itch.io

If you email nokiajamofficial@gmail.com or message me on Discord I can help you out!
https://discord.gg/GWBpgempN

You can do exactly 84x48 pixels but it is very difficult to play on modern screens so upscaling is recommended

Optional Theme:

Luck's got nothin' to do with it.

How could your game make players play the odds to make them feel like its all skill? A puzzle game that takes sheer brainpower to win. Can you make a fun game with no luck or randomness?  A game with an inevitable outcome that will take all a player's willpower to achieve. Is a cowboy saying it? Make a game set in the wild west or around a poker table. How could your game capture the phrase "practice makes perfect?". How could this phrase inform a character in a visual novel?

These are just a few of the ideas that I came up with off the top of my head. I am excited to see & hear your own interpretation of the theme!

as long as the pixels in the bottom example are aligned to the grid it would not be disqualified

Are animations with interpolation allowed if the final result is still aligned to the pixel grid?
     Nearest neighbor interpolation has generally been accepted as long as it aligns to the pixel grid. Bi-linear interpolation starts to play with opacity of the colors, so unless you are trying to mimic the screens ghosting, I would generally avoid. Games have to have pretty egregious sub-pixel movement or be blatantly ignoring the resolution rules to get disqualified. If you upload an example of what you are talking about I could give you a more definite answer.

Is it allowed to generate graphics procedurally during or before the game runs / prerendered graphics? 
     Since we are not trying to get the game to run on the actual 3310 whatever modern features hardware/engines have you can use. Unless you are trying to be as accurate as possible we are simply trying to make a game in the spirit of the original phone.

I hope that answers your questions and feel free to ask more or for more clarification on any of this. I am happy to help!

This is some really great information! I appreciate you sharing your findings with everyone!

That is totally fine

the resource page has been updated with a link to your repo. Thanks for sharing!

Sweet! Let me know if you'd be open to me to linking to it from the resource page. 

Looks good! If you want to share the framework files I can upload it / link to it from our resource page and give you credit for the work. Let me know if that is something you're interested in! Always looking to expand the platforms we are available to!

Yep!

Yes that will be fine. It is recommended to scale the final resolution so it is playable on modern screens as long as the base resolution is 84x48.

From the rules on the jam page: 

"Any game engine is allowed as long as you can set your game's resolution to 84 x 48 or limit the number of pixels the player sees to 84 x 48. It must also be able to use the provided palette. Pico-8 devs click here to see how you can participate!"

I am glad to hear you are excited about it! I honestly can't remember where the 15FPS spec came from, there's been quite a bit of community discussion over these past 8 years so its hard to track down where it originated from. Its not a hard requirement, it was put in place for those who wanted to try and be "as accurate as possible". However, based on your info and seeing the datasheet of the PCD8544 I am going to update that section of the FAQ with the info you've provided!

As a general rule, if a participant believes they have a way to make their game MORE accurate in a way that is not stated in the rules it would be allowed and encouraged.

I appreciate your insight and I am excited to play your game!

If you have any questions about the rules of the jam that are not answered below feel free to ask them in this thread and I will get back to you as soon as I can!

When can I start working on my game?

Your game, including all assets outside of the resource page, should be made within the jam’s duration.

Does my game have to run on a real Nokia 3310?

Nope! We're just using the restrictions as a design space.

Can I make my own engine?

Yes! Many participants have done this. Feel free to make the framework before the jam begins. Just make sure it doesn’t put you ahead of other people using pre-made engines.

How do I make my game as accurate as possible to the Nokia 3310?

None of the following is necessary to submit a game and it won’t improve your score. This is for those who want to go the extra mile. Game fps should be 15. As pointed out by hoaniware in the comments below, the screen the Nokia 3310 used (PCD8544) was capable of up to 67hz so you can set your FPS to anything 67fps and below, whatever you feel emulates the 3310's screen responsiveness best. Ensure you are not using more "modern technology" like physics engines, 3d graphics, etc. The simpler the better. You could simulate the LCD's ghosting. The Nokia 3310’s screen also did not use perfectly square pixels. Each pixel was likely a 3:4 / 7:9 ratio.

  The Nokia 3310 was incapable of sub-pixel movement and sub-pixel scrolling so it is NOT allowed. This means all pixels must be perfectly aligned with the pixel grid. There should be no half-pixels even while moving. The ultimate challenge would be to get your game running on a real Nokia 3310!

Only 12 controls are allowed but the Nokia 3310 has 16 buttons.

The jam excludes the 4 menu buttons as they were usually used to navigate menu's and not play the actual game.

Can I mix and match the three color palettes? 

No. You should be selecting one option and making your whole game with your selection. Palette swapping is allowed if it is an option/setting and not part of gameplay.

Congrats! I was following other interests for awhile and didn't have much motivation, did some adjacent stuff like web development. Hopefully will do more soon!

There are no available ratings for disqualified games but you always have a chance to be a game dev! just keep on practicing and making games!

Your game itself is the correct resolution but your UI elements are not aligning to the pixel grid. Your ui and your game need to be adhering to the same resolution and be in line with the pixel grid.

