Summer 2010 Dualstream Day of Zeux Judging Sheet:Terryn

Terryn's DoZ Scores, Summer 2010

Topics: Imjmortality (Abstract) & Nanomachines (Concrete)

Judging Standard: MZX 2.83 stable (Win XP-32 platform)

(Scores attempted to be consistent and relative, but I'm not making any promises, especially not this time.)

To explain the WACKY scoring changes per game, I've written up a small guide on our system and placed it right below this line! How convenient!

Games choosing the THEME-HEAVY scoring are scored as follows:

Theme - 100/400 (How appropriately it sticks to the above topic. Novel applications of the theme are especially welcome here; cloying, ham-fisted application of it is not.)
Gameplay - 90/400 (What the game expects the player to do, how novel/fun/considerate it is for the player, and how little the player futilely struggles with the game.)
Graphics - 70/400 (The difference between eye-gouging and eye-popping.)
Technique - 60/400 (How painless it is for the player to play through the game (disregarding obvious gameplay decisions such as difficulty), and the technical prowess shown in the code.)
Story - 50/400 (Whether your grasp of English, your grasp of flow, and your grasp of creativity align. If this cannot be arranged, partial credit is better than none.)
Sound - 30/400 (With the beeping and the blooping and the chiptunes and the borrowed game music and all of that.)

Games choosing the THEME-LITE scoring are scored as follows:

Gameplay - 120/400 (This is the core of the game; it is the interactive part of a game and hence the most likely thing to make or break a game for a player. It's not just about quality; quantity helps a great deal too.)
Graphics - 90/400 (How pleasing the game is to the eye. No accounting for tastes, though some works seem better to everyone overall than others.)
Technique - 80/400 (The complexity of the code involved, and whether said code actually works most of the time. Efficiency counts in the extreme cases where it's relevant.)
Story - 50/400 (Whether the words arranged therein form coherent sentences, and even better, coherent plot threads.)
Sound - 40/400 (The ears' domain; whether sound effects and music are not only good, but well-suited for the game.)
Theme - 20/400 (Whether you actually paid attention and bothered haphazardly grafting the right conceptual fragments to your glitzy engine. 5 points average or less and your game is outright rejected.)

Without further delay, my scoring for this DoZ's games begins!

[3656] "sick fetish for all things obsolete" (Mr_Alert) -IMMORTALITY/HEAVY- [DQed]

Theme - 10/100

Pretty soon, MZX will be able to run on freaking everything, esoteric tendrils extruded, veins sucking up precious lifeblood from the ruined architectures of the past.

Gameplay - 9/90

It's there! Just not intrinsically.

Graphics - 7/70

It has them! Just not intrinsically.

Technique - 30/60

It works. I'm not willing enough to break out a floppy and transfer this to my 486-DX to test natively, but it runs well in DOSBOX to actually play things.

Story - 0/50

Mr_Alert's been wanting to backport MZX to DOS for quite a while. Too bad he decided to abandon his plans of making a real DoZ entry and worked on something completely different instead, like pretty much everybody else. =S

Sound - 0/30

Nope, no sound.

Overall: 56/400

Interesting and aggravating way to spring this on the community at-large.

[7494] "Immortal Nanomachines" (GreaseMonkey) -IMMORTALITY/LITE-

Gameplay - 80/120

It's a rudimentary RTS, and it works despite its many quibbles. Troop selection is effortless, though they have a hugely annoying tendency to line up one after another instead of getting in range to shoot at enemies. Troop diversity is low; most troops just shoot when in range, and a few throw grenades. Action diversity is very low, with options limited to move and halt movement (attacking is automatic). Enemy strength is fairly strong, so seeing the game over screen shouldn't be a surprise.
There are only two levels, unfortunately. Actually, this is a recurring theme. There's really not enough diversity in anything to give it a much higher score, period.

Graphics - 45/90

They do the job. Terrain looks okay (it's all the same characters mishmashed, but the colors contrast enough), enemies look fair, and basically everything looks identifiable without much visual clutter.

Technique - 53/80

Functional but unpolished and a bit messy. The aformentioned AI quirk is annoying; the grenade graphics have a high tendency to stay on the screen after they hit.

Story - 17/50

CJA wants to become immortal... by collecting the three Nanomachines (that aren't actually nanomachines) of Lancer-X... and you and your band of DMZXers must stop him and his minions. Pretty uninspired, especially for a plot that decided to tie into the community for some bewildering reason. It doesn't develop much, either, due to there only being two stages.

