Roger Wilco

@haywyre: Yep, it worked like a charm. I switched off my DualShock4, and then I was able to log-in to my profile from within the game using the PS3 wireless guitar. Played about 45 minutes last night, and had a great time. I'm looking forward to the holidays. I'll break out all of the instruments and have a blast playing with the family.

@haywyre: Thank you, HayWyre! I'll try that tonight when I get home. It doesn't affect things too badly as far as local multiplayer goes. My group of friends is always going to have someone willing to pick up the mic. But it is an issue for solo play, especially guitar solo play. And getting some nice, soothing rocking in is part of what I love about music-rhythm games like this. If your suggestion works, it will save me some trouble. I'll let you know how it goes.

I got this for PS4 yesterday. I installed it, and fired it up. I was able to play the game using my legacy PS3 wireless Rock Band guitar. But I had an issue with being able to log-in to my user profile. The guitar worked fine in game, but wouldn't work in the PS4 interface. So my personal profile only registered as being the vocalist, but refused to show up as the guitarist. This meant that when playing the guitar part, I could only play as "guest." This prevents me from playing as the characters I try to create.

A fine idea. There's always some debate over how much of a game interactive fiction really is. But I always loved choose-your-own-adventures. I actually tried Twine out the other week for the first time, and found it marvelously easy to get into. The advantage of a tool like Twine for a game jam is that it lets you skip directly to content creation.

This is called "Backlog Syndrome." It is an increasingly common problem as games become easier and cheaper to acquire. I'm a game collector. No matter how bad your backlog syndrome has become, I can assure you that mine is exponentially worse.

And with things like Steam sales, Good-Old-Games, PS+ freebies, and the like it is only going to get worse and worse as time wears on. You can either try to throttle back on the influx of content, or you can just accept the fact that you will never truly be able to get around to playing all of the games that you have access to. I had to make peace with that fact years ago.

Honestly, tackle your backlog in whatever manner is comfortable for you. When I need a break from some of my more intensive hobbies, I usually fire up a smaller, indie game title. But these days, I never force myself to finish any games.

Yes, the GameCube has turned the corner in terms of collect-ability. A few years ago, you could pick up almost any GameCube title for a song. It's lack of success commercially, combined with the sheer durability of the system, meant that most of the GameCube that had ever existed were now available second-hand.

Now that enough time has gone by, we are starting to see nostalgia having its inevitable effect. A lot of kids who grew up playing the GameCube are starting to get jobs and disposable income. And the demand for some of the better offerings on the GameCube is shooting up. It helps that there has now been a significant amount of critique of the Cube's library. It is now easy to find comprehensive lists on-line of the very best that the system has to offer, and how much those games can be had for.

This happens to all systems, it just takes 15-20 years. I do understand the original poster's point. The increase in digital distribution and more fluid software targets for games is going to shift titles away from physical media. The more this trend continues, the less likely it will be that physical games will be collected. I know that my access to digital games has been drastically increasing over the past few years, despite my fondness for keeping shelves full of physical copies.

Also, get a GameCube. It really was a great little system, and is well worth collecting for. I rank it quite highly in my own collection, right up there with the Dreamcast. (another fantastic system to collect for)

Video killed the radio star. Mobile gaming killed the public handheld gamer. There was always a slight social stigma surrounding the public consumption of handheld-games. (Game Boy, DS, PSP, etc...) Nothing major, but some people would always look askance at someone toting around a handheld for entertainment.

Now that mobile platforms are as prevalent as they are, no one even looks twice at someone playing a game on their tablet or smartphone. If you have a mobile device with you, you can enjoy whatever games you please to your heart's content, and never have to feel even mildly self-conscious about it.

In a way, this is a step forward for the medium. By opening gaming up to a wider audience, mobile gaming has helped to erode the stigma against playing games in public. At the same time, they are constantly eating into the market-share of more traditional hand-held video game experiences. Well, any kind of progress comes at a cost.

I can't paint textures to save my life. But when it comes to 3D modeling and sculpting, I'm actually pretty good. I'm not really interested in doing realistic 3D models, but if someone could post some of the "cartoon" interpretations of the giant-bomb gang, I wouldn't mind taking a crack at that. It wouldn't take me all that long to do a basic sculpting pass, retopology, and UV map. Mixamo's a good idea for the rigging, it plays nice with Unity.

Okay, shameless plug time.

Unity Cheshire Component

This is a little tool that I created for the Unity Asset Store. I can't say for certain that it would be useful for a game jam, as it is really more geared toward animating characters, and pre-scripted animated sequences. However, it is free, and will remain so for the foreseeable future. So if any of the Unity users want to take it for a spin in order to get some quick-and-dirty talking characters in their game, feel free.

The component also comes with a 3D model of a head, and an already-set-up sprite for a mouth. Both of these assets are free to use. (otherwise I wouldn't have included them in the tool) I created them myself, so I own the copyright. Anyone can download them from the Unity Asset Store and use them however they please. I can't guarantee that you will want to, neither of them is my best art. But I can guarantee that they both work just fine in the context that I'm using them in. If you have any talent for painting, you can re-paint the 3D model, that would definitely help it to look better.

Well, "guidelines" is a considerably gentler term than "rules." It implies wiggle-room from the outset. Though you may be right. This is a creative effort, after all. And creative types usually prefer not to feel that they are being repressed in any way. Even a term like "guidelines" might still scare some people off, despite its ambiguity.

Perhaps just a minor disclaimer that empowers the community in general to disqualify any entries that are being willfully offensive/in epic bad taste? The goal here isn't to suppress expression, but simply to discourage the kind of expression that could paint the site, or the site's community, in an excessively negative light. And enforcement of such a policy could be the work of those running the jam collaborating with those participating in the jam. A bit more of a general consensus solution, as opposed to managerial enforcement.