Introducing: IdeaHack
The IdeaHack competition is a game programming competition with a difference - namely, it is defined by its entrants. Each participant submits one 'requirement' before the competition. The requirements may govern gameplay and game design, but not technical issues, and genre must remain free.
The entrants then have one week in which to write their games. The entries will be judged according to how many requirements they meet and how well they meet them.
Here are examples of the kinds of requirement that will not be accepted:
- "The game must be 3D." (This is a technical issue.)
- "All graphics must be generated in run time." (Likewise.)
- "The game must be a high-speed action game." (This relates to genre.)
- "The game must be better than Quake 3 Arena." (Do you know any games that aren't? )
Some technical requirements have been laid out in order to ensure that everyone can play your game. They mostly relate to portability and hardware issues. If you wish to add to this list, and make a good case, in good time, your wish may just come true Here are the technical requirements:
1. Use a recent WIP of Allegro, and do not use any OS-specific stuff. conio.h is out of the question.
2. Release full source code.
3. Do not rely on 3D acceleration. Remember your game must run in DOS!
4. Do not assume the user's graphics card can do true colour graphics in resolutions below 640x480.
5. Source code and data must be 1337 KB or smaller when zipped. We do not all have 128GB/s connections! Note that this number has been chosen according to a complex mathematical formula.
6. Any other libraries must be included in the zip file.
Reasonable efforts will be made by the judges to resolve unforeseen portability issues when the competition concludes.
The competition will run from Saturday 15 September 00:00 GMT to Friday 21 September 24:00 GMT - so you can get a good start on the game during the weekend and add the finishing touches in the evenings after school or work. Remember that many time zones have the clocks set one hour later in summer than in winter; for instance, the UK is in GMT +1 at the moment, not GMT, so the competition starts and ends at 01:00.
If you are interested, please post in this thread. We will soon set up a website for the competition, at which point we'll post here again with details. Remember, IdeaHack will not run without your participation!

count me in

That sounds very interesting....
Count me in too.
So, now i'd need to find some team-mates.
I wonder why am I up at this time (it's 04.10)

Man, is it just me, or are these competitions getting more frequent?
bdavis, are you going to compete?
I might join, but I'm not making any promises...
Are teams alowed?

count me in as well, even if I don't really know if I'll be able to code in that period due to exams =(

Some more details on the compo would be nice...

This is nothing compared to the beginning of the year... there was like a compo every week!

Cool idea for a compo! Too bad I don't have time to participate. Well, good luck anyway.

I'm lost... is it like... .everyone sumits a requirement, and then before the compo starts the requirements apply to all games?

quote:
The entries will be judged according to how many requirements they meet and how well they meet them.

I think that means that you don't have to meet all the requirements, just that the more you meet, the higher the chance is that you are going to win.

"Note that this number has been chosen according to a complex mathematical formula."

Cute. How very l337.

Are we supposed to make up the requirements here?

Zaphos, I think, if you will participate then you could put them here?

Or maybe not too... just guessing.

Shouldn't the genre be limited?
If it isn't that might be kind of tendious for the judges or voters (whichever method you'll be using)...

I'd love to join! Just give us a few examples of "good" requirements.

dosbert: am I going to compete? Ah, now that would be telling...

Yes, teams are allowed, as long as you list all the team members.

We're not going to limit the genre. The requirements should be sufficient to inspire people, if that's what you're worried about.

Zaphos: yes, put your requirements here.

Goodbytes: we're not going to give any examples of good requirements. Doing so would limit your imagination Post your ideas here, and we'll either approve them or we won't

I'd like to join as well And I'm wondering, can I use AllegroGL? I think it's not completely platform independent. (No BeOS, and I'm not sure about DOS..)

I think I'll join...
Does anybody want to be on a team with me? (I prefer working with at least one other person)

AGL is no DOS.

That compo sounds cool. I think I'll take part.

I'm looking for a team too...
Troy: Download the latest version from CVS
and it will work in DOS, the next official
release will work in DOS if you dont have
CVS.

I'm not sure what requirements would be legal, then, besides plot based ones, like: "The game must involve at least twelve drugged squirrels." Speaking of which, that's my requirement, if that is a legal requirement, and count me in.
[edit: the squirrels no longer need be murdered.]
[ August 31, 2001: Message edited by: Zaphos ]

Who's we?

