#LOWREZJAM - Offical Thread

[gikdew]

 

LOWREZJAM 2014 is organized by http://www.deviever.com/ !

Please use the #LOWREZJAM hashtag on twitter and help spread the word while you develop your LOWREZJAM game!

WHEN :

•  ENTRY DEADLINE IS MAY 19th 12AM PST
• VOTING ENDS MAY 26 12AM PST

GENRE : ANY

THEME : ANY

RESTRICTIONS : Create a game with a maximum screen resolution of 32x32 pixels.

DETAILS : There are no limiations on the amount of colors, sprites, or anything else. The idea of this is not to create a retro pixel art game, but rather to challenge your skills in making an enjoyable gaming experience using a minimal amount of detail. You are obviously allowed and encouraged to upscale the game for the sake of playability by allowing the player to stretch the game to full screen / a larger window, but please make every attempt to maintain the hard edges of the pixels in the process. Also, please do not fake smaller resolution by using large blocky sprites in a higher resolution.

[gikdew]

Following this little guide image uploaded by the creator of Jam, you have to stick to the 32x32 grid (or less), but the game can be scaled up!

 

[Nambiar]

Seems interesting.. working on it now!

[jpdev]

I am joining too..

 

This is what I got so far:

 

 

Maybe you can figure out what is going on, but maybe not...

[codevinsky]

Here's my current WIP for #lowrezjam

 

IE and Chrome have upscaling problems that I'm still trying to work out. 

 

Firefox and Safari are the best right now.

 

Left/Right arrows to move.

 

Right now, you'll have to refresh when you die.

 

DUALIET: http://dualiet.herokuapp.com

[codevinsky]

Finished with my game:

 

duliett: http://duliett.codevinsky.com

[jackwkinsey]

Anyone have any tips on scaling up the game so you can actually see it to play? 32x32 is kind of hard to test and I'm not sure how to scale the game up. Just code to a size like 512x512 but use tiny sprites and just scale those up? Wouldn't that be breaking the rules?

[Kapsonfire]

Finished with my game:

 

duliett: http://duliett.codevinsky.com

server not found

[rich]

Here is our current  lowrez entry. This is still work in progress, but you can play and explore the first level of the dungeon

 

http://gametest.mobi/timesoflores/

[jpdev]

Nice - finished the level (cleared everything).

Cool combat system (a little easy, but it was only frogs.. so maybe things will get harder in the next level )

 

Also nice of you to put a map in.. I remember ones where you had to draw your map on paper

 

Reminds me that I should continue with my 32x32 dungeon.

(Top down view, 2 pixel player, no relation to your cool 3d dungeon)

[rich]

Yeah frogs are meant to be the easiest level baddies and there is still quite a bit to do, but the core mechanic is in and working nicely.

[Alvarop]

My entry for the jam. A little silly and very, very basic gameplay. Just made it for fun.

 

http://gamejolt.com/games/arcade/photobomb/26274/

[codevinsky]

server not found

Whoops.

http://duliett.herokuapp.com

[jpdev]

Hi guys,

 

Here is the first preview version of my lowrez game.

 

http://jppresents.net/static/dungeon32/

 

Please (at least for the tutorial) use sound, if you would.

 

Also the tutorial is not complete yet, so here is the missing info:

 

use space to hit stuff with your sword.

green guys = slow zombies

white guys = fast skeletons

 

also: if you end up in a room with no more doors, then you reached the end of the first test version

 

Any feedback would be greatly appreciated.

[Nambiar]

Hi guys,

 

Here is the first preview version of my lowrez game.

 

http://jppresents.net/static/dungeon32/

 

Please (at least for the tutorial) use sound, if you would.

 

Also the tutorial is not complete yet, so here is the missing info:

 

use space to hit stuff with your sword.

green guys = slow zombies

white guys = fast skeletons

 

also: if you end up in a room with no more doors, then you reached the end of the first test version

 

Any feedback would be greatly appreciated.

Its not working for me... hits a 404 error while trying to load phaser.js

[jpdev]

Thank you very much Nambiar.

Screwed up my GruntFile.js .. 

