A CD is around 12 cm in diameter, so I suggest you specify the cover as being at least 13 by 13 cm at 300 dpi (5 cm of margin per side), rather than the ambiguous 20 cm you mentioned (which also says nothing about the resolution).

I might submit something if inspiration hits.

Of course, those are coming.

Nothing terribly special about this one, but it does have small caps. I wanted it not to have angles or curves, so that it still looks good when blown way up, but I deviated from that in the end in some characters, so I'll probably make some alternates for those. I may also do katakana & hiragana just for the hell of it.



It's not supposed to be monospaced, so what would be the ideal way of formatting this for ease of use? Should I make it a .ttf?

Assembleech-happy link.

Compo version above. For an updated, out-of-deadline version, see a few posts down.

A good way to do this is take the fanzine approach. If you're gonna be amateur and cheap, don't try to hide it, but do the job with heart. Make a black and white cover, hopefully hand-drawn (well) and made to be photocopied. The CD-Rs should be doodled on or something, maybe even stenciled-on in some way if it's too much of a pain to do otherwise, but make sure you don't ruin the discs in this case. Make sure the thing has a personality (unlike most of the shiny, shrink-wrapped AAA game boxes).

It's really easy to make a CD sleeve with a letter/A4 sized sheet of paper. You just put the disc in its center, then fold around it to form a square (following the length of the sheet first), with the disc inside. The flaps that result can be put one into the other to keep it closed, or just put some tape on it. Then just go to some neighborhood music stores, pubs, and whatnot, and ask the guys if you can put your discs there for anyone to take, like any old party flyer.

To make the thing more massive, make a torrent of the CD and a PDF of the cover available to be printed, so that anyone willing can repeat your process in their own home town.

This is so fun, it's like an ARG.

I'd appreciate an invite, if anyone has any left.

Kirby Tilt 'n' Tumble (Only really good if you find an actual cart.)

No; he can't play it with an SP or DS, because the cart slot in those is reversed from that of the old Game Boys.

DS:

- Polarium
- The Rub Rabbits
- Konami Arcade Hits
- Phoenix Wright series (in order)
- Mario Kart DS

I will repeat some that you have listed, just for emphasis. Most of these are games I enjoyed back when I liked playing these kinds of games; nowadays my list would be much shorter.

GBA:
- Rhythm Tengoku
- Donkey Kong: King of Swing
- bit Generations Dotstream
- bit Generations Soundvoyager
- bit Generations Digidrive
- Metal Slug Advance
- Gunstar Super Heroes
- Castlevania: Aria of Sorrow
- Metroid Zero Mission
- Wario Ware
- Wario Ware Twisted
- Kuru Kuru Kururin
- Astro Boy: Omega Factor
- Puyo Pop
- Chu Chu Rocket
- Mario Kart: Super Circuit
- Drill Dozer
- Mr. Driller A
- Racing Gears Advance
- Konami Collector's Series: Arcade Advanced

GB:
- Donkey Kong '94
- Wario Land
- Operation C
- Game Boy Camera
- Metroid II
- Mario's Picross

No DS games, right?

This is weird. I have no idea what sort of thing I should upload.

edit: Don't know what registrar you used, but be aware that if you let it expire and then want to buy it again, you will possibly pay a lot more than if you just renewed your contract.

I am reluctant to let a third party keep all my important discussions in their servers, forever.

I love it. I think my favorites are possibly the opener and the last track.

Awesome news. I might have to get into 3D.

Console, like text mode DOS? If so, have you heard of Flashterm? It's a telnet terminal in Flash. I don't think that it's open source, sadly. At any rate, yours sounds like a cool project.

My engine is aimed at making less graphic games, but other than that, I think that the idea is rather similar. Ren'py is entirely built around ren'ai games, all of its features are aimed at imitating the functionality and look of such games, but the core of it is pretty much what I want to achieve with this (but for Flash games).

I took a look at ren'py's scripts, and I was rather impressed by its cleanness, which comes from the python syntax, I suppose. XML has the disadvantage of being rather dirty looking, and it takes long to write. Maybe I'll have to create my own syntax for this.

Just checked the twee syntax, as well, and it is very elegant, and seems perfectly suited to this project. Hrm, I wonder if I should...

I know ren'py, yeah. Didn't make the connection, though! I'll see how things are structured in that.

And thanks, heh.

Cool! It being useful to one person other than me makes it worth it.

I had no idea that Bubble Bobble had massive amounts of secrets.

I plan to make a rather simple engine for text games similar to Sheets. I intend to make it free software and open source; I'm not sure if it'll be useful to anyone other than me, but I want to make it a learning experience. I made Sheets precisely to see in practice what such an engine would need, so I've been thinking about this for a while. Here's how it would work, in my mind:

• The logical structure would divide the games into chapters, pages, lines, and options. A chapter is a collection of pages. A page is a line and possibly some options, all displayed at once in a single screen. A line is just that, a line of text, which may have a name (author) attached to it. An option is a link to a different line or chapter.
• There would be any number of variables, to keep track of things. There would also be some read-only variables, like total time elapsed, delay before clicking, last page viewed, and possibly others.
• Of course, conditional statements would be needed to use the above. These would be called during transitions from one page to another.
• Visual styles would be definable on a global, per-chapter, and per-page basis. I expect these to involve at least choice and size of font, colors, positions, and a background image. After all the basic stuff is working well, I might add 'effects', like displaying the text at different speeds (as seen in many RPGs and games like Phoenix Wright), flashes, shaking the screen, and such things.
• Playing sounds should also be supported.
• I think game descriptions will use XML, but game logic will probably just be actionscript, at least at first. Maybe I'll devise a way to make the logic XML, too.

My intention is to make it easy and quick to make simple games in this vein. The truth is that I have no experience making IF games, or the like, so my ideas might not support the most efficient way to make a text game. Thus, I'd like to know what people think, before I actually start programming this.

Lovely videos. Especially the marbles.