Sound - 34/40

Pretty good selection of tunes I've not heard before (YES, I'M USING THE MODPLUG ENGINE). Fits the tone of the game well. The sounds aren't objectively great, but they're amusing and work well enough for the game.

Theme - 8/20

Immortality is just barely above a fill-in-the-blank mention; the goal of the villain is to achieve it, that's all.

Overall: 237/400

Not fond of this entry at all, but it did enough of what it wanted to and that's just fine in my book.

[8724] "Nanofighter" (mad) -NANOMACHINES/LITE- [DQed]

Gameplay - 24/120

You do like to go on about fighting games, so let me similarly go on about what's missing. Although there's (great) character art, little is really implemented. The characters can move about, attack, and (passably) do special moves. Missing? AI, second player controls, characters turning, hit detection (and its wonderful little sister, move priority), special bar charging, assorted other possible benefits like offensive/defensive dashing. It's at least beneficial that what little is here works without a hitch, though considering the pain of using the keyboard for fireball/dragon punch motions, the second character might have benefitted from being a charge character.

Graphics - 35/90

Pretty nice character sprites. Animation is sparse, but hey, the sprites still look fine. That's the full extent of the graphics, though.

Technique - 30/80

Huge and un-buggy sprite manipulation. That's pretty much all the engine condenses to, sadly, but it's still not bad.

Story - 0/50

In 2240, furries develop the technology to shrink themselves to a nanomolecular size. The press, still wildly bleeding money and completely out of touch with the average person, calls them: Nanofurries. These "nanofurries" have fun riding blood vessels as innertubes and studying tai-chi under praying matises and and using silk threads as lassos and stupid shit like that, but some nanofurries use their abilities... for evil. Therefore, a police force was developed to bring these rogue nanofurries to justice. Since metal can't shrink for some reason that has to do with neutrinos or quantum tunnelling electrocution or something, they must all be highly trained in hand-to-hand combat. This is the story of the Provisional Nanofurry Defense Force.

Sound - 12/40

There's one song, and it's nice enough to keep around for the duration of fiddling about with this entry.

Theme - 0/20

hahahahahahahaha, no.

Overall: 101/400

Glad you finally stopped just talking about making a fighting game for the DoZ and actually tried. You've been saying you would for, what, three or four years now? Pity it wasn't playable, though.

[19798] "One Tower One Life" (KKairos) -IMMORTALITY/HEAVY-

Theme - 57/100

The theme is used ...plausibly, but that's about the strongest word I can use. The fact that the game is impossible to win hints at the futility of attaining literal immortality, I guess.

Gameplay - 27/90

Level up your abilities by convenient keystrokes. There's nothing else to do, as fighting off the wave of enemies happens automatically.
Moreover, the balance of the game needed some serious tweaking. Very few points have to be put into damage output, and the starting energy points are enough by themselves to get to wave 4 (try it!). Once wave 11 happens.. oh boy, you're probably going to die right then.

Graphics - 26/70

Not absolutely horrible, anyway. Decent title screen, tolerably-ZZT blockmonster baring its very heart out to the world, smileys, ...nice...screen...layout... there's nothing else to mention.

Technique - 21/60

To its credit, the engine mostly works, glaring balance issues aside. The weapon zaps enemies at the given range point and right in front of the monster, and the stat changing is actually effective.
However, by the time Wave 11 hits, with its instant attacks, the game's pretty much over unless you were cheating anyway. On that note, the inner workings are simple and thus very hack-friendly, so F11 away and tinker a bit.

Story - 15/50

You are a monster. You decide to occupy a tower and tear out your giant heart as a big, flashing target with "STAB ME" yelled out in neon, air-raid intensity to attract a steady swarm of heroes off which to feed. It works, though with the way stereotypical heroes are, wouldn't just occupying a nearby tower work anyway?

Sound - 12/30

The sole tune's nice, and having no sounds is better than having horrid ones. Having more than one substantial tune would be overkill for a game this tiny anyway.

Overall: 158/400

Having a complete, though completely mindless, game is a boon to score. Now that's efficiency. The game's not GOOD or anything, but still

[22625] "King Yu's Tower" (logicow) -IMMORTALITY/HEAVY-

Theme - 87/100

Embodies the theme well. While the theme doesn't heavily impact the core gameplay, it has a considerable involvement with the enemies faced and the storyline.

