homebrew Lawnmower by OCEO - Silly Venture 2019 entry for Atari Lynx Game Compo

[Nop90]

Last game of mine, coded with the great guys of OCEO team @marss  and glafouk, for this great year of Atari Lynx coding.

 

Game story:

 

The contest for the best lawnmower is open and you want to win the first prize.
First train yourself with nine basic lawns then enter the competition trying to mow 23 of the worst lawns of the city. To be a pro mower remember to cut only the grass because flowers and other obstacles will make you lose fuel.

Don't hurt the moles if you don't want to be disqualified, but if you close their holes they will stop disturbing you

If you are short of fuel find a tank before it is over; some special tanks have less fuel but contain additives that give you bonus powers for a limited time.

There are three difficulty levels: it is better to practice with the easy one before trying the others.

Good luck!

 

The game ROM will be published by Silly Venture on December 25th, so there is time to make a final fixing and tuningof the games.

 

Here are some pics and a video of the game (it is the backup video sent to Silly Venture in case there was problems running the game).

 

 

   

 

   

 

   

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Lawnmower.txt

Edited December 7, 2019 by Nop90

[KevinMos3]

2 hours ago, Nop90 said:

The game ROM will be published by Silly Venture on December 25th, so there is time to make a final fixing and tuning of the games.

That'll be an awesome Christmas present.    This looks VERY well done.

I can hardly wait.  The live stream of the Silly Venture compo this morning was a lot of fun.  So many great works to look forward to.

[PFG 9000]

I stumbled across a video of this on YouTube today, and it looks fantastic.  I can't wait to try it out!

[LordKraken]

Really looking forward to play this one... and I'm amazed by the level of polishing, like all the title screen, the high score, the different mode and so on. Please tell me you don't have kids otherwise I need to rethink how fast and efficient I am when coding (probably a bit too slow )

[Nop90]

13 minutes ago, LordKraken said:

Please tell me you don't have kids

I have three, but they are growing fast: a 15 yo girl, a 13 yo boy and a 11 yo girl.

 

The smaller one is my best game tester so I have to make games that are in her taste ?

[LordKraken]

Ahah ok then i understand they are probably not poking you as much a my 3yo

but still the number of your productions and their level of polishing is quite impressive

[Nop90]

The rom is available for testing in my closed club.

 

Let me know who wants to join

[im_reg]

Being a self employed gardener this is right up my street. It looks fantastic. Great fun with lots of items to keep amused. ??

[bdoi]

Looks amaizing!

Sadly I have no time for testing but I am clearly interested to buy the game if you will make a cartridge;)

[drludos]

Woaw, congrats for this impressive entry!

I really enjoyed the NES version a few years ago, and I'm happy to see it enhanced for the Lynx, and it's a perfect handheld game! (simple and quick to play, but quite challenging!)

[Turbo Laser Lynx]

I love it! It looks very polished, great work from everyone involved. Great music and I love the Micro Machines inspired graphics, somehow very fitting.
 

7 hours ago, im_reg said:

Being a self employed gardener this is right up my street. It looks fantastic. Great fun with lots of items to keep amused. ??

True gardener! Works in gardening all day -> goes home to play Lawnmower on the Lynx in the evening!
 

[Nop90]

8 hours ago, drludos said:

I really enjoyed the NES version a few years ago, and I'm happy to see it enhanced for the Lynx, and it's a perfect handheld game!

It's much slower than the nes version, so we added other things to the game play. Easy mode is good for playing a level when you have a couple of nimutes free, but hardmode is very challenging.

 

 

[marss]

Thanks to the SV2019 for having fucked up my presentation

[Igor]

Game info page: https://atarigamer.com/lynx/game/Lawnmower/858330648

Party version playable online: https://atarigamer.com/lynx/play/Lawnmower/858330648?r=0

 

[+karri]

3 hours ago, marss said:

Thanks to the SV2019 for having fucked up my presentation

Of course you get a better presentation by being there in person. Most of the titles being presented have comments on this forum like "they stopped playing just before the first boss...". My game also had graphics from the later worlds that I wanted to be shown (Makeup table, Night club, Heaven, Hell). It would have given a better view of what is in the game.

 

[LordKraken]

Quote

they stopped playing just before the first boss

Yeah that was me, watching the stream and seeing the first big boss coming... and bam he got hit by a bullet

Too bad, but lesson learned for next time, if I can't make the trip, it's better to have a slightly modified version that shows the game better (and I'm working in AAA doing special E3 version... I should know about it ^^).

