So, according to here, TINS is currently only 1 day 8 hours away. Just thought I'd make a thread about it, because there's not a whole lot of TINS chatter going on at the moment, heh. So is everyone that's participating ready?

I know, it's almost...eerie.

This is going to be a weird compo for me. Huge amounts of time are already blocked out, giving me far less than 72 hours. However, I think a winning TINS title is not something that can be made in 72 hours, but more like 20 hours. I'm going to try to get my sleeping schedule a little more normalized for the event.

I have been working on a game pretty heavily all of March. I was hoping to release it this past Monday, but a few zits popped up and I decided to delay it a week to get its face washed.

Damn it, I just caught the flu. I don't think I'll make it this time. Well, my games never win anything...

I've already written my game. Now I just need to make it conform to the rules.

I was going to call you a cheater, but then I read the rules. Oh, what a fool I have been!

I got kicked in the head at football yesterday. I think I might have had a minor concussion. I don't think anything is broken but I have a black eye and my whole head hurts like hell and I'm a little dizzy all the time. Also I just got a tiny little programming job with the due date on sunday. I'll still try to make something for TINS though. This is going to be a very interesting weekend.

Of course you're going to go to the doctor if you start throwing up? When I had concussion, after falling down some stairs on an icy day, the "adult head injuries" booklet I was given by a doctor suggested that medical attention would follow if I threw up 5 or more times, otherwise no treatment was required. Very odd.

I do feel a little nauseous but I didn't throw up, so I guess I'll be OK.

We have a live countdown in #allegro-tins on Freenode!

Blah, bump!

News is hard.

If you still feel nauseous two or three days after the injury I would at least talk to the hospital staff and get their advice. I'm not implying we're not doctors here at A.cc, but it can be good to get a second opinion.

I don't particularly like it as an art rule, but meh. I think I've decided on what I want to do. Afterwards, I went to news.google.com and searched for the base theme and found a topic on March 13th, 2007, which will give me a setting and a background story, so I think I'm good here. Of course, I won't place high on this category, especially since it isn't world news.

It's all good, except for the news part. I might make a very very simple game about burning garbage and then shoehorn some news.

Hm. I may be completely effed. I'm at my university right now, about to head home. If you don't hear from me, I'm still without internet access.

If I don't have internet, I'm just not going to participate. I have a bunch of homework I need to catch up on, and I haven't seen 300 on IMAX yet...

You can still participate and upload on monday from your university.

You don't need internet to participate at all.

I'd like to propose a convention for this year's speedhack:

set_config_file("../speedhack.ini");
int width = get_config_int("graphics", "width", 640);
int height = get_config_int("graphics", "height", 480);
int card = get_config_id("graphics", "card", GFX_AUTODETECT_WINDOWED);
int depth = get_config_int("graphics", "depth", 32);

Modify width and height to be in range for your application of course.

Just a little thing that could make the games easier to playtest.

[edit]
Switch to get_config_id.

Well, I have internet!
Now it's time to ignore obligations and make games!

Just got down to business and the requirements are kicking my ass so far; need to think for a while.

I've already got my own config routine. How 'bout we just make it convention to have the above avaible in a .ini file of some sort?

That defeats the purpose of setting it once for each application all the games. If you want to use your own config file:

override_config_file("../speedhack.ini");
int width = get_config_int("graphics", "width", 640);
int height = get_config_int("graphics", "height", 480);
int card = get_config_id("graphics", "card", GFX_AUTODETECT_WINDOWED);
int depth = get_config_int("graphics", "depth", 32);
override_config_file(NULL);

Oh yeah! this is what i need, when is it starting? in 3 hours rigth? (i hope) i'm very bad with GMT and stuff... btw: BAF, are you starting know? and nice list of 93 processes .

BAF and I have a Monkey Island type game planned

Doesn't this assume that all games are going to be intended for the same kind of resolution? That seems rather... wrong.

It started quite a while (6 or 7 hours ago), but I convinced a guy to join about 30 minutes ago, so...join!

nice .

><!. but i'm joining anyway!

It's just for recommendation. If you game requires higher resolution, then adjust. I mean, at the very least you have a GFX mode to work with (windowed or fullscreen).

Don't worry, I won't even get to start for another 6-10 hours! All I can do is think about what I'm going to do, which is somewhat agonizing with the tantalizing tidbits X-G is presenting.

And I would hope that at least most games default to Windowed mode. I can't stand full screen mode.

hehe , i didn't think i would find any useable news.. a question: is it legal to.. edit the news a bit? like "they say this happened-but actually this is what really happened" because i think the news are too realistic to be fun. also. about the 400kb compressed file, should it include both the source code and compiled version? or can i use it for small pictures and stuff?

You don't have to include binaries in the 400kb zip. Did you read the rules?

I think it's legal to tweak the news, or even use fake news, but it's going to lower your scores in that category. The word "current" is also very relative, you may wish to dig a few weeks back to find something you can work with.

And BAF's right, 400kb is not counting the binary.

Depending on your view of time, current can be really relative. For example, compared to the (supposed) age of the earth, even the Civil War or American Revolution could be current. What's the limit?

