My 48-hour contest entry! Fun game! Download now! ( [Archive]

Jamul

07-15-2002, 07:00 AM

The Ludum Dare (www.ludumdare.com) 48-hour game development contest is over! I am REALLY happy with what I accomplished. So download a copy and try it out.

It's extra important that you try this game out because it runs in OpenGL. I would like to do future games in OpenGL, but I don't know how widespread good OpenGL drivers are, so I don't know if I can do that. So PLEASE if you download this (and please do download it!), let me know if it works on your computer (preferably as many different computers as you can), and how smoothly it ran, how well it works, and heck, while you're at it, how much you liked it and how it could be improved as a game! The technical testing is EXTREMELY important! I will announce more testing like it in the future, because I do need to know if Joe Average has decent OpenGL capabilities, so I can make smoothly animated games, and 3D games, in the future.

Here's the game!

www.hamumu.com/goods/scarecrow_install.EXE (5.5MB)

PROTECT THE CORN!

Mike Hommel

Marshmallow Head, Hamumu Software

http://www.hamumu.com

jamul@hamumu.com

Jamul

07-15-2002, 03:00 PM

No, you can't save, it's just kind of an arcade game. You can start on level 11 next time if you want (of course, you won't have all the powerups you got between though).

Mike Hommel

Marshmallow Head, Hamumu Software

http://www.hamumu.com

jamul@hamumu.com

Anonymous

07-16-2002, 12:00 AM

I liked the game a lot, except the menus go really slow on my computer, which has Windows 98 (350mhz). Is there any way to save your game? If so, how? I got to the twelveth day when my dad said I had to get off. On a scale of 1-10, 1 being the worst, 10 being the best, I would give it a nine.
The Real Homer Jay Simpson

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Anonymous

07-16-2002, 03:00 AM

Ok, I played a full game, and I got to day 37! My score was 10385 points.
The Real Homer Jay Simpson

The Real Homer Jay Simpson is a Simpsons fan site with information, contests*, multimedia*, a message board powered by YaBB, and much more.

* This part of the site will be at the site soon.

Anonymous

07-16-2002, 04:00 AM

It looks like it would be fun--but everything runs impossibly slow! I tried to play it, but unless there is an easy fix, it is unplayable on my computer!

Jamul

07-16-2002, 08:00 AM

Sounds like you don't have openGL drivers, Lisa... you could check your video card's website or www.glsetup.com (which does not run on XP, by the way) to see if you can get some. I presume you have a video card with acceleration, since if you don't, your computer is probably like 10 years old!

It does indeed require more modern hardware, that's why I am seeing how it runs on peoples' PCs. Without acceleration it will DEFINITELY be unplayable, but it's impossible to get a computer without acceleration in the present day, or even in the past, what, 3 years? So I would guess very few casual computer folks lack an accelerator... the problem is that I have heard many accelerators don't have good openGL drivers, and/or what casual user is going to go find openGL drivers?? So more reports people, please!

Mike Hommel

Marshmallow Head, Hamumu Software

http://www.hamumu.com

jamul@hamumu.com

Anonymous

07-16-2002, 09:00 AM

I've tried it on the compaq, and it's not working for me. It has a 3D accelerator, but apparently very low end, with 300-350 MHz, K6 processor, and a graphics card that has only 2MB of memory. Also running Win98.

I tried changing the size and bits, but that didn't work at all, I had to cntl-alt-del to get out. When I left it on the "original" setting it did come up, and I could see the corn (which looked cool). The word Scarecrow very slowly "shifted around" on the screen. I didn't get any further than that, and gave up.

I have other PC's to try!

Jamul

07-16-2002, 09:00 AM

yeah, that's the kind of info I need! It sounds like that too is missing openGL drivers (which means it doesn't use the 3D accelerator). I don't know much about 3D junk, so it could also just be the fact that this game uses a kajillion megabytes of graphics and they don't all fit in 2MB, so it runs real slow. By the way, press CTRL to select menu items, not enter!

Mike Hommel

Marshmallow Head, Hamumu Software

http://www.hamumu.com

jamul@hamumu.com

Anonymous

07-16-2002, 10:00 AM

Mike, I went to the site you suggested, but I am leary about downloading "beta" level drivers. It sounds like a lot could go wrong--not nearly as easy as beta testing your games!

It also sounds like you need to be online when using/playing games that require those drivers. Since we only have 1 phone line, that doesn't seem like a good idea.

My computer will be 2 on Thanksgiving and it wasn't state of the art when we got it, but it was new and good enough for the cost! It is an Intel Celeron 633 running on Windows ME. I will have to find the book to see if it has a video accelerator card--the tower lists 3d AGP. I thought it didn't have an accelerator card, however it runs Spiderman which says it needs an accelerator.

Computers can be so mysterious!

Jamul

07-16-2002, 01:00 PM

I'm sure it has an accelerator card. Whether or not there are openGL drivers for it is another question entirely! Beta drivers can definitely be risky, you might want to avoid that. Although there's no reason why it should give you beta drivers - glsetup is just designed to tell you what drivers you do need for your card (the latest ones for your card), which may be beta or not, usually not, I would hope.