[agradeneu]

1 hour ago, karri said:

Of course you get a better presentation by being there in person. Most of the titles being presented have comments on this forum like "they stopped playing just before the first boss...". My game also had graphics from the later worlds that I wanted to be shown (Makeup table, Night club, Heaven, Hell). It would have given a better view of what is in the game.

 

Well, we got 1-2  min screentime while the other ones at least 4 or 10

[marss]

The audience thought the game was slow because the guy showing it did not press button A (hence the poor ranking). When i asked to play the video of the game, the reply was: 'it is too late'. Not to mention that some had 10 minutes to present their production.

[marss]

Igor... can you remove the game from your page, please? thanks

[+karri]

Nice video btw. Perhaps a fixed length video would have been a better way of presenting entries? Then it would be up to the people making the games to decide what to show. To be honest the most irritating experiences in the competitions are the 10 second reviewers who press buttons at random and when they get to the first obstacle they end the game with "ok... Let's go to the next game".

 

Sometimes I wonder if a modern player would manage to get anywhere in Zork.

 

"You are standing in an open field west of a white house, with a boarded front door.

There is a small mailbox here.

>

"

 

Or perhaps you need to add guidance.

(Hint: type "open mailbox" without quotes. Remember to press <ENTER>. The key. Don't type "<ENTER>")

[Nop90]

Some people, not only from our team, seem upset after this competition.

 

Zen meditation taught me that the only important thing is the present moment. Past and future are only a dream, and being upset is only judging a dream. What a silly nature we uman beings have.

 

But young people need to experiment strong emotions before recognizing the real nature of the dream, so I think I'll stay out of all this situation since spirits will calm down.

 

Coding of the game will contine after some rest (I really need some rest) and we will try to reelase a phisical cart with a nice multiplayer mode in 2020.

 

Soon will be released the compo version to be considered as a demo version. Final version will have a lot of extra content (and believe me in the demo version there is already more than what is showed in the video) so stay tuned.

 

 

 

[+karri]

48 minutes ago, Nop90 said:

Zen meditation taught me that the only important thing is the present moment.

And chocolate is important! (And I don't mean the Kylie Minogue's tune with the same name from the album "Body Language")

[agradeneu]

2 hours ago, karri said:

Nice video btw. Perhaps a fixed length video would have been a better way of presenting entries? Then it would be up to the people making the games to decide what to show. To be honest the most irritating experiences in the competitions are the 10 second reviewers who press buttons at random and when they get to the first obstacle they end the game with "ok... Let's go to the next game".

 

Sometimes I wonder if a modern player would manage to get anywhere in Zork.

 

"You are standing in an open field west of a white house, with a boarded front door.

There is a small mailbox here.

>

"

 

Or perhaps you need to add guidance.

(Hint: type "open mailbox" without quotes. Remember to press <ENTER>. The key. Don't type "<ENTER>")

The Atari/Silly Venture audience looked way over their 40s, mostly.   I just think the demo scene culture was always about pushing technology/graphics, not so much sticking to the rules of "pure gameplay". But anyway I think the two best entries won, from a tech and also gameplay perspective, Silas Adventure was by far the most ambitious/impressive effort, really pushing the system off the charts.  Same with MK. Its a port nobody thought would be possible at THAT quality. That's masterclasss, simple as that.  Without envy I must admit that being pretty good and very good is sometimes just not enough to be "the best", like with anything in life.

[im_reg]

On 12/8/2019 at 9:37 PM, Turbo Laser Lynx said:

I love it! It looks very polished, great work from everyone involved. Great music and I love the Micro Machines inspired graphics, somehow very fitting.
 

True gardener! Works in gardening all day -> goes home to play Lawnmower on the Lynx in the evening!
 

?

 

[Turbo Laser Lynx]

I've played all the games tonight for a while on atarigamer.com, and I liked them all. (Saving up for longer play sessions on a real Lynx when the roms are available). After the first impression I personally liked playing Lawnmower the most (NOT saying the winners weren't worth their wins), just subjectively. Many of the games need more time to check out properly and obviously the two player games need to be checked out with a friend.

 

I want to put focus on the most positive aspect of the competitions this year, and that's what a colorful sh*tload of new fabulous games we got for the Lynx this year! ? I barely have the time to play them all if I'm going to get any gamedev done!