Melly, your clue is totally giving me a clue... I'm imagining a game now where you play a character created in the mind of someone who's in a coma. You have to leave on a quest to stop the approaching apocalypse, which of course is when the host of the dreamworld wakes up and forgets everything and everyone in the character's world. So you have to travel deeper into his mind to ensure that he never wakes up. The main character is the coma guy's dream avatar, and so that brings up some interesting conflicts, and as you travel through his dreams and deeper into his mind you grow to understand the mind of the guy even as you quest to screw him over by pushing him into a permanent coma.

Dammit. I guess that's another one to add to the 'someday' stack.

Okay, fine. I was gonna take a shower and generally neaten up beforehand, but if yer so damn impatient...  :D

The theme of the first challenge is...
FIRE!!!
Maybe it's the theme for a thrilling escape from a towering inferno? Or perhaps the fire is a campfire and it's the only thing keeping the wolves at bay? Maybe you're a sorcerer, and you make the flames dance to your whim to entertain your children. There's a lot of ways to go with this one guys. Enjoy! 

Seems like we've got a decent base for the first go. I've already got a theme in mind, and I'll be announcing it when I wake up tomorrow (probably around noon  :D)
As far as deciding successive themes goes, I figure the way we'll do it for now is whoever picks the theme also can pick someone to pick the next theme. No back and forths, obviously: if someone picks you, you can't pick them next. No 3 person cycles either, unless they're the only people participating. Also, if you pick someone, try to notify them a few days in advance and via PM so that they notice: I'd like to keep the themes coming on Thursday. If it gets to a certain point and no one's announced a theme, I'll go ahead and do so myself. Yeah. I think that'll work. 

I'm pretty new here, but I saw a link to the old music challenge thread in the sticky, and damn that looked fun. So I'm thinking if there's any interest I'd like to get that started back up again, with maybe some minor changes in the name of increased longevity. Here's what I'm thinking:

a) Bi or tri-weekly:
I think part of the reason the thread died down so fast before is because asking people to put together a piece in a week for a game is a little steep a participation price. Perhaps making it every other or every third week would keep people from burning out on the idea.

b) No 'winners':
This is an idea that I liked from the previous challenge. There's no accounting for subjective tastes, and if you're good at what you do you probably don't need a meaningless interweb trophy to showcase it. While I'd like to see a certain amount of competitive spirit, I think it should be more in the name of trying to showcase the extent of our abilities rather than trying to win some nebulous 'prize'

c) I don't wanna be the guy who sets the theme every week  :D
Okay, mostly selfishness on my part, but I don't think it'd be as much fun(for me) if I worked off of my own cues all the time. Also, I think this would keep the thread a lot fresher, because there would be all sorts of different and, most likely, unusual ideas presented for the themes. As to how to decide who does it... I'm not sure. Perhaps if we have a group of 'regulars' to the challenge then we could just pass the job around in circles? Which brings me to my next point...

d) Commitment?
Basically, as long as people can just walk in and out, there's eventually going to be one week where basically no one gives a shit and after that it's just going to die. That seems to be what happened to the last one. So basically all I'm thinking is maybe have a group of regs who, to some extent, expect each other to submit pieces. (edit: Holy crap I just reread that and I said basically like basically a gajillion times basically)
Nothing big, I'm just looking for minor guilt pangs to keep people honest

Well, how does that sound? If you guys generally like where I'm going with this, then I can stick up a theme to use on Thursday, in honor of the predecessor thread. If not, then I can change! Just let me know what you think would be a better way of doing it.

And the first NEW music challenge is more or less over-ish!
First theme: FIRE!!!
C418
Annabelle Kennedy
Kobel
RadRuss
KareemK

I've been reading through the SFML tutorials and so far I really like what I see. It seems like this could provide an interface nearly as painless as Flash's and FAR faster. No decisions yet, but as I said, I like what I see here.

Okay, I think I can do what I was thinking of doing with vector stuff with a bunch of layered Raster components and color transforms. With that in mind, OpenGL is looking more and more appealing, though I've yet to get into the guts of it. Sorry if this is coming across as flaky and indecisive, I'm just trying to learn a lot of new stuff at once here.

I'm looking into OpenGL now, which is actually what prompted the complaint about all the tutorials assuming the Win API. SDL is also sort of on the backburner, as I think I want something more robust for graphics but I understand it has pretty good support for input and audio and whatnot. I should probably at least look it over real quick as see basically what SDL can do right out of the box. GLFW I hadn't heard of before, so I'll look into that now.

[WELCOME!]

I feel like I haven't said "welcome" in the welcome thread in a while.  So WELCOME!

What a thing to post on April 1st  :D

Okay, some stuff about me. My name is Ben Taber: I love games, of course, or I wouldn't be here, but I wouldn't say that I love them more than any other medium. Ever since I learned to read I've been an avid reader, and I have a great deal of appreciation for cinema as well. In actuality the first time I played Super Mario Bros. I sucked so bad that it didn't really appeal to me(though I did enjoy watching my brother and father play). However, I tried it again a few years later, and from that point on I was hooked.

