Ahhh interesting, so it sounds like a whole different game then. I might have to grab this one. I will probably still wait for it to hit the $30 range, but it'd be kind of cool to have a Wii arcade stick.

I've eyeballed this game a few times, but after watching a few tournament matches this game looks kinda broken.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PAP1CHiiqSY
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8vHBfsVQp1s

Infinites
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-EkY850WFGA
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9-Tqm7yThFg
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U0baNYj0giA

100% Combos
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PJ3zjpPT4fw

I might pick it up when it goes down in price a bit, network play is always cool in 2d games when its not laggy. I remember trying to play Capcom vs SNK 2 on the Xbox 10mbps network, it was muuurder.

submission submitted! With 3 days to spare! I think this is a new record for me.

...of course, I'll spend the next 3 days thinking of things I should've added and repeatedly amending my submission up until the very last minute.

They're already playing the submitted games... there's no guarantee they'll try your amended version.

Really? Good thing I got mine up as soon as possible...

I think Bennett meant even if you fix up your build, its most likely the judges have already played it. But there should definitely not be a penalty for submitting the last day.

The last few days are always the most stressful though. On my game, Paul's finishing the last levels, and I'm adding the last new assets and squashing a few timing bugs. Paul's room mate didn't pay his internet bill, so we've been communicating via cell phone and internet cafes, which has been an interesting one. I'll probably make a thread on the gamma page on Sunday when we submit.

Whats distracting about this?

One thing Obama did that made me really happy was he went after the Supreme Court's ruling of reversing the unlimited spending.

"With all due deference to separation of powers, last week the Supreme Court reversed a century of law that I believe will open the floodgates for special interests –- including foreign corporations –- to spend without limit in our elections.    I don't think American elections should be bankrolled by America's most powerful interests, or worse, by foreign entities.    They should be decided by the American people.  And I'd urge Democrats and Republicans to pass a bill that helps to correct some of these problems."

http://www.nydailynews.com/news/politics/2010/01/28/2010-01-28_full_transcript_text_of_president_obamas_2010_state_of_the_union_address_with_vi.html?page=10

You can see it on their faces during the speech, they are PISSSSSED. (Edit: Update, looks like they did a news story on this as well: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/35117174/ns/politics-white_house/ ) Also Nancy Pelosi looks like she's had too much botox, she's slowly pulling a Joan Rivers smile.

Some of his other stuff was kinda meh, but NPR did some good fact checking on some of his boldest statements. http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=4476500

Nuclear power is an interesting one. Yes you can call it clean and safe, its better than coal on the environment above us but the nuclear waste is terrible on the ground and lasts a very long time.

So something interesting you might consider is cities that are much older being built up around previous building. In Denver, for example, we have a lot of historic buildings that cannot be destroyed because they are considered "historical monuments" even though some of them are furniture stores and what not, and others are apartment complexes. So something I have not seen before in a dynamic city engine is the idea that cities mandate certain districts/buildings to be "non-destroyable" which gives certain cities that whole character type of thing.

This is inspiring me to make a city builder of some kind. Thanks for necromancing this Alex :D

Strange Sega Saturn platformer, Nantasu Kaze no Shima Monogatari. Its pretty difficult to understand anything, but just look at dem frames!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j2rCkFacCKI

I know I've seen it pop up on a few pixel-related forums before, and I've played it on my Saturn a few times. Its really difficult though without a translation.

Edit: ahhh it was on here! Under the impressive color palettes and it was brought up by Kyn.

http://forums.tigsource.com/index.php?topic=10057.0

Congratulations, you just described a version of a Model-View-Controller design.  

But yeah, any decent game framework should use MVC.

Yeah, game frameworks are generally some sort of MVC design because it is simple enough to implement in almost any language/situation.

http://gpwiki.org/index.php/Programming_Techniques

Some of the interesting bits for me are proper resource management, module creation/modification (if you have modules), extensibility through internal/external structures such as XML, using the correct data structures for the correct situations, proper inheritance techniques, and portability.

Professional game engines written by big game companies like Sega also wrap all of their important low-level calls around high-level wrappers, making it a million times easier to port between compilers such as PS3/X360/PC. Tommy is a big proponent for this on his Meat Boy project, and its pretty common practice in the professional world.

