[Blind cooperation contest.]

There's a similar idea to that 'trade paint' one already, Medieval.

Blind cooperation contest.
People are split into three (or more) groups with tasks like developing art assets, recording sound effects or developing a game engine (presumably with placeholder art). Then people are randomly selected from each group and have to combine their existing assets into a finished game. Hilarity ensues!

What follows is a list of the ideas I voted for in that other thread.

• Sprite hack, a two stage competition.
• Someone makes a piece of music and everyone has to use that music in their game.
• A 'games for your sweetie' competition
• Games for a charity compo
• Educational Software Compo
• Creative Design
• Textless Compo
• Missing Element
• Autobiographic games
• Paradigm Shift
• Very Short Games
• Goalless games competition
• Everyone is given a number of music files, and they have to use them in the game.
• Message games
• Creative Output Compo

Out of these I really have to stress my preference for the very short games idea, because many of us don't have the time to devote to a complex game, and not only would short games be more manageable to finish and polish, but it would also be easier for voters to sample the whole list. Also, there's something to be said about a tightly-packed game with no-nonsense, just the pure concept brought to its condensed zenith.

Voted. Here are my choices:

• Sprite hack, a two stage competition.
• Someone makes a piece of music and everyone has to use that music in their game.
• A 'games for your sweetie' competition
• Games for a charity compo
• Educational Software Compo
• Creative Design
• Textless Compo
• Missing Element
• Autobiographic games
• Paradigm Shift
• Very Short Games
• Goalless games competition
• Everyone is given a number of music files, and they have to use them in the game.
• Message games
• Creative Output Compo

Oh wow, Farbs, this is amazing!

Yeah, I know! Don't worry, I plan on fixing for the next build.

OK, I finished it. Finally. Took me way longer than I had gambled for, but it was all due to my fantastic idea of rewriting the whole algorithm. The result is code that's easier to read, but did I spend some time debugging this thing. I swear, there was no opportunity for making a tiny mistake that I skipped.

Anyway, here it is. Right now it's balanced so that making a composition that is symmetric in a single direction gets you a value close to zero. If the composition is symmetric both horizontally and vertically it'll move toward the positives. And it's still only checking vertically and horizontally, nothing more.

I think that rotation by 90 degrees would be good.  I don't think 45 degree rotations would make enough sense on play-areas of the size you've given to be worth coding for.

Oh, but I didn't mean rotating, I meant using a 45º symmetry axis. Right now I'm using axes 90º from each other.

Also, please do consider my suggestion of allowing swapping of colours as a form of symmetry (or *something*).

What do you mean by this?

The higher the 'symmetry score', the lower the symmetry I think ;)

That's correct. Sorry for the confusion.

Your idea ain't half bad, increpare, but then we have the problem of rotating the image in various angles. Truth is, for such a low resolution picture, I don't think that every which symmetry angle is needed; vertical and horizontal is already pretty good, and if I added 45º it'd be as good as it's needed.

Oh and I have to say that I didn't understand a word from that Wikipedia link. :(

Thanks a lot for testing this thing out, and the ideas. I'll be uploading a version with the symmetry algorithm fixed soon.

edit: Oh, would that Fourier transform deal help with calculating rhythm (repeating patterns)?

Yeah, you're right, it's not working properly, and I know why now. That second example I'm not sure if I will try to accomodate eventually, because right now the algorithm isn't even attempting to check for such cases.

As for what the algorithm does, let me try to sum it up. It's pretty brute-force stuff. What it does first is take a row, and take an axis from a range close to the center of the image, say, like this:

Code:

x x o x x x x x
. . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . .

The axis can be a cell, like indicated by the 'o' above, or the point between two cells. Next, it checks for similarities between the two cells closest to the axis:

Code:

x o x o x x x x
. . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . .

And continues to compare with the rest of the equidistant cells. The value of each cell comparison is calculated by the formula below. I'm no mathematician so forgive the lack of correct notation:

difference = positive(cell_a - cell_b)
value = difference * e^(distance_from_axis)

So the resulting values grow exponentially the farther from the axis the cells compared were. When one of the cells is actually out of the canvas, instead of calculating the difference I just use the worst possible value (100% difference). This plays up the relevance of the centermost axis.

Of course, this continues with the next axis for that row, until they have all been checked. Then, the rest of the rows are checked in the same way. The resulting values in the different rows, for any given axis, are averaged (which I just realized is totally backwards, but works nonetheless), resulting in a unique value per vertical axis. The lowest value obtained is recorded as the horizontal symmetry.

All of this is then repeated, but calculating the value of horizontal axes and thus the vertical symmetry, which is averaged with the horizontal symmetry.

The part that I realized isn't working is calculating the difference between two cells. Right now all I'm doing is substracting, which means that red weighs more than green than blue. Yeah, totally stupid. Will have to make it compare each color separately, and it should work OK then.

You're welcome, and I hope your game turns out great.

Thank you!

Uploaded an improved version. I realized that there was a gaping flaw in the way I was averaging colors per cell, so I fixed that. This means you should get better temperature results now. I think there's still something wrong with the symmetry algorithm, though (caused by the same mistake), but I'll work on that later.

Awesome, Derek!


















Wish it didn't put those spaces in between, but at least I can do a search-and-replace with a text editor to get rid of them.

So is this the first forum on the internet to have this feature? Are we making history here?

That's... so awesome.

I can't see it.

You're close, small one. Closer than you believe.

Time to spam the boards!

In my past projects "peace" and "cooperation" have been messages, but "peace" obviously does not work in a shooter, so "collaboration" is left.

Considering this, I think I should make the game's artwork abstract, to escape or at least ease the moral impacts. Shooting things that resemble living creatures could trigger the wrong ideas, shooting inanimate things like robots is less problematic, ethics-wise, but still destructive. Shooting colored shapes might be the most innocent way to build a shooter.

That's one way to go about it. But with some left-field thinking you can still make it non-violent. For instance, the players are bugs in a house, shooting jars and causing mayhem (and no one dies, of course). For cooperative play, light-hearted settings are usually best, with silly details to laugh at.

Hmm, you could very well make something up that stems from the very cooperation that's the reason you made this game. Like, a quest for love in divorceland, to say something silly. And if you go abstract, you could get inspiration from things that are always in pairs: pants, glasses, scissors, etc.

So, with all this said --which I actually wrote before I read your last post--, I think that those graphics are okay to work with, but could use some spicing up.

Good job, Melly. I hope a single post can hold them all.

architekt, thank you for your words.

Well! It's starting to look more like a game now. The fundamental new feature is the functioning carousel, as you can see in the screenshot below. It's also a bit more attractive to the eye. It's playable here.

In my opinion, the black outline is too harsh. I'd use an orange outline.

Wrapping them with colored cellophane would probably be more effective.

I can't see it.

I've never played Fallout. :/

Hm! I don't dislike this idea of several people making new entries in the 'Suprematist Game' series. I'd contribute, but I'm such a game-making newbie that I'd spend way too much time in it, neglecting my project for school, which is top priority right now. If I feel more comfortable about it at some point, I just might.

I look forward to yours, increpare.