The "we" is supposed to make it look like there is actually more than one person running this compo, which is supposed to make it look more professional.

How's the website coming?

elias: It seems AllegroGL isn't completely portable, so I'm afraid you can't use it. If you wish to do 3D graphics, you can either use Allegro's polygon functions (which aren't too slow in 8-bit, at least in DOS), or find an add-on library to do the polygons for you. Remember you must include all libraries used besides Allegro in the zip.

If you wish to create an optional AllegroGL port of your game, we shan't complain - but remember your game may not be judged using a 3D card!

Zaphos: your requirement is good. This is to be an interesting competition

goodbytes and dosbert: believe it or not, I'm not the only one behind this competition

I'll get back to you about the website.

A nice gameplay requirement: All the text presented to the player must be in japanese. Copy from some silly rpg if you wish, 99% of players wont notice anyway .

I won't probably take part in the competition because school is starting, but it is fun to disturb others. I'll post some more weird ideas if i come up with them.

I'm one of the 3 guys behind IdeaHack (maybe 4 of us). It's bdavis, me and nsmith.
At last I figured out how to use ftp through my firewall, so I'll be hosting it
The page is here, but note that it is not very good-looking at the moment. It was created by bdavis in a hurry to make you all happy here We'll improve the design in due course.
Those who wish to participate should write to the three e-mail addresses given on the IdeaHack page with the following information:
- Whether they are individual entrants, a team, or looking to join a team
- Their requirement for the competition
We will post here if there is anything new on the homepage.
BTW forgot one thing: In the mail tell us if you want your e-mail address published on the page or not.
[ September 01, 2001: Message edited by: Ook ]

Mars: if you are going to participate then mail us all: entheh@users.sourceforge.net; thrion@hot.ee; white_door@yahoo.com, tell us your requirement, are you in a team or not, or are you looking for one to join.
Right now we have:
entheh:
Frag: "The game must have a dog in it."
gnudutch:
lillo:
Mars:
nsmith: "Include some sort of post nuclear theme in to your game"
X-Viila: "Your game must have some random elements in it which encourage people to play the game repeatedly."
Zaphos: "The game must involve at least twelve drugged squirrels."
Teams: none at the moment.
People looking to join a team
dosbert2001: "You must mention claustrophobic ferrets at least twice in your game"
Ook:
Anyone else interested, mail us, and post in this thread too, so it dosen't look like no-one is taking part
[edited: seems that i dont know how to use the e-mail tags so i dont try]
[ September 02, 2001: Message edited by: Ook ]
[ September 02, 2001: Message edited by: Ook ]

Hey! Post whenever any new people/requirements come in! (Otherwise I'll probably forget about the compo, and I'll certainly forget the website to check.
Is all the code supposed to be fresh? No one cares if we cut and paste from old engines we've made?
So, what genres are people doing?
All the requirements so far make it look like rpg-type stuff. But I guess not, I guess you just need some (mild) excuse for a plot.

On the twelfth day of PostApoc, my true love gave to meeeee,
Twelllllllve, drug-ed squirells!
eleven blah blah blah
...
Fiiive claustrophobic ferrets!
four blah blah blah
...
and winged do-og in a pear tree.

What Ook, my requirement's not good enough for you?

Mine is the game must have a mini game(s) along the lines of pong or that card match game in Mario3.

Zaphos: Who sayd that there has to be a plot? Though it would be a bonus when
calculating the score... And you can use some other libraries, maybe even some
snippets made before, but not taking code from another game. The amount of
stolen/reused code will be a factor when calculating the score, and remember, you
have to tell us what code and from where did you reuse, we'll find it out anyway sooner or later.
Thanks for reminding me to update it here too.
Oh... and please mail us too...
brn: ermm.... huh?
gnudutch: I wrote on the page that it was OK by me and nsmith. But i'll let bdavis decide that, I haven't seen him today, so we'll know it tomorrow (for me at least).
Mattias is taking part too ( in my team ), but he has no requirement yet.
Again anyone who is interested, mail us: entheh@users.sourceforge.net, white_door@yahoo.com and thrion@hot.ee
[ September 02, 2001: Message edited by: Ook ]

No one said there needed to be a plot; I was simply looking at the requirements, and thinking that they would be most easily fulfilled with some sort of plot.

