I just had a crazy idea. For the Retro Remakes competition, (IIRC there is no teamsize limit), why don't we have a lot of Allegro/Allegro GL users form 1 big team. We could make a really nice remake, and split up the prizes if we win or something. It could be 3d with our 3d experts here, we have people good at gfx, good at sfx, good at composing music, etc.

I think it is a good idea. Anybody else?

Yes, except that it would be a delegation nightmare to see to it that everything was done, and done correctly.

I think it would be a delegation nightmare to pick a game to remake.;D

We could always do a rouge remake or something... think of the possiblities...

MWAHAHAHAHA

we could have one huge CVS server, a vote for what game, etc

Go classic. Metroid!

No, it should be a game with entirely seperate levels so it's easier to delegate levels to different people (who then don't have to give a fig what's in other levels).

You know us too well ...

This idea has merit. There is alot of talent around here, most of us have been around for a while and dabbled in quiet alot of different areas.

It should be a game that its easy to get gfx for; like an snes or nes game so we can rip gfx from an emu screen shot or something. Like Legend of Zelda 2 - the side scrolling one (Metroid would work too). If we could do this then I would help with gfx (ie, it would require no artistic talent ).

if anyone else is interested; start nominating some games!

Well, I'm interested but I can't say I have the time. My not-so-s3kr1t-pr0j4kt has my full attention.

What's your not-so-secret-project?

Ohhh, I know.......you're working on allegro 5!!!

Well, a project of this type would be great for me, except that I A) don't have time and B) have less game programming expereince than most of the people here. Maybe I would be likely to help with such a project once I get a version of my own game up?

Not quite. It's a first-person adventure game, and I'm using the PolyEngine as a backbone for the renderer. I released an engine test a couple weeks ago.

EDIT:
Remember kids.. always quote what you're responding to because you never know who'll post before you..

Sounds like a good project, Kitty.

I would gladly offer to join fellow allegroids and work on this retro remake game, but I'm afraid X-G will tell me that my work is stupid and send me to his unofficial allegro.cc-poster-encyclopedia-thingy.

Maybe then a game, where every level is separate game? Like Terminator from Amiga: fighting game, puzzle, racing and I don't know what else was later.

You played that one too?
It wasn't that good really, but it had one nice idea for a mini-game segmented game: between each round you got to play a repair puzzle, where your score affected how much health you regenerated before the next round.

I haven't got time.. But I vote for Road Rash. Man I loved that game..

The Speedhack proved again that indeed there is a lot of talent around. But putting a team together and getting all faces in the same direction is going to be a real challenge.

Unfortunately, I don't have enough spare time right now to join.

See, we have 3 months so that helps too. If you figure there might be 500 active users here, and maybe 50-100 will participate. They could finish the game a lot faster than, say, 2 people. So you could spend a whole month, if needed, organizing and getting ready.

And we have a lot of 3d talent, and a lot of the remakes are 3d.... So we may get a lot more points doing it 3d

50-100 will be a bit to much for a team ... Especially since people here are mainly coders... Adding a whole bunch of artists would be a great benefit, but having so many coders might as well screw everything up

Now why would I do that? I love retro games.

Me too, X-G

Has anybody played "Highway Pursuit" by Adam Dawes? Now that's a really nice remake of Spy Hunter.

I'll participate, sort of. No, wait, not really. I'd be glad to provide some engine code here and there, though.

I was thinking about entering this competition myself too, but I hope it won't be against rules if I helped in Allegro Team project too. I think I could help in coding, 3D modeling and music as well as level design and design in general.

I'd be glad to participate under the following condition: Someone has to plan the project out and give team members a clear cut assignment to work on. OO lends itself to this. Once the team leader gets the engine skeleton done, each person can handle one class, and if any changes need to be made to the class interface, the corresponding team member can manage it.

If you guys are serious, perhaps you could get a cvs or subversion repository up and write some basic code, and provide a link to the contest rules?

I might like to do something team related, time permitting.
Now, I've been saying that I'd like to help out or do such and so provided that I have time for a while now, and as yet haven't had any time, so don't pin me down on anything.
Besides, my own projects need looking after too! I worked a little on some older projects earlier this week and it was fun to get back to them (and see how messy their code looks to me now). I'll be moving my website and download sites shortly too, so expect at least some maintenance updates from me shortly.

AFAIK there are no contest rules at the moment. They are going to be released 1 July, when the contest starts, to prevent people from working earlier.

I can give you the 2003 contest rules. And i have a SVN server repository set up here that we can use

http://www.remakes.org/website/comp2003.php <-- rules

I see nothing on there regarding teams, so I would say it would be OK to have Team Allegro

[edit]
I could be the leader, we could appoint someone leader, or have an "election" for the leader. Or we could just let our Benevolent Leader be our leader

Hey, if enough people are interested in this, can one of the mod's make this thread sticky for alittle while?

