BGMC 23: Tell a story | Announcement!

Theme
***The theme for BGMC 23 is Tell a Story. You must in someway incorporate this theme into your game entry.

Start Date/Time***
http://s.mmgo.io/t/iuq

You are allowed to plan your game, but you are not permitted to start building the game until the countdown has ended!

End Date (you must submit before the countdown ends!): *** ![http://s.mmgo.io/t/i7N](http://s.mmgo.io/t/i7N)

How to Enter

***Once the competition has ended submit a new thread with download links in the finished game section with the title:

“BGMC 23 | name of your game”

It is also recommended that you start a WIP (work in progress) thread in the work in progress section so that you can get feedback while you are still developing the game.

Collaboration is allowed (but you will have to split the prizes amongst yourselves)

Game Engines***
Any engine that is integrated into the Blender interface is allowed, this includes:

  • BGE (v2.77 recommended).
  • UPBGE
  • Blend4Web
  • Panda3D via Moguri’s panda3D plugin
  • Armoury
  • BDX

You may NOT use (because they aren’t integrated into blender):

  • Unity
  • Unreal
  • Godot
  • CryEngine
  • any other non-blender engines.

It is recommended you use an engine you are familiar with.
It is recommended you export your game so that more people can play it (without needing blender).

Blender Version (for BGE)
***I highly recommend v2.77a as this works on older laptops in GLSL mode (to ensure more people can play your game).
Also 2.78a has bugs with mirror.py so it is not recommended.

Prizes
***There is a total potential prize pool of $412 USD, if you would like to donate another prize please send me a PM.

1st place:

  • $150 cash + 15% off blend4web PRO, if the winning entry uses blend4web this doubles to $300 cash + 30% off blend4web PRO.
  • $60 from me + Grenzer
  • A copy of the BGE Sprite Addon (worth $10)
  • A copy of the BGE Music visualizer by Nicholas_A (worth $2)
  • Organize next BGMC
[B]2nd place: [/B]
  • $25 from me + Grenzer


3rd place:

  • $15 from me + Grenzer


Everyone:

  • A finished game you can put on your resume/CV.

Judging
***Judging Panel:

  • Monster: Moderator of the game engine forum, with lots of experience.
  • Martinsh: Shader King of BGE, creator of most 2D filters and many BGE tech demos.
  • haidme: Runs a game studio, creator of KRUM and tomato jones (both released on steam)
  • Contret: Blend4web team

The judging criteria will be the same as BGMC 22:

  • Gameplay Experience (45%)
  • Graphical Quality (25%)
  • Sound Design (15%)
  • Theme Adherence (15%)

The judges decision is final.
There will be NO community vote.

REMEMBER: You are building a game NOT a tech demo.

Assets
***
You are permitted to use any assets that are freely available to everyone (blendswap etc.) before BGMC 23 start date.
You are NOT permitted to use private assets that have been modelled/textured before BGMC 23 without being shared freely.
You can only use private assets if they have been modelled/textured during BGMC 23 (23rd - 30th January).


Restrictions
***
We have increased the file restriction to 50mb compressed (source files) .zip, this should be plenty of space for any game made in a week.

You must wait until the competition starts before creating your game. You are allowed to plan out the game before BGMC 23 starts.[B]

Penalties
***
[/B]

  • 1% penalty per MB over the limit.
  • 10% penalty per day past the end date.

[B][B]

Conditions of Entry
[/B][/B]***All projects must be released open-source, regardless of engine. This includes blend files for the assets if they are exported into some intermediate format (Eg json for blend4web), any scripts, sounds and so on.

The winner will take responsibility for organizing BGMC 24


Inspiration:

Feel free to share this post with anyone wanting to join BGMC!

Some useful resources and links:

If you would like to stay up to date, I will be posting reminders/announcements on this facebook group.
Any other questions or if I have missed something out let me know :smiley:

Hey!

