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[Inane]

Ancient Greece! Fuck yeah!
(I pretty much picked out 3 random posts from this thread to get an idea of what it's about)

Er... Yeah, thats my only comment.

_{Ancient Greece}

[Arne]

Zombie mall?

I think that could be interesting. I've always wanted to play a 2D zombie mall game. Could be turn based, realtime, "baldur's gate" style. Shooter, Puzzle, Exploration, Stategy.

Oh, no zombies.

Hmm how about a genre that really haven't gotten much attention in quite some time?

I really wanna do a LaserSquad/XCom game with Baldurs Gate "pause" style control.

Or a top-down WASD+Mouse game, like moonpod's Warangels or something Robotron. Not really suitable for the gameboy scale though?

Sim Ant? Autonomous units you can't control directly, instead you need to use the environment (like in DF). It could be a colony of anything really, as long as you can't micromanage.

Z/Dune 2/Herzog Zwei. The latter could work with the idea above. It was ages since I got a good dose of a nice topdown RTS. Mmm a macromanagement RTS. *Bulge in my pants* I'd rather play an RTS on a large screen though (otherwise it gets terribly cloustrophobic), but I suppose some Zoom/Overview features could be used.

So, my suggestion would be a game where you have to use the environment (or some sort of global control, or you're a chief unit of some sort) to control a mass of whatever, be it tanks, lemmings, dwarfs, sims, ants. Fits Derek's requirement for vagueness.

The Atari 2600 has pretty strange graphics restrictions. As far as I understood, you had to time the game code with the scanlines, ie, you did game physics stuff when the drawing beam was outside the screen, or sometimes between graphics on screen. Really tricky stuff. It also has something like the copper bar effect on the amiga, i.e. you could set colors for individual scanlines. The graphics could also be scaled for some pretty large pixels.


Adventure for the 2600 was a nice game. I think Atariage had a contest for making Adventure II some time ago though, otherwise that could be an idea.

[Madgarden]

I love zombies. And ninjas. So it would suck to put a restriction on them. I'd hope the rules would allow for artistic freedom on those details, and more define a general theme, such as Survival, Rotation, Attraction, Swarms, etc.

[moi]

If anybody wants to do an atari 2600 game, I remember someone released a basic that compiles to Atari 2600 binaries not long ago...
Oh and you don't know colors limitations if you didn't code with an Oric (t'was better to just stick to monochrome )

[Markus Rosse]

I think i remember that Arne did some Atari sprite test for a new "Adventure" Game? When you code your game for the computer, you don't have to mess around with restrictions, just imitate the old look, shouldn't be that hard. Maybe a simple black&white game like hero?

[wonderpus]

i like the idea of a set of graphics we are allowed to use .
these can simply be added too at will by those with pixel talent
like resources.tigsource.com ?

otherwise all i can give you is games with tetris style art and i don't mean the nice
background images

- Wonderpus

[Alec]

If the games all had the same art it would be kinda dull. But maybe we can set up some way to make it easier for programmers to find artists?

[konjak]

I hate competitions where everyone starts with the same art 

[lowpoly]

How about we code for the Altair? Or maybe punch cards?  :D

I'm all for some fun, creative restrictions but I think for the first compo we should keep it a little more open and loose.

[wonderpus]

I'm not suggesting that the resource pack be mandatory just a resource that it is approved for us to use .
just like a folder of submitted pixels and sounds and whatnot that COULD be used if you don't have pixel talent ?


 

[lowpoly]

I'm not suggesting that the resource pack be mandatory just a resource that it is approved for us to use .
just like a folder of submitted pixels and sounds and whatnot that COULD be used if you don't have pixel talent ?

Ya, that's exactly how I envisioned it. Maybe down the road, a restricted pack compo would be fun, but for now let's open it up a bit and work the kinks out

[axel]

I hate competitions where everyone starts with the same art 

I agree. Restrictions are fun, as long as they aren't too... Um... Restrictive.
How about a gameboy theme? I'm talking low resolution, green 4-color graphics, chip music, etcetera. Not too original, maybe, but it'd still be fun

[Pita]

I would be very keen to enter a competition, I very rarely completely finish any of the games I start to make... Something like this would be great to, well, help me get a finished game made and out there.

Theme ideas:

Abstract, lost, escape, fever, chain reaction.

Restrictions on size/colours/music/resolution etc are always fun

[Derek]

Yes!  The point is to finish a game.  A finished product, even if it's very small, is better (imo) than having an unfinished sprawling epic that never sees the light of day.  Especially because small != not fun.  And I'll make sure that everyone who finishes a game gets good feedback.

Okay, so here's what I'm thinking for the first competition:

• 1 month time limit!
• Size restriction.  Probably something like 4 megs?
• No color or resolution restriction!  I want to see diversity, really... and would putting restrictions on the graphics really make the games more interesting?  Maybe for a future contest.
• One general theme (I'm leaning toward "swarms") and a list of mini-themes from which you must pick at least one but can choose to use all of them for mad bonus points.
• A graphics pack will be made available with really really generic and kind of abstract (but clean and cute) pixel sprites for people to use for prototyping or if you can't do graphics yourself.
• Prizes: at the very least a link to your game and a website (if you have one) on the TIGSource front page and on the forums.  The site is getting heavy traffic these days, so it's a good opportunity to get noticed.  A custom title on the forum if you don't already have one ('cause that's always fun! ).  A tangible prize might be nice, too, I'll look into it.

How's that sound?  And I can promise good feedback on all the (finished) entries from the judges, and when the compo's over you can also open your game up to the feedback forum.

[jaredbloom]

Okay assuming we were to later vote on the restrictions and whatnot, can anybody persuade some sponsors to help us out with the prizes?

We should ideally be able to do the prize giving over the internet (sponsors email registration keys for their games to the winner of the competition) so nobody will end up getting ripped off.

EDIT: As I wrote this Derek made a post: Derek, I agree with everything except the size limit; how about instead of a size limit the entrant is required to have a reliable server to host the file on?