[Mark Thomson]

It's that time of year again! Granted, it's been four years since it was last that time of year, but that just makes it all the more exciting.

That's right, ladies and gentlemen, the voting period for the annual-ish uDevGames Mac Game Development Contest has begun! After three months of hard development, there are twenty games for your entertainment, and I can assure you all that you won't be let down by the overwhelming quality that this year's entrants have produced.

Now, faithful gamers, it's your turn. These people didn't enter for the money and they sure didn't enter for the girls. They entered for the twin joys of peer recognition and the great array of prizes provided by this contest's sponsors. So please, head on over to http://www.udevgames.com/games/list/ and download 'em all, play 'em all, enjoy 'em all!

Then, when you've realised that my entry is far-and-away the best, cruise over to http://www.udevgames.com/vote/ and give the developers the feedback they so crave- a pittance in comparrison to the hours of quality gaming you're about to enjoy.

You have until March 12th to let your voices be heard, so get to it today, help out the community, and have some fun.

On a final note, a huge thanks to the sponsors of uDevGames 2008, who are listed here: http://www.udevgames.com/sponsors

[Pegasus]

I've tried all of the games today and there are only two of them that stand out to me: Laserface Jones is quite good, and I've really enjoyed uDead. Pretty amusing.

Surrounded by Death wasn't bad, but it started to bore me after a while.

[Eric5h5]

I thought gw0rp looked like it might be one of the better ones, but I couldn't make any sense of the system requirements: "Mac OS X 10.3 with an Intel processor." Um, there's no such thing. I downloaded it anyway in case one or the other was wrong, but the .dmg wouldn't mount.

--Eric

[Naman]

Sneaky Snake, on March 7th 2009, 08:30 PM, said:

An honourable mention to this spam

Um... what?

As for me, I tried most of 'em, and the ones that really shine are Constellation and Laserface Jones. Constellation is good as it is, but it could be the base for something great. If the dev continues working on it after uDev, I could see it doing well as a shareware online-multiplayer game.

[diordna]

Eric5h5, on March 8th 2009, 05:48 PM, said:

I thought gw0rp looked like it might be one of the better ones, but I couldn't make any sense of the system requirements: "Mac OS X 10.3 with an Intel processor." Um, there's no such thing. I downloaded it anyway in case one or the other was wrong, but the .dmg wouldn't mount.

--Eric

I forgot that 10.3 won't run on Intel. If I had compiled a PPC build, it would theoretically run that far back. I will update the requirements.

Also, I had posted a bad DMG because my connection dropped out during an upload. That should be fixed.

[Eric5h5]

Oh, I get it...it requires 10.3 or higher; I wasn't paying enough attention and for some reason I read the next bit as not being able to test on 10.4 or 10.5 (instead of 10.3 or 10.4 which is what you actually said). So I thought it literally required 10.3 only. Unfortunately the Intel-only thing makes it a no-go here.

--Eric

[TheMCP]

Pegasus, on March 8th 2009, 03:08 PM, said:

I've really enjoyed uDead. Pretty amusing.

Thanks I appreciate the mention.
Shout at me if you need any hints and tips.

[Janichsan]

Naman, on March 9th 2009, 02:41 AM, said:

As for me, I tried most of 'em, and the ones that really shine are Constellation and Laserface Jones. Constellation is good as it is, but it could be the base for something great. If the dev continues working on it after uDev, I could see it doing well as a shareware online-multiplayer game.

I agree. Of the one's I've tested so far, these are the most polished and finished ones. uDeadGame could be fun, but doesn't play very well. "SpaceProto" looks as if it could become someday the game I've always looked for (a worthy clone of Frontier: Elite 2) but is not even a real game yet.

[Malt-Pipefishes]

With all due respect to Matt Hergaarden, I found Surrounded by Death to be a rather laughable pursuit. It's basically a poor man's Zombie Panic, which is in turn a poor man's Left 4 Dead.

[TheMCP]

Janichsan, on March 11th 2009, 09:45 AM, said:

uDeadGame could be fun, but doesn't play very well.

Could you elaborate? Doesn't play well as in doesn't run smooth?
Could I get some system specs if thats the case?

Or doesn't play well as in you didn't get the gameplay and were expecting it to do things
it didn't do, or it did things you didn't expect it to do?

Feedback helps a lot, its like with sex, when a woman says "Do it like this".
Even if you break up with the girl eventually, the trick you learned usually works for the new one(s).
And of course it really helps to know if your equipment is adequate for the task.

[Janichsan]

TheMCP, on March 12th 2009, 03:11 AM, said:

Could you elaborate? Doesn't play well as in doesn't run smooth?
Could I get some system specs if thats the case?

Or doesn't play well as in you didn't get the gameplay and were expecting it to do things
it didn't do, or it did things you didn't expect it to do?

It's the gameplay. First of all, I find the maximum viewing distance is far too short. I assume that might be intentional, nevertheless, it makes the level layout slightly confusing since you can easily miss a fork in the path. Furthermore, you see your enemies only when you almost run into them.

The controls are too sensitive – some slider to adjust that might help.

And last but not least, I found it to be difficult to select a specific target for the zombies to attack, especially when the target is moving. That probably is result of a combination of the too sensitive controls and the humans' rather high movement speed.

[TheMCP]

I split the reply to its own thread Here, so as not hijack this one with my own reasonings and explanations.

Less than 15 hours left to play for free and vote for the games in uDevGames folks.
After that they may vanish forever, or go shareware, so hop to it!