I added this to the “Projects Page”. Here is a direct link (fill in a nickname and #bbg as channel): http://webchat.freenode.net/

Any feedback, suggestions, bug reports and requests are more than welcome. Especially I would love it if people would take my basic map and do a lot more with it. At the moment I have a slightly more advanced version for the General’s Map prototype, which has unit movement and AJAX calls — but I thought that giving away this basic map would be a lot more useful for most people.

Disclaimer: It’s only tested with Google Chrome on windows.

Features:

• Tile rendering in multiple layers
• Clickable objects
• Movement by using the arrow keys

The HTML file

The javascript file

Free Hand Drawn Tileset

Demo

Hope you like it!

I run this blog for no money and I ask for no money, and I try to keep it add free, because I love what I do. I’d love to see the PBBG community work better together to create better games, that’s exactly why I’m doing stuff like this. That said, if you really want to donate I wouldn’t want to take away that from you, so here’s a nice lil’ button:

The winner

Wicked Dead came out this competition as the winner and it is a fun game, you should definitely check it out.

Learn from the process

The most interesting about the BBGameZone competitions are not the finished games though but it is watching the process they went through. So if you want to read through the game developers’ updates check out this page.

Chris, a reputable member on the BBGameZone forums, was so kind to “write down” his view on the development of his game during this competition:

This competition was very interesting to me and I learned a lot. I approached it very confident and have not made proper preparations. This was a disaster. Since I had no fully clear concept what kind of game I’m making I was struggling the whole competition. I started 4 different game designs and ended scrapping 95% of the code I wrote.

The first shock was when I realized that I might not be able to finish this time.

The second shock was when I actually made it at the very last moment. After I gave up, but just before the deadline, I recalled a simple game I wanted to make a long time ago. So I did it, barely making it on time. It even got 3-rd place, so definitely not bad considering how my design & coding process looked like during this competition.

The third shock was when I got players response. I have several games and stable player base, so I have pretty accurate expectations how should they react to a game on that stage. They reacted as if this was at least beta, not pre alpha or development version. They simply started playing it right away without making any complains and started to draw their friends to it. This was really puzzling to me.

So, what the game is about? Well, very simple, www.duelarena.com is about challenging other players to get experience and gold, there are also plenty of options that let you affect your combat power and… logout button. That’s it, it’s as simple as you could imagine. A fantasy like PvP with tons of options to modify your combat power and absolutely nothing that would make you sidetracked (like quests, story, NPC, etc).

The competition has not taught me anything new, I knew all this before, but I never know these things were *that* important. A clear vision what the game is about. Sticking to core gameplay first before making additional features. And the most important one, the time you spend on project is almost insignificant part of the final outcome.
I do look up to the next competition, you are also welcome to join us at www.community.bbgamezone.net we have such competitions on regular basis. It is a lot of fun and you will hone your skills without investing lot of time. Definitely worth it!

There are no prizes to win but the competition should motivate you to code your game a whole lot faster. Your objective? Create a working game in one month! This should motivate some people to start coding their game and also to prototype neat ideas. If you check out the people that already started in the competition you will see that there are some very interesting ideas.

The use of code snippets from previous projects is encouraged. So if you have a very basic game already you can probably join in too. If you are not joining the competition you should at least follow the people updating on their progress. Very interesting!

For more information you should check out the bbgamezone forum:

Official competition 2010

Competition progress

Everybody can join but be fast since the competition has started already!