But the one thing I really enjoy about this topic: there is not really one right solution. Even if you account algorithm speeds and optimizations, everything is reliant on user-input which can be at any random interval. They could want to shoot 50 missiles instead of firing the single laser beam, which would mean your engine should be able to handle those new physics objects and run their given AI. Or you could run through the entire game without killing a single enemy, which means every AI that is allowed to exist in the current game area has a running AI system. So you have to be efficient enough not to slow down a computer, but you never want to run EVERY AI in the level if its a huge level.

Yeah the animal mounts were a really neat idea. I always thought giving animals candy to make them fall asleep so you could "sneak" into their bodies was something only a little kid would think of.

Oh wow, I've never read about Yoko Shimomura's work before. It seems like ever since she did Breath of Fire, she really leaned toward Squaresoft games. Mario RPG also had a huge place in my childhood, especially with the other super composers like Nobuo Uematsu and Koji Kondo.

I had an account on there that was ranked pretty high before they had a major server crash and lost half their accounts. That site is not shabby for beginners, I'm actually pretty active in a local security group called dc303 (www.dc303.org) I've done one presentation, and one tetris server hacking challenge for the group so far.

If you're finding those challenges too easy, I'd suggest looking at OverTheWire. Its probably the most realistic/hardcore reversing hacking challenge I know of.

http://www.overthewire.org/wargames/vortex/

Last time I played that, I got stuck on Level 4 and never made it past. Its very challenging, but I enjoy it. Also, NOPs 'R Us post the qualifiers and sometimes the full CTF games for Defcon every year with solutions. Some of them are f'ing impossible, but others are great challenges if you're just getting the hang of reversing and exploiting.

http://nopsr.us/

The first computer I learned to program on was an old Commodore 64 my uncle gave my older brother.  I know a good deal about the computer's capabilities and limitations.

My biggest complaint about the Commodore 64 is how hard screen scrolling is.  It would require a highly optimised assembly routine to move screen data since the hardware only lets you scroll the screen eight pixels vertically and horizontally.

I had this idea of using run-length encoded redefined character map screens that can be scrolled either horizontally or vertically (depending on line orientation), then only the beginnings and ends of the lines need to be changed when the screen is scrolled -- thus significantly reducing the number of reads and writes to memory.  The major drawback with this would be repetitive looking graphics, but it might not be too bad if done right.

Alternatively, it might just be a good idea to avoid scrolling and simply use rooms instead.

Ahh cool, so it'd be very nostalgic for you as well to do some C64 programming :D

Scrolling is definitely more challenging as you have much less space to work with. I googled it a bit, and found this: http://www.c64.ch/programming/c64prg10.txt  but I'm not sure if thats exactly what you'd need to do the full tile routine.

Code:

SMOOTH SCROLLING

    The VIC-II chip supports smooth scrolling in both the horizontal and
  vertical directions. Smooth scrolling is a one pixel movement of the
  entire screen in one direction. It can move either UP, or down, or left,
  or right. It is used to move new information smoothly onto the screen,
  while smoothly removing characters from the other side.
    While the VIC-II chip does much of the task for you, the actual scroll-
  ing must be done by a machine language program. The VIC-II chip features
  the ability to place the video screen in any of 8 horizontal positions,
  and 8 vertical positions. Positioning is controlled by the VIC-II
  scrolling registers. The VIC-II chip also has a 38 column mode, and a 24
  row mode. the smaller screen sizes are used to give you a place for your
  new data to scroll on from.

  The following are the steps for SMOOTH SCROLLING:



  128   PROGRAMMING GRAPHICS
~


  1) Shrink the screen (the border will expand).
  2) Set the scrolling register to maximum (or minimum value depending upon
     the direction of your scroll).
  3) Place the new data on the proper (covered) portion of the screen.
  4) Increment (or decrement) the scrolling register until it reaches the
     maximum (or minimum) value.
  5) At this point, use your machine language routine to shift the entire
     screen one entire character in the direction of the scroll.
  6) Go back to step 2.

