Summer 2014 contest entries uploaded

Dear friends,

Believe it or not, we have only received 3 entries for the Summer 2014 contest. I know that my email address has rejected lots of emails lately, though, so post a message here if you have submitted a contest entry and you don't see it in the list.

The entries are uploaded to Acknex Unlimited:

Acknex Unlimited Demo Page

Please download them, test them and then vote the best one. The poll will start accepting your votes in about 72 hours; I want to make sure that I have uploaded all the contest entries and that they are all ok.

Once again, post a message in this thread if you don't see your contest entry in the list or if your demo has problems.

Thank you!
George

By the way... what is the first price?
An unity3d pro licence? This would be coolest.

Yeah, Unity will solve all our problems, and we will be able to make a game from our dreams with a single mouse click in Unity.

Unfortunately only 3 participants, but good luck for all. Who knows, maybe we get new entry before voting start. I remember a few years ago there were only two participants who automatically receive pro edition

all the 3 worth a pro.


enemy agents inside!

Many people believe that working with a newer game engine will help them finish their games faster, so they jump from one engine to the other. Still, most of them suffer from the shiny object syndrome; they get an adrenaline rush whenever they buy something new.

As some of you may know, I work in the online marketing (search engine optimization) industry. Just read a study released by a huge digital products company, which was stating that 16% of their clients don't even download the purchased products.

Gamestudio won't beat the Unreal engine anytime soon, but it's much more user friendly and can help anyone build commercial quality games. It's true that you will need commercial quality artwork and coding, though, but that's true no matter what game engine you choose.

@^: well said, but I had to laugh when reading alpha stikes post

I totally agree with you George, there is no magic wand to make good game. For 15 years, I've changed a few game engines and i must to say that (with the exception of World Editor) for my current project Acknex is the simply perfect. Before someone decides to go with creating a game, he needs to see what features is needs for this kind of game. I am very sure that 99% of indie developers can achieve their goals with GameStudio. A good example are the guys from Turkey who have made some hight quality games with Acknex, and now working on a new project. The bigger problem is the slow engine developement in last two years, and if this continues, we just need someone to turn off the light.

About contest - damn, it will be a difficult decision. Like Sivan say, all the 3 worth a pro. Hmm perhaps Ackmania is the best, but this time i think i will vote for a one of the lone wolves . Who will it be, i do not know yet.

my opinion shortly:
- Ackmania: it is a well done completed funny little game, nice job!
- Maggots: as an old Worms fan I like it, but with the uploaded version I can't shoot grenades, only with the older version to very short distances. so I added a line to launch_gr(): if (proc_status(launch_gr) > 0) return; to the beginning and in this case it works, but somehow the projectile calculations are not okay, they fall very fast... but the other parts, like the destructible terrain and worm movement/falling into holes, are great!
- Evoeon: an easy to use 2D editor was a missing tool for 3DGS. it has a good potential, and features good ideas like th blocking box and event box, but somehow I expected more from it, I couldn't really use it until now, maybe I should read the short manual more carefully.

Thank you Sivan, that's a nice review.

Voted Evoeon 2D Game Builder by EVO. Like Sivan said it could really help some GS3D users.

I was hesitating between EVO and Ackmania (Operation Deadnex) v1.2 by AckCon 2014 Team though, cause with the latter maybe more people will get a pro license which is a good feature too .

The maggots one did not really work for me (grenade fire did not work).

Ackmania is a great game. I really enjoyed playing it. It was finished with professional quality and was done in an impeccable amount of time. Deserves a Vote.

WJBender's Maggots needs a bit more work but the Worms Idea stuck out at me. With explosive bmap terrains, and good pixel collision I was impressed with this project. All it needs is a bit more labored time involved and it can really be something spectacular. Deserved The Vote.