Sorry gnudutch, but you're going to have to come up with another requirement. You're effectively asking people (including yourself btw) to write two games in one week. Try to think more along the lines of the extra requirements we were given for SpeedHack - elements in the game, not extra functionality in the program, if you see what I mean.

Mattias is taking part. He told us his requirement in EFNet #allegro:

"At least 50% of the text in the game must be written in 1337, Japanese or Egyptian, or with letters in the style of Japanese or Egyptian writing."

If you do not know what 1337 is, click here. If you do not know what Japanese is, you obviously never went to a music school with lots of Japanese students As for Egyptian, you should be ashamed of yourself Over half the world population speak Egyptian natively

WHAT YOU SAY???

Let me think of a different requirement...

There are a lot of missing letters on that page... here is my attempt to complete the 1337 alphabet:

F - |=

J - _)

P - ¶

Q - (,)

U - |_|

Z - ¯/_

Okay, okay, so I'm using +127 characters, so what?

And, let me say that I really don't like the "half the game should be written in ..." requirement...

What if the game has 0 text?
1/2 * 0 = 0.
Ha! You can fulfill that requirement perfectly w/out a single word!

Where does one hire 1337 translators?

Whoops I just found one.
http://www.planetquake.com/turkey/l33translate.htm

Don't be silly
the game should have a realistic cat as the main chars companion

Realistic? As in ... well drawn?

Isn't it more fun if the requirements are loose and subject to interpretation? For the cat idea, one person might think it's supposed to be well drawn, and another might think it needs to fall asleep a lot or attack the main character when it's hungry.

The rules can be interpreted in any way( as long as their main idea is fulfilled), it would be interesting to see with what someone can come up with interpreting the rules.
If anyone wants to make a rule that can be followed in only one way then its author has to word it so that it can be understood only in one way.

A note on my requirement: Actually it goes like this:

"At least 50% of the text in the game must LOOK LIKE 1337, Japanese or Ancient Egyptian."

So i dont care if you use a hex editor to write your source, as long as the player sees some nice confusing text.

What do you mean by "look like?" It has to look like 1337, but not be in 1337? Is that even possible?

Master Goodbytes: you read through what I said about interpreting the rules, didn't you ? As long as he hasn't said anything else you can interpret the rules in the way you want to.

Sorry, I won't be able to participate, I just realized. I have too much other stuff to do.

Im glad to tell you that there are 2 more people in IdeaHack now, StevenVI - he's alone and Master Goodbytes, who wants to join a team.

StevenVI's requirement is: "There must be a heavy usage of "Cheeze", whatever that's interpreted to mean by the creator."

And Master Goodbytes's: "The game must feature a weapon called the 'Relatively Harmless Rubber Ball Launcher.' If applicable, this weapon must be necessary to complete the game"

So, anyone who is interested in joining a IdeaHack but thinks that he can't complete a game in a week should post here or mail Master Goodbytes to make a team with him.

damned me...

[ September 03, 2001: Message edited by: Ook ]

This is going to be one hell of a game I'm another with no time; I'm finally getting a lot of work done on my own stuff.

I've got a good idea for a game going and I can associate all the requirements into it, it'll be interesting to see how far I get considering I don't get home 'til 8, then I gotta start on my homework, and I'll probably have no time to work on it. Having no time isn't an excuse . I'll probably throw it all together in an hour or so.

-Steve

My idea is:
"Game should feature a special guest star from this board, and spew catchphrases/sig lines"
Now, as I understand it, the goal here is incorporate as to many ideas as possible, not necessarily all. Obviously the guy who can shoehorn ALL this stuff in the game will have a better chance of winning. Right?

StevenVI: I'm not good enough to throw it together in an hour or so And I'm still swamped with my own projects. I like gnudutch's idea; one of the better ones.

I'll join up for it, but I'm beginning to think that this competition might need to be rescheduled since the site isn't up yet and the competition dates will be upon us before you know it. Still I love challenges so I'm in .

