Floatation: My Apologies.
Sophie Houlden says …
overall I liked the game, even though I suck at it.
however whilst bug fixes are usually more or less ok if you have crashing issues or the game wont run for some people, when you get to the point where you are tweaking AI and other stuff after the deadline I think its going a bit too far. its supposed to be 48 hours and not 73 
I’d keep a link to the updated version in your description but have the main links that go to the original version 
Tenoch says …
Sorry, but the rules clearly state that source must be provided. This and after deadline “big” modifications force me to give minimal grade on Overall…
It’s too bad that people can’t take 5 minutes to read a page…
From reading the rules previously, I’d thought I’d read that source was optional. (I was mistaken) I thought that minor tweaks could be made.
I’m now uploading the version that was submitted at the deadline without any of the following bugfixes or tweaks. (All of which fixed graphics misdisplaying, fixing the AI not functioning as expected due to errors because of sleepiness when initially creating it and lack of time to test it, fixing the disable sound option, and tweaking the price of a single item that was being abused by my playtesters for an easy victory)
Despite the seemingly gigantic differences between the deadline AI and the most recent AI, the difference is no more than the modification of a few variables and the changing no more than four or five lines of code.
If you think my actions were acceptable, please download the fixed version. If you want the vanilla with all bugs, glitches, malfunctions, and incompatibilities present, feel free to punch it.
Well, the idea is that everyone works within the same constraints, that being 48 hours. Everyone either choses to sleep (and lose time) or keep working (risking making mistakes). If the mistake is bad enough that the game crashes, then yes, you probably want to fix just that and reupload with a note stating what you fixed. This way people can actually play your game and rate you on things that were not related to the crash. They may mark you down a little for having the bug there in the first place, but without fixing it, you could be getting a big fat zero.
The fact that they were just a few lines of code is irrelevant. I have lost many hours of LD time due to simple one character mistakes. Does that mean I get that time back on Monday? No, of course not.
If you keep working on your game, by all means, make sure that people have it available in addition to the original. Their grading should not be based on it, but in every compo there are people who find some games interesting enough to want to play a more complete version.
Either way, even if it’s not perfect, you made a game in 48 hours! That’s awesome and more than can be said for me this time around!
I’m still judging yours off of the fixed version, mainly because the other one was much more glitchy to play.
I ended up bugfixed mine around 3 times because stupid last-minute mistakes I threw into the game were causing the game to do wacky things and become unplayable.
Sorry for being a bit harsh there… Of course it’s fine to have a post compo release, many people do. But as you say, the original must be available, and it’s the one that should be voted on. If after 48h your game is still unplayable, then… well… sorry about that but that’s your fault. If it’s a last minute savage editing that borked the whole thing, I believe it’s ok to correct it.
Your blog posts rather suggested that you corrected a very big number of bugs, and urged the readers to reconsider their votes up. That seemed just plain wrong.
“After the deadline, we do allow bugfixes. You’re allowed to fix any bugs that stop a player from playing or finishing your game. Make your fixes and upload/edit your entry as appropriate.
New content however is outside the scope of what’s considered a bugfix. You’re welcome to and encouraged to make a “post compo” version of your game after the deadline. Feel free to edit your entry post and make a new posting on the blog to tell us about it.”
This should be expanded to cover changes that do not add/remove content, but neither are they a fix for something which makes the game unplayable. For example, when I got the chance to run it by playtesters (which I had no access to over the weekend, else I wouldn’t be having this problem in the first place) I noticed a multitude of things that just shouldn’t have been. While I found the game challenging and enjoyable because I was following the rules I [thought I] had set in place, the playtesters were discovering and taking advantage of improperly enforced gameplay rules, making the game no longer fun nor challenging. I feel it should be allowed to not only fix issues make the game unplayable, but make fixes to the gameplay that do not add or remove content, and do not modify any media. (images, models, sounds, etc)
My suggestion?
After the deadline, we do allow bugfixes. You’re allowed to fix any bugs that stop a player from playing or finishing your game, “and to make small adjustments to malfunctioning or broken portions of gameplay mechanics”.
Yeah, but what is the line between fixing broken portions of gameplay mechanics and making new mechanics?
A broken mechanic is usually a half finished mechanic, and “fixing” it is pretty much like making an entirely new mechanic.
If you can change mechanics, it seems to me the 48 hour limit will end up being
“48 hours to get the art and rough mechanics in, and then as long as you like to polish the gameplay without drastically changing it” instead of 48 hours for an entire game.
Yea, but playtesting and balancing is part of making the game. It’s not fair that you’d get extra hours to fix it.
Your view on this is just totally wrong. Everybody gets 48 hours to get everything right, and that’s what makes it fair. You can’t just keep tweaking because you think some rule would be a little better another way. That’s what the 48 hours you have are for. I wish the ‘post compo crash fixes’ rule would go away too, because it causes this kind of confusion.
My concept: If your game crashes at the end, then you blew it. Feel free to provide a playable for people to enjoy, but they have to rate what was there after 48 hours. Think of it like this: If my game crashes after 24 hours (which it usually does), I then spend the next 1-10 hours getting that fixed, and guess what? I just lost 1-10 of my compo hours getting it back to where it works. I could’ve dramatically improved the game in that amount of time. Whereas these people who fix a crash after time just get that fix time for free. It’s my fault I made a mistake that makes it crash, just like it’s my fault if I didn’t draw a cool looking sprite. That’s my time that goes into fixing it either way (or I leave it like that). I don’t understand how the fairness of this can be confusing.
I believe the original intent of the whole post-48 crash-bug-fixing rule was actually for things where you submit a working game and then it turns out it doesn’t work on somebody else’s system. So now all you’re doing is making it so that somebody else can experience exactly what you do. In that way, it’s exactly like porting: the game doesn’t run on Macs, so you port it after the 48 and people on Mac can experience exactly what you did at the end of 48 hours on your PC. Similarly, you fix a Vista bug so that people on Vista can experience exactly what you did at the end of 48 on your Windows 7. I think the point of the rule was that – to make sure that what you released after your 48 hours is what everyone gets to play.
Come on, it’s a 48 hour contest. You have 48 hours to see what you can do. That’s how it is! There’s no prizes, just test yourself on what you can accomplish in 48 hours.
PS – I’m rating your game highly… judging on the ORIGINAL. Nobody expects perfection in 48 hours, and it’s great to keep pursuing the game. I’ve made lots of money off of upgrading 48-hour games myself. Just don’t suggest we judge the enhanced version, because that’s blatantly unfair.
Mmm, I like the fact that it’s possible to make a quick fix after the deadline if it’s a show stopping problem. It’s not fun if your week-end’s work goes to waste because you didn’t notice something in the rush to upload your finished game at the last minute (and I’ve never made a LD entry that I didn’t finish at the last minute
).
This time it happened to me as I had not taken the time to test the whole game from start to finish, just little bits at a time. So after I submitted my game I noticed you couldn’t finish the game. It was a 5 minutes fix and it was made within the hour following the deadline.
Maybe for the new rules, if the deadline becomes more absolute (no time allowed to submit after the end) we could instead have 48h + 1h for upload/last minute fixes. Basically it’s an extra hour, but if you don’t have it you’d have to stop at 47 hours to make sure you can submit your game in time.