Gameplay - 73/90

It's top-down MZX gameplay, but the kind that's in favor in more recent games. The default weapon is a sword (with excellent range, probably the smartest thing to include in a sword engine), and eventually other weapons will be acquired with effects like giant cones of electrity. Game balance is good, with fair grunt enemies, moderately challenging bosses, and with one spot in particular made for harvesting coins to buy ammo for your weapons.
The stage variety, on the other hand, is a bit weak. While the different areas are apparent in style, basic enemies only come in two flavors at that (two and a half if you wish to be generous and count the crypts), and so enemy variety isn't one of the defining factors for the different areas.
Thankfully, the bosses make up for this by having interesting strategies and good tactical variety. You're going to loathe the necromancer's shadow touch by the time you fight him a bit. The game's not hurting for bosses, either: it sports four in total.

Graphics - 48/70

Outside of the big closeups in the intro, the game loves its jumbles of ascii. It's not ugly, per se, but it's not exactly beautifying. In fact, it's the reason logi went theme-heavy this DoZ. The bigger blobs of graphics look pretty decent (e.g. flowers, towers, meteors) and it's easy to tell what they are. The big expanses of blackness in the safe zone are a bit of a distraction, though.

Technique - 45/60

Nothing really fancy here, though it's still nice to spit out arcs of damage and see huge ovoid explosions fly out. The game's working fine, and gave me no problems, though some others have reported a game-breaking problem with the last boss never teleporting back into the arena.

Story - 31/50

Your solar airship is running low on juice, so you park it by the nearest artifice of civilization you can find: an old tower in the middle of nowhere. You soon find and talk to its king, who is immortal and wishing for a release, and you decide to help him out of altruism (I guess, the game pulls the silent protagonis trick). Simple, yet effective.

Sound - 26/30

Not bad. Not bad at all. The sound effects are PC Speaker bloops, which fits well with the whole ascii motif the game has, and are pretty decent in and of themselves.
The music? madbrain's. It's pretty fitting, all of it, even the quacking.

Overall: 310/400

You strove for completion and kept the game as cohesive as you could manage. Well, congrats. It worked.

[22677] "22677" (asgromo / Kom) -IMMORTALITY/LITE-

Gameplay - 79/120

It starts out simple enough. The player walks through the level, in sidescroller perspective. trying to find the exit, while enemies sporadically (or later, constantly) show up and spit out projectiles. The player has a simple gun that fires using WASD (including diagonals) and will level up when enemies are killed. Unfortunately, the balance goes off-kilter fast and the weapon becomes exponentially more powerful, to the point of severe CPU choking. Even the absolute floods of enemies aren't a problem for your ridiculously powerful uber-beam. It's almost a shame. I went around for a little bit and went close to enemies to simply see what their firing patterns looked like, since I couldn't see much of that when they all die pretty much the instant I point my weapon at them.

Graphics - 73/90

Excellent cinematic graphics, blocky but good-looking in the way some of you might remember from Diamond's "controversial" The Wired.
World graphics weren't bad, with nodules and pipes flowing everywhere to make the appearance of a sterile, mechanical complex on stage 1, rough, L-shaped polygons forming tightly knit surfaces on stage 2, and so on. Color choices fit too, although it becomes hard to make out the enemies from the backgrounds at times. Speaking of which, the enemies are okay-looking; nothing really distinct, but better than the average "it works" lancer blob.

Technique - 62/80

The dungeons are randomly generated, and the enemies consistantly spawn out of sight. There's a nice weapon engine that shoots in eight directions, and speeds up as the player kills more enemies. There, unfortunately, are some considerable hangups with the engine and game.
The big hangup: the levelling system is far too generous. After a while, the weapon becomes an ERAZER BEAM OF BALL-STREWN ANNIHILATION. It doesn't just kill the large swarms of enemies, though! It also murders your processor! While this can be circumvented, at first, by gingerly pressing the fire keys, treating the weapon as a railgun, and by firing into nearby walls and ceilings, by level 4 slowdown often can't be helped. By that point, it's _very_tempting to just fire straight down long hallways and watch as the game goes into 1/20th speed and half a minute passes as the game calculates just how much of the screen to fill with confetti.
The small hangup is that the level generator creates inescapeable pits on occasion. Just remember to save when you need to.
The insignificant hangup is that both things you can do on the last screen (going back to the door, or firing downwards in the little trench) end with the same ending. oh, and the scrolling feels a bit clunky and the cutscene engine is a little sensitive of spacebar presses, but at this point these quibbles are almost insignificant.

