16th February, 2011

Congratulations, everyone! Great games -- all around.

Posted by Shiru

16th February, 2011

Thanks Chris

Posted by The Chris Street

16th February, 2011

Ok, all the pages link to the games submitted. I had to upload three games to TDC, it wasn't as bad as I thought

Posted by Pixelthief

16th February, 2011

Although I think its a bit silly to have a download link for a flash game

Posted by The Chris Street

16th February, 2011

Ah, I missed your link in the comments Pixelthief, sorry!

Posted by JetpackLover

22nd February, 2011

I don't see whats so bad with mixing styles. I feel like that was an unfair judgment call for strife. It didn't detract from the experience at all. Would you also fault the new kirby games for featuring hand drawn backgrounds? I think not.

Posted by Jacob!

22nd February, 2011

There's a difference between mixing sprite/backdrop styles and having differing styles for sprites/backdrops and backgrounds.

Posted by RenatoDep

2nd March, 2011