Secant Software : Game Contest

[cairnswm]

Contest Rules and Information
http://www.secantsoftware.com/forums/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=33

[Alimonster]

I don't suppose there's a theme or anything? Is the competition just "create a game, any game", or is it more scientific than that? I didn't catch some stuff from the link you gave but it does seem like a nice idea.

[cairnswm]

There doesn't sweem to be a theme - and the link I said had all the competition rules in it.

In the creative section of DGDev I gave an Idea called Farmer Joe - I'm going to try do this for the competition - in an isometric view.

I need pictures of a Tractor, Cow, Horse, Bull and if possible Wolf and Bear. If I cant get the last two its not a problem but the first 4 are actually needed.

[cairnswm]

I got severly distracted from my Farmer Joe game. Instead I have done a Battleships clone called Pirates that I'll be entering for this competition.

I'll see if I can find time to upload my game sometime soon.

I'll see if I can't possibly turn Farmer Joe into my first commercially viable game.... (Wish me lots! of luck).

[cairnswm]

My entry for the competition: Pirates, a recreation of the old traditional Battleships game.

The pirates home page is at:
http://www.cairnsgames.co.za/pirates/

To just download the game:
http://www.cairnsgames.co.za/pirates/pirates.zip

The source code is also released (Delphi 6 with DelphiX):
http://www.cairnsgames.co.za/pirates/piratessrc.zip

[Traveler]

I had a quick go at it and although I'm not a real big fan of Battleship games, I must say this one plays quite well already.

Not sure how much time is left for the compo, but I think there's still room for a few (minor) improvements.
The AI could be improved a bit, but I believe that's already on your todo list. An other thing I noticed were the sound icons. There seems to be no diference between active/inactive. Furthermore, I only heard one sound. It might be fun to hear a splash or kaboom when you miss or hit. Also, I found the background to be a bit boring. Perhaps you could add a few trees or perhaps pirates standing next to the water? (cheer when you hit?)
The underlined 'Pirates' looks a bit 'cheap', perhaps you could change it with a fancy graphical version?

Anyway, the game plays well already, it does what it is supposed to do. But give it a few extras and you'll have a winner.

[cairnswm]

I had the cheers in the game but they didn't come through very nicely :( As an aside finding nice sounds on the net isn't easy.

Also wanted to make a cannon ball go from the cannot to where you shoot as an animation but didn't get around to it.

Also wanted to do the animated pirates but didn;t have time.

Also wanted to make it an animated duel on the intro screen.

Today was the deadline for entries. As usualy work got in the way of doing all the fun stuff I wanted to do...

[cairnswm]

Oh yes

Can anyone suggest a decent font creation program - I need fonts that have 'texture' at the moment I'm just using GDI calls for fonts as is easiest.

(The xcess game kit seems to be an option but I havn't tried its font creator yet - shadows etc)

[Alimonster]

There are free sounds available at http://www.meanrabbit.com/wavhtml/wavepage.htm. I think that Powerdraw comes with a texture font generator (at least, I've definitely seen one -- maybe it was for DelphiX?), so you could modify that to save in your own format.

Keep on working on the game -- maybe you'll get lucky and the next competition will be to make a battleship clone. :P

Just remembered: there was a thread (http://terraqueous.f2o.org/dgdev/viewtopic.php?t=390) listing some resources.

[cairnswm]

I find that these competitions give me the incentive to actually get a game into a usable state. Normally I just get a game to the state that proves I could do it.... At leat these two competitions have got me to get nearly finsihed game done :)

(Also anyone know a .wav editor?)

[Alimonster]

I find that these competitions give me the incentive to actually get a game into a usable state. Normally I just get a game to the state that proves I could do it.... At leat these two competitions have got me to get nearly finsihed game done :)
Getting closer! Soon you'll have that killer instinct to finish off games in time - maybe you'll just have to feign a mystery illness to avoid doing other work that gets in the way (I know the feeling, sigh) :roll:


(Also anyone know a .wav editor?)
GoldWave is the usual suspect for this. I've not used it for a while (at uni, so a couple of years ago now) but it was a very nice package. It's shareware I think...

[cairnswm]

Well I often take days off work just to sit and code at home :) For this game I did it one day but due to home renovations I only got about 4 hours work done that day.

I've got three very pet game ideas at the moment that need time (Farmer Joe and Fairy Fantasy described here before and Dragon Racing :) ). One day I'll find time to work on them properly :)

[cairnswm]

www.goldwave.com

Thanks!

[Alimonster]

Doing it in a rush in the best way, I think. For my uni honours project I wrote the whole thing (a 3d game in Java3d) in the last couple of weeks. It was the fear of not having done anything, and the way that results were visible, that kept me interested. I've been tempted to do something like this (write a game in a day or two), but I am too easily distracted at the moment (mainly because of this (http://game.panlogic.net)!). At least one of us is productive :).

Are you going to keep your other ideas for your own time or will you use them for the next competition(s) you enter?

[cairnswm]

The ideas are currently too big for these quick competition entry type things. I am thinking of trying to get one done as a 'commercial' project. Its probably about 300 hours of my time required to get it right. at the moment thats about 2 years work.