 

it's now fixed

 

 

Play here

[jpdev]

Here is our current  lowrez entry. This is still work in progress, but you can play and explore the first level of the dungeon

 

http://gametest.mobi/timesoflores/

 

Edit: I thought the animations (key flying up) might be tweens that are sub pixel movements.. but I think I was wrong.

Just looked so smooth

Edit2: I was definitely wrong.. and I will steal... borrow... be inspired by the way you scale up your game

 

That's a great way to do it.. because this way all tweens are pixel perfect.

(As of now I could not use them, because my game was actually bigger and every sprite just scaled up and aligned to a virtual "pixel"-grid)

[rich]

Heh yeah they're definitely not sub-pixel because the entire game runs in 32x32 - no faking it for us Feel free to use the same scale method. I couldn't find any other way that worked cross-browser as well as this. It's quite inefficient, but when you're dealing with just 32x32 pixels that becomes utterly irrelevant.

[jpdev]

Yep, just finished changing my game.

 

Really great, that since it's real 32 by 32 I can now use tweens and all the awesome phaser stuff.

Already put in sliding doors

 

Weird thing:

 

Crisp and perfect rendering:

<canvas id="pixel" width="256" height="256"></canvas> 

Smoothed and uneven rendering:

<canvas id="pixel" style="width: 256px; height: 256;"></canvas>

It's the only change and happens at least in chrome... well should have stuck to what you did from the beginning

[jpdev]

Looks like deploying to gamejolt is really easy.

 

I just created my account there and after uploading a zip file, the game is direclty playable on the games page.

 

http://gamejolt.com/games/adventure/low-rez-dungeon/26418/

[Ernesto Torres]

Is there a proper way to upscale the whole game by a factor?

 

I haven't found a way to upscale the game while keeping it pixel crisp

[Alvin]

@Ernesto : 

 

If you're using Phaser, you can use this to keep your pixels crips : 

game.stage.smoothed = false;

If you're just using canvas, it is also possible via : 

context.imageSmoothingEnabled = false;context.mozImageSmoothingEnabled = false;context.oImageSmoothingEnabled = false;context.webkitImageSmoothingEnabled = false;

Good luck

[jpdev]

There is a way to perfectly scale up a phaser game.

It's what Rich uses for his 3d-dungeon-crawler and I use it for mine now too.

 

Phaser itself runs on a 32x32 canvas - without scaling anything! - this is a huge bonus, as you can now use tweens and rotation and everything without breaking 32x32 pixel perfect movement.

 

This canvas is then taken every frame and drawn onto a bigger canvas (in a size of your choice) and is perfectly scaled in all browsers.

 

Here is how that works:

 

On the html page (invisible phaser canvas, actual canvas):

<div id="phaser" style = "display: none"></div><div id="game">    <canvas id="pixel" width="384" height="384"></canvas></div>

Global vars (put it next to the game var):

var pixelcontent = null;var pixelwidth = 0;var pixelheight = 0; 

Setup code (run it in the create of your first state):

  var pixelCanvas = document.getElementById("pixel");    pixelcontext = pixelCanvas.getContext("2d");    pixelwidth = pixelCanvas.width;    pixelheight = pixelCanvas.height;    Phaser.Canvas.setSmoothingEnabled(pixelcontext, false);

And last but not least, the render function of the state:

pixelcontext.drawImage(game.canvas, 0, 0, 32, 32, 0, 0, pixelwidth, pixelheight);

I hope this helps

 

You can see it in action here:

 

http://gametest.mobi/timesoflores/ (Rich)

 

and here:

 

http://gamejolt.com/games/adventure/low-rez-dungeon/26418/ (mine)

 

Both are minified, but it's exactly that code in mine and nearly identical in rich's game.

 

 

 

Also I can't believe how much time I put into the #lowrezjam, but programming (and even playing) the dungeon crawler ist really fun.

(Maybe because I still think that zelda on the gameboy was one of the best games ever...)

[Ernesto Torres]

Great thanks, I'll take a look

[jpdev]

Finally done

 

http://gamejolt.com/games/adventure/low-rez-dungeon/26418/

 

A little challange:

 

Tweet me a screenshot of the endboss or the end screen and get mentioned in the gamejolt description of the game

 

Twitter: @jpdevelop

 

(Won't take longer then 10 minutes to play through.)