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Terry
Spectral Form
Joined: 16 Jun 2002
Posts: 798
Location: Dublin, Ireland
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 Posted: Mon Oct 18, 2004 10:00 pm Post subject: |
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I'm having serious computer problems, and it looks like there's no way in hell that I'm going to get a copy out tonight. Long story short, I've formatted my hard drive again. But I have a backup, so all is not lost! (And at least the port in my room works - I'm connecting from Knoppix)
So I'm just going to go ahead and ask again: It seems now that every entrant is having issues - how about we have another two days extension? I mean, I fully agree with the motivation behind limiting the contest time to a weekend, but now that we've taken part and nearly finished, that time limit has served it's motivational purpose!
We COULD all try and release a shoddy walkabout demo tonight, or we could spend the next two days finishing the games at our lesuire... what do you say?
Personally, it's going to take me at least until midnight to get my computer working again, so if you all disagree, I'm afraid I'm out of the contest...
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DeveloperX
202192397
Joined: 04 May 2003
Posts: 1626
Location: Decatur, IL, USA
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| Posted: Tue Oct 19, 2004 12:07 am Post subject: |
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| Chaotic Harmony wrote: | how about we have another two days extension? I mean, I fully agree with the motivation behind limiting the contest time to a weekend, but now that we've taken part and nearly finished, that time limit has served it's motivational purpose!
We COULD all try and release a shoddy walkabout demo tonight, or we could spend the next two days finishing the games at our lesuire... what do you say? |
Man, I agree....everyone seems to be having trouble...though most are further along than Dream Destroyer....I think that if we can get the engine working tonight, then 2 days would give us time to create the game content.
I'm sure that Mandrake, and Bjorn would also agree that it would be best to extend the competition....right guys?
hint* *hint*
Please?
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tcaudilllg
Dragonmaster
Joined: 20 Jun 2002
Posts: 1731
Location: Cedar Bluff, VA
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| Posted: Tue Oct 19, 2004 1:00 am Post subject: |
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Competition has its limits, and the state of this contest is an excellent example of those limits. Although the RPGDX contest paradigm has increased the volume of independent RPGs, it has by no means increased their quality. As much as I would like to see my team win this competition--and I'm sure that they would--there comes a time to step back and ask what one is fighting for, and whether the prize itself is the right answer....
DeveloperX, let's just let this one go. We'll be back. ;)
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DeveloperX
202192397
Joined: 04 May 2003
Posts: 1626
Location: Decatur, IL, USA
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| Posted: Tue Oct 19, 2004 1:11 am Post subject: |
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| LordGalbalan wrote: | Competition has its limits, and the state of this contest is an excellent example of those limits. Although the RPGDX contest paradigm has increased the volume of independent RPGs, it has by no means increased their quality. As much as I would like to see my team win this competition--and I'm sure that they would--there comes a time to step back and ask what one is fighting for, and whether the prize itself is the right answer....
DeveloperX, let's just let this one go. We'll be back. ;) |
I agree about the quality over quantity,..
Update: In the event that there is no extension, then Dream Destroyer will be completed nevertheless!
I have enjoyed working with you guys (refers to his team) and I think that we make a great team! We can do this game if we have more time.
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Mandrake
elementry school minded asshole
Joined: 28 May 2002
Posts: 1341
Location: GNARR!
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| Posted: Tue Oct 19, 2004 2:07 am Post subject: |
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Lord Galbalan: you are a callous prick and an asshole. If I were still admin, I would ban your ass until your gained the sensible human decency that even pricks like me and Happy have. You are a runt and shit. You are an idiot and an ass. The way you treat your co-workers is disgusting and despicable. You shame everyone that has ever programmed anything.
With that said, I was actually going to see if everyone wanted to go another weekend. I could upload mine, but I do not want to win by default, and the game is just a simple demo right now. There are only 4 people (or teams, rather) participating. We are all behind. We should allow ourselves an extention. After all, by not extending it, what do we accomplish? Nothing.
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LeoDraco
Demon Hunter
Joined: 24 Jun 2003
Posts: 584
Location: Riverside, South Cali
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| Posted: Tue Oct 19, 2004 2:14 am Post subject: |
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| Mandrake wrote: | | Lord Galbalan: you are a callous prick and an asshole. If I were still admin, I would ban your ass until your gained the sensible human decency that even pricks like me and Happy have. You are a runt and shit. You are an idiot and an ass. The way you treat your co-workers is disgusting and despicable. You shame everyone that has ever programmed anything. |
Jesus, Mandrake. Regardless of the (apparent) truth of your position, there is something to be said about tact.