{"name":"170bfe1fb5555d38fe0fb85a2531569c.png","src":"\/\/djungxnpq2nug.cloudfront.net\/image\/cache\/1\/7\/170bfe1fb5555d38fe0fb85a2531569c.png","w":1031,"h":255,"tn":"\/\/djungxnpq2nug.cloudfront.net\/image\/cache\/1\/7\/170bfe1fb5555d38fe0fb85a2531569c"}

yeah i did.. but i don't remember anything about that, reading it again... it says: "the complete source code must be included with the entry" i guess that means the binary files doesn't? but what about the resources and datafiles and stuff? the source should be able to compile into my game rigth?

You have to include your source code and any files your game requires that aren't available on the internet as of 2 weeks ago.

Well, any code had to be available as of 2 weeks ago to be eligible, and graphics and such have to be included anyway.

gah, stupid headache.. so i just have to upload the source code and all the files used by it like ex: datafiles? do i have to send a read me with my source code to describe how to.. build it up?

i statically link allegro so my exe takes alot of space..

Yes.

Well, if you use a Makefile...

makefile? this isn't the time to learn new stuff... if i upload the following:

/zip
-/source
--source files!
-/gamefolder
--config.ini
--datafiles.dat
-X<- put the exe here!!..

would this be valid??

they are going to test the games right - -?

A better layout would be like this:
/zip
-/albins_game
--source files!
--config.ini
--datafiles.dat

Of course, if you provide a makefile, you can do it however you want. Here's a makefile for you:

Untested, but should work...

Thanks , my project is kept together by a .dev file, can i sent it with the source?

Yeah, sure, it won't hurt.

[horribly lame mama joke]Yeah, sure, and send yo' mama too, I'm sure she'd like to be part of the full package at least once in her life.[/horribly lame mama joke]

woho!

onewing...

So how're you guys doing?
i'm doing fine over here.. with a main menu! and a >possibility< to make an intro. - -, oh, and i have a "great" story!

Here's some advice: scrap it. No ones going to see it anyway.

too bad i've already written it.. it's not something big.

Heh, just sat down to prepare my game and thought I'd check this BAF cam thingy. This picture pretty much sums up these hacks:

{"name":"591713","src":"\/\/djungxnpq2nug.cloudfront.net\/image\/cache\/c\/6\/c6277a8f40bad8c4f5388865b8b27499.jpg","w":635,"h":475,"tn":"\/\/djungxnpq2nug.cloudfront.net\/image\/cache\/c\/6\/c6277a8f40bad8c4f5388865b8b27499"}

Now, to work I go!

I set one of those things up too:

http://home.cgamesplay.com/~cgames/screen.html

Linux users: set one up yourself!

while true; do import -window root -quality 60 screen.jpg; scp -q screen.jpg
home.cgamesplay.com:public_html/screen.jpg; sleep 30; done

question: a friend of mine asked me if i wanted some music for my game, i was going to ask yes, but i'm unsure whenever that counts as continent, which it should. and if it does, dosen't he have to be a part of my team and sign up?

Teams are informal anyways. It's fine that he writes music for your game. Remember, you only get 400KB zipped, and sound doesn't compress well.

Good-bye, cruel Hack!

CGamesPlay:

.

edit: Get to work you hillbilly.

Woo! I posted our first screen shot!

Right on schedule!

I wonder what you do in your game.. the screen shots tell me nothing .. i guess i'll know in 12 hours.

Question: ex: if a game doesn't have smoke, will the game not be able to enter? or are the rules more like guidelines that the game then gets rated on after how well it's been implemented(or some other word)?

Another Question: How should provide a link to the news i used?

Well, BAF and I slid in under the deadline. Our game is pretty short, but built on a really solid engine. If you grab the TINS distribution, you can build it using just Allegro (no other dependencies), and play it. As you are playing, if you have any problems, stop clicking. So far the two people I have shown it to have had problems solved by them just waiting for the dialog to finish. FYI, clicking restarts the dialog.

It's an adventure game, a la Monkey Island, as I've said before.

If you're interested in check out just how solid of an engine it's built on, grab the source from subversion, which includes the non-compiled levels. Until I bother to make a decent web page for the project, this will be the official readme:

To make new levels, run mklevel on the name of the directory containing the level files. The directory must have a scene.ini file, describing the level. The [scene] section must have a background filename, a collision bitmap filename (the character can walk on the white areas), and optionally a load script filename:

[scene]
background = bg.bmp
collision = collision.bmp
event/load = intro.txt

The script will be discussed in more detail later.

Then add entries and objects to the scene. An object section takes the name [object/name], and has a required x and y position, and an optional width and height (which default to the size of) an optional display bitmap filename, an optional z position (distance between the Y position and the "ground"), an optional "give" variable which adds a clickable padding around the size of the object. Use that with the optional "obstacle" field which tells the game to not allow the player to walk through the object. Finally, optional "interact" and "load" events.

[object/mound]
display = mound.bmp
x = 0
y = 240
give = 32
obstacle = 1
event/interact = mound.txt
event/load = moundload.txt

This object will run the named scripts when the user clicks the object ("interact"), and when the user enters the scene ("load").

Finally, the scene must have entries. These are named like [entry/name], and contains X, Y, and Z fields. Z default to 0.

The scripting language used is command-based with a very simple syntax. Each line represents one command. There is no expression support. Here is a short guide of some of the more important commands: (Note that the language does not support comments, you should not include the line beginning with # in the actual file).

I hope you enjoy our very short game!