Who wants to help poor old svero? He desperately needs his action fix. I have a solution for the last few days of the holiday season!

The 24hr* coding thrash!

Here's the rules (which may look, er, familiar):

1. Programmer art only! We shall enforce this by arbitrarily limiting you to 16 colours, including black.
2. You may have up to 8 moving objects on the screen at once and no more. You may have a background but no scrolling is allowed.
3. There must be at least one sound effect in the game which isn't a windows beep.
4. The game download must be under a meg, excluding runtimes and drivers. Java, Flash, Shockwave etc. are all permitted providing the download is under a meg. Which lets me enter :P
5. The game must run at a minimum 50fps on a TNT class 8MB video card and 300MHz processor.
6. No network connection allowed.
7. Competition closes on Sunday 7th September or thereabouts.

Cas :)

*spend as long as you like on it but remember it's a complete waste of time and can't be bigger than a meg so if you spend any more time on it than an evening you're already on a losing streak :D

... for those of us who do our own pixelart ANYWAY, is that 16 colors for the entire game palette or 16 colors for each individual sprite/tile? A specific 16 colors (ancient windows palette) or any 16 colors?

Do we get a free copy of Alien Flux if we 'win'? :)

Ooh I nearly forgot:

8. source code & art resources must be available.

That's 16 colours in the entire source artwork. If any other colours appear as a result of alpha blending or additive drawing it doesn't matter.

and

9. Steve Verrault is the final arbiter of all the entries that I don't disqualify for cheating :D Hehe. And the lucky winner gets a copy of AF off of me. I suppose really this means I can't enter after all.

Cas :)

Maybe it´s a good thing if you can´t enter, because I remember reading a while ago that you was short on time, but my memory may be corrupt. ;)

I think you should change rule 1 and 2: Steve is a hardcore gamer, he wants 800 objects on screen with 16 MILLION colors you know... :cool:

we managed to make hardcore intense stuff with 8 sprites on the C64 so I reckon we can manage it again with some really proper imagination.

Cas :)

Any takers then?

Cas :)

"...holiday season"? what's that? ;)

would a java applet be allowed? probably not if look at rule #5 :eek:

but i'm afraid don't have the time anyway :)

I will now horrify and astound you with my ability to write bad games on short notice. :)

www.hanakogames.com/bird.zip

It may not follow all the rules precisely (I never DID color within the lines well) but hey - it was quick! :)

oh my god... I just scored 396 points. Somebody shoot me!

Cas :)

324 points. So close yet so far. Nice game.

I'll take a shot at writing something if I find a slow moment (unlikely).

First try - 552 (incuding figuring out how to play)
Second try - 766 (including accidentally clicking on another window)

Show I be proud, or go cower in shame?

I'll give that a wack in the next day or two, I start holidays soon so it'll give me something to do :-P

My top score is 800 something. :)

Ive been unable to download anything. They cut off my phone due to non-payment. Of course I just moved into a new place a week ago. So the problem is the landlord didnt clear the phone bills before I moved in. Anyway... hopefully it will be straightended out by tomorrow. In the meantime without all this email and message boards and surfing websites I'm sure getting a lot of work done....

Well the phone is back so I just played the bird game. Great! Awesome. I've seen top 10 games on realarcade that are far less entertaining. When will the full commercial version be available for play?

I guess I'm like the unofficial PR guy for Hamumu or something but playing the bird game reminded me of one of my favorite short-made little games recently. It's called Scarecrow - heart of straw. You can get it here..

http://www.hamumu.com/gamelets.php

The other gamelets are cool too but that one's the best IMHO - slick production and pretty original and fun to play.

Thank you! And now for the informative portion of this post: that game was created (well, actually for a 48 hour contest, as usual, but also: ) with the intent of seeing how OpenGL did among my very casual user audience. It bombed. Hard. Not that they didn't like the game, but the feedback I got was about 50% successful, the rest ranging from 0.5fps (obviously being done in software) to absolute non-function. Just a note for non-hardcore indies... openGL seems to be a no-go. Some of these people had older machines, but a large number of them had recent gear, they just didn't have good (or working, or any) openGL drivers. And you don't get the non-hardcore to download new openGL drivers. DirectX, sometimes.

It was really disappointing, because I loved developing in openGL, it was so easy!

Also the Spaceboy demo there is quite fun. Shame it won't be finished. It looks like it would have been a really cool game.

>And you don't get the non-hardcore to download new openGL
>drivers. DirectX, sometimes.

Only the MS default **** drivers doesnt support openGL (and we know their reasons). All other drivers usually does (detornator, catalyst etc).

If someone doesnt install a driver (the MS thingie doesnt count) for his/her graphics card, then they shouldn't be surprised [because it's usually the first thingy after raid controllers]. Seriously, Windows has never worked correctly out of the box and I'm quite sure that will change never.