I have to apologize. I was just skimming through when I decided to join up. Then I went back and read the posts thoroughly and saw that the site was up and running. I feel dumb now, but oh well; you can only get smarter by feeling dumber cause you learn from your mistakes .

It is going very good by now.
There are 13 participants by now ( 9 individual and 4 in a team)
I have updated the page with the new people and their requirements.

Ok, updated page again. Now there are 16 (yay!) entrants!

If you have any questions then post them here.

For my own good I post here the webaddress, so I don't have to go back a page and search around for it again:
Idea Hack Site

Whoever's in charge of the IdeaHack website:

On the site, it says my team does not have a name, but we have found a name: "IdeaHackers." Could someone please update the site to reflect this?

Goodbytes, I'm maintaining the page.
We'll get a page with proper design very soon, maybe even today, I have the layout in my computer right now, but it has no text on it, bdavis will fill in that and I'll upload it then.
I'll fix our teams name anyway

'Carp' i misread the e-mail with the new page and thought it was ready... it's not.
Sorry

I've seen the slow improvements that you've been making to the website Ook and I'd have to say that it's coming along great . And on another note; I'm going to use a few ideas from IdeaHack and make my own competition. I'll keep everyone posted on what it is and when I'll have the site up and running. I'm making the rules right now and revising them a lot to make them a little different from yours. I plan to make it DOS specific like IdeaHack and prohibit the use of conio.h, but I've got to set the rules and everything before I post the title, competition time, etc. Hope to see Ook, bdavis, and everyone else to become entrants of that competition . I've revised the rules about ten times now and am running out of things to add so I might have them up on a different post in a few days or so. I'll post a new thread and post a comment in here to make sure that everyone sees the competition. I do have a few things set for the competition, but I'm keeping quiet until I can get everything as final as possible. Sorry for the secrecy, but it makes it harder to figure out what the competition will be . I'll keep everyone informed.

[ September 08, 2001: Message edited by: Destined Entertainment ]

We have a new entrant:
El Cipotón Justiciero : "Put a bald man's head, severed from the body with the neck shod in blood and a tobacco pipe in the mouth, somewhere in your game."

Ok it's official the games for this are going to be the weirdest games in the world . Just playing. With the amount of talent we have in this competition the games will be fun and interesting to play (hopefully ).

Just a thought... what is there to prevent people from starting early? There should be a set style of game, I could've started a wekk ago and nobody would be any smarter...

-Steve

I've signed up and added the following requirement: The game must feature at least one black hat.

I'm not sure if I want to do it alone or as part of a team, so if anyone want an artist (and musician) as a teammate, let me know! (You can see some samples of my style at my homepage.)

StevenVI: The honor system.

*** to anyone that can help me, but more for the IdeaHack people ***

im in, but i got a few problems....i have windows 2000 professional, and it sucks. for some reason my once magnificant dos djgpp/allegro games SIGSEV on me all the time, so im trying to learn MSVC+allegro. do you have any problems with me entering the contest with MSVC windows version of a game? or am i gonna have to erase winblows 2000 and replace it with 98?

sicgamemaker: Allegro is a portable game library. That means we should be able to compile your program, written in MSVC, on any platform supported by Allegro (DOS, Linux and some others). However, you'll have to be careful how you write it. This shouldn't be a problem for you in terms of hardware support, since your background is DOS.

It says on the page that we will make reasonable efforts to resolve unforeseen portability issues. However, we will not resample all your sprites and adjust all your hard-coded coordinates so that your game can run in a supported graphics mode.

There is some good information in the Allegro docs. Look at the sections towards the end.

im up for this competiton, sounds like fun. BUT i have win 2000, and i cant program dos games with it, would it matter if i used MSVC 6.0 + allegro and i did it that way?

oops i posted the smae thing again and i fixed the problem. i made a new partition with windows 98 and dos on it problem solved!

In light of the terrorist attack on the world trade center... should we still have the contest?
[edit :
It has come to my attention that what I wrote above sounds like I'm asking for the competition to be cancelled. That's not what I want. At the time, I thought maybe it should be postponed, but I don't feel the same way now. (call me mr. moodswing ) ]
[ September 11, 2001: Message edited by: goodbytes ]

I see I'm not the only one that's getting to

Heh, the attack has given me a whole new idea for a game, "Middle Eastern Terrorist Killa". The enemies are people like Hussein and Bin Laden. I don't have any webspace to upload my game to, is that a problem?

