Lua is good too .  That example of yours could be..

Game {
    name = "Final Night",
    width = 80,
    height = 40,
    screens = {
        startScreen = {
             -- etc
        },
    },
}

Since Lua is an actual language you could easily do things like random items and generated content and such too.

Liberated Games, dot com

Congratulations, everyone!

Yeah, don't be afraid of giving out constructive criticism (and your crits seemed pretty constructive, Terry ).  Maybe you'll hurt a little ego (probably had it coming anyway), but most likely you'll help someone improve, so their next game will be that much closer to a true masterpiece.  Crits are good!

SDL is set up to be loaded via DLLs, and its LGPL license doesn't allow you to include its source files directly in your game, unless your game is open source under a license compatible with the LGPL.  (This is so that end users can upgrade the LGPLed portion of your game, even without access to your game's source code)

Not exactly..  I mean, SDL is LGPL-licensed, but that doesn't actually prevent you from statically linking it, even if your game isn't GPL/LGPL or even open source at all.  Dynamically linking SDL is just usually the most convenient way to comply with the license.  Otherwise, you need to provide some other way that people can re-link the game with a different (compatible) SDL library if they wish.  (Using dlls or providing the source code of your game gets you this for free; people can just replace the dll or compile/relink.)

You could also provide object code in stead of source code, which works just as well for relinking purposes (well, assuming the object files are compatible with the new linker).  Or, you could have multiple builds of the game, one statically linked and one dynamically linked, which I think should comply too, as long as the builds are otherwise identical.  Both of these have been done before with some closed-source/commercial SDL games, so should be safe enough.

Also, you don't have to include source/object code/dynamic exe with the game itself, it's enough to provide some way for people to get it (for free).  A separate download should work.

Sticking with the dlls is less of a pain to support, though.  I'd do as mewse said

(In Linux, you can also set LD_LIBRARY_PATH to the path of a subdir with the .so files in a wrapper script or executable, or embed a relative rpath into the main executable for mostly the same effect.  Relative rpaths are relative to the current directory though, and doesn't seem to affect dlopen for some reason.)

Oh also, the above is based on what I (think I) know of the LGPL v2, which SDL is licensed under.  Haven't read the LGPL v3.  (Also IANAL blah blah etc)

Wait, there's an ending?  I just stopped playing when everyone was in love since I didn't want to break their little digital hearts again.  What was I supposed to do after that?

Posted an update (same filenames as before).  Some fixes, and things now move around slightly.

Sounds like a re-theming of the gameplay from Robot Finds Kitten, yes?  Neat!

Yep.  As I say in the readme it's inspired by rfk, though "rip-off!" might be slightly closer to the truth

Sorry, but, what exactly do you do? Just fumble randomly until you find Holmes?

Essentially, yes .  Just wander around and bump into things to talk to them.  If you're lucky, you might find Sherlock before you've tried them all!  If not, at least you get to hear random musings from lots of strangers.  (With the update, they might bump into you too occasionally.)

[Update]

You are Watson. Sherlock Holmes is missing! You should probably find him. Download: [ windows ][ linux (x86) ] Made in one day!  Didn't have time to finish my original idea(s), but I wanted to finish something for this compo.  So I made this. Move around with the arrow keys and bump into things.  Enter restarts, F11 toggles fullscreen, M toggles music.  Have fun! Update: Added some slight movement (+ some fixes)

So it's too late to join, then?

If it's not too late, I'd like to join this too.

[!]

Don't worry, I haven't forgotten about you .  Sorry about my lack of activity here though, I've been a bit busy the past couple of weeks.  Also didn't get around to making a tune for this myself yet, but I'll get on that later today or maybe tomorrow.

Anyway, I closed my eyes and listened to all the tunes a couple times, and I've reached a decision!  Here goes..

increpare, I did like your tunes, but they didn't really give me the feeling of flying through clouds.  Sorry.

RadRuss, your tune is amazing, really well done and literally gave me chills at one point.  However, while I can picture myself flying through clouds to this tune, the feeling is unfortunately not as strong as with C418's and Annabelle's tunes.  Also it doesn't really sound like it's a beautiful day at all.  There's something really sinister there.  (Besides, you ran the previous challenge. )

C418, I really like your tune.  It really gives the feeling of flying through clouds, and I seriously considered choosing yours as the winner for a while.  It does seem a bit unfinished, though.  Too bad you didn't finish this, eh

That leaves Annabelle Kennedy!  I can almost feel the clouds flying by as I listen to this, it does feel like a beautiful day, and the tune is generally excellent.  This deserves the first place!  Congratulations, Annabelle!

Sounds good to me!  Now then...flying like a sparrow, or flying like an F-14 jet?

That's up to you!  I was thinking someone having fun up there, flying around unassisted at high speeds just to feel the wind against their face (maybe soaring would be a better word?), maybe playing with the clouds.  I won't kill you if you interpret it differently though

[Flying through the clouds!]

