The breathing fire thing IS part of my original vision. All your questions will be answered and your doubts put to rest when i release a more refined version of the game. Get ready!

With any luck, i may be able to offer both versions for the public event next month …

- – -
My suggestions, unlike the ones you mentioned, are SMALL and can ALL be implemented within 1 hour. You’ve already got the code for the ships and sailors, dump them in an array/collection and away you go. Don’t create a new type of sailor, just instantiate more of the existing walking sailor (and stop him from moving 8 out of 10 times). I believe most of my other suggestions can be implemented by deleting or tweaking existing code (no need for new graphics or substantial rewrites). You can quickly implement the ideas to see if they improve the game, and keep them if they do.

I find tips like “have the dragon breath fire” entirely unhelpful since:
a) No thought was put into it
b) It could take a substantial time to implement.
c) Once you added dragon breath fire, next up is dragon breath ice

Here are some equivalent ideas:
a) Let me build my own monster
b) A Cruise Ship should sail by with tons of ladies sunbathing on deck.
c) Record my game so I can play it back and upload it to my friends
d) Use ragdoll physics for the sailors and aforementioned cruise ship passengers.
e) Have an iceberg come out that crashes into the monster. Using my head, let me lob broken pieces at the ships.
These ideas are yours free of charge!

Plus, does adding fire really add anything to your game?
i.e. If I can already destroy the ship with my tongue, why do I need fire?
i.e. I’m already spitting, chewing and tonguing, how would the player even choose fire?
i.e The game is short by nature, is lack of weapon variety even an issue?
i.e. Would TOJammers have stopped abandoning your game if you added fire?

It’s worth noting that my seagull “idea” is the most infeasible idea, and bordering on being crap as a result. I was figuring a 2 frame flapping V would be easy enough to do, which is why I suggested it. The seagull wasn’t the important part (it doesn’t suprise me you thought of it). What’s important was that when I click, I tongue. Switching to spit feels like the monster missed my click (since he’s not tonguing).

- – -
“Time and again, i’d hear this: keep the fun part of the game, but take out the challenging part. ”
“Do game developers know what players want better than the players do? i’m not sure.”

These hint at a broader issue. If you’re creating games for a business, and are targeting a market that isn’t game developers, then game developers don’t know what’s best. If you’re creating games for yourself (a la TOJam, a la my Hobby), you should create games that YOU want to play. If you think it’s fun, it should be in your game. Not only will like your game (no matter how crappy), but you’ll remain passionate about it. i.e. If you want scoring and timers in your game, put them in your game.

It doesn’t matter what I or anyone elses thinks, there are plenty of games for us already. The games I remember most are the ones where the developer relentlessly stuck to his/her vision, and kept honing it. If you don’t think an idea is good, that’s all the justification you need to get rid of it. In that respect, games are starting to resemble music and film. Remember the immortal words of Maestro Fresh Wes, “Stick to your vision”.

- – -
I agree that more people are talking more about fun versus challenge. However, I don’t think it’s a shift, and it’s certainly nothing new (i.e. Bizarre Creations spent a long time deciding how much of Project Gotham Racing was available right away). The market is simply expanding, and different people want different things from games. The “new” style of non-challenging casual games (“I should be able to see everything regardless of my skill level”) will eventually replace existing TV shows and Movies. It’s also worth noting that some games are finding success by moving in completely the opposite direction. “I Want To Be The Guy” is unbelievably hard and patently unfair, but is very successful thanks to the expanding market of people who understand the language of games.

Games are going to be bigger and more prevalent than anyone imagines. There will be more game categories than Movies, Music and TV COMBINED. It’s scary how big games are going to be, which is why some people are demanding a new word to represent games. Eventually, we’ll move past the basic terms like “fun versus challenging” to “romantic comedy versus intense drama”.

Given all of that, I’m not sure why people think that games targeted at the 20-30 year old male market, that finds hard challenges fun, are broken and need to be fixed. Those games are fine for their market. People should really be talking about how they can expand the market further, so there’s an audience for less challenging games. Nintendo, EA (Pogo specifically), Oberon Games, Digital Chocolate, RealArcade are all doing this, and it’s working.

i’m frustrated that i didn’t even *see* your game at the end of the event, let alone get to play it. That’s the way it goes – it’s such a mad, crowded scramble on Sunday night, and i always miss at least half the stuff on display.

i took a look at your screenshot – i DO remember sitting down with you as another pair of eyes while you figured out that your missing text problem came from not embedding the font.

At that time, i suggested you embed small letters, capitals, numerals and punctuation. You took me by surprise and asked me whether including the 95 “Basic Latin” characters wasn’t the same thing. i said “no” because at the time, i thought that character set might have included accented characters like é, but dig it:

http://jrgraphix.net/research/unicode_blocks.php?block=0

So the accented stuff isn’t in there, but there are a few wasted characters in the top two rows. i think that’s why whoever trained me told to include just the four character sets. i’m sure it works out to a few milliseconds of load time, but life is short! :)

During the Jam, i had to decide between adding more boat types, and polishing the graphics. i focussed on graphics, because too often during my career i’ve focussed on features. The result is that i have a really cool, deep game that looks like ass, and i’m embarrassed to show it. There’s one game in particular from my YTV days that i was REALLY proud of, but the graphics were so feeble, i didn’t like to show it to people.

