Dobbs Challenge Debuts First Month Challenge Winner, Highlights
[Our sister programming mag/website Dr Dobb's Journal has been running the Dr. Dobb's Challenge game competition in association with Microsoft Visual Studio, with $10,000 in prizes. There was an initial $1,000 'First Month Challenge' prize for modding the downloadable Windows game.
Here's contest organizer Mathew Kumar outlining the best entries and the 'First Month' winner - all worth checking out for game mod fun, and to see if you can do better for the final June deadline.
UPDATE: Please note that the games are much closer to 'hobbyist' mods created by Dobbs-reading programmers in their spare time than fully-fledged indie classics, so ameliorate your expectations accordingly.]
We'd like to thank everyone for entering the Dobbs First Month Challenge. We thought that even with $1,000 on the line to the best entrant with a month to develop a serviceable work-in progress, it was just going to be too much work for our regular readers who don't necessarily have a lot of time to develop indie games.
We were, happily, proven wrong and there's a fun crop of games now available up on the Dobbs Challenge Critic's Choice download section for you to check out -- including a one button fighting game from Alexkr; Badly Drawn Robots, which can be best described as "Robotron Meets Castle Wolfenstein Meets Dr. Dobbs" and Dobbs Derby, possibly the most ambitious total conversion so far, which turns Dr Dobbs Challenge into a racing game.
We've selected five mods from a rich selection to spotlight here -- four runners-up and the $1,000 winner. If your entry wasn't selected, please don't think that we've lost, missed or ignored it!
Runners Up
Alexkr's Mod
AlexKr has created a mod which works as a sort of one-button sumo - hold down the enter key to run towards your opponent and mash it to attack. [details]
Rodhyde's Mod
RodHyde has created a fast paced shooter with Badly Drawn Robots. The room layout reminds us of the classic adventure game Castle Wolfenstein, even if the gameplay is most similar to Robotron. [details]
Ethanpack's Mod
Ethanpack's Debugging With Dobbs uses the graphics provided with Dr. Dobbs Challenge to good effect, creating a single screen platform shooter (almost a "run and gun") with Dr. Dobbs firing bugs at the Defy All Challenges enemies that swarm the screen. [details]
Lanza's Mod
Lanza's mod, called Modpower, is one of the most technically remarkable, as it contains scrolling levels, something that the original engine was not set up to do -- making the title to the original Dr Dobbs Challenge what Super Mario Bros. was to the original Mario Bros. [details]
$1,000 Winner
Punkle's Mod
Punkle's Dobbs Derby is a total conversion of Dr. Dobbs Challenge, turning the game into a one button slot car racer. [details]
Our judges were impressed by the amount of work that must have gone into the mod after such a short period of time, as it features a completely different game design from the original Dr. Dobbs Challenge game, with new graphics (including a simple particle system), but noted that the game's one button controls were fun even in the game's incomplete state.
If you entered but didn't win, please don't lose heart. As we've already stated, the judges were very impressed with the majority of the entries, and found it very hard to choose a winner. With a $9,000 prize pool still on offer, it'd be foolish to give up now!
If you haven't even begun developing your mod, there's plenty of time yet too. The deadline for The Dobbs Challenge is June 13th, 2008, and you still stand a chance to win: Best Windows Game ($4,000), Best Windows Mobile Game ($2,000) Best One Button Game ($1,000), Best Game Starring Dr Dobbs And The Defy All Challenges Crew ($1,000) and Best Total Conversion ($1,000).
Comments
"The room layout reminds us of the classic adventure game Castle Wolfenstein, even if the gameplay is most similar to Robotron."
http://hg101.classicgaming.gamespy.com/berzerkfrenzy/berzerkfrenzy.htm
Posted by: Anonymous | April 23, 2008 9:59 AM
... I guess I'm being harsh, but it seems unfair to the great work that comes out of other competitions, and the hobby game dev community in general, to say this is impressive work "for a month" or for any length of time. Better work regularly comes out of weekend-long competitions.
Also, does Microsoft really think that putting a floating dev studio icon in a game will convince people to use their IDE? That's some pretty bizarre and cheesy advergaming.
Posted by: Zaphos | April 23, 2008 10:51 AM
Erg, sorry, mood swings or something ... it's nice that the competition is motivating people to make games and learn stuff; I shouldn't be randomly insulting their hard work. Apologies to all :(
Posted by: Zaphos | April 23, 2008 12:12 PM
Well, fair comment, Zaphos, but if you think you can do better, then enter, it's as easy as that.
FWIW (as one of the contest organizers) this is a little more on the 'average programmer noodles around' level than the typical 'indie game whizzes do amazing stuff' level.
Posted by: simonc | April 23, 2008 2:49 PM
Thanks to "anonymous" for the link to Berzerk / Frenzy. I hadn't come across that one before. I fully admit that Berzerk is one of the major influences for "Badly Drawn Robots". I love the simplicity and pace of that game. Alan McNeil (who invented Berzerk) was on to a good thing.
Defender is another influence, but you can't tell that from what I've done so far. Hopefully it'll come across in the final version.
@Zaphos - you have a fair point and I make no excuses. I can only speak for myself in that I have an hour or two free on a good day to work on this competition, but it's a lot of fun to do it.
--- Rod
Posted by: Rod | April 23, 2008 4:50 PM
@simonc : All he is saying is that there is a _lot_ of contest like that out there, making better or equivalent offering in less time without having to resort to all the marketing gimmicks this one seems to employ. You have to remember that the Indiegames blog cover them all (or most of them anyway), so people who post here take offense if something is touted as an amazing thing made in a short time. We saw far better stuff made in less time.
After all, Cactus spoiled us all, and contests like LD48 or the JayIsGame ones (which produced a lot of cult classics) get pretty good coverage here.
(and "if you think you can do better then enter" is a very, *very* smug answer, especially as an organizer. Unless this contest is targeted towards coders only, in which case this blog shouldn't talk about it)
Posted by: Jean-Sebastien | April 23, 2008 10:41 PM
Jean-Sebastien: Fair enough. Perhaps the comments on the entries (written by Mathew) are a little over-enthusiastic. I take the point - we're just happy that people entered at all.
BTW, I don't think 'enter if you can do better' is a smug thing to say. Coders can enter without artists if they want - or with artists if they need help.
Posted by: simonc | April 24, 2008 4:11 AM
Well I'm not sure if "enter if you can do better" is smug or not, but it's certainly irrelevant to anything I was saying. Reminds me of the common fallacy where people say criticism of a work is invalid unless the critic personally takes the time to create better work. Except with another layer of tortured logic on top, where apparently I should create better work in order to be a critic of a non-critical critic of that work? Confusing.
But if we set that aside, it was a very pro-active 'community manager' type of non-response, so perhaps it was the right thing to say anyway. Especially since I was just being obnoxious in the first place.
Anyway, to Rod -- no need to make excuses for yourself -- congrats on making a game :)
And working an hour or two a day for a month is a great pace, I think. It's a funny thing -- the difference in man-hours between a weekend competition and a month-long competition is actually way less than it sounds like, since the weekend people know the dev time is so limited that they feel it's okay to just do nothing but program for that weekend.
Posted by: Zaphos | April 24, 2008 4:59 AM
Heh, well interactions like this are probably why I'm not a community manager, then. Sorry about that, everyone. Lesson learned.
Posted by: simonc | April 24, 2008 5:22 AM