Interview With Paul Harrington

Paul Harrington has many names: Bob Surlaw, The Wobbler, That-Guy-Who-Ran-Hamster-Speak. He's well known around the OHR community for his sage advice, critical eye, and bizarre games. I know him best as being the inspiration for starting the Hamster Burrow after Hamster Speak's long run ended. As such, it's pretty great to have him as the first interviewee on the Burrow.

Hit the jump for Paul's thoughts on his latest game, game design, and the origin of flaming yaks.

The 2013 Week Long Random Collaboration Contest

There's still a week to sign up for the 2013 random collaboration contest, held by Spoonweaver. Entrants will be paired randomly with another entrant. They will then be tasked to create a game during the week of April 6-14. There are already quite a few entrants and we'll be waiting with bated breath for the results. Check out this cool contest over on the Slime Salad Forums, and sign up if you haven't already!

EDIT FOR GLORY: The contest has been moved up a week! THERE IS STILL TIME TO SIGN UP gogogo

High Score Challenge: TheSuperAmazingBlueBallGame

(Our current high score is 312, by Willy Elektrix...wow!)

It's time for the first high-score challenge ever! This first round will be a competition in TheSuperAmazingBlueBallGame by foreverblue2. There will be a prize for the winner, but first let's look at the rules:

1. This will be for the All Out mode, so high scores in any other modes will not be accepted.
2. One entry per...entrant. Submit your best score the first time. Never mind, I'm not worried about this anymore.
3. That's it, I think 2 1 rules is enough, don't you?

So here's the deal: submit your score in a comment below. Please tell me the score and include a link to a screenshot. You can take a screenshot by hitting F12 in game. If you need a place to upload it, try Tiny Pic or some other free uploading service. No screenshot, no prize.

Speaking of which, the prize will be a fancy pin/button saying that you won a Hamster Burrow High Score challenge! I will only be sending these to winners of these challenges, so it's pretty special.

The contest will run for a week from today, so it ends March 22nd, 23:59 PST! So get to scoring!

Thanks to Meowskivich from the Slime Salad forums for the idea.

Littlest Game Contest Voting

The Littlest Game Contest has ended, and voting has begun! Vote your favorite game up! The voting will last until the 24th, so that gives you a good chance to play all of the games and give them a fair shake...especially considering how little they are. Vote now!

Free Battle Backdrops from Fenrir-Lunaris

Fenrir Lunaris, pixel artist extraordinaire and famed creator of Vikings of Midgard, has offered up 6 battle backdrops for free use. In his words:

I've collected no less than SIX battle backdrops I've pieced together into one spiffy package for newbies and OHR enthusiasts alike to try out in their own games - all already set with the default OHR palette! Now your worlds can consist of more than just sandsea.bmp!
 

You can download the pack here and hit the jump for a preview of all six backgrounds!

Making a custom combat engine

Today, Adam Perry takes a good hard look at what it takes to make a new combat engine in the OHR. As a bonus, there are many example scripts as well as some darn good advice for anyone working on a project of this magnitude. 

Anyone who's hung around any game design forum for any length of time has inevitably seen someone new drift in with a request that looks like this:

"I want to make custom combat engine that is totally awesome and also brews your coffee for you! How do I do it?"

This is awkward. Usually, no one will answer for a day or so, then some kindly soul will step in and gently suggest that the requester start with a smaller, less ambitious project.

But maybe you're past that hump, and you still have no idea how to move mountains with the power of scripting. In this article, I will give you the answer to that age-old newbie question. Are you ready for this?

The Littlest Game Contest!

I'm a little late to this party, but Adam Perry, AKA Mogri, is hosting a game contest on Slime Salad known as the Littlest Game Contest. The goal of the contest is to create a game within certain limitations, such as a low resolution, single-button input, or only 2 colors. Entrants are awarded points for meeting these limitations, and some creative designers have already met the challenge. But there's still time to enter! The deadline is February 28th, more than enough time to create a little game.

Mr. Perry explains it better than I do, and in great detail, in the announcement thread so check it out!