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View Full Version : 2007 PGD Annual: Pre-Event Hype



WILL
30-09-2006, 07:06 PM
Well it's only fair to kick this off at some point. Even if it may be a bit early... but who is anxious for this upcomming competition? no, nothing announced just yet, just ideas being tossed around. But taking from the last 2 years successes, who is looking forward to this one.

Now do realize that even though there where some mistakes made here and there, we are looking to improve and account for those this year. I will not be organizing this year, as it is well Dom's turn. ;)

All humour aside though, it's not official, but I believe that Dom will be in charge of this one, we are just all awaiting his 'official' announcement. I'm sure in a few days time once he and I have gathered some of our general direction for 2007, he'll make known his intentions.


In the meantime though, let the anticipation, hype and gossip start. :)


Who is looking at entering this next one? Any things that you would be looking for if you did want to compete in 2007?

jdarling
01-10-2006, 02:14 AM
I'm on pins and needles to be honest. I can't wait, I just hope that its something that I can get involved in.

On another subject, since it has been brought up before, how about some side compos. I thought of a few: Casual Gamming (brought up in my previous posts), Childrens Games (these are of special note for me, and I know a few others on the board), 72 hour game off, and a few others. Just something to keep our appitite through the year :)

K4Z
01-10-2006, 04:39 AM
I've gotten all exited and fired up about the last 2 anual compos, the first week in, everything goes well, but then stuff always happens or the work load is too much to juggle between other stuff, and then I bum out... :P

On and off throughout this year I've been experimenting with 3D programming and OpenGL, and working on getting some solid base code finished to start a project.

I've got a good feeling about this next comp :wink: :wink:

Huehnerschaender
01-10-2006, 09:50 AM
If my time allows it, I am in again of course...

Greetings,
Dirk

Legolas
01-10-2006, 01:05 PM
Will the competition be open for ALL platforms? :whistle: :mrgreen:

NecroDOME
01-10-2006, 01:18 PM
Count me in! I can't wait till it starts.

WILL
01-10-2006, 01:34 PM
Well as always, the platform restrictions would be to whatever the judges have. So if they all had, say GameBoyAdvance machines, then we could accept games off that platform. Last year we could only allow Windows(32-bit) and Linux.

Funy thing is that we only got Win32 games so... Who knows maybe this year we can accept win64 on top of that list. And with luck maybe Mac aswell.

Though has anyone here even made a game on the Mac before?


Returning champions are more than welcome to run again. ;) In fact I think it'll be great to see what you guys will come up with next. Builds up a fan-base for you guys AND draws in more attention to the competitions as you have returning familiar faces along with new 'potentials'.

WILL
12-12-2006, 03:14 PM
Who would consider creating a GBA game for the PGD Annual next year?

If the idea where to become real (by enough interest was shown!) There would be a specific prize for the best GBA game and the games would still be included in the main competition event.

Both Judges & Competitors would of course have the exact same emulator and version number. (in fact the same copy made available for the run of the competition) so that we could claim consistency with the platform that we are catering to.

Free Pascal's recent advances for support of the platform has sort of sparked this idea and though it's not official (Dom is 'da man' this year and he still says what goes and doesn't) it certainly has great potential in many aspects.


So just throwing that out there, who would be interested to participate in the PGD Annual Competition that way, or even go as far as to commit to making a GBA game.

Note that this idea does NOT entail restricting the platform to the GBA, but instead including it among the PC OSes offered. (Windows / Linux)

Legolas
12-12-2006, 03:44 PM
Yay! I could try to make something, if this idea become real (if I'll find some spare time :cry:). Of course, waiting for a NDS competition in the next year :mrgreen:

WILL
12-12-2006, 04:12 PM
Well if you can see that everything works for it in time for the following PGD Annual I can see that it happens. :)

Only question I have right now is can we get GBA's sound working under FPC right now? If you can get that working and it's manageable then I'll definitely push for this idea for this upcoming competition.


Dom seemed keenly interested in the idea when I brought up the idea in a quick little chat we had recently, so I'd say it's a definite maybe. :thumbup:

Legolas
12-12-2006, 04:31 PM
Hardware registers for sound are implemented. I have tried to embed an external library, but doesn't work fine (it stops playing after a second).
Now I have made some changes to the compiler (I should merge them to svn), but I haven't tried anymore, because fpc4nds :)

However, you can do sound with fpc4gba, though without an external lib it is a bit hard.

WILL
12-12-2006, 05:04 PM
Ah... well if GBA is to be a part of the competition, I think anyone wanting to make a game would want sound to their game.

How else will they be able to compete for 'Best Sound' in their game? ;)


How long do you think would it take to get the external library working? I'm sure that FPC4NDS could wait for GBA's sound. It would be of benefit to NDS development later on as well, no?

czar
12-12-2006, 06:31 PM
Games for children sounds good. It is a special niche that no one else tends to do yet there seems to be lots of call for games and activities for children aged 2-8. Would give PGD a probably big marketing boost. ;)

dmantione
12-12-2006, 07:05 PM
I searched some information on GBA sound chips on internet... It is a combination of a stereo PCM voice with 4 synthesized voices. Synthesize voice 1,2 are square waves with variable pulse width, voice 3 is a very primitive wavetable voice, voice 4 is a noise generator. That sound pretty reasonable but wait, there is NO ENVELOPE GENERATOR. (It is a shame that the Commodore 64 is still state of the art technology regarding sound synthesis.)

IMO the synthesizer is simple enough to be driven directly by the programmers. Any programmer can put a sound frequency in a register and start the note. Just document the registers and make them available in a unit.