Story - 41/50

As far as I can gather, the player character is a sentient being created by a consciousness trapped in an autonomous computer-planet, the embodiment of technology gone wild. This consciousness wishes to end the planet's mindless ravaging of other planets' resources and finally "rest". The implications of "Kasey"'s origins aren't explicitly said, which actually helps add to the narrative style. The dialogue is pleasant, a reflection of distant, yet close acquaintances.

Sound - 32/40

The music selection is fitting, and novel. The cutscene music was especially well-picked. The sound effects were unobtrusive.
I'm thankful that level 4's music is good, especially over long periods of time... because, man. Stuck there for ages.

Theme - 16/20

Fits the theme of immortality in a somewhat indirect, but strongly narrative fashion. Above average, in total.

Overall: 303/400

This would have (barely) won in my book, if it were properly balanced. Ah well, c'est la vie.

[24560] "255 nano robotz" (mzxrules) -NANOMACHINES/LITE- [DQed]

Gameplay - 12/120

You know what? I'm tired of writing somewhat on-point criticisms on how old-sckool didn't make anything worthwhile for the doz for the sixth or seventh time. I'm pretty damn sure the other judges have done that for me anyway. I'll just go on autopilot this time.
...you know what, my conscience won't let me do that. I was just going to put "lol" for every category, but I... just can't. fuck.

Graphics - 22/90

They're decent. It's just overworld graphics, but the color slection is good and the characters are fine, though in sparse number. It looks a bit... fuzzy and ill-defined though.

Technique - 5/80

I can't see much of any. I guess it's a blessing that it's near-impossible to get a 0 from me in this category.

Story - 0/50

lol

Sound - 2/40

None.

Theme - 2/20

"^255 nano robotz"

Overall: 43/400

Aren't you tired of your entries being birdcage liner yet? It'd be nice to see you go back to making real entries again.

[41608] "WANZA FYUCHAA!~" (Lancer-X) -IMMORTALITY/HEAVY- [DQed]

Theme - 0/100

IMOUTOS!!!!!!!!!! LOLIS!!!!!!!!!! TSUNDERES!!!! HAS MAKI IZUMI?? YES!!!!!!!!!!!!! BUY NOW!!!! WELL TRAVELLED!

Gameplay - 0/90

EROGAMESCAPE REVIEWED A MILLION TIMES

Graphics - 26/70

OLD IS SUCK, BUY NEW
BUYYYYYYYYYYYYY

Technique - 32/60

GIVE 1996 EROGE TO NEIGHBOUR, CLASSLESS BOOR

Story - 3/50

HERE'S EROGE FOR PLAYING ON THE BUS, ZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ

Sound - 7/30

ENJOY! HAHAHAHAHAHAHA

Overall: 68/400

I WILL PLAY A GAME WITH 5000 LOLIS, AND IF YOU DISAGREE

[54188] "Indiana Smiley and the Orb of Immortality" (Baby Bonnie Hood) -IMMORTALITY/HEAVY-

Theme - 80/100

Rote, if mildly amusing, application of the theme. You seek immortality, soon get it and soon become extremely bored by its totality.

Gameplay - 40/90

It's classic MZX gameplay throughout. However, the whole immortality gimmick hurts the gameplay in favor of story/theme usage. Go figure.
The good thing is that the author is then allowed to exploit ridiculously bad gameplay strategies with no penalty. Stars? YES Lake of lava with a convoluted one-char path? YESSSSSSSS

Graphics - 30/70

Completely unremarkable and forgettable. I had to re-load the game to find a more appropriate description for them. "Caverns-like" would probably be the best substantiative description for them, although the colors clash a lot more than they ever did in Caverns.

Technique - 30/60

It wasn't going to get high points here, because it doesn't do anything out of the ordinary, but everything works.

Story - 34/50

Quickly evident as the focus of this game. The writing was good enough to play out the idea without any awkwardness.

Sound - 14/30

It's not bad, though it's also nothing I haven't heard before a few thousand times. POOPROAD>:( and asiekierka even wore out the mod speed thing ages ago :(

Overall: 228/400

It's thoroughly average! It's _Manna from Heaven._

[71124] "Goo! It's ALIVE!" (duvel) -NANOMACHINES/LITE- [DQed]

Gameplay - 6/120

I'll count "The thrill of loading up Super ZZT under DOSBOX" under gameplay, I guess.

