I'm counting with shipping only source and data. There will be txt file with instructions how to build this simple game. But at first I must find a bug in my memory allocation

I just had a very hard day at the university. I had an exam, taken on a bunch of computers. I filled in my test in time by pressing the correct button and waited for the transaction to finish. It didn't, so I called the test supervisor to look at my computer. He did so, and then went on to check if he got my submitted results on his computer. Then he said that everything was in order (despite the fact that my monitor still displayed "Transmitting data..."), and that I can leave.

So I did. When the time came for looking at the test results, I wasn't even on the list. The guy supervising us was nowhere to be found (after all, it's Saturday... who the hell schedules a test on Saturday?), and the professor claims that he never even saw my name amongst the submitted results.

What's funnier - this is the only exam on this course in this semester, which means that I won't be allowed to try the final exam - because I have 0 points. I spent the major part of the day trying to find out where the heck my results are and why they weren't on my professor's desk. The supervisor (I managed to catch him on cellphone) claims that he has sent everything.

Sorry for the rant. On topic of the competition:

It seems to me that option 2) has gathered the most following. That's great, because that is the option I like the most myself. I'll amend the rules and put up a warning on the site.

The final idea will be something like this:
- you are required to submit one ZIP, 1,000,000 bytes or less in size, which contains all the source and game data.
- you are allowed to additionally submit another ZIP, up to 10,000,000 bytes in size, which would contain only binaries and shared libs needed. No duplication of game data - all the game data would sit in the first archive.

I don't want to dwell on this longer - I really would like that implemented fast. I don't know how much time the issue with the exam will eat (at that point, I think that, at best, I will be allowed to take the test once more with a different set of questions), so I don't have how much time I'll have on my hands. I still have to start work on my entry, but I'm mentally exhausted for now .

So long. Keep up the good work, all of you. I'll try to make the modifications before 21:00 GMT.

Naturally you're going to fight this? How long do you have until the final, and have you contacted the department committee (or whoever is in charge of this stuff in your course's hierarchy) to sort this out? I can't see how it would hurt them to let you sit the final while from their point of view the doubt persists and then to strike you from the list if they ultimately find that you didn't take or pass the earlier test - which of course they won't.

In that case sorry to dwell, but I was planning on submitting a range of binaries for all three major Allegro targets - the third being MacOS X. Unfortunately the artificial separation of data and program files is something that isn't really maintained in the Mac world, instead applications come as a bundle, which means that a single icon represents all of the binary and data files for an application. To install the application you drag its icon to your /Applications folder, to uninstall it you drag the icon to the trash.

The icon actually represents a directory structure that includes the binary and the data files. It is possible to delve inside using the Finder (analogue to the Windows Explorer) but the layout isn't very user friendly and it isn't always obvious where the programmer expected data files to be put - especially as vanilla Allegro ignores the normal pattern of doing things.

The normal Mac user will consider an application that stores its data files separately ugly and hard to manipulate. Not as bad as a program with a Windows style installer, which usually simply won't get installed, but pretty evil. Of course keeping a Mac application bundle in a zip file rather than a Mac-ordinary dmg virtual disk images will produce some ugly extra files if extracted on a Windows or Linux machine, but I can live with that.

If the consideration is space, could it not be 10,000,000 bytes without data, 9,000,000 with - so that if the user wishes to duplicate data files they can simply "pay" for it by giving back what theoretically could be duplication of source code zip contents?

I'm virtually done with mine. It helps that I started on a framework that included functioning placeholder title and instruction screens two days early, but even considering that I think I may have aimed too far on the simple side with gameplay. I can add some extra graphics, I suppose. At least I've managed to make it much more fun than it was, albeit at the cost of now having only a much weaker link with the spirit of the descriptions sent to me.

I want to second this. I have personally failed miserably to organise two competitions now, so I'm in awe.

I see no reason why the data cannot be in both zips as long as they're the same. I think that I won't have enough time to finish my game, but let's see. starts working.