-Steve

Since Goodbytes dosen't want it to be postponed anyomre the IdeaHack competition will take place at the time it should.
If anyone has objections to it then he should post here.
StevenVI: You wanted to say that you dont have web-space to upload your IdeaHack entry or ... ?
If so then don't worry, I can upload it at the IdeaHack site, or create a new one

Then it's only about 27½ h left until it starts. I'm still interested in teaming up with someone if someone (that I want to work with) want to work with me. So, if you might be interested, let's talk about it!

If I don't team up with anyone I will participate alone.

Why am I still not listed on the IdeaHack web page? I've both sent the mail and announced my participation on this forum.

(Less than 13 hours left until start...)

12 hours til start by now...
Trummgotist, i had you on the page, I think that your browser did'nt reload the page.

Same thing happened to me... unless the website was just changed now. I hit [refresh] five times in a row and on the last one, the page layout totally changed and now I see frames, background images, all this wierd crap... must be a bug in IE6. If there was only some way I could tell it that when I hit refresh, I mean refresh...

But, anyway, I still don't see Trumgottist on the page.

woohoo! nice new web page! and I can see trumgo....whatever,.. hes on the apge

and know for my question... how come IM not up ont he page yet? well, me and my team?

Ermm... you will be there some time... but not now, I dont feel like hand editing the page. (!)
Anyway.. here are some new entrants:
Team PurplePoo
sic "For some reason, all characters must be deathly afraid of electrical
flying spoons, and they must appear (in text or picture) in the game at
least twice for no real reason" joey_wj@hotmail.com
plastichead "There game must have an intro, and it must have absolutly
nothing to do with the game itself" plasticheadz@hotmail.com
solvle1 "Poop must randomly fall from the sky" s0me1_82@hotmail.com

So, now the competition started! (actually 10 minutes ago)

Good luck to us all!

sicgamemaker: please come up with a requirement for the competition. There are some guidelines on the page, and you can see what requirements other people have come up with if you're stuck for ideas. When you've got a requirement, post it here so everyone can see it without having to wait for the page to be updated.

Thank you,

- entheh

[ September 15, 2001: Message edited by: bdavis ]

Ah... Finally! I was already itching to get started on the project

[ September 15, 2001: Message edited by: X-Viila ]

I'm starting a bit late... heh... first thing I've programmed since like May or something. I'll probably get addicted to this and neglect all my homework...

I forgot how to do timers, I'll have to look through my old source code

-Steve

Afer X-Viila threatened to file a complaint on #allegro I finally updated the page, and also, X-G and Trumgottist are in a team now.
Team 1337
Have nice coding

i did make a requirement, my i accidently wrote my name dowqn as sic instead of sicgamemaker...im the idiot with the electrical spoons idea

Is it just me or is this more of an opinion? Random != replayable. To one person a game that randomly kills you at certain points is fun, but to other is just a waste of time. In a game being made in a week, is it really possible to have replayability like that? Does a random starfield count as adding to the replayability? It looks really good.... it's all my game is so far .. well, you also control one of twelve space ships that can't fire weapons (yet) while cruisin' through the stars ... but yeah, I'm blabbing now.

-Steve

PROGRESS CHECK!

-i can move a guy around a world, but nothing happenes yet.....i stress yet....

Gnudutch: Your idea is good, I want to add it.
BTW: Nicholle or Spoon:
can you describe yourself to add you in my game? You know, blond hair, thin, small, fat, etc...
Thanks.

Was that your personal comment on your status or were you mocking the fact that I'm not gonna finish my game?

Will non-playable games be okay? If this were over summer...

-Steve

CJ: Are you making a fighting game?

its my way of saying "oh crap, im not very far along, but i dont want every one else to think im movin fast when im really not "im runnin into MSVC 6.0 issues oh well, are non playable demos accepotable?

Well ... my computer picked a absolutely WONDERFUL time to crash horribly .... and just arbitrarily fixed itself. Woot.
I think my entry is screwed.

