This was discussed a bit a while ago, but this seems like an opportune time to bring the subject up again.

Now that Allegro 4.2 is nearing completion (although no release date has been set yet and there'll be several release candidates out before that time), it's time to start thinking about the demo game. As we all know, Allegro's current demo isn't really a good example of proper coding style, and it's fairly old. So it might be time to replace it.

Therefor, I would like to organise an Allegro Demo Game Competition. I realize that there's allready other competitions going on, but what's one more, right?

To qualify for a good demo game, it should fulfill some requirements:

• The code should be readable and well documented with comments.

• The code should use Allegro and only Allegro. No addons.

• Use the Allegro logo on the opening screen. Optionally feature either of Allegro's mascots, Al or Alex. The latter if Johan Peitz agrees that it's ok to use his character for this.

• The code should compile cleanly without warnings on Allegro 4.2, on all platforms. That means no deprecated functions can be used, so that means it won't compile on 4.0.

• The game should feature the list of AUTHORS and their contributions in some way or other, similar to what the current demo game does.

• The game should showcase a lot of Allegro's capabilities in some way. Think rotating sprites, multiple update methods, separated logic and drawing code, having the game run at the same speed on all computers, things like that.

• The code should be in C, although I wouldn't be too strongly opposed to having a second demo game (or the same game) written in C++, but we don't want to bloat the default download with a lot of demo games.

• Original content for the media is a big plus. At the very least sprites, samples and music should be from the public domain. If you don't make your media yourself, make sure that you know where it comes from and has a license that is compatible with Allegro (meaning SpriteLib is out). If possible, ask permission from the author of the media to use it.

• Size restriction on the media: I know you'll hate this, but the demo game media should not dominate the Allegro package download. The current demo.dat is 383KB. I think we can go a bit above that, but do try to keep it down.

I think that covers most of it. I'll add things to the list if I think of more of them.

So, what's to win? Obviously, the grand prize would be to have your game shipped with Allegro. If there are several entries that qualify (and I hope there will be!) I'm in favour of making a separate `demo game' package linked from Allegro's homepage with a description and small screenshot of each game.

For game ideas, think simple games. Remakes of old games everyone knows and loves should be fine. Feel free to recycle old projects and work in teams.

Again, no release date has been fixed for Allegro 4.2, although it should be sometime in the next few months. If you want to try to make a demo, do say so and I'll try to keep everyone up to date on the release schedule. Compared to the rigorous 72 hours of SpeedHack or TINS, this should allow you ample time to finish the project anyway as you'll have at least that much time.

If someone feels like helping me set up a webpage for this event similar to the website for SpeedHack or TINS, let me know.

So go thee forth and make some demo games!

Very good. Now go post something useful.

It would be great if anything gets done

As I said, feel free to make it a team effort.
Considering how well Allegro.cc's last team project fared, I wouldn't recommend trying to get a significant portion of the community to work on a single game for this. It's probably also overkill for a project of this magnitude. I think one person for coding, one for graphics and one for music should be about the maximum that is realistically feasable.

Anyway, feel free to do this any way you see fit!

I'll write one, but it'll be in C++, and most certainly use blending of some sort. But 4.2 isn't out yet, so how can I use 4.2 "features"?

Though, to add to that, should the demo require decent specs, or almost none at all (like the previous)? If you go too high, people can't run it (and Allegro will seem slow). But if you go too low, Allegro won't look very pretty.

Should it be 2D or can we make use of Allegro 3D functions and make something fully 3D?

Hmm, good incentive for me to clean up G-Fighter's source and slap some better graphics on it. It's been on my to-do list for ages...

Why on earth is this topic yellow.. hurts my eyes.

The fact that almost nobody uses certain Allegro function doesn't make it non-Allegro. In fact, Allegro has cool 3D functions and I think somebody should finally start using them. Of course it can't be compared to hardware accelerated drawing, but it's probably best thing you can get without it.

3d can be used to create some bitmaps runtime: render stuff to bitmaps and use as usually. Only problem is that I couldn't find a way doing ortho projection with allegro.

I once converted some nehe's model loading tutorials to allegro3d but unfortunately thse got lost while installing new OS.

About 3D, a separate demo for Allegro GL wouldn't be bad maybe. It could show how to combine OpenGL with Allegro's font and bitmap routines and so on.

Oh, and speaking of OpenGL reminds me - we should probably synchronize the 4.2.0 release of Allegro with the 0.3.0 release (or whatever version number) of AllegroGL. So at the release day, someone should be able to get both and convert over old projects..

Yes, if someone would just remake the current demo, but with readable code (i.e. code where you could say "that's how you should do it" to new users, and which could be used as base for other projects), that would be perfect.

Well, if you want to submit a cleaned up version of the current demo, that would qualify... at the very least, the current demo would have to be made available as a seperate download.
But I think a newer demo game would be nice to have