GameSalad Pinball Jam!

ForumNinja

Hello everyone, we're throwing an end of the year Game Jam to end 2015 with a bang!

With the introduction of custom collision shapes to GameSalad, many new types of games can now be created. One very notable genre that has been missing for a long time, as you might have guessed, is pinball. In honor of this Game Jam, we've released a new Pinball Crouton (art pack) that you can grab here: http://learn.gamesalad.com/pinball-crouton/

The rules are simple:

• Your entry must incorporate some form of pinball game mechanic
• Your entry must be created from scratch for this Game Jam
• Your entry must be submitted before the Game Jam ends (After the release of 1.25 / TBD)

How do I enter the Game Jam?

Entering the Game Jam is easy! Simply:

1. Publish your project to the GameSalad Arcade with visibility set to public
2. Once your project is published, click the "Pinball Jam 2015" bubble at the bottom of the page:
   

What could I win?!

When the Game Jam is over, we'll narrow down the entries to what we believe are the best finalists, and then we'll open a poll on the forums here for the community to vote for the winners. The prizes are as follows:

1. First place will receive a $100 Amazon gift card
2. Second place will receive a $50 Amazon gift card
3. Third place will receive a $25 Amazon gift card

If you have any questions, feel free to comment below. Happy holidays and best of luck!

Braydon_SFX

Awesome!!

Armelline

Sounds great! Do custom collisions work in Arcade now?

Approw

Awesome jam genre! Do we need to use the provided art pack or can we create whatever we want?

dgackey

Custom collision shapes in Arcade isn't quite working yet, which is why we're going to play the actual gameproj's natively and narrow down to the finalists.

We'll actually use those final games to help us test the Arcade implementation of the custom collision feature, and then republish them into a Game Jam gallery for final voting shortly afterwards.

You don't have to use the Crouton pack! Feel free to use some of it, none of it, whatever. We just provided it as a starting point.

jamie_c

Awsome, I've always wanted to make a pinball game. Now might be the time!

Socks

Awesome idea !! Good luck to everyone who enters !!!

jonmulcahy

yea, great idea. good luck everyone!

Thunder_Child

Sweet. Soinds fun....I shall play !

MentalDonkeyGames

Sweet!

Hopscotch

Cool! Been waiting for a new jam!

The_Gamesalad_Guru

Very cool!

jay2dx

OMG YES!

I've been trying to make GOOD pinball physics within Game-Salad for ages! to this day I still fail, (note its my lack of skill not GS's potential), Hopefully this Jam will help it along!

Now off to start my entry, Thank you GS team this is awesome

Rainbros

So let me get this straight, since custom collisions won't work in the arcade, the community is supposed to vote for a winner without actually playing the working games...?

Armelline

@Rainbros said:
So let me get this straight, since custom collisions won't work in the arcade, the community is supposed to vote for a winner without actually playing the working games...?

See @dgackey's post above, he explains this. Short answer is no.

Rainbros

@Armelline yeah I did read the post, just wanted to make sure.

Also, how does one upload a portrait game to the arcade? I don't see how to make it anything other than 480 x 320.

dgackey

@Rainbros by the time we post the finalists for voting, we expect to have custom collisions working on the Arcade.

We were going to need some test cases anyway, so we thought this would be a fun way to do it and try to get some cool game types that were somewhat lacking going at the same time.

digitalzero

Are there any solid tutorials?

Rainbros

@dgackey That's good to hear! Thanks for the reply. Can you answer my other question as well? I'm trying to get started on this but not sure what size project to start with.

Spalding004

@Rainbros said:
@dgackey That's good to hear! Thanks for the reply. Can you answer my other question as well? I'm trying to get started on this but not sure what size project to start with.

As far as I know, you can publish any size/orientation project to the arcade.

Rainbros

@Spalding004 Oh okay thanks, but then what is the point of the "Arcade" project setting?

Armelline

@Rainbros said:
@Spalding004 Oh okay thanks, but then what is the point of the "Arcade" project setting?

Leftover from before they expanded the Arcade to allow any sizes. Guess they forgot to remove it or decided not to

The_Gamesalad_Guru

Too bad the center of mass is screwed up, building the flippers would have been a breeze. Have to use the old method.

Braydon_SFX

@Lost_Oasis_Games said:
Too bad the center of mass is screwed up, building the flippers would have been a breeze. Have to use the old method.

Yeah, I was playing with it yesterday and it seemed odd. Thought something was wrong with it. Hopefully they get it fixed soon! @dgackey

skott

I also have some issues with my flippers. When they are rotated, my ball goes half way through them. I don't know if it's related center of mass? Sounds like it.

And then the old issue with an actor that can fly through another actor if the speed is too high. Resulting in ball flying through flippers. Requires some patience to find the right speed of ball, and might end up being too slow for a pinball game.

MentalDonkeyGames

@skott said:
I also have some issues with my flippers. When they are rotated, my ball goes half way through them. I don't know if it's related center of mass? Sounds like it.

increasing the the density of the flippers a lot helps. I have mine set to a 500 at the moment and it's pretty good. But there is still some issues though.

skott

@NipaGames said:

@skott said:
I also have some issues with my flippers. When they are rotated, my ball goes half way through them. I don't know if it's related center of mass? Sounds like it.

increasing the the density of the flippers a lot helps. I have mine set to a 500 at the moment and it's pretty good. But there is still some issues though.

Same here.. It's not 100% good, more like90%..

jay2dx

I've had that problem all year! I just can't get it perfect! Most pinball games are built from the ground up to be honest, so we're all best just making it fun and worrying about collision accuresy later

jay2dx

...

mhedges

Quick question on the Physics Editor (related to the Jam, indirectly):

Say I import an image sized 20x60 px (for which I already did the json at the 20x60 image size). I create an actor, assign the image, and then the json. Can I subsequently alter the actor's size, or will it throw off the json?

Thanks, regards.

Spalding004

@mhedges said:
Quick question on the Physics Editor (related to the Jam, indirectly):

Say I import an image sized 20x60 px (for which I already did the json at the 20x60 image size). I create an actor, assign the image, and then the json. Can I subsequently alter the actor's size, or will it throw off the json?

Thanks, regards.

The collision data will scale accordingly.