Graphics - 3/90

There's some approximation of art! Beer! Music note! GREY GOO

Technique - 6/80

There's an intro screen present. Just getting to the editor is a bit of a task, so pity points here.

Story - 2/50

Grey goo is out to eat everyone! AAAH the horror

Sound - 2/40

There is the startup sound you'll hear once you realise that there's no game outside of the intro screen.

Theme - 3/20

Grey goo! Bunches of it! oh my!

Overall: 22/400

Super ZZT. Ain't it a stinka?

[75946] "Mina and the Quest for Immortality" (commodorejohn) -IMMORTALITY/HEAVY-

Theme - 2/100

It's mentioned, at least.

Gameplay - 9/90

You can move your character around, at least.

Graphics - 15/70

They're FF6 placeholder graphics. In a real DoZ, and a real entry, and using more of them, probably enough for a DQ, since the heavy sheet won't do the job by itself. Here, though, ehn.

Technique - 22/60

There's a working sprite movement engine, and a textbox engine, and very limited interactivity. At least it works.

Story - 0/50

None.

Sound - 8/30

Again, the single tune used for an entry isn't that bad ~~at least~~. I wish I didn't have to repeat myself.

Overall: 56/400

Better luck next time.

[85132] "Nanomachines from Space" (asiekierka / Taitorian) -NANOMACHINES/HEAVY- [DQed]

Theme - 1/100

It was a hollow, empty shell of a promise...a platitude so bereft of consideration that strangled this pathetic mockery of a conversation. "Where is it!" I barked. No answer, just a defiant stare.

Gameplay - 1/90

I secretly struggled for air, my desperation choking the life out of me. "What! What have you done with it!" I snarled, masking my fears.

Graphics - 22/70

He just laughed. Laughed like a hyena with a bolus of rotting ibex flesh lodged in its throat, a mad, constant, trilling whirlwind spattered with rough coughs and hacks. Whatever used to be human in laughter... was now gone, like everything else here.

Technique - 18/60

Suddenly, though, he pulled out a wrench, a perverse symbol of utility now gone wrong. I went down like a glass-jawed, snot-nosed babyface facing a brutal, battle scarred champeen in a single, artless blow to the head.

Story - 0/50

I woke up, at the wrong side of Lady Luck again. I saw nothing but blackness, the blackness endemic of this low-rent slum.

Sound - 8/30

A mechanical din scraped across my ears, the sound of dragged chains and rusted metal, cast over the churlish burlesque of a damaged radio. It was then that I knew that I will never find what I am looking for here, and will soon never have the chance to again.

Overall: 50/400

(thanks for introducing me to a great CJA thing I hadn't seen before, but other than that, ugh. asie, it's amazing that you're not actually a troll.)

[95763] "denis" (coda) -IMMORTALITY/HEAVY-

Theme - 5/100

There are arrows constantly soaring through the air. It matters not if they hurt you, for you are immortal.

Gameplay - 4/90

WHETHER 'TIS NOBLER IN THE MIND TO SUFFER THE SLINGS AND ARROWS OF OUTRAGEOUS FORTUNE, OR TO TAKE ARMS AGAINST A SEA OF TROUBLES, AND BY OPPOSING END THEM

Graphics - 7/70

Ooh, colors! I like colors

Technique - 9/60

I like how you used huge lines of robots mostly to shoot in a single direction.

Story - 5/50

The story is that I missed the meme. Oh well!

Sound - 8/30

Crashman music generously re-interpreted, and something else. I'm pretty sure that the minimum word guidelines will be practically ignored for this DoZ, fffff.

Overall: 38/400

burp

Final Rankings

#1: King Yu's Tower (310/400)
#2: 22677 (303/400)
#3: Immortal Nanomachines (237/400)
#4: Indiana Smiley and the Orb of Immortality (228/400)
#5: One Tower One Life (158/400)
#X: Nanofighter (101/400)
#X: One's Future (68/400)
#X: sick fetish for all things obsolete (56/400)
#6: Mina and the Quest for Immortality (56/400)
#X: Nanomachines from Space (50/400)
#X: 255 nano robotz (43/400)
#7: denis (38/400)
#X: Goo! It's ALIVE! (22/400)

All in all, a sadly disappointing DoZ. Although the preparation was muted in comparison to some past DoZs, that wasn't the big issue behind its failure. It was planned well in advance, with considerable solicitation. The topics were, for once, near-universally praised. Even the best tools can go ignored and useless if few people bother using them, I guess.