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[Zhooibaal]

Let me add to that that there aren't any Intel graphics chips that are even designed to run games.

True, but it is also one of the most common chipsets in notebooks (ok laptops whatever) on the market today.  If your going to design for high end hardware then you should test up front during the load for that hardware and warn the user if they don't meet your expectations, or scale down the effects (as many production games do) so the user can at least see that you have something beautiful instead of wonder what died.

It's only fair to keep in mind that the laptops (or notebooks xD) that are equipped with such graphics chips aren't catagorised as gaming systems. The "gaming laptops" out there are all equipped with somewhat high-end graphics chips like the GeForce Go 7400 mentioned by Wizard. The Intel chipsets have no support for hardware shaders whatsoever. My laptop doesn't even display anything other than the hud when I try to run FUR on it. Later chips (yours probably) attempt to emulate the shader support, but that's the bottleneck right there. The emulation is way to slow to pull off a decent framerate on such a graphics chip. Even my old Athlon 64 3200+ (a single core that is) with 1GB RAM and a GeForce 7600GS runs the game fine even with the motion blur enabled but on a relatively low resolution. But it manages to keep above 30 fps all of the time with those settings.

As long as no shader technology (or only very old shader technology) is used it'll all be fine on graphics chips like yours. But current gen technology or even last gen won't work very good. And last gen is DirectX 9 or even DirectX 10 as DirectX11 is the current version and therefore that is the current gen. I can imagine that DirectX8 will work fine on your graphics chip. Just try a game like Battlefield 1942.

[chronozphere]

I'm anxiously waiting for the final outcome of this competition. 

Is judging still progressing?

[Traveler]

I believe it is.

I have my results nearly ready and I'm currently in the process of writing a review for each game.

[paul_nicholls]

I believe it is.

I have my results nearly ready and I'm currently in the process of writing a review for each game.

Nice

cheers,
Paul

[WILL]

Is judging still progressing?

Yup, got my scores in already. Working on the magazine.

(I could use some photos from the 2 remaining teams which haven't sent me theirs yet.)

[NecroDOME]

Just wondering are the results in yet?

@WILL, sorry, we forgot to take a picture I hope I don't forget to make one this evening or else I need to take an old one...

[AthenaOfDelphi]

Here's a quick competition update...

One of our guest judges (Vicki from Cengage) has had to pull out due to work commitments, so we have four judges.  WILL and Traveler, Yuriy (aka Lifepower) from Ixchel Studios and Teri-ann (aka Spirit) from Outer Reaches Studios.

All the scores are in, I'm just trying to finish off the competition site so we can get it all sorted properly, plus as WILL has mentioned, he's writing an article for Pascal Gamer which I have to provide some content for.  I'm still working on that.

Also, as many of you will already know DeleD is going open source, so after talking things over with Jeroen, it's been decided that they will withdraw the prizes they were providing as everyone will be able to download a full copy of their product in January.

From my perspective, this years competition has been a little disappointing in terms of the number of final entries... we had 15 teams I think it was that signed up and provided a design document, but then, even with an extension of 2 months, only 4 teams submitted a final entry.  So, this is a request to everyone... what can we do differently next time to improve things.  Please email me directly on athena at outer hyphen reaches dot com with your comments and suggestions.  The flipside to a lack of final entries is that we could find it more difficult to secure sponsorship if potential sponsors don't think they're going to get value for money.  So, improving the turnout is important.

And on that note, I shall get back to working on the competition site, ready to get the results released, so stay tuned

[chronozphere]

Great.. I cant wait for the outcome of the compo. 

I agree. There were just too few competitors who delivered a final game. I even tried to motivate people (by sending some PM's), allthough I must admit that I had some motivation problems myself in the end. I'm glad I made it though.

I'm hoping that there will be more people competing in 2010. 

[paul_nicholls]

Great news about the results almost being here!

It's a great pity that only us 4 entrants finished the race, so to speak...

It is also a real shame that all the others didn't finish and most didn't even do progress reports either to help motivate others

I hope this doesn't ruin the competition (or even stop it) next year.

Thanks for all the great work so far Christina

I am waiting with baited breath!  
cheers,
Paul

[wagenheimer]

Unfortunately I did not participated the competition this year, by the total lack of time and especially for having lost the opportunity to participate from the start!

But I hope that next year it returns, and I wish to participate, or better, I will parcitipate, I will not miss the opportunity to participate it by anything in this world!

[paul_nicholls]

Hi all,
    I know it is christmas/new year break and all still, but I am wondering how the judging is progressing?

In the meanwhile, every have a nice day

cheers,
Paul

[AthenaOfDelphi]

I'm in the process of preparing a results posting, for release (hopefully) later today.  This won't be done on the competition site because quite simply I don't have time to finish it off at the moment (work has taken over my life unfortunately).

So, given I know what it's like to be waiting for the results, I'm going to publish them here as soon as I've finished the article and had one or two questions answered by the judges.

The wait is nearly over :-)

[AthenaOfDelphi]

Hi all... the moment you've been waiting for... the results have been announced here.

Prize List

First place gets:- Genetica Studio Edition, FL Studio - Producer Edition, EZGenerator, Wicked Defence 2, Aztlan Dreams, Userbase, Bouldermouse, Tomb Climber, Codesite, a custom mug and their choice of 3 books from the list below.

Second place gets:- Genetica Professional Edition, FL Studio - Fruity Loops Edition, Wicked Defence 2, Aztlan Dreams, Bouldermouse, Tomb Climber, Codesite, a custom mug and their choice of 2 books from the list below.

Third place gets:- Genetica Lite Edition, Deckadance - House Edition, Wicked Defence 2, Aztlan Dreams, Bouldermouse, Tomb Climber, a custom mug and the remaining book from the list below after 1st and 2nd place have made their choices.

Best Newcomer gets:- A custom mug.

All software is supplied as a single licence (with the exception of Bouldermouse and Tomb Climber - one copy of each per team member is being provided by MagicStorm and the mugs, where one will be provided for each team member), which will be sent to you directly by the sponsors.  In the case of teams, please let me know which team member should receive each item.

Book list:-
AI Game Engine Programming (ISBN: 9781584505723), Awesome Game Creation (ISBN: 9781584505341), Beyond Game Design (ISBN: 9781584506713), Business and Production (ISBN: 9781598638097), Design and Content Creation (ISBN: 9781598638080), Video Game Design Revealed (ISBN: 9781584505624)

[chronozphere]

Wow... 






Yaaaay I won!! 

I can't tell you guys how happy I am. Actually I didn't expected this.
I also wish to congratulate all other competitors on succesfully finishing their entries. Finally I would like to thank the judges for their efforts.

I'm allready looking forward to a competition in 2010. I hope there will be more finishing teams because the ammount of final entrants was a bit dissappointing this year.

Anyway... I'm going to take an aspirine and calm down (headaches and winning the compo don't mix very well lol )

[de_jean_7777]

Still, it was a pretty close call between chronozphere and Paul, and somewhat unexpected.