April 27th, 2010 10:27 pm
And I’m all out of games. Anyone got bubblegum? 
So, since the compo ended I played and rated 172 games. Basically I started with the web games, then went through people I recognized from one or another site… then I started in on my assigned games, and when I finished those I just kinda kept rating…
If I didn’t rate your game it was because:
Your game crashed before the title screen, or in the first few seconds after the title screen
Your game caused a Blue Screen of Death.
Your entry didn’t provide a web version or windows binary when I checked.
Your installer failed (XNA only, though most were fine)
You required hardware I don’t own. (eg, a gamepad)
Your download link was broken/shut down (I checked each of these more than once, sorry I missed you)
Some stuff I want to say:
Don’t play 172 games in 2.5 days. They start to blend together, and there are some which I probably did not give the time they needed in order to be assessed. (Not -YOURS- dear reader, yours was unique and captivated me 
)
XNA guys- I know XNA has dependencies, so it makes sense to use installers. Please stop having those installers put stuff on my desktop and in my start menu. It’s not -difficult- to remove them, it’s just annoying. And I know you don’t HAVE to, because not all the XNA entries did.
Flash- You need to have at least a basic preloader. I might think your page just isn’t loading.
Flash- Don’t link directly to your swf. Make a dummy html page, and use the embed tag. Or have the game hosted on swfcabin or similar. If you link direct to the swf, there are occasionally scaling issues.
Flash- Don’t distribute your swf and call it a windows binary. Or if you do, include an html page that embeds it. Not everybody has a debug/standalone player.
Everybody- It’s probably not a great idea to call your .zip archive LD17.zip…
Everybody- Please DO indicate on your title screen how to get to the main menu. And if you include a line that says ‘Press the Any-Key to continue’, please make sure the left arrow works.
(I pick on Flash, because I do Flash.)
I thought the over all quality of the submissions was really high! I enjoyed making my game, I enjoyed playing all yours! I’m looking forward to doing this again in August!
-TF
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Wow, good job! I haven’t even started rating the games yet. Just played a few interesting looking ones.
I guess you didn’t leave comments for many games. Comments are always nice!
You’re right, of course. But generally, I don’t like to comment if someone else has already said what I was going to say. That goes for games, blog posts, etc..
Awesome job, and thanks for the tips! I always intend to name my zip something sensible – ideally with my name and the game name in there, but this time I just did turtleferry.zip. You’re a credit to the community, thanks so much for supporting everyone!
I think I’m going to comment on this even though Dock just said everything I wanted to say
Somebody get this man a trophy!
point taken.
My game seems to have fallen into the no-preloader-problem category, then
Yup, I played yours (and it’s good!) but the no preloader thing is an ugly, bad practice and needs to be stamped out.
Very much so, for some reason tho I was unable to make even the most simplistic preloader that worked alongside Flashpunk. ;( Shoulda done my research beforehand, heh
Quote – “XNA guys- I know XNA has dependencies, so it makes sense to use installers. Please stop having those installers put stuff on my desktop and in my start menu. It’s not -difficult- to remove them, it’s just annoying. And I know you don’t HAVE to, because not all the XNA entries did.”
I disagree with this. I use the latest XNA setup and depoloyment of XNA games is not straight forward. If you have all the dependancies already installed then fine – an entry can do what it likes – Ie a straight copy of the exe + content folders is totally fine. However, I’ve had untold problems diagnosing what isn’t on clients machines when they try to run my games. Using the deploy method which wraps up the exe with checks and installers for prerequisites has been the only way to give my code a good chance of working.
On the downside, MS has then decided to do something pretty much non-standard with their deploy installer, which surprises me, which is to install the app into a “hidden” folder on your system. Without using the option to put a shortcut on the desktop the client by default doesn’t now have an option to run the exe they’ve just installed!
At least uninstalling the program is by a standard process of going to add/remove programs.
The positives still outweigh the negatives imo – especially as with a bit more time those negatives can either be fixed or worked around. (I confess I’m no expert on the deployment mechanism and fixes to the above problems).
I probably just won’t bother running a game that requires the use of an installer. I don’t mind installing the XNA runtimes separately as that needs to be done only once , but I don’t want to have to go through an installer for every little game I’ll play 5 minutes.
But then you leave XNA devs with an awkward position. (Or indeed anyone with installation prerequisites).
1) They work and actively support all users by working on the basis that they don’t use an installer, so everything should be a manual installation.
OR
2) They use the safer option of using an installer and alienate those that think an installer is not the way to go.
In my experience 1) is too much work, and there is precisely no guarantee it would result in a working game. 2) has to be the way to go. Bearing in mind an installer takes about 30 seconds to use, and requires approx 30 seconds to uninstall the application. Imo that compares far more favourably than having to spend a similar amount of time to fix the multitude of entries I’ve reviewed that either come in non standard compressed formats and/or not in a folder, or in something unhelpfully named such as “ludumdare17″.
I’m neither suspicious of installers, nor find having no installers makes my life easier in this competition.
Installers are slower to use than just unzipping to a folder, the whole point of the installer is to install things behind your back, I’d rather know what I install. Uninstalling is also a lot more annoying than just pressing the delete key to erase a directory and most of the time uninstallers leave unwanted things behind. 30 seconds is slow when you could unzip in 5 and delete in 2. But it’s not really a question of time, it’s just annoying.
The whole installer concept was invented as a way to allow people who don’t know how to use their computer to install software, the LD crowd should have no problem with that.
Now I don’t mind using an installer when it’s something I actually want to install and keep. I don’t want to install a LD game, I just want to play it (only once in most cases).
However, I agree about the archive filenames and I’m sorry I forgot to prefix mine with my name this time (it’s hard to think about these little details at 4am when trying to have a finished game to submit)
I also refuse to install games. Time has nothing to do with it. The ease of use of your installer also has nothing to do with it. Installers have gotten a bad reputation in my eyes and that’s why I won’t use them. Would it be so difficult for you to include the game along with your installer? No it wouldn’t, so why not give us both options?
Installers in the past have dumped stupid files on my hard drive, put files all over the place (xna installers won’t even let you choose the directory!) make entries in my registry, and who knows what else. That’s the thing, I don’t know what they are doing. With a zip, I know exactly what files are going where, and it takes a split second to delete them. Compared to going to the control panel, going to add remove programs and removing your file. And then manually deleting the shortcuts that never seem to get deleted (may be UAC related).
No thanks. Won’t play your game. There are plenty of other ludum dare entries (~200 or so) that I could be playing instead of wasting my time using (and bitching about) your stupid installers.
Codexus has pretty much stated my position.
I don’t think it’s unreasonable to believe that installers are overkill, when most of the XNA entries did not use them. They’re a deployment convenience, but not appropriate in this setting.
course if everyone has an installer thats only 3 and a half hours just for installing and uninstalling (for this compo)