That sucks! oh well, keep tryin, im not that far along either, thanks to Microsucks Winblows 2000x more then normal. oh well, i guess its the best partially completed game

My game would be better if I had more time and hadn't been away from programming for so long.

For some reason my linked lists aren't working properly, so I used arrays and they're not working right either. I've forgotten everything I learned... grr.

I was talking to this guy in one of my classes today and he was talking about how most professional programmers stay away from pointers because they can "really **** things up". I thought that was funny, imagine how hard doing certain things would be without pointers... sad thing is I think that I missed something somewhere with the pointers and that's why my crap isn't working .. just blabbing before I start coding for today.

-Steve

AHHHH NOT ENOUGH TIME!!!! i just finished making the game engine, got things movin around, but i still need more time ::starts crying:: more... time....

When's this comp over anyway?

Umm ... friday?

To all: I'm dropping the compo due to lack of self motivation to actually code anything specific ... and my workload, which is large enough to make hrs_used_on_unschool = hrs_of_sleep_deprivation.

Ahh ... sleep deprivation. It's like drugs, except not at all.

Anyway, sorry 'bout that. I'm no longer certain what will happen to the 12 drugged squirrels (are they still a requirement, ook?) ... but ... Owell.

doenst matter, i used 12 drugged squirls in my game but sleep depravation? i sleep maybe 4 hours a night. i love college :0

Hmm, pointers can really **** things up, can they?

NODE ****handle_to_a_node_handle = NULL;

nuff said.

I think we should keep all the requirements in. People will have planned their games around the requirements, and it would be unfair to those people if they didn't get points for it at the end.

Sorry to hear you won't be participating Zaphos I hope you'll be able to take part in the next one though.

45 hours left!

[ September 19, 2001: Message edited by: bdavis ]

I might as well say that I definately won't have anything worthwhile by Friday. I'll stay in and upload my half-started game (where I accidently screwed up the starfield in it) and see how I compare to everyone else. Maybe I should just ignore deleting nodes from linked lists for now, that way I'd at least be able to get a somewhat playable thing going. I doubt I'll have any time to program on it, though.

-Steve

I'm very happy that I teamed up with X-G. Otherwise my limited time would not have allowed for anything decent.

I'm part of making a game without having to do any programming. It feels good.

I just realized I can't finish in the remaining time, so I wondered, would anyone else like to add a day, for cleaning up the readme and makefiles and polishing some stuff? Or is everyone happy that it is over
I think in case enough ppl want to add a day, it would be no problem to do so..

>sigh< i have nothing worthwile -- i just didnt have time -- i realized my one partner couldnt program for crap, and the other could only do graphics ! bah! i havent even had time to make sure my windows ver was portable to dos or linux yet oh well...i gues si upload partially completed games...

An extra day couldn't hurt...

I agree, I've been ill so one more day would be good, but the rules are the rules, right?

I say that the competition gets renamed to the LazyHack competition, because we were all too lazy and spent our time (at least I spent mine) on crap like school, work, and homework . If only I got off my butt and did something worthwhile...

Out of curiosity, does anyone here have a project that they're proud of?

-Steve

im proud of what i have, but its not complete...its just a simple game engine....i think im gonna make it more advanced and pop out a good game (and make the graphics not cartoony)...but as of now, you dont do anything cept ruin around and shoot walls oh, and how the hell do we upload it?

Seems that a lot of the contestants(coders, whatever) were not able to create a game with gameplay in it and so the time will be extended by exactly one week ( so it'll end Friday 28 September 24:00 GMT ).

You all happy now ?

I am

If I had known it would be extended I would've worked on it in tha few hours I had last night that I was supposed to be sleeping during, but stayed online instead.

I say end it, and we say that everybody won .

I still will probably have trouble with free()ing things... I think I know what the problem is, but I haven't had the time to play with it. I hope I can get a good amount of stuff done this weekend, with all the homework that I have... all these competitions should be held over summer, not in the middle of the school year. Maybe if I were still in high school I'd have more time... I'm too old to be doing this .

-Steve

Ook you are a kind and gentle god.

I barely got my game engine running this morning. I was in the middle of slapping together some elements from the contest when I came over here to check the chatter.

Another week and I'll have a REAL entry for IdeaHack!!!