I'm not going to write a complete autobiography here to tell you how I got here, but let me sum up basically where I'm at right now. I'm interested in making games, as I have been for 15 years or so. In pursuit of that interest, I've learned the fundamentals of programming and electronic music(in doing so composing many many pieces which may yet someday be used in a game soundtrack). I also began studying game design books and, through them, the games I play; it makes it a lot harder to play a game now, actually, without thinking of all the little design issues I would have done differently. I even gave a technical school(no names!) an unreasonable amount of money to mostly tell me things I already knew or could have figured out myself, but at least I have a degree to show for it. More importantly, the instructors there insisted upon their students picking up some rudimentary art skills, which I have since developed to the point where I can be fairly proud of them (though, of course, much of the work being carried around in binders at GDC put mine to shame... at least in terms of technical merit).

Where I'm going next... hell if I know. I've developed so many branches of talent that I'm actually really confused about where I want to go now. I've got a project in mind that I want to develop, but it's the sort of thing that can't possibly be done in a short period of time, so I'm trying to figure out how to support myself in the interim. What doesn't help is that, though this project was originally conceived to be built in Flash using AS3, I just recently decided that AS was unsatisfactory due to a series of very unusual and unreliable program results and some latent concerns about its ability to handle joystick input. So, I'm planning on going with C++ now, but I'm rusty with it and I need to decide what libraries I'm going to use and all of the tutorials seem to be reliant upon the windows API when my desire to make the whole thing platform independent is why I went with Flash in the first place! Sorry, had to vent a little 

Enough of that. Why don't I do the favorite games thing? Everyone seems to like that.
In no particular order...
Grim Fandango
Silent Hill 1 & 2
These games represent what is IMO some of the best storytelling in games ever... often, unfortunately, to the detriment of gameplay, but that's beside the point. Grim Fandango is outstanding because of the sheer excellence of the story it has to tell, and the SH games because of the way it's told. In the first SH game, the story is mostly told by newspaper clippings and pieces of diary scattered around the town, and multiple theories as to what the hell is going on are presented to the player; when the game ends, we STILL don't know for sure what was going on. SH2 tells its story through the environments, but in a different way, where the world shifts around James in such a way as to represent his state of mind. Even remembering this game, the terrible sorrow that permeates it affects me.

Final Fantasy 6
Chrono Trigger
I believe these two games together jointly define the apex of the traditional JRPG genre. FF6 provided ample character customization while avoiding the trap of making them all functionally identical, and allowed for significant player innovation in the way each character was developed. FF6 was artistically excellent in every way, though limited by the graphics of the time, and because of this and its superior gameplay overshadows the competition even today. Chronotrigger is less impressive in terms of gameplay, but the soundtrack and setting define a slightly detached surreal air that has always captured my imagination. I don't know how the CT team achieved what they did, and to be honest I'm not sure they do either. No game I've ever played has come close to capturing the warm surreal bleakness that defined the world of Chronotrigger.

Half Life 2/Portal
There's basically nothing to say here that hasn't already been said. I honestly can't think of anything  :D

Einhander
I'll be the first to admit that I don't know a lot about shmups, but Einhander is my favorite of this genre I know nothing about. The weapon-switching system and core destruction systems made gameplay fast and dynamic, with a robust level of challenge that wasn't often seen on the PS1. Also, I must say as an electronic composer, Kenichiro Fukui has achieved some things on this soundtrack which AMAZE me, using very unusual time signatures but integrated so well into the tune that I didn't even notice there was anything unusual until several listens later. The Einhander soundtrack will always impress the hell out of me I think.

Final Fantasy Tactics
Job system! FFT manages to completely obsolete FF5, a mediocre game improved by the excellent job system, by including it in a game that would still be excellent without it. Between that, a dark, complex and involving plot(muddied somewhat by the translation), a powerful soundtrack, and some of my favorite character designs ever (I have a gigantic nerd crush on Agrias), this is still the best TRPG I've ever played, despite being the first.

Legend of Zelda: LttP
This game still taps into some primal childlike joy-place for me. Mostly it's the little aesthetic details which most games wouldn't have bothered with... the shadow of the leaves in the forest, the sparkling dew dotting the mountaintops. These details, accompanied by an outstanding soundtrack and absorbing gameplay, make this game unusually involving. I think that, as with CT, the developers stumbled across an unusual and distinct tone which is unlikely to ever be seen in another game, making LttP truly irreplaceable.

Castlevania: SotN
This game has withstood the test of time better than any other I've played. Yes, I can fight the bosses and take note of all the things I would have done differently were I developing the game, and yes it's WAY too easy now, but I still am amazed by the effortless flow of this game and the minimalistic charm of the art style. I can't even describe how much I enjoy this game. Because of this, SotN is the primary influence on me in the design of the project I'm working on now.