It's a beautiful day, and you could do with some wind in your hair.  Luckily you've got the power of flight, so off you go!  This week's theme is Flying through the clouds!

Good luck!

Wow, thanks guys!  I'll post the new thread in a little bit.

mjau: Yours reminds me VERY much of Metroid at the beginning. That can only be a good thing! The chase is properly exciting as well, and the one complaint I might have is that it seems a little meandering, like someone just improvising on a theme. The part where I think it sounds most 'purposeful' would be at around 1:25, where the sequence descends. I like this composition very much, I'd just be interested in seeing what it could sound like if it were restructured a little. 

It probably sounds like improvising because that's exactly what I did :D (well, I think...  it's a little unnerving because I never know where the tunes I make come from, if I'm just subconsciously remembering something else or making things up.  Probably a bit of both).  But yeah, I'm pretty new at this music creation thing, so some basic things like, uh, structure, still eludes me.  Have to work on that.

Anyway, great work everyone!  I'll go post the new thread now.

Decided to give this a try.  The result could've been more suspenseful , but the chase part turned out ok I think.  Made with PxTone.

lab.ogg

I think that NES tiles are 8*8, 4 colors per tile but games usually clumped them together into 16*16 blocks.

That was because of a hardware limitation, you could only set the palette for groups of 2x2 tiles on a standard NES, and there was a limitation of how many palettes there was to choose from, too (I think it was 4).  Some games had a chip in the cart that made it possible to set palette for each tile though (and you could do screen splits and such to get more palettes per screen, etc).

Yeah, don't worry about it too much.  If anyone understood my post though, good for you .  (That hashing code I quoted has been released as public domain by its author btw, so it's free for anyone to use.)

Just for the hell of it though, xor is exclusive or.  It works on the individual bits of a number.  Bits are how numbers are represented internally in the computer.  They're "binary digits", each one can have a value of just 0 or 1 in stead of the usual ten choices of 0-9 we have in the number system we use normally, which is called the decimal system.  When you put several bits together you can make larger numbers called binary numbers with just the 0 and 1s, for example 101010 in binary is the same as 42 in decimal.  The decimal system is base 10, since it has ten digits:  To get the value of 42, you take the first digit, 4, and multiply it by 10, and then you add 2, getting, well, 42.  The binary system is base 2 (only two possible values for each bit), so you multiply by twos in stead.  10 is 1 * 2 + 0 = 2, 101010 is 1 * (2*2*2*2*2) + 0 * (2*2*2*2) + 1 * (2*2*2) + 0 * (2*2) + 1 * 2 + 0, or 1*32 + 0*16 + 1*8 + 0*4 + 1*2 + 0 = 42.  You can do the same thing to convert from other bases.

So anyway, xor works on the bits of a number individually.  If it gets two equal bits as input, the resulting bit is 0, and if it gets two different bits as input, the resulting bit is 1.  For example, 101010 xor 000111 = 101101.  Bit shift operations also work on bits, but not individually.  They shift the bits up and down.  101010 << 1 (shift up 1 bit) is 1010100 (84, or 42*2), 101010 >> 1 is 10101 (21, or 42/2).

Awesome!  It's like a demo with video.  Was this made for something, or is it just some people having fun?

3. Multiply all the ASCI codes together to make one big number.

There's one big problem with that.  Since order doesn't matter for multiplication, any words with the same characters in a different order would come out with the same result.  Same goes for addition etc.  It'd be better to use a real hash function for hashing your string.  Here's a good/simple one for strings (from Wikipedia, also, Bob Jenkins has a website with lots of hash functions):

Code:

uint32_t jenkins_one_at_a_time_hash(unsigned char *key, size_t key_len)
{
    uint32_t hash = 0;
    size_t i;
 
    for (i = 0; i < key_len; i++) {
        hash += key[i];
        hash += (hash << 10);
        hash ^= (hash >> 6);
    }
    hash += (hash << 3);
    hash ^= (hash >> 11);
    hash += (hash << 15);
    return hash;
}

(if you're not familiar with c, << is left-shift, >> is right-shift, ^= does a xor between the variable and the value and assigns the result)

Also, personally I'd use UTF-8 (or some sort of unicode) in stead of ASCII to support other languages than english in a consistent way

int value = CalculateHashOfUserEnteredString( userString );
srand( value );
int numberOfEnemies = rand();
int enemyMaxHealth = rand();
int enemySpeed = rand();

This also has a problem, but only if you're concerned about consistent results on multiple platforms.  Unfortunately different c libraries implement the random function in different ways, so while you'll get consistent results on one platform, you probably won't get the same results in Windows as in Linux or OS X with the same seed, for example.  Only way around that is to use some well-defined function in stead.. (should use existing code or at least existing algorithm though, it's hard to get random right)

[It's never the butler.]

"It's never the butler."

A bit close to 'The Butler Did It', a game with almost the exact same description someone made for last weekend's Ludum Dare..