I'd be interested in helping in some way. I have vacation time coming up Not sure what I could help with, maybe if we needed someone to rip gfx from games, I can do that Otherwise my other skills are some what mediocre compared to most around here.

Why doesn't everybody that is interested head on over to this page:
http://www.bafsoft.com/page.php?content=ta and register and add some games? (The site will be slow for about 20 mins, there are more dns server upgrades going on)

I can code something, design something, or merely cheer you up

go there and register then

[edit] you can now link to screenshots or upload screenshots (either way, they are downloaded to my site) to go along with the games!

[edit2] we need to elect a leader. I will add a thing so you can vote for whoever is signed up on the team allegro page at that time.

Heh, I only nominated Mario 64 because people were talking about doing a 3d game. Doesn't really seem 'retro' though. Druid looks like a good game to make retro remake though.

it has to be a 8-bit or 16-bit game

Anyway, we were talking about ideas on team managment and leadership on #allegro, we basically came up with:

CGamesPlay(he hasn't given his consent yet) and Epoch71 are the team leaders
I am the main organizer/cooridinater/service provider (web stuff)

and that is about all we got so far. How does that sound?

and also: if you post a game, try and post a couple screenshots for it. thanks.

Hmm..this may prove to be fun. I registered. Yays. Now to let somebody else manage everything

Erm... was GTA 2 released for any 8/16-bit platform?

Also three leaders... isn't it a bit too much? Knowing how team projects are usually going, somebody is going to do major part of work with help from others for it to have any real chance to turn into something complete. Probably OO design could help a bit in distributing work, but I guess really not much.

Anyway, if Druid is picked, you can count on me doing a lot of coding work since I was going to make it myself for this competition.

Wtf? You expect me to read the rules?

Let's say that would be a good start

IMHO leadership should only go to some one who has a proven track record of completing game projects. And that eleminates most of us. Its easy to talk about dividing up labor, but someone needs to actually know how to make/complete a game here. Just my .02

i know. We need to have voting on who should be the leader. Should i add a voting system to the page on bafsoft.com, or should we just vote here on the forums?

Vote here. I vote for the first nominee.

Who are the nominees?

I think I should sit back and take care of the backend work, the site, any technical problems, etc. I was going to do the network code for the game (it needs to be network multiplayer-able) as well.

Hmm... lemmie see what games I would like to see good remakes of:

Metroid
Megaman
Rogue
Sonic the Hedgehog (any version, especially version 2)
Zelda (always good to remake)
Crysalys (NES Game)
Castlevania 2: Simon's Quest (NES)
And of course, the best one of them all, Earthbound (Version for both NES and SNES, but it never made it to N64, and might not make it to Gamecube. Great, entertaining game.)

I would have to say Earthbound, Rogue, or Metroid are highest in my "I want to see/help with a remake list."

From the classics, classics, nothing better than Zelda.

Yeah, but there are way to many zelda clones out there that are not complete. I mean, we could go zelda clone as long as we stick with the entry even after the contest is over to make sure it is kept up to date, but other than that, the world doesn't need another dead-clone.

This is the best Zelda clone I ever seen.

You could do something really interesting, like having Zelda rescue Link instead of the classical way

Yeah, openzelda is pretty good, but it is still unfotunately incomplete. Personally, I like Zelda Classic. The first, 100% complete implementation of a Zelda remake. True, it is the first Zelda for NES, but it still is cool! (Heck, it is basically a complete clone, not just a remake)

You should go add them to our list at the Team Allegro site

You dont have to post screenshots, others can post them for any game (as long as they're logged in), its just nice to have shots to look at.

I would add them, but I can only add one, BAF. The "Add game" button disappeared after adding "Rouge" (which I spelt wrong. It is "Rogue", not the french word for red...).

hmm, Add Game should be there , and i'll fix that spelling mistake (no admin page for games yet, just have to use phpmyadmin and change the row for it in my db)

And what is with you guys posting gba and n64 games -- it has to be gameboy pocket and lower (gba is 32 bit)

[edit] Carrus: try refreashing the page. I was updating the php file adding the email stuff, which can really mess up the outputting php while it is being overwritten

Isn't retro about the age of the game, rather than the platfrom it runs on?

I posted a link to the 2003 rules here someplace, and i believe they said 8 or 16 bit

[edit]
Here are the rules:

I'd like to see a remake of the Lost Vikings. Not because I ever played the game, but because I always wanted the game and never got it.
Yeah, I know it's out on GBA, but I'm not spending my money on a GBA just to get Lost Vikings. If I could find the SNES cartridge somewhere that'd be cool though...