Evoeon 2D Game Builder was not as user friendly as I would have liked it to be. As a past RPG Maker User, I was hoping this would be similar to it, just as it looks to be. But when I started using RPG Maker I was able to jump right into it and start making games without reading the manual... This was not the case. I gave this Project 10 minutes of my time trying to figure out how to operate this program, and had no success then lost interest. However the Idea of it, is a great idea and I would like to see this advance much further. Deserved a Vote.

how many have this grenade throw issue ?

I don't think I would be allowed to make any revisions to it now though.

Voted maggots, because worms and bitmap desctruction.
dude needs pro for using his awesome more effectively.

Grenade throw stops working after frist one but sivan's fix kinda works.

Evoeon is a really cool idea, though severely lacking on the UX side. Otherwise promising project and as others also stated could help a lot of people.

Operation Deadnex does not deserve(or need for that matter) pro that traitors.

I now tested maggots with Sivan trick too (adding if (proc_status(launch_gr) > 0) return;), and the environment destruction is really cool. Well done on that part Wjbender.

@Quad: It is not about the pro, it is about the jcFame

I'm pretty sure jcl is part of the jury, so he MUST play Ackmania. HAR HAR

those votes almost made me shead a tear !

I am grateful !

a bit offtopic but , looking at the solution sivan gave
I believe theres more than one grenade launched one
after the other during the small time window that space were pressed , wich is weird because I tested
(actually played) for time on end before uploading the last revision , and I tested in all kinds of ways with
throwing ,I even made sure by holding space in throughout the whole time and not once did it malfunction on mine , I cannot really explain it from what I experience on my pc with the version of GS I have ..

I am sorry about the state of maggots , it is not in me to drop off a project in such a state , I am a bit of a perfectionist and I never settle for less unless I am limited by some means like time
or ability , so I feel bad about the fact that it doesn't
behave the same on others pc's and to be honest the
graphics were rushed because I spend so much time
coding and recoding parts that I became afraid I wouldn't make it in time after I only read about the competition a while ago before dropping of the first version , the same goes for the fact that I haven't cleaned up the code and simplified everything but anyway thats the story in a nutshell .

even with that said I am glad that it did make a good impression thus far ,thank you .

@Wjbender, maybe you accidently uploaded an older/test version?
But it doesn't matter much I think though, most who will vote (/have voted) here will have read Sivan 's post anyway or just plainly came up by the idea themselves to add the extra line.

, agreed

mmmm what's up doc ?

It wasn't an easy task, but the jury has managed to decide the winners:
1st prize: Ackmania (Operation Deadnex) v1.2 by AckCon 2014 Team
2nd prize: Maggots by Wjbender

Winners, please pm me your contact info (name, address, email). I need to send the data to JCL, so that he can email you the Gamestudio license keys.

congratulations

thank you for all the votes , and thank you to jcl ,george and everyone else who bring this competitions to the forum .

I can't wait , never expected to win 2nd, actually I
thought I would get 3rd

I have PM you George

Imho you would've deserved the first place because I'm 99% certain that at least half of the votes on AckMania come from the creators themselves. But that's just my 2 cents.

Congratulations all around to everyone.

Congrats!

congratulation!


yeah, team work is more efficient!

Thank you WJ, I have got your details.

also, whenever we actually need a Pro is only at ackcon (for WRS) and christian always takes care of publishing, so all in all we don't really need it.

EDIT: And congratulations of course! Very formidable 2nd place!

The votes itself - whoever clicked - in the past were not the sole key for the final result. It happened several times that the final ranking did not match to the votes.
Knowing that I hope the jury met a proper and fair decision, being aware that forum polls are and have always been subject to manipulation.

Congratulations to WJ Bender

Unfortunately it took about a week for them to verify my account, so I couldn’t vote (so congratulations winners). .. Hopefully there is a contest next year, I’ll definitely upload something.

contests happen in like every 4 months, not once a year.
Next contest's topic will probably be determined in next AUM or the one after that. Then you have about 3 months to work on your contest entry and then we poll for projects again.