    To go into 38 column mode, bit 3 of location 53270 ($D016) must be set
  to a 0. The following POKE does this:

    POKE 53270,PEEK(53270)AND 247

    To return to 40 column mode, set bit 3 of location 53270 ($D016) to a
  1.The following POKE does this:

    POKE 53270,PEEK(53270)OR 8

    To go into 24 row mode, bit 3 of location 53265 ($D011) must be set to
  a 0. The following POKE will do this:

    POKE 53265,PEEK(53265)AND 247

    To return to 25 row mode, set bit 3 of location 53265 ($D011) to a 1.
  The following POKE does this:

    POKE 53265,PEEK(53265)OR 8

    When scrolling in the X direction, it is necessary to place the VIC-II
  chip into 38 column mode. This gives new data a place to scroll from.
  When scrolling LEFT, the new data should be placed on the right. When
  scrolling RIGHT the new data should be placed on the left. Please note
  that there are still 40 columns to screen memory, but only 38 are
  visible.
    When scrolling in the Y direction, it is necessary to place the VIC-II
  chip into 24 row mode. When scrolling UP, place the new data in the LAST
  row. When scrolling DOWN, place the new data on the FIRST row. Unlike X
  scrolling, where there are covered areas on each side of the screen,
  there is only one covered area in Y scrolling. When the Y scrolling


                                                 PROGRAMMING GRAPHICS   129
~


  register is set to 0, the first line is covered, ready for new data. When
  the Y scrolling register is set to 7 the last row is covered.
    For scrolling in the X direction, the scroll register is located in
  bits 2 to 0 of the VIC-II control register at location 53270 ($D016 in
  HEX). As always, it is important to affect only those bits. The following
  POKE does this:

    POKE 53270,(PEEK(53270)AND 248)+X

  where X is the X position of the screen from 0 to 7.
    For scrolling in the Y direction, the scroll register is located in
  bits 2 to 0 of the VIC-II control register at location 53265 ($D011 in
  HEX). As always, it is important to affect only those bits. The following
  POKE does this:

    POKE 53265,(PEEK(53265)AND 248)+Y

  where Y is the Y position of the screen from 0 to 7.
    To scroll text onto the screen from the bottom, you would step the low-
  order 3 bits of location 53265 from 0-7, put more data on the covered
  line at the bottom of the screen, and then repeat the process. To scroll
  characters onto the screen from left to right, you would step the low-
  order 3 bits of location 53270 from 0 to 7, print or POKE another column
  of new data into column 0 of the screen, then repeat the process.
    If you step the scroll bits by -1, your text will move in the opposite
  direction.

  EXAMPLE: Text scrolling onto the bottom of the screen:

start tok64 page130.prg
  10 poke53265,peek(53265)and247        :rem go into 24 row mode
  20 printchr$(147)                     :rem clear the screen
  30 forx=1to24:printchr$(17);:next     :rem move the cursor to the bottom
  40 poke53265,(peek(53265)and248)+7:print :rem position for 1st scroll
  50 print"     hello";
  60 forp=6to0step-1
  70 poke53265,(peek(53265)and248)+p
  80 forx=1to50:next                    :rem delay loop
  90 next:goto40
stop tok64

We had a HUGE collection book of these when I was a kid. I remember being about four years old and flipping through the pages and imagining what was happening. There was one scene with a giant fish that always fascinated me. The fish I think eats Nemo, and it gets very bizarre.

The Nemo NES game was brilliant, I used to watch a neighbor play it through from start to finish. It was also really cool because it introduced a game play mechanic that you don't really see in later Capcom games from that era, where each level has a different physics/game system (Frog, Bee, Lizard, Gorilla, Mole).

Also, the Nemo Arcade game was different from that, feeling more like Magic Sword.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dMWId-Ru5qI (one guy plays both characters) I liked the NES game better, but still cool to see so many different Capcom games come from such an old comic.

I've been wanting to do some small retro projects for fun.  Years ago I've played with GameBoy and GameBoy Advance C compilers.  I remember it was very easy to get a sprite moving around and interacting with a tilemap.  I've learned a lot more about game development since then and am curious about what I might be able to accomplish now.