I seem to be having quite the opposite problem. The thing I planned proved to be so much easier than I thought it would be that apart from one graphic I'm finished. I guess I get a lot of time to tweak the difficulty curve, which at the minute doesn't really climb like I'd like it to. Although I am enjoying my little game much more now than I was, so either the various tweaks and changes I've made have worked or it's a grower!

EDIT: I even double checked the name of the person I'm making for (my guess was correct!) and already inserted the near-obligatory reference to them. Indeed you now play the game as that person.

All I can offer is the slightly illegible Gothic thing I used several years ago in my Anarchy project, shown more clearly here in something else:

{"name":"Anarchy1996-1Allegro.png","src":"\/\/djungxnpq2nug.cloudfront.net\/image\/cache\/b\/9\/b949a3ab5aafc2cffafba70fa173f540.png","w":640,"h":480,"tn":"\/\/djungxnpq2nug.cloudfront.net\/image\/cache\/b\/9\/b949a3ab5aafc2cffafba70fa173f540"}

Presumably that doesn't fit the bill? On the off chance that it does, it's included in the datafiles of both real Anarchy and "Anarchy: Early 1996 Turbo C attempt - 2005 Allegro update" (which is a much lighter download) on my members.cc site.

Well, I have an arial font I use with allegrogl that I made for openglui. You may have to tweak it a littlbe, but it will save time.

Thanks Steven, I'm gonna try it now.
Anyone know how to do rotations on images on photoshop without anti-aliasing, or even to disable anti-aliasing for good?

Well, I've tweaked mine heavily and have just made my first submission! I still think that the idea I invented based around my receiver's suggestion was probably too simple and more of a 2 day SpeedHack type thing than an 8 day Christmashack, but I find the end game strangely mesmerising so I'm happy with that. I'm also busy tomorrow and Tuesday, so if I hadn't started on my framework two days early I probably would only have finished on the final day. I'll probably just sit around tweaking it from now on.

How is everyone else doing? Has anyone else, like me, picked something that was probably a little too simple? Is anyone suffering with something that is possibly slightly too complicated?

Sorry, not a clue. But the popular shareware Paint Shop Pro can do it if you can live with a few days of that - although perhaps writing a tiny Allegro program with rotate_sprite would be less hassle than downloading and installing something like that. Alternatively, if your ultimate recipient isn't me and you're happy with me knowing it isn't me then I could do them for you via an email swap.

Oh, you won't believe how simple my graphics are - part of the design brief I was forced to adopt involved being able to survive without any talented artistic input! I'll post a screenshot as soon as the competition ends so that you can see, although I'm definitely marking mine to be publically available after the event so you can check it out yourself maybe.

Actually, who's up for a mass screenshot posting thread kicking off at 16:00 on the 23rd? Obviously not a formal part of the competition, but if we can all try and grab an establishing screenshot (e.g. the title screen) and a "cool" in-game shot then it should be interesting to take a step back at the end and see what everyone has come up with. Especially once we can reveal titles, base descriptions and recipients!

I was debating last night whether I should switch to a different idea or stick with the one I'm working on. I actually wanted to switch to a different, simple idea, but I decided to stick with what I have.

Let's see here, 5 more days. Should be plenty of time.

EDIT: By the way, one of the most annoying things is when you run into a problem. With time short you can't just post the problem and then read a book until the problem is solved; you have to either fix it or work around it and keep going with the rest of the project.
I'm also having trouble keeping track of what to do next. There's so many things that need to get done before I even have something to work with. One of the reasons why I wanted to switch ideas. Like, I'll have spent the past 30 minutes doing one feature, compile, run, and then I have to go do 3 other features before this feature even does anything.

I'm still working on my idea, kind of... working along (actually i havent done much in the past 2 days ).

I've made a well-rounded game in a month, but a week is a different story. Plus, I'm still relatively new at the allegro library, so I have to spend a lot of time checking the manual. I was hoping to catch up to my planned timeline today, but I'm having this problem.