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tcaudilllg
Dragonmaster
Joined: 20 Jun 2002
Posts: 1731
Location: Cedar Bluff, VA
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| Posted: Tue Oct 19, 2004 2:20 am Post subject: |
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| Mandrake wrote: | Lord Galbalan: you are a callous prick and an asshole. If I were still admin, I would ban your ass until your gained the sensible human decency that even pricks like me and Happy have. You are a runt and shit. You are an idiot and an ass. The way you treat your co-workers is disgusting and despicable. You shame everyone that has ever programmed anything.
With that said, I was actually going to see if everyone wanted to go another weekend. I could upload mine, but I do not want to win by default, and the game is just a simple demo right now. There are only 4 people (or teams, rather) participating. We are all behind. We should allow ourselves an extention. After all, by not extending it, what do we accomplish? Nothing. |
With words like these, I must be doing something right! ;)
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Mandrake
elementry school minded asshole
Joined: 28 May 2002
Posts: 1341
Location: GNARR!
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| Posted: Tue Oct 19, 2004 2:38 am Post subject: |
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I think, things are passed the necassity of common civility. If I had a stick, I would smack him with it.
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DeveloperX
202192397
Joined: 04 May 2003
Posts: 1626
Location: Decatur, IL, USA
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| Posted: Tue Oct 19, 2004 4:18 am Post subject: |
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| Mandrake wrote: | | I think, things are passed the necassity of common civility. If I had a stick, I would smack him with it. |
I think someone should teach you civility.
You are rude.
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Rooter
Copyright Infringer
Joined: 09 Feb 2003
Posts: 61
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| Posted: Tue Oct 19, 2004 5:16 am Post subject: |
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| Mandrake wrote: | | Lord Galbalan: you are a callous prick and an asshole. If I were still admin, I would ban your ass until your gained the sensible human decency that even pricks like me and Happy have. You are a runt and shit. You are an idiot and an ass. The way you treat your co-workers is disgusting and despicable. You shame everyone that has ever programmed anything. |
Coming from the king asshole himself, I think Galbalan should take that as a compliment. God you're a pretentious prick Mandrake... get over yourself.
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Adam
Mage
Joined: 30 Dec 2002
Posts: 416
Location: Australia
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| Posted: Tue Oct 19, 2004 5:29 am Post subject: |
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| Mandrake wrote: | | Lord Galbalan: you are a callous prick and an asshole. If I were still admin, I would ban your ass until your gained the sensible human decency that even pricks like me and Happy have. You are a runt and shit. You are an idiot and an ass. The way you treat your co-workers is disgusting and despicable. You shame everyone that has ever programmed anything. |
I don't see too much wrong with what LordG said. The contest can't keep on being extended indefinately. And, if a game isn't ready by this stage in the comp you have to accept that it won't be ready for this comp.
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Bjorn
Demon Hunter
Joined: 29 May 2002
Posts: 1425
Location: Germany
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| Posted: Tue Oct 19, 2004 6:41 am Post subject: |
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There is little point in doing a race towards the first more or less complete (but rushed) game. None of us were apparently really prepared and we all had too much work on our hands to be able to finish the game in a weekend.
I propose aborting the competition. The start we all made on our games could grow into some nice game releases later I think.
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Terry
Spectral Form
Joined: 16 Jun 2002
Posts: 798
Location: Dublin, Ireland
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| Posted: Tue Oct 19, 2004 8:45 am Post subject: |
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| Quote: | | I propose aborting the competition. The start we all made on our games could grow into some nice game releases later I think. |
I understand that position, but 3 of the four of us have said that we would like the extension. So I think we should make one last attempt to finish the contest. How about we say that we upload the finished product on wedensday evening, regardless of it's status, and leave it at that. I'm pretty sure that would be enough for most people. No extensions after that.
By the way, Mandrake, that was way over the line.
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DeveloperX
202192397
Joined: 04 May 2003
Posts: 1626
Location: Decatur, IL, USA
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| Posted: Tue Oct 19, 2004 9:33 am Post subject: |
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| Chaotic Harmony wrote: |
I understand that position, but 3 of the four of us have said that we would like the extension. So I think we should make one last attempt to finish the contest. How about we say that we upload the finished product on wedensday evening, regardless of it's status, and leave it at that. I'm pretty sure that would be enough for most people. No extensions after that.
By the way, Mandrake, that was way over the line. |
I fully agree with Chaotic Harmony.
We should all upload what we have, disregarding the game's stage of development, wednesday evening.
I've made alot of progress today, and it may be possible to get something playable by then, maybe even finished, depending on the amount of bugs we have to squash, and the resources that need to be created.
This competition has done alot for me, and CCPS Solutions.
I have learned more in the past few days about program structure, resource management, the need for reusable tools, and solid code bases. I have also learned that good team management is a top priority, if not _the_ top priority for anyone who wishes to develop _anything_ with someone else. Be it a game, and engine, a tool, or even a custom text editing program, you have to respect your team, and yourself, or you will fail.