Could you add BDX as one of the engine’s of choice? It’s Blender integrated and I think it’s pretty viable :slight_smile:
People can find it here:

I hope I have enough time to participate in this challange - this week is crazy, heh

Sure thing I’ve added it to the post! Make sure you export it for the final game so others can play :slight_smile:

BGMC 23 doesn’t start until monday the 23rd (see countdown)

Cool, sounds good.
I’m getting ready to tell a story…

I’ve just spent several hours trying to come up with a game plan. I’ve got nothing I think is achievable in a week that will be fun. I guess I’ll keep on trying to think of something.

I’m keen to team up if someone has a solid game idea. (PM me if you don’t want to tell everyone)

Here is a good example of a simple story:

Maybe take a simple picture book and turn that into a game.

e.g. Green eggs and ham: and you have to escape ‘sam-i-am’ who is trying to sell you green eggs and ham.

Create a game and apply a story or get a story and turn it into a game … that is the question ;).

Creating a story for a game is a common task for game developers. Once you have your addictive gameplay, you need a story to make it seem more interesting. Sometimes they would take an existing story and character and fit them to the game. Did you know the the game Donkey Kong was originally supposed to have Popeye as the hero and Bluto as the characters but were unable to secure the rights to use them?

Sometimes the situation is reversed, with gamedevs being given a story (again, it’s common to be given an exiting franchise like ET or Back to the future) and they have to turn that in to a game.

A handful of games, like the point and click games produced by Lucasarts, managed to create a story and game in harmony.
I think I’m going to try for a point and click adventure, I don’t know if I can manage to make it in a week, but I’ll see what I can do.

If you can’t think of a story, try choosing an existing one. If you have a game idea already, just try and find a story which fits it.

A story is really just 3 elements:
A character.
A goal.
A conflict.

Who is your character? What do they have to do? Why is it difficult to do it?
Ask yourself those questions and if you can think of an answer you’ve got a story ready to roll.

Story telling isn’t my forte but hey I’ll give it a shot C:

I’m am super excited to try this out, even though I have no idea how to tell a story (thanks Smoking_Mirrors for all of the help so far).

Added a resource thread with useful links and tutorials for BGMC 23:

Inspiration for people struggling:

If someone wants to do a 3rd person point to and click story game, I have posted an asset quote some time ago called acts trip beta

I will support you coding wise in using the template if you have the art.

BluePrintRandom that looks very cool… inspires to make and an RTS could it be adapted for that sort of game? or more for turn based rpg?

Anything, in wrectified it will be a state machine for things like opening doors, as well as playing dialog and even playing animations in another actor while calling ui features,

(for things like tutorials or game dialog that happens on the move)

It could work for a realtime diablo style game

A turn based rpg etc,
,
(however you would want the control proxy from wrectified for that as well)

when it is a actors turn you just pass them the controls, in theory the same actstrip can be controlled a enemy ai mastermind as well

My ui is a object witb a list on another scene, appending a ui element to the list prompts the ui controller to add the ui element,

Please do not use a prebuilt system for BGMC, this is unfair on the other contestants.
If you wish to enter, you should write all code during 23rd-30th.
Open source code like this is rarely useful for anything else.

Its already in resources and has been around for quite some time.

Why not use it?

We are not allowed to use assets that are available to everyone before the tournament?

Everyone else is free to use it, and I will support them as well*

If I am only allowed to be one 1 team thaf is fine as well.

Edit

Yes you can use assets, but I meant in regards to models and textures as these often take the longest.
What you have here is potentially half a game already, that’s definitely not fair.

Chances are you can easily rebuild this system in a day or two anyway, so it shouldn’t be a problem for you :slight_smile:

I am not competing, I was trying to raise the bar.

Btw I can code this in a few hours not days lol

You should see the newest wrectified systems

I would consider competing if I had a competent artist/story teller who was not green to bge.

Why not try anyway BPR? I’m going to be going for very basic graphics this time around, with the game being designed to run at 640x480 resolution. It’s a retro style survival horror! :slight_smile: You don’t have to go all out for high quality graphics, those games that do are going to suffer in the gameplay and theme categories because there’s just not enough time to focus on everything.