Oh and btw DirectX is bigger than a driver (despite the fact that detos tend to be really huge [for a driver]).

None of that matters... people don't want to install drivers to play your game, simple as that. How much effort can you expect the average person to go through to try out your game? Approximately none! Simply put, most people won't download anything beyond the original product (technically, MOST people won't download that either, but of the ones that do, few will go any further). People think computers just work. And people SHOULD be right about that. It's a shame this cult of complexity has continued around what could easily be a highly tweakable but simple if untweaked consumer product (see playstation for comparison).

As for working out of the box, the PCs I buy from Gateway most definitely do. And that's how non-techie people live. Pop the box, plug it in, enjoy. You shouldn't expect a person to be a mechanic to drive a car.

PS - my experiment was very informal, and only had maybe 30-40 respondents, so definitely don't take it as gospel! It certainly made my decision for me though.

How come I still have to explain to my wife that the car needs both oil and petrol to function then???

The solution is staring us in the face: get your software to take care of installing the right shit to make it work. I'm looking into auto-installing GL drivers right now. Most commercial games already do this; there's no reason why we can't have a downloadable game that does it for you too. The key issue is probably not one of waiting; it's just reliability and convenience.


Cas :)

Too bad that http://www.glsetup.com/ is somewhat dead (since win2k iirc). It was kinda neat... you had a little programm wich checked what's installed and if something was missing it was able to download and install it.

Well, I'm going to attempt to write a teeny tiny DLL that'll sort all this stuff out. I'll be making it freely available to everyone as usual.

Cas :)

Originally posted by princec
Well, I'm going to attempt to write a teeny tiny DLL that'll sort all this stuff out. I'll be making it freely available to everyone as usual.


That sounds very interesting (since the game I'm working on is OpenGL too... and I really don't feel like rewriting it for D3D).

patrox's PTK (http://ptk.phelios.com) is very nice. If you are thinking of doing a 2D game that you may want to run on PC or MAC using GL, DDraw, D3D, or GDI.

Well heres my entry for all of you that have python and pygame installed. Hopefully I can get a nice compiled version up tomorrow. Anyways this was my first time using python and the whole project took about 4-5 hours. I had fun making it and hopefully someone will enjoy it even though the whole thing is pretty bad.

http://plaza.ufl.edu/yq713/rocks.zip (http://plaza.ufl.edu/yq713/rocks.zip)

Here's the exe. It's slightly over a meg because of python overhead. Hope everyone enjoys it.
http://plaza.ufl.edu/yq713/rock.zip

not bad going!
It's up to svero to judge between 'em now :P

Cas :)

I'll wait for more entries.. I feel deep down that there's at least one more game out there...

>I feel deep down that there's at least one more game out there

How did you know? :>

http://people.freenet.de/ki_onyx/TinyRivers_s.jar (~47kb!)
(needs the java runtime enviroment)

Basically it's Four Rivers... just faster (Rivers is usually played with 21 tiles... and this one has only 10).

Didn't found the time to include a proper instructions screen (and the credits screen is also less than basic). And the highscore table isn't shown ingame... but that will change with the official version. [It's intended to be a free game, wich should attract some visitors].

To remove the tiles you have to match em up by pairs. There is only one rule: the space between em has to be free and you can do a maximum of two 90° turns on your way (L-shape=90 / U-shape=2*90). Of course, if two tiles are side to side, you can remove them too.

Btw my personal best time is 40480msec. Try to beat that :D

edit:

Duh... forgot the keys :>

F1-F4=zoom factor (F3 is somewhat optimal imo)
f=show framerate
t=toggle fps throttle
r=restart
1-3=sample test

.jar? python? Jeez.. what's up with you people. Doesn't anyone write programs anymore?

I have NO IDEA how to run a .jar file. Help!

>I have NO IDEA how to run a .jar file. Help!

:o

-download the JRE (java runtime enviroment):
http://www.java.com/en/download/manual.jsp

-install it (no reboot needed)

-double click the jar :)

You've really got to get the hang of Webstart, Jos...

Cas :)

Yea yea :o

Everyone is slapping me for not using webstart ._.

But I would need .htaccess right? So I can't do that right now...

nah, you can just get the user to download the jnlp file and double click on that instead for now.

Cas :)

http://people.freenet.de/ki_onyx/TinyRivers.jnlp

Works with a left click... wow :)

Had to disable saving for now... not such a big problem since the highscores arent shown ingame (yet).

167371 ms

- Steve

>167371 ms

So... you haven't figured out the rules yet (or lets say got used to it).

Maybe the alternative explaination helps...

It's a grid. To match the tiles up you have to be able to move the tile till it reaches the other one by moving horizontally or vertically and you can change the direction only up to 3 times (up to two 90° turns). The way has to be free... that's it. I know that it sounds odd... but you will understand it better by just playing it a couple of times :)

[The instructions screen will become kinda helpfull in the future]

Originally posted by oNyx
>167371 ms

So... you haven't figured out the rules yet (or lets say got used to it).

