Okay, there was some shakiness on the site because I was changing things. However, now votes are listen on the page. Everybody make sure they are correct

Well, we're not ranking the revised versions, and your un-revised version had a lot missing and was confusing. It's not clear what criteria we should be using to make our rankings, but having a "complete" game seems to be important to a lot of us.

I hope you won't worry too much about the ranking ... just have a good time, and do something interesting!

I think for MinorHack there are three basic rules, in this order:
1. Make it playable.
2. Make it fun.
3. Make it original.
(you can add "profit" as fourth)

1) Make sure the basic gameplay is there before you start to add features related to anything else. Basic ways to achieve this:
- use basic graphics (circles, lines and boxes do well),
- don't bother with title screen,
- make sure controls are comfortable (not too slow, not too sensitive),
- make ending screen as simple as possible (textout, "while(!key[KEY_ESC])" and exit(0) will do)

2) Make sure end results are reflecting player's actions. Don't make game unbeatable or so easy that player can play it infinitely. This can be done by gradually increasing game difficulty or adding "You Win!" screen. "You Win!" screen can bring life to even most ridiculously easy and boring game if you stop the game before player gets bored. Using some kind of maps (tile maps or wave information) is also good idea if you can get it done because it will add variety to your game that will keep player interested.

3) Pick an idea you think nobody else is going to pick. You can take first 5 minutes to think about the theme and try to come up with something unusual that will fit the theme.

And bottom guideline to everything: don't overshoot, all the time be aware of remaining time, cut features and simplify everything as much as possible when you feel you have too little time. Basically, no matter what you do, you will have to cut some features at one point or submit something unplayable. Whenever you feel you have some time, realize that you are wrong for 99%.

Well, this got a bit longer than I've intended it to be, but now it may be worth putting somewhere on the compo site, unless you have different view on how to do the 1h gamedev compo.

Everything below is my opinion only, and you're free not to share these views:

A 1-hour compo is all about hacking together stuff that works in that 1 hour. We shouldn't in any way take the revised entries into consideration when judging, and, specifically, we shouldn't look at what the author tried to achieve. This is the only way to have a fair competition.

For me, the most important factor is completeness. A complete entry shows that the author correctly judged his abilities and stood up to the challenge. Originality and fun-factor are also important, but only if they're there in the original entry, and not only in the author's mind (or the revised entry).

I saw that you tried to do something original and even tried to have a theme with the "delete"'s and memory and so on. That's great, and that is why I rated you above BAF who went the easy way and made a pong game. But your entry crashed when I pressed the mouse button, so the gameplay just wasn't there - I could imagine it, but it wasn't in the entry. All I could was run around in circles until all the digits melted into one jittery being, and then commit suicide. I would've ranked you much higher had the original worked like the revised version does.

Anyway, my recipe for MinorHack is:

19:57 - close the door to my room, put on headphones, turn on ambient music, turn off IM
19:58 - open the text editor, save an empty file as mhack.cpp.
19:58:30 - open the command line, type "g++ mhack.cpp -omhack -lalleg -g3", press enter
19:59 - start refreshing the page .
20:00-20:05 - coming up with an idea. If I don't come up with a good idea in that time, I just go with what I have, because there isn't much time really. During this time I also type up the basic framework with timers, initialization and so on - it's a routine task, so I can think about the idea while typing the framework.
20:05-20:30 - creating something that works.
20:30-20:50 - creating something that plays nice.
20:50-20:55 - creating something that looks nice.
20:55-21:00 - tweaks/submitting.

I always try to come up with an idea that I think I can do in 40 minutes or less. It always takes longer than you think .

[edit]
Oh, and \o/. Unanimous win .

It's a great idea.

Hey, another one scheduled for the 30th. That's the first day of TINS! Does that mean it's like an exponential hack or something?

It's a warmup!

Okay, I seem to have mistaken 12 PM for 12 AM, and then March 31 for March 30. I've moved the competition 1 day closer to avoid collision with TINS. If this means you guys who voted for it can't participate, feel free to propose another one. Personally, I won't be able to play right before TINS starts (10 am March 30 UTC), but if you European people are, you might want to get together on it

Today is the 21st, and the competition is on the 30th. It starts in 8 days and 6 hours.

Like I said, if you European ones want to have a different one at like 10 am GMT, feel free to propose it.

5 AM where? Are you Central time? Enjoy this.

Well, 10am still wouldn't be good as I study on Fridays as well.