Definitely, you would NOT have to be online to use the drivers. You're probably thinking of how GLSetup works, which is to download a small file which decides what drivers you need, then goes online to download the drivers themselves, which can take a while. You should try glsetup and see what it says are the drivers you need. If they're beta, you might not want to risk it, if they're not, then you're simply making your video card run better! Not so shabby! Of course, I should add there's always risk in downloading drivers. Weird things can happen. So it may not be worth it, but scarecrow is pretty fun....

Mike Hommel

Marshmallow Head, Hamumu Software

http://www.hamumu.com

jamul@hamumu.com

Jamul

07-16-2002, 03:00 PM

I don't know about the switching (just slowness I suppose), but the starting up of a game is because there's MAJOR loading going on, tons of big textures. I was tempted to put in a loading display, but you know, 48 hours!

The title screen is certainly the big acid test, because it has TONS of sprites, and a lot of alpha blending.

Mike Hommel

Marshmallow Head, Hamumu Software

http://www.hamumu.com

jamul@hamumu.com

Anonymous

07-16-2002, 03:00 PM

The game runs great on my system, as you would expect from the specs (AthlonXP 1700+, GeForce 3) but I also noticed the menu slowness somebody else mentioned. There's a slight delay when switching between menu items and when launching an item.

Anonymous

07-16-2002, 09:00 PM

I'm just curious - why the experimentation with OpenGL? Is there a specific reason(s) or just part of the perpetual search for a better/easier way of doing things?

Anonymous

07-16-2002, 10:00 PM

Yeah, 3D would've been an obvious guess but I thought maybe you were sticking to 2D and using GL anyway.

I'm sure you've already seen a ton of helpful GL sites out there but I thought I'd share one particular site with you in case you haven't seen it:

gametutorials.com/Tutoria...GL_Pg1.htm

They've got 5 pages of great tutorials where the entire lesson is written as comments in the source, and they're still very thorough. They start at roughly the same level as the Nehe tuts but they get more advanced on some topics (like model loading and animation and octrees). I've barely gotten started with 3D/GL and that first page full of camera tutorials is helping me a lot.

Jamul

07-16-2002, 10:00 PM

In order to make 3D games of course! And because I absolutely LOVE rotating sprites. And OpenGL makes doing true-color sprites trivially easy as well as some other stuff. It's SUPER easy, and fun to do! But mainly for the possibility of 3D.

Mike Hommel

Marshmallow Head, Hamumu Software

http://www.hamumu.com

jamul@hamumu.com

Jamul

07-17-2002, 08:00 AM

Yeah, that's one of my bookmarks!

Mike Hommel

Marshmallow Head, Hamumu Software

http://www.hamumu.com

jamul@hamumu.com

Jamul

07-21-2002, 09:00 AM

My high score is currently (I think this is right) 23,310 on level 50. That's starting at level 1, with 1 ear per stalk. Level 50 is pretty close to impossible to pass! Moo Mania indeed....

The balance on the game is pretty iffy. Too slow and boring up until maybe level 20, then it quickly gets too frantic, but you also have so much firepower by then that you just sort of mow through everything. And when you're finally down to just a few stalks (hopefully near the middle!), and you have so much firepower, you can just continuously BOO(OOOO) on top of your stalks and protect them forever (which also is pretty boring!). Then the only threat is cows, which are actually MORE dangerous when you have more firepower, since you can't avoid hitting ones you don't want to while hitting ones you do. All very interesting.

Mike Hommel

Marshmallow Head, Hamumu Software

http://www.hamumu.com

jamul@hamumu.com

Anonymous

07-21-2002, 10:00 AM

jamul, now that the contest is over, can you please modify the game a little bit?

Jamul

07-22-2002, 07:00 AM

That's awfully vague.

Mike Hommel

Marshmallow Head, Hamumu Software

http://www.hamumu.com

jamul@hamumu.com

Anonymous

07-22-2002, 04:00 PM

the game didnt work on my computer. i have a COMPAQ Windows Millenium Edition[ME].

Anonymous

07-24-2002, 04:00 AM

Well, i have a REALLY powerful Celeron Dell, and the game runs just fine, and i also have Windows XP.

The Master Of Emperors!

Big Fan of Hamumu Techincal Manager of Yellow Teeth Software

The Bouncy King!

Anonymous

07-24-2002, 08:00 AM

My Scarcrow runs exellent too i'm suprised jamul didn't do this earlier!

Anonymous

07-24-2002, 02:00 PM

you guys are lucky that you can play.I cant.

Anonymous

01-23-2003, 10:00 PM

I only like games with textures I don't like 3D games a whole lot example Rage of mages has great graphics! lot's of textures and it's not 3D well it's a map type game the units do pop out like 3D but well you get the point! I got MHZ 200 and I don't want to download OpenGL I don't like downloading only when it comes to RAGE OF MAGES! AND HAMUMU GAMES!