One machine that I have a nostalgic fondness for is the Commodore 64.  I hope we get to visit a number of the old classic consoles, computers, and handhelds of the past.

Yeah I was going to start with something in C so people would not be overwhelmed by the ASM. Also game consoles like the Gameboy and Nintendo DS have locations in memory specifically designed for sprites, backgrounds, layers, etc. So the hardware itself is lending you a hand as you program, taking care of the sprite/tiling details.

The Commodore 64 also has sprites and tiling, but its a bit more complicated. If you want a head start for when we get to the Commodore, here's a programmer's reference manual (all code examples are in Basic.)

http://www.commodore.ca/manuals/c64_programmers_reference/c64-programmers_reference.htm

Question about submitting flash games: should I include Joy2Key in my Zip file for a flash game? I will make sure to export the swf to Exe, but I'm not sure if I should also have the Joy2Key exe in there as well.

As much as I hate to admit it, those breathing/relaxation cds put me to sleep every single time. My biggest problem is my mind is racing every night, so sometimes its impossible to just shut it off. So I was given a relaxation cd and gave it a serious try. It relaxed me to the point of making me fall asleep.

The dude's voice is a little creepy, so I'll wrap it up real quick:

- Relax every muscle in your body, starting from your toes, to your knees, to your legs, to your hips, to your stomach all the way up to your head.

- Take a breath in for 10 seconds, hold it for 10 seconds, exhale for 10 seconds.

Hmm.. seems like there might be an error on the page?

"Our fourth show airs in....

   LIVE NOW...
   Reloading browser..."

Seeing this on Firefox 3.5, IE 8, and Google Chrome.

I wanted to try out GBDK a bit to before I started getting into the first month and got people into this. I've actually discovered quite a few bugs and quirks about the C compiler that I can share when the month comes, and I worked through porting the 1 hour tetris clone to the Gameboy Color. (http://www.gamedev.net/community/forums/topic.asp?topic_id=192483)

Here is the demo rom as of 1-15:
 http://cthulhu32.kraln.com/misc/hcc/gb/tetris.1-15.gb

The rotations are chuggy and the colors are pretty harmful to the eyes, but its the first iteration so I just wanted to show it off a little :D I'll release source once I get the speed up to snuff, and I'll probably add a menu and everything so I have some basis to do a few tutorials.

I plan on getting a Wii, but right now I'm moving a lot so it won't be before a handful of months...how easily can one develop for it and run the result on emulator?

There is a Wii emulator called Dolphin-Emu, you need a beefy machine to run it. Unfortunately the homebrew support is still slightly wonky, Bushing is trying to fix it and he has homebrew dols loading, but some people are reporting only getting sound and no video. So if Bushing gets that up to 100%, the latest SVN Dolphin-Emu will run your results just fine.

As for compiling, its extremely easy. The Devkitpro installer works great - http://sourceforge.net/projects/devkitpro/files/Automated%20Installer/  or if you click show files, you can install it in Linux manually. In Windows, after you run the installer and have libogc and devkitppc installed, you just create a custom bat file and you should be compiling your DOLs in no time.

I made this awhile ago with Adam Atomic on the sprites:

http://www.ivansafrin.com/INVADE2.NES

I should work on it some more some day.

Yeah! Adam showed me this a few months ago, looked pretty awesome. Have you read about how to do NES horizontal and vertical scrolling? Its insane! But so freaking cool. I've done a few demos, including a fixed-16 physics demo:

http://cthulhu32.kraln.com/nesdev/physics/physics.0.1.nes

press I think its A to make it bounce up again, and the y value wraps around. The code is actually very simple, when we hit the NES on the HCC monthly challenge, I'll make sure that you get a message.

Here's another teaser for anyone who wants to get a little more hardcore:

http://gameboy.modermodemet.se/en/demos

particularly
Space Waste by Octarine - http://gameboy.modermodemet.se/en/demo/1
That thing comes with full source, not sure what compiler he used, but its all in ASM.

I think I'll have like 3 levels of challenges, and for the advance challenge I'll have a "make a plasma effect" or something. That way we can try to get all levels of programming expertise.