Anybody who turned in a finished game by the original deadline deserves bonus points and a hearty pat on the back. PAT

Ook, what is the submission method? Do you want us to email to you or post to a web/ftp?

Hehe, the people who know me dont say that i'm very kind .

But for the submission you can mail your games to ideahack@hot.ee .

(i wrote the mail addy as my ftp login name...)

[ September 22, 2001: Message edited by: Ook ]

How does the judging bit work? Did you already say?

Unfortunately I don't have the enthusiasm of everyone else. My computer crashed and it took the first week of the competition to get the computer up and running. So it is with great pain that I have to withdrawal from the competition because there is no way for me to get the game done and I'm not going to request another extension on the competition deadline. But I have made up my own competition that I will be running soon and I'll have the guidelines up soon (which some are based or come directly from IdeaHack). Again I hate to drop out, but there is just no way for me to complete a game within a week. The two week deadline works, but because of my computer's power supply going out a few days after the start of the competition I have no chance so I drop out of the competition and will be hosting my own competition that will be sponsored by my video game company.

Well here is my competition info. It's posted here . Hope to see a lot of people joining up for it .

As we near the end of the IdeaHack competition, and the participants are adding the finishing touches and polishing off their games, it is time to start thinking about voting.
Firstly, every participant will give every game, except his own or his team's own, two scores out of ten. The first score represents how well the game meets the programmer's own requirement. The second represents how well the game meets the voter's requirement. So, for example,
- I give Ook a score out of ten for the spoof (my requirement), and
- I give Ook a score out of ten depending on how much more I hate Microsoft by the time I've played his game (his requirement).
Remember, when you rate the requirements, be open to interpretations other than your own! While we will not overrule any votes, I'm sure you don't want the entire Allegro community to know how anticompetitive you are
Secondly, every participant will vote for his favourite, second favourite and third favourite games, not including his own or his team's own. Each first-place vote a person receives will score six points, each second-place vote will score three points, and each third-place vote will score one point.
The upshot of the above is that team games will get fewer scores and fewer votes than the rest of the games. In order to make sure the scoring is fair,
- Requirement scores will be averaged, not summed, and
- Each game's overall score will be multiplied by the total number of participants and divided by the number of people who had a chance to vote for that game.
We've tried to arrange it so that people don't have much to do to vote. Therefore, please make the effort to vote for this competition.
Good luck to everyone for the last 29.5 hours!

quote:- Each game's overall score will be multiplied by the total number of participants and divided by the number of people who had a chance to vote for that game.
Doesn't that mean that the more people that work on a game, the larger the score will be? I shouldn't be complaining, my team has four people on it
[EDIT:
Okay... it seems that I didn't read your full post, Ben Nevermind what I said above... ]
[ September 27, 2001: Message edited by: goodbytes ]

Should I bother uploading my game menu (that's basically as far as I got, I haven't touched it since like.. the 20th)? I know there's no chance I have, this competition should've been over the summer.... as I've said many times already .

-Steve

StevenVI you can always complete the game for the TOGPAC competition that I've started. The rules and details are in the Depot under the thread TOGPAC. The competition is a year long so that everyone can have time to create a game that they are happy with and that way it's like some of the smaller companies out there that make a game in a year or so (instead of big name companies like Squaresoft that take several years to make a game like Final Fantasy X). Plus it makes it to where you can work at your own pace and to where you can do research and development (R&D) during your project for TOGPAC . Here's the link for my thread for TOGPAC:
http://www.allegro.cc/ubb-bin/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic&f=3&t=000465

[ September 27, 2001: Message edited by: Destined Entertainment ]

I got my entry in just under the wire! WHEW!

So far i have 4 games on the site.
The games are temporarily available at
a temporary page, that until i have created a page for the games, that will be today( after I have slept some 8 hours )

I set up the Results page now too.
Now there are 6 games, hurry up with sending your games in.
I can tell you that the games already on the page are very good

I have uploaded the dos binaries for 4 games, elias's game dosen't work under dos, so i didnt upload that one, and X-Viilas gave me 'Can not set gfx mode'.
If anyoe wants to have their binaries of various platforms up there then mail them to me ideahack@hot.ee