Okay I see, that's my bad. I tested on 1080p screen and 2k screen like you mentioned but I was seeing the same issue. Other Godot projects I played didn't have this issue so I assumed it was dev mistake. Downloading the game resolved the scaling issue. Ill make sure to go through games earlier in the voting period and check different builds so potential issues like this can be sorted out before the end of the jam. I sincerely apologize for my mistake.

This is probably one of, if not my personal favorite submission from this year. While I can understand some of the criticisms I think it excels at delivering an intense drifting experience, especially given the restrictions. 
Is the window to get the shifts right pretty tight and unforgiving? Yes. But so is drifting a car. Getting it right is extremely satisfying and once you realize you can change gears faster by cutting it short it almost emulates discovering advanced manual driving techniques (multiple gear shifts, double clutching, etc). It also gives a sense of mastery and advancement. It feels a bit crazy that I feel this way about a game that at its core is a number memorization game but the stick and the visuals surrounding it complete the experience.

I will say the first race does take a bit too long imo or the first race should be super easy to have a better learning curve. Numbers on the screen would also be nice as I am not a manual driver. I wrote the numbers on sticky notes and put it on my screen lol. I did get a bug multiple times where I would get the "good" sound and then get the "bad" engine animation which would ultimately cut my runs short as I think the "bad" engine animation somehow wrote over my correct shifting. On thing I saw you said you might do that I would advocate against is returning the stick to the middle every time, I am assuming you were going for seamless "drift switches"(idk how to explain it") But I liked that part of the challenge was remembering where I left off. For me personally it left just enough difficulty where I wanted to keep trying to get better.

Despite those critiques, this one definitely left an an awesome impression on me. Great work!

Great job submitting a game! Unfortunately it breaks the resolution rules so I have to disqualify it. There may be some unity devs in our discord that would be able to help you fix those issues for next time! 

Good job submitting a game! Unfortunately it is breaking resolution rules so I have to disqualify it from being rated. Would love to see you submit next year with those issues fixed!

Really cool little idea you have here! There appears to be sub-pixel movement, the character doesn't align to the pixel grid, which is an indicator that your game is not being scaled properly. This goes against the resolution rules so unfortunately I have to disqualify it from being rated. It would be awesome to see continued development of this idea!

Cool challenge to bring some "upgrade" elements into snake. It looks like your ui and game have conflicting resolutions which unfortunately disqualifies your entry from being rated. Looking forward to your updates to the game!

These are some fun arcade inspired mini games! It looks like your opening menu's are breaking resolution rules so unfortunately I am going to have to disqualify the game. You can hop in our discord and see if any godot devs know how to fix the issue for next time!

Thanks for submitting a game! Unfortunately there seems to be a third gray color present in the game which is not allowed according to our rules so this game has been disqualified.

Cool take on Space Impact! Unfortunately there are discrepancies in your resolution. The enemies are moving in sub pixels and the hp indicators are a completely different resolution that would not be able to work on the Nokia screen. This means your entry has been disqualified. I encourage you to figure out how to resolve these issues and participate next year! Thanks for making a game for the jam!

Fun platformer! Unfortunately the text above the character as well as the character movement is not sticking to the resolution rules or aligning with the pixel grid which disqualifies the game. There may be some Godot devs in our discord who could help you with the restrictions if you would like!

Really love the vibe and idea of the game! It looks like the camera outputs too high of resolution so unfortunately it is disqualified from ranking. If you have questions on how to prevent this in the future we have some other Godot devs in our Discord that may be able to help!

Cool little game with a simple objective! Great job. Unfortunately it looks like you are breaking the resolution rules with player and character movement as they are not aligning to the pixel grid. This disqualifies your entry. There may be some devs in our discord that are familiar with Godot and how to fix this issue if you are interested.

Great job making a game! This is a fun idea. Unfortunately you are breaking resolution rules with certain aspects like the sheep movement and the grain "line" so your game has been disqualified. This looks to be a case of not scaling the game properly and I am unsure of how to do it correctly in unity but we have some people in our Discord server that may be able to give you some advice if you're interested!

Really cool way to tell a narrative story! For your first jam this is really awesome. Unfortunately you are heavily breaking the sound limitations of the phone/rules of the jam so your entry has been disqualified. Keep up the dev work and would love to see you back next year! I've linked a youtube video that demonstrates the capabilities of the phone more clearly.

Thanks for submitting a game, cool take on a rhythm game for this resolution! Unfortunately it heavily breaks the audio limitations in the rules and has been disqualified. Please see below for the sound rules:

"To most accurately represent the sound the Nokia 3310 was capable of, please use the sound resources available for download on the official itch.io resource page. There should only be one audio channel and one sound played at a time. So if you have music playing and a sound effect is played it should interrupt the music, not play over the top of the music."

Thanks relei! So happy you were able to play all the games!

Hey Relei, I answered in the Discord as well but I will leave this here too. I don't know why submissions weren't locked, I guess I forgot to tick the box but they are supposed to be locked for the duration of the judging period. It would be best if you deactivated the new version. Thanks for your transparency!

Thank you for playing and for the kind comment!

Use the report feature on itch.io and we will take a look

That's so awesome that you finished your first game! And I am glad you enjoyed the restrictions. Can't wait to play! 

There are a some unity devs in our discord that you could ask for help if you need it! https://discord.gg/A6nxGXydZB

Hey Bady, sorry to get to this late but I see you've joined the Discord. Yes totally fine!