Topping the list of game improvements are additional boats (where “boats” can also include jumping swordfish, mermaids, and the seagulls you mentioned … i had that idea too). Numerous people requested fire-breathing, which was also rolling around in my head from the very beginning. If i have an idea, and everyone who plays the game brings it up, i’d be a fool not to implement it.

The spitting/chewing thing is very interesting, and cracks open a big can of game philosophy. When i was building kids’ games for YTV, i’d have something like Pac Man, and the kids on the boards would say “i thouhgt it was a rully cool game. i liked eating the dots. i didn’t like being eaten by goasts. take teh goasts part out and the game well be good.”

(kids can’t spell worth a damn, btw)

Time and again, i’d hear this: keep the fun part of the game, but take out the challenging part. Occasionally, i’d do it, and then the comments would read “too eeeeeeasy!!!” It’s a fine balance. Do game developers know what players want better than the players do? i’m not sure.

Spitting and chewing in the sea monster game both make the game more challenging, but less fun. The real trick, i guess, is to come up with a FUN challenge.

Lucasarts did this with their beloved adventure games. Competitor Sierra On-Line built games that were all about killing the player whenever he tried to do stuff … in some cases, this just meant walking into a room. Lucasarts understood that the puzzles were the challenging part – not the deaths – and eliminated death from their games. To this day, i’m a much bigger fan of Lucasarts’ games than i am of the Sierra titles.

There’s a shift afoot to build games that are more about fun and less about challenge and punishing levels of difficulty! Check out this article about two GDC 08 lectures for more:

http://untoldentertainment.com/blog/2008/02/26/best-of-gdc-2008-best-panel-or-lecture/

One Idea: Start with a half empty stomach that’s constantly draining. You need to eat sailors just to stay alive (common problem in the animal kingdom). Your goal is to eat a ton of sailors quickly, so you can fill your stomach and rest. Two Endings: You die of starvation, or “win” the current ending.

Be warned, I just played the final version, and I am offering more opinions.

—
What I like:

1. Controlling the monster’s head.

2. Shooting the tongue – even if I miss.

3. Grabbing a sailor with my tongue.

—
What I think can be improved:

1. There is really only 1 sailor to eat. Plus, there is only 1 ship.
I wanted more ships, each with more sailors.
Currently, I eat 1 sailor and then wait for more.

2. I’m fairly confident that players only see the sailor that walks back & forth,
since the other sailors (crows nest and portal) are somewhat invisible.
I bet anything TOJammers thought they were eye candy or protected by the wood.
When I said I wanted more sailors to eat, I meant I wanted 10 sailors on deck.
Since the boat is already moving, I want 8 of the 10 sailors to be standing still,
with only 2 fatter sailors (fill your stomach faster) walking back & forth.
If I shoot my tongue quickly 10 times, and aim perfectly, I’ll clear the deck. AWESOME.

3. Remove the ability to eat the boat. Who wants to tongue a boat?
Plus, your graphics and animation are so good you’ve convinced me my flimsy tongue
couldn’t possibly destroy a solid wood boat.

4. Spitting and Chewing is really a penalty for using your tongue well..
Spitting and Chewing prevent me from eating more sailors.
You solved this by having only 1 boat with 3 sailors, but you solved the wrong problem.
While I like the variety, currently I spend more clicking chew and flicking spit
than I do firing my tongue. The problem? Firing my tongue is a LOT more fun than chewing or spitting.
Anything that delays my ability to fire my tongue is bad.

5. Once you have more sailors, spitting and chewing will become a huge issue. So…
a) Remove spitting (I repeat, who wants to tongue a boat?)
b) Require penalty chewing only after eating 10 sailors (10 fat or 10 regular for strategy).
If you remove spitting, allow me to fire the tongue in the sky to grab bonus passing seagulls.

Who am I?
Just a man…
standing in front of a monster…
asking her to love him.

I’ve played your game for a while, and it looks really cool!

I want to thank you for mention my tutorial at actionscript.org, and also use it to build a great game. You made a good job with it :D

Thanks again, and you can visit my blog for more examples like that one.

Cheers!

Alejandro

You forgot to mention the delerium that set in Sunday morning at 5:00am. If memory serves, you suddenly burst out laughing at your machine. After several outbursts (followed by several apologies), you took off your headphones and said something like this…
“okay okay okay… you HAVE to hear this… it’s the greatest burp sound of ALL time”
(cue more laughter)
I listened to it, and it was pretty damn good.

“The Big Reveal” is a great name for the TOJam ending,
I’m stealing that for T.O. Jam #4 unless you object.

Some people were planning on naming the dead rat in the stairwell. I meant to remove it, but completely forgot. I think we may have just found a soulmate for our lonely GoatOnAPole.