Maybe the alternative explaination helps...

It's a grid. To match the tiles up you have to be able to move the tile till it reaches the other one by moving horizontally or vertically and you can change the direction only up to 3 times (up to two 90° turns). The way has to be free... that's it. I know that it sounds odd... but you will understand it better by just playing it a couple of times :)

[The instructions screen will become kinda helpfull in the future]

I know the rules. I HAVE after all made 2 mahjongg games. Although I admit neither has this particular rule variation. Anyway... I think I may have typed that number in wrong.... I think there's an extra digit... I'll play again....

83811ms. Getting quicker....

Cas :)

108436ms... So I'm just bad at it :-) I was trying to go pretty quick that time too!

- S

Originally posted by svero
I know the rules. I HAVE after all made 2 mahjongg games. Although I admit neither has this particular rule variation.[...]

That rule variation is called "Shisen" or "Four Rivers" it's my favorite gametype. I suggest to include it in your next mahjongg game (or update), because it won't be that much work (I did this little game in 4 evenings) and it can increase your sells a bit :)

There are two default layouts... the small one is 7*12 with one layer (like mine) and the big one is 6*12 with two layers (wich has to be cleared seperatly).

In the small layout you play with numbers (MANZU) 1-9, rounds (PINZU) 1-3 and bamboos (SOUZU) 1-9.

And in the big layout you play with almost all tiles... one half is for the upper layer and the other for the lower layer - this way you just have to clear 'em seperatly (but I don't exactly know wich tiles are used for the layers... I usually play the small layout).

I like this rule variation too but never included it because I wasn't sure if it was something proprietary that someone invented recently or whether it was an old classic public domain game. I was first introduced to it in the excellent mahjongg game (Pharoah's Curse?) -- I forget the title... same as the Dex game? Donno.. anyway it had an egyptian theme and a number of good ideas like magnets and tools to break blocks and so on.

Hmm... I just tried to find some usefull information with google... but I hadn't much luck.

Well there are alot of other mahjongg games, wich offer that gametype.

I think these rules are public domain.

All rules are public domain; you can't copyright or patent game designs. Yet.

Cas :)

Originally posted by princec
All rules are public domain; you can't copyright or patent game designs. Yet.

Right :)

But can you call it "Four Rivers" or "Shisen"? (If you make a Tetris clone the name shouldn't sound like that... everything with a "tris" at the end might get you in trouble)

s'right, you've got to be very careful with trademarks though.

Cas :)

Haha! New Highscore :D

40040 msec (440msec faster)

Demon! Best I got was 61749ms.

Cas :)

Originally posted by princec
Demon! Best I got was 61749ms.

Cas :)

The trick is to look for doubles and click them out of the middle making holes in the thing. I say that with the worse score but that's not important.. trust me! THATS the trick

and the winner is?

although it doesn't quite follow the 'rules' for this compo, we did do a 24hour game about a year back called When Clones Attack. We did cheat and reuse two of the graphics though (the background and asteroids from Intensity XS).

The Pigeon Grab game was really neat, btw.

Winner eh? Well... any more games coming? Last chance!

AWESOME :D

0:39'490!

I'd never thought that it could be such a great feeling to beat my own game. Haha. It's so sweet :)

It's about 6kb smaller now (~40kb). Graphics look as before... there are even some new graphics (a char set[no tiles]), some funky flashing lines (if you connect two tiles) and the text at the end is nicely formatted (with that new char set).

I'll upload it once it's finished (have to throw BufferStrategy out - since I'm (ab)using it in a quite strange way [linux/mac doesnt like that]).

Originally posted by svero
The trick is to look for doubles and click them out of the middle making holes in the thing. I say that with the worse score but that's not important.. trust me! THATS the trick

I had used that tactic at the begining, too. But it's more efficient to clear the board from one side (you can't do that in 21 tiles rivers), because travel distances are shorter and you stay more focused - also it takes longer to see if you can match some specific tiles up, if the board is perforated a lot.

If you get stuck, just click on any tile wich will be accessable from the side you are travilling to (eg one at the corners) and if you find that tile on your way, you have found your new entry point; otherwise you can simply fallback to the next available pair :)

[Yes... I know how odd that sounds]

edit:

0:36'140 screenshot (http://people.freenet.de/ki_onyx/tr_record.gif) (looks much nicer now... the textstring on top is just for checking ;))

Originally posted by yq713
and the winner is?

The current winner is the bird game. They're all pretty good quick games but the bird one is nifty and original.

... I never did get a Fluffy Prize... :) (been too busy to NOTICE, really, what with cramming to get my little adventure ready for the IF Comp.)