Due to the lack of volume envelopes the musical abilities of the synthesizer are limited, so the stereo PCM sound voice looks much more promising. However, writing a module player for the GBA at this time looks too optimistic.

I think it is the most realistic to expect games to use the synthesizer for music and the PCM for sound effects.

WILL
12-12-2006, 07:49 PM
Well hopefully my OpenMOD library will be capable of such a task eventually, but I have no time for it just yet. Once I do complete it however, the programmer will be able to render the audio to whatever device or API they so choose hopefully in near any format the require.

Might I suggest though that someone give that GBA sound library a try before mid-Jan next year? :) Would make all the difference I should think.

I say before mid-Jan as we wouldn't want a team competing for the PGD Annual having to start sound from scratch. :? Unless they were to focus only on audio. But that wouldn't make for an exciting game, would it? :P


Anyhow, the time for the competition is closing in and I believe that the theme is fixed now. We just have to wait for Dom's announcement in January. I personally can't wait. :D

cairnswm
13-12-2006, 05:12 AM
I'm sure I'll be entering :)

I've really enjoyed the last two themes as they have been open and designed to allow people a lot of creativity. I hope we can keep this up :)

IlovePascal
13-12-2006, 09:26 PM
Well, I'll definitely try to get in if I hav time, in order to improve my skills! lol
I would particularly appreciate Childrens games because that doesnt have to involve all the 3D OpenGL stuff that Ive been having trouble with! :lol:

WILL
13-12-2006, 09:41 PM
The PGD Annual wouldn't be the same if you weren't in it William. ;)

Now I really can't give too much away until it starts, but from what my talks with Dom where like, this year it'll be focusing on innovation more so than the last 2 years.

I honestly don't know, but I believe that he wants to keep the deadlines in, but it might be scaled down a bit. He hasn't even told me about that yet so we'll have to see.

It'll be fun as always, I'm sure of it. :thumbup:


As for advertising, stepping back from running things this year really gives me the chance to focus on it. I want to get the word out more and put up visuals everywhere. Even before the event kicks off. The PGD Annual has done great with little or next to no pre-start ads anywhere. This year I'm going to change that as see how we fare...

NecroDOME
29-12-2006, 11:10 PM
Any news on the compo yet?? getting a bit exciting :)

WILL
30-12-2006, 04:18 AM
Well I'm not too sure how accurate I'm being here... but I was talking to Dom some time ago and we seemed to agree that it would probably be best to push back the start date of the competition until Feburary.

This is a good thing in some ways as it would allow for more prep and finalized planning time. Plus there is more time to take on sponsors outside of the busy holiday season where they'd be otherwise distracted with seasonal stuff.

Other than that not much (to my knowlage as I'm not running this years) is going on until Dom gets back from his well deserved vacation in January.

michalis
30-12-2006, 04:36 AM
Aw man, I'm still finishing my "The Castle" 0.7.0. But for sure I'll try to enter the compo (at least to submit again the only Linux entry :). Can't wait !

WILL
30-12-2006, 05:34 AM
Well I'd personally like to see more Linux (or *nix portable) entries. I don't wish for any less win32 entries as I'd like to try them all like I did last years. (All those that completed competition entries did very well I honestly believe. I'm proud of them all!)

GBA might be on the table... unsure though... as there is no existing sound library for it yet...

I doubt that anyone would be interested in competing against PC entrties with a console entry that they may not be able to get full control of. This is just my personal thoughts though, don't let me stop you if your interested. :) What do you guys think?

Legolas
30-12-2006, 04:22 PM
GBA might be on the table... unsure though... as there is no existing sound library for it yet...

I doubt that anyone would be interested in competing against PC entrties with a console entry that they may not be able to get full control of. This is just my personal thoughts though, don't let me stop you if your interested. :) What do you guys think?

I have started converting libgba from scratch, because this sound issue, and to make it similar to libnds... I hope I'll finish this work in a week :)
Paradoxically, at this time libnds for fpc is more stable and complete than libgba for fpc, so it could be even better to have the compo open to nds instead gba :think:

WILL
30-12-2006, 09:00 PM
Ok well thats great. :) I personally like that we can now fully flesh out a fully working GBA game using all of its hardware.


Paradoxically, at this time libnds for fpc is more stable and complete than libgba for fpc, so it could be even better to have the compo open to nds instead gba :think:

Hmm... now thats interesting. However, our biggest limitation as seen in the PGD Christmas Demo was that we could not access enough memory (or the full amount of memory allowed on a NDS cart) and we could not access all of the two screens. Do you think you could overcome this obsticle before Feburary?


Ultimately, as I said before... with all hardware access limitations put aside it lies on the shoulders of the competitors. If Dom cannot get at least 2 solid confirmed GBA or NDS entries I would see it being difficult for him to arrange it.

A GBA/NDS specific prize would possibly be on the table aswell if Dom did enter the platform. But like I said before we'd need confirmed teams to make a GBA/NDS title to attract such a sponsorship.

Legolas
30-12-2006, 11:17 PM
Ok well thats great. :) I personally like that we can now fully flesh out a fully working GBA game using all of its hardware.


Paradoxically, at this time libnds for fpc is more stable and complete than libgba for fpc, so it could be even better to have the compo open to nds instead gba :think:

Hmm... now thats interesting. However, our biggest limitation as seen in the PGD Christmas Demo was that we could not access enough memory (or the full amount of memory allowed on a NDS cart) and we could not access all of the two screens. Do you think you could overcome this obsticle before Feburary?


Let me explain: the problem I had with snow demo is not due to fpc or libnds limitations, but to my limited knowledge of nds programming techniques. :oops: