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Halloween Hack
Fladimir da Gorf
Member #1,565
October 2001
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Quote:

I'd like to recommend everyone to do what you can to reduce the size of your entry, use datafiles.

What about PNGs? IIRC they're gzip compressed, may compress even better than Allegro's datafiles, maybe depending on if you use global compression or not. And about downloading time, the final product is zipped anyways. In any case, I bet everyone will be able to fit their entries in a single forum attachment...

OpenLayer has reached a random SVN version number ;) | Online manual | Installation video!| MSVC projects now possible with cmake | Now alvailable as a Dev-C++ Devpack! (Thanks to Kotori)

lambik
Member #899
January 2001
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Could you guys help me out a bit? I realise I could always make a game featuring a witch and some bats but I would rather like to know more about Halloween. You see, it is very much an Anglo-Saxon tradition, overhere (Netherlands) at that date (Allerheiligen/Allerzielen) people go visit the graves of deceased familymembers and tend to their graves but that's it. No other traditional activities.
I guess the word Halloween originated from Hallow e'en = Holy Evening or rather Eve of a Holy Day. Furthermore I gather that it is a night when the boundaries between the world of the living and the world of the dead are very weak but that is about it.
Please enlighten this poor halloween-newb ;)

Goodbytes
Member #448
June 2000
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&*@#%#$^*(! I clicked on spell check and the damn thing went and timed out on me... erased my submission when I clicked on 'back'... why has this been happening so often lately?

Anyway, in North America, we don't treat Halloween in any sort of religious or spiritual or mystic way. We don't pay respect to the dead on this day. It's mostly a candy-related tradition here.

Children dress up in costumes, which range from ghosts, witches, monsters, politicians, fruit, giant rolls of toilet paper... pretty much anything, though usually it's 'scary'. They go from door to door down the street, and when the door is opened they yell "Trick or Treat!" This means "Give me a treat or I'll pull a trick on you," but most kids probably never make the connection, although some will egg your house if you give them no treats, or if they're not very good treats. Households will buy candy specifically to hand it out on this occasion. Probably about 95% of children under 13 will participate in Halloween traditions.

Halloween, for some, is also a night for scaring younger kids, stealing their candy, and causing general mischief/vandalisation.

Also, sometimes we bob for apples, which involves floating apples in a vat of water and trying to retrieve them using only your teeth, but obviously this isn't as fun as getting free candy.

Oh, and people put out jack-o-lanterns and skeletons and lights and gravestones and stuff for decorations.


--
~Goodbytes

Synapse Jumps
Member #3,073
December 2002

Wow... I've never heard Halloween decribed in such detail and technical terms. Also, Halloween is a chance for some peopole (my dad) to try to scare as many people as possible (he's even gotten me on occasion, and I grew up with him). It's really mischevious, as Goodbytes said some people will throw eggs at houses that didn't give them candy, however, some people will throw eggs at houses simply to be mischevous. Also, some people smash pumpkins (the jack-o-lanterns that other people carve). I don't know what else to tell yah.

Make your game scary... if at all possible ;)

brain21
Member #1,208
December 2000

Halloween has become all about candy. Children get very excited going from door to door getting candy. Some even start very early and go on through the night with garbage bags of candy (the hefty kind). Some go to one house, then change their costume a little and go back to the same house. Ahhh, chidhood.

The candy factories start selling their halloween specialty candy packs 2 or 3 months before halloween. It's insane. They know that everyone will be bying candy's cause they don't want to get their houses egged.

Denny

CGamesPlay
Member #2,559
July 2002
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I always thought the word Halloween meant All Hallow's Eve, but what that means I assume it was some black magic sort of day...

"Dubble bubble, toil and trouble, fire burn, and cauldron bubble. Cool it in baboon's blood; then the charm is firm and good..."

--
Tomasu: Every time you read this: hugging!

Ryan Patterson - <http://cgamesplay.com/>

X-G
Member #856
December 2000
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The Three Witches from Macbeth, by William Shakespeare said:

Double, double toil and trouble;
Fire burn, and cauldron bubble.
Fillet of a fenny snake,
In the cauldron boil and bake;
Eye of newt and toe of frog,
Wool of bat and tongue of dog,
Adder's fork and blind-worm's sting,
Lizard's leg and owlet's wing,
For a charm of powerful trouble,
Like a hell-broth boil and bubble.
Double, double toil and trouble;
Fire burn and cauldron bubble.
Cool it with a baboon's blood,
Then the charm is firm and good.
By the pricking of my thumbs,
Something wicked this way comes.
Open, locks,
Whoever knocks!

--
Since 2008-Jun-18, democracy in Sweden is dead. | 悪霊退散!悪霊退散!怨霊、物の怪、困った時は ドーマン!セーマン!ドーマン!セーマン! 直ぐに呼びましょう陰陽師レッツゴー!

CGamesPlay
Member #2,559
July 2002
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Yes, once, for a parody play, I memorized that last stanza... I forgot the last four lines, though...

The play was titled "MacBooth", and had to do with MacBeth and Aberaham Lincoln's assassination. But that's off topic...

--
Tomasu: Every time you read this: hugging!

Ryan Patterson - <http://cgamesplay.com/>

Synapse Jumps
Member #3,073
December 2002

Quote:

The play was titled "MacBooth", and had to do with MacBeth and Aberaham Lincoln's assassination. But that's off topic...

::) Just a little ::)

Quote:

The candy factories start selling their halloween specialty candy packs 2 or 3 months before halloween. It's insane. They know that everyone will be bying candy's cause they don't want to get their houses egged.

Yea... Not like Christmas doesn't make companies do that or anything. A week ago, my mom came home with Christmas stuff :o

Quote:

I always thought the word Halloween meant All Hallow's Eve, but what that means I assume it was some black magic sort of day...

I thought what you said except for the Black Magic thing, someone's been watching too many Disney movies ;), but his makes sense too...

CGamesPlay
Member #2,559
July 2002
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Quote:

Disney movies

No...... This is like.... *this = ~Disney;

--
Tomasu: Every time you read this: hugging!

Ryan Patterson - <http://cgamesplay.com/>

Bruce Perry
Member #270
April 2000

Halloween has never meant 'scary' to me. It's always meant 'supernatural made fun and comical'. Casper the Friendly Ghost is a good example of this. I don't like the idea of 'Trick or Treat' much - it's just a form of blackmail. For me, a good Halloween would probably involve going to some kind of fancy-dress party (or at my age maybe helping organise one for kids), playing spooky-made-comical music, and having a good time. The idea is probably nicer than such an event would be in practice. But that's just me - maybe I'm alone in this.

I can't enter this year, since I'll be starting a project soon for my course here at uni. But if the competition runs again next year, I may well have time to enter. Thou shalt PHEAR my entry ;)

--
Bruce "entheh" Perry [ Web site | DUMB | Set Up Us The Bomb !!! | Balls ]
Programming should be fun. That's why I hate C and C++.
The brxybrytl has you.

kdevil
Member #1,075
March 2001
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Most kids don't even bother saying "Trick or Treat" anymore. They just ring the doorbell, open their paper bag/pillowcase/backpack, and expect you to put some candy into it. And just forget about hearing a thank-you if the kid's older than 13. That said, I've also never seen anyone's house get egged either, so maybe everyone's just getting really apathetic about Halloween in general (except the candy companies).

As for the competition, I'd modify Empire Allegro for it, but I'm already too busy working on adding some decent AI to it.

-----
"I am the Black Mage! I casts the spells that makes the peoples fall down!"

spellcaster
Member #1,493
September 2001
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Regarding Halloween hack:

I'll put a website online this wek. All guidelines / rules will be on it. I decided to allow people to enter in different categories:

** The Halloween Edition Game **
Take any existing game idea and give it a creepy touch. What if the Monsters had invented Tetris? The Addams wrote Zelda?

** The B-Movie Retro Feel Game **
Create a game that tries to get close to the typical classical B-Horror-Movie feeling. Think Tarantula, Mummy, Nosferatu etc. The game must be monochrome.

** Everything goes **
Create a game with a halloween / horror feeling. It's up to you to define the details.

Extras:
- Style Points are given if there's a helper named "Igor"
- Style points are given for voice-overs
- Style points are given for references to other classical horror movies or horror games

These categories should not limit you, but give you some strating ideas... that's why there is the "Everything Goes" category.

--
There are no stupid questions, but there are a lot of inquisitive idiots.

Trezker
Member #1,739
December 2001
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I'm dumb!, thanks SC, now I know what to call the useless tip creature in my platformer ;D
If I ever get that far...

lambik
Member #899
January 2001
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Thank all for your information. If I can't find a better idea I can always make a game about scaring away the neighbourhood kids before they take all your candy and in the meanwhile preventing them from egg-ing your house :)
Are teams allowed? I just might talk Amarillion into joining me.

Bruce Perry
Member #270
April 2000

If teams are allowed, I may be willing to write .mid or .it music for someone. So post if you need music, and say what kind, and I'll consider it :)

--
Bruce "entheh" Perry [ Web site | DUMB | Set Up Us The Bomb !!! | Balls ]
Programming should be fun. That's why I hate C and C++.
The brxybrytl has you.

Goodbytes
Member #448
June 2000
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What exactly do you mean, spellcaster, by 'voiceover'? Would, say, reading the title of the game in a scary voice constitute a voice-over? And, when you say "references" to classical horror movies or games, does this include spoofing? Finally, are style points awarded "binary," that is, you either get them or you don't, or, if I do my whole game in voice-over, will I get more style points than someone who just has his/her title read in a scary voice?

[edit] Oh, and can we submit more than one entry?


--
~Goodbytes

spellcaster
Member #1,493
September 2001
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Quote:

What exactly do you mean, spellcaster, by 'voiceover'? Would, say, reading the title of the game in a scary voice constitute a voice-over?

Sure. Same if a voice says "Another visitor. Stay a while - stay forever!" :)

Quote:

And, when you say "references" to classical horror movies or games, does this include spoofing?

When someone playing the game will get your reference (say because your main enemy is a Vampire Lemming with bad AI, your doors open with a star-trek like "swoosh" or because ini the background is a giant tarantula) it's a reference.

Regarding style: These style points are used to increase your maximum style points.

Say you have the normal speedhack like 1-5 range. For each of the areas you can get a bonus to your max points. So, if you have references and voice overs you get +2 to your possible max points.
So you can get 1-7 points for style.

Quote:

Oh, and can we submit more than one entry?

Sure.

--
There are no stupid questions, but there are a lot of inquisitive idiots.

Elias
Member #358
May 2000

Quote:

Extras:
- Style Points are given if there's a helper named "Igor"
- Style points are given for voice-overs
- Style points are given for references to other classical horror movies or horror games

What about the style points for the most scariest code? :)

--
"Either help out or stop whining" - Evert

Miguel Pineda
Member #313
May 2000

I LOVE horror games and I've been wanting to write a Resident Evil type game for a while now, so this seems like the perfect excuse to start coding it ;D

I hope I can finish it in time!

spellcaster
Member #1,493
September 2001
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Quote:

What about the style points for the most scariest code?

That would be the "pure allegro compo" then :)

--
There are no stupid questions, but there are a lot of inquisitive idiots.

amarillion
Member #940
January 2001
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Teams are allowed right? I'm in together with Lambik.

Steve++
Member #1,816
January 2002

This is cool! I don't care about winning or losing. I'm in! My first ever allegro comp! I had this idea ages ago, for a horror twist on a well known game. I made some art and that's about it. But now I've got a good excuse to start coding it!

Now, where's that pixel art gone... ???

Miguel Pineda
Member #313
May 2000

Are other libs allowed? ??? (Alogg, Jgpalleg? I'm using both).

spellcaster
Member #1,493
September 2001
avatar

Sure. But if you use them state that, make sure your makefiles handles those libs well and consider to provide the link to the respective download sites as well (and to any other libs needed).
So, if you use PNGs make sure to provide a link to both libPNG and Zlib (and the allegro wrapper, if you use one).

In other words: use what you want, but make it as easy as you can for others to compile your source. Yes, this adds some work on your side :)

--
There are no stupid questions, but there are a lot of inquisitive idiots.

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