With that said, I vote for the final extension, and I hope that the admins (Bjorn, and I don't remember if there _is_ another)
agree with me on this last statement:
Throughout the entire contest, it was an enjoyable, though sometimes difficult experience for anyone involved, and has definately shown each of us what we _truly_ are capable of, when we are required to get things done in an extremely limited environment. (For some, this is more than others, but you get the idea)
I for one, was very unprepared. At first I was going to use qbasic, then Mandrake said I could use Gia, then I had alot of trouble getting Gia setup, mainly because he had not written any tutorials, and his examples were not commented enough to make up for the documentation, which was as weak as watered coffee. Anyway, then LordGalbalan PMd me, and asked me if I wanted to work together, I said yeah, and then we went from there. I found Gustav a day later on the rpg dreamer forum (shortly after posting an article on allegro game programming) and he asked me to help him with an opengl game..anyway, we started talking, and he mentioned that he was a pixel artist, I saw some examples, and I knew that he would be the best choice for my entry's artwork. I didn't have anything planned. At all. I brought the Dream Destroyer project to life overnight, by writing a short story, thinking of a few character names, and starting the engine with c++ and allegro. After driving myself insane trying to figure out pixel*pixel scrolling, I eventually got it working, by playing FFV and looking very closely to the way things worked...Istarted a new cpp file, and shortly after, I had my working engine base. I was happy, then the thought occured to me, I had to have a scripting language...I thought about it awhile, and developed my own command based language, and then thought about the script parser..man this was not going to be fun. I thought about it somemore, and decided to compile my scripts into bytecode..This posed a big problem on me. I had no idea where to begin, so I started writing my script compiler in qb (my native programming language is BASIC if you guys don't know that) and after nearly 15 hours, it worked! I was really excited. LordGalbalan wrote the virtual machine that loads the bytecode into the game engine..this process took hours upon hours to figure out. Then, right when we think that we're good to go...*compile*...*errors* :(
Not just a few, but illogical errors that took more time to fix than anyone wanted to spend, and to make matters worse, the script compiler failed when it came down to compiling the first scripts for the actual game..out of memory, and syntax errors flagged in the scripts? Huh, this couldn't be! It worked! It Worked! I screamed at my computer...(didn't help) LordGalbalan insisted that I rewrite the compiler using VB..so I did, and now everything works great on that end. Scripts of nearly any size (10mb) can be compiled into as little as 1/4 of the size of the script! The engine was soon to be complete...no errors...compiled okay, linked okay, *RUN* ... CrAsH! "this program performed an illegal operation and will be shut down" BAH! NoooooOOOOoo, we were so close, there was no obvious error, no syntax errors, what could it be? To no avail, after rewriting the bulk of the code, we've still not figured out why it crashed. And most likely will restart, again, this time a little more wiser than last, now knowing the working algorithms for everything.
Also, I should mention, that I needed a map editor..LordGalbalan suggested Sphere...I tried it, it didn't work, it simply crashed, or 'ate' my graphics files, destroying the contents..*good thing I had backups!* I looked into using Mappy....MappyAL 8bit only. DAMN! My game is 32bit! Mappy was out. I looked at Tiled..this was too much work to implement. I looked at at least 15 public domain map editors, and to no avail.
I eventually wrote my own using VB, and I must say, it _IS_ the best damned map editor ever written by an idependant developer! At least for me it is! ;) So, we have a map editor, a scripting language, script compiler, virtual machine, graphics, sound!, music!, and a pixel-scrolling tile engine..what could stop us from winning this competition? Time. There was only 20 minutes left by this time..then I heard of the 1 day extension, which was great, except that the engine now wouldn't compile, was over 2500 lines of code, had errors that were so illogical that it made me want to just give up, I didn't. I haven't. I wont. I am determined to complete my game, with my wonderfully talented team backing me up, there is no way I will fail.
I may not make the contest, but I sure as hell will try.
wow, I guess that _wasn't_ the last statement.. :P
Heh, I guess it needed to be said.
And if not, may all of you learn from my mistakes.
If you are entering a 24/48/36/72 hour competition, make sure that you plan ahead, and have a solid set of tools to work with.
With the proper tools at my disposal, I would have finished my game in the second day. I have no doubt about that.
Peace everyone.
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Rambling Indie Games, LLC
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Bjorn
Demon Hunter
Joined: 29 May 2002
Posts: 1425
Location: Germany
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| Posted: Tue Oct 19, 2004 11:32 am Post subject: |
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Guys, it's ok, you've got the extension. I'm turning this contest in a week long one, as I don't want anybody to rush it in a day or two now. Most of us will have job and school going on throughout the week. Upload anytime before the end of next weekend, the contest will enter voting stage on Monday when at least 2 participants have released a game.
That's final. We all seem to have prepared our projects as if we had a week to finish it, and now we have it. :-)
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