Phew. I think I got long winded there. Sorry. Seeing as I mentioned liking other media as well though, why don't I wrap up with mini-lists of books and movies I also think are amazing, though I won't bother typing descriptions this time.

Books
Mother Night, by Kurt Vonnegut
Catch-22, by Joseph Heller
Invisible Monsters, by Chuck Palahniuk
A Prayer for Owen Meany, by John Irving

Movies
The Big Lebowski
Dead Man
The Incredibles & Ratatouille
American Beauty
Spirited Away
Fight Club

Okay, the reason I keep on harping on the vector graphics thing is because I want to be able to modify the fills in real time based upon position. If my understanding is correct, doing 2d in openGL is basically a matter of disabling the perspective and just using the z axis for sorting out occlusion, then doing everything with basically textured planes: Is that correct?
So, in those terms, what I need to be able to do is draw to those planes with fairly powerful vector tools in real time, ideally with a toolset that would make direct conversion from common vector formats relatively easy. Although, I suppose if OpenGL can support THAT many bitmaps maybe I could do the same thing with multiple layered images... hmmm. Well that's an idea 

I'm going to be checking out some openGL tutorials; I'm noticing a lack of subpixel accuracy in Allegro's vector drawn graphics, and this displeases me  :D

Seeing as I'm going to have to write code to interpret whatever vector graphics format I need, having native support for importing them isn't actually a big deal. In fact, I may yet get some use out of all of that time I spent learning AS3 by making a tool in it to import pre-made vector images and export them in whatever proprietary format I need for this project.

If OpenGL had support for vector graphics then that would be a pretty ideal solution. Anyone know if there's an add-on for that anywhere?

Well, this is going to be entirely 2d; would OpenGL have any point in that context? Right now, I'm looking at the Allegro tutorials linked in the stickies, and it seems like it might be suitable to my purposes, though I'll probably do more research before I settle on a final choice. SDL sounds interesting by your description though, I'll definitely check that out.

Okay I don't see any reason to make a new thread for this, though I will if I don't get a response here.

Basically, here's the situation: I've been working on the bones of a game engine in Actionscript 3, and somewhere in the process of working out the collision testing code I got fed up. Perhaps it's because of Flash's undocumented 'features' (hey guys, did you know that Flash automatically floors sprite coordinates to the closest 0.05 value? It's true!), but at the point where a TRACE was causing my code to behave erroneously I really started to question how worthwhile this endeavor was (especially given my pre-existing concerns about Flash's lack of native joystick and mouse-right-click support).

So, okay, let's go to hypothetical town. Say I ditch AS3 and want to develop this in C++. I'm a little rusty, and I've never developed an actual application, but when I see code snippets I usually understand them okay so I think I'll be fine in terms of converting the structure of the game engine over.

However, I know two things about graphics programming: Jack and shit. So I either need to download a graphics library which will give me the same capabilities as Flash's (particularly the ability to create both vector and raster images and draw both to the screen) or a tutorial which will let me make one myself (preferably the former, this sounds like an ungodly pain in the ass). Any graphics library would need to be relatively platform independent, as per my earlier concerns. Of course, I'll need the same for sound. This is concern number 1.

Concern number 2 is that the game programming book I have (Beginning Game Programming, Michael Morrison) focuses entire on developing within the context of the Win API, which would kind of shit on my goal of making this platform independent as well. This is less tricky, as all I really need is a good example of a game written in C++ that DOESN'T rely upon the Win API to go off of (preferably heavily commented and/or accompanied by a tutorial).

I'm sure I'm going to find it very difficult to figure all this stuff out in C++. HOWEVER, I've noticed that basically every tough to eliminate bug I've encountered so far has been a result of Flash's bullshit (CONSTANTS SHOULD BE CONSTANT GODDAMMIT). Considering that it will make the final product superior and it's beginning to look like it may actually end up easier once I get into the swing of it, I think this is the right decision to make.

So: I would appreciate it VERY much if any of the more experienced developers here could point me towards some resources to help me resolve the above concerns. All advice is welcome, even if you think I'm a total jackass and I'm making a huge mistake. I've heard worse before 

I was planning to go entirely 2d; do the environments you mention sport any substantial benefits over AS/Flash in that context?

Anyone know how much it would cost to hire Keanu Reeves to read this site to me?

Understood. Thanks for the help guys. I'm reading through the sticky at the top comparing tools now, so that should help clear some things up too.

Hm. Is there any solution readily portable to both PS3 and 360, or is that too much to hope for?

I'm thinking about starting up a game project and looking at the different options for development environments. I was originally planning on using Flash/Actionscript, and this is still one of the primary platforms I'm considering.

However, I'm concerned about platform portability, as if I DO finish this project I would like the option of pushing it on consoles as well as on PC. If anyone could just point me towards something listing the portability pros and cons of different environments, I'd be much obliged.