You could try searching net for Amiga version and Amiga emulator.

Anyway, I think I could help in doing 3D OpenGL engine for this project (or do most of it in case of teamwork difficulties).

hmm, I registered.

1. Does it HAVE to be a remake of a old game.

2. nm;D

EDIT: And I cannot work every day, in the middle of the competition i am on a sweeden/denmark vacation for two weeks

Yes, but what 8/16 bit game was 3d? When I nominated Super Mario 64 thats what I had in mind. Or maybe an old t 2d game remade in 3d? Like the Atari tank battle game, but in 3d? Now that could be interesting...

The SNES games using some special chip ( I don't remember the name of that chip ) like StarFox, Stunt Race FX and few others were 3D games...

In fact I believe that a remake of the SNES Starfox with and OpenGL engine could really rock ! I am just trowing you guys an idea, since I am not entering Team Allegro

[EDIT]
The chip use in the starfox and Stunt Race FX cartidge was the "Super FX".

I thought when i thought of 3d, remaking something like Heavy Barrel for NES in 3d.

Isn't moving from 2D to 3D enhancing graphics?

Not necessarily

mostly, you can enhance game play too IIRC.go to remakes.org and check the 2003 compo results, i don't know if any were 3d. There are some games that'd do good in 3d, yet others that couldn't.

I believe you could enhance the graphics by doing 3D graphics, but the gameplay should stay 2D and as close as possible to the original game. In fact the game should nearly look the same, except it would be using 3D models instead of sprites and tiles.

For example I took a quick look at the retroremake site and saw a Galaga remake. The gameplay seemed exactly the same as in the originals, but the ship and enemies were 3D.

That's what I meant. Something like Druid in OpenGL with 2D gameplay should be easy to make and should look awesome with lighting, transparency and all stuff OpenGL can do.

I like the StarFox idea (although I only played StarFox once), mainly because it involves some more physics and mathematics than a 2D game with 3D graphics.

But anyway, thinking of it, making a Starfox remake will be damn difficult, especially understanding how levels where stored and how events occured in the levels, and how AI was done. IMO the game is far too complex for a 1 month compo, and there are too many details of the game which will be very difficult to create back.

I think even 3D would be too difficult because most people here aren't that experienced with it. The lesson from Speedhack is you will always try to do something too big or ambitious in the time available.

So go for something simpler than Starfox.

Starfox 3D is pretty simple.

Not really ...

I think doing starfox would be really cool & fun, personally. It doesn't look particularly hard ... certainly the art would be easier
(well, of course, unless we significantly improve the art, which would be a good idea)

I thought it was pretty much all scripted?
Level events sound not too hard.

Starfox for the SNES sucked but starfox for the N64 was slightly better, maybe with AllegroGL we could do the N64 version with enhanced graphics. However that will require even more physics... but from what I saw in the speedhack entries that shouldn't be a problem with a group of us.

You've got one month... go for it and surprise me!

Steve : Only 8-bit or 16-bit machines game remakes... Any N64 game won't be allowed

An StarFox remake would be great! I played that game tons of times, and never got bored of it.

I don't think it would be a big problem about the programming part (If we're enough people), and storing the levels is plain easy (the are a number of predefined objects you can place in the map).

But there are 16 levels (and 1 secret level) in the original game (and the 3 final stages have two parts -> total "real" stages = 20), plus a big variety of enemies, and about 12 different final bosses. Not to mention the in-game events. I don't think it's possible to do this in one month.

From what I remember the AI is inexistent in this game. All enemy movements are predefined. At most the aiming is all the AI does.

So while this will be cool, for this comp my proposal is still F-Zero .

I'll be glad to help with what I can ... coding or otherwise ... just let me know what you want done and I can get on it.

Outrun!!!!

I agree more or less with Richard Phipps about doing a 3D game.
IMO, it takes one person (or just a few) to make a reasonable 3D engine, but a lot of very talented persons to create 3D artwork for it. I feel that 3D static models like planes, props and levels can be done, but creating fully animated 3D models that don't look too ugly comes very close to professional gamedev.
So if we are going to do an rpg of some kind (which is not my favourite anyway), I am against 3D.

I also think that we should not focus on developing an `engine´ for a game, but create the game with the engine builtin. This creates results more quickly, and therefore it motivates people more (which is important in a community project).
I participated in the ´first age´ project which was going to be a LOTR rpg game, and IMO this is one of the many reasons why it went wrong.

So without creating an ´engine´ first, we would design only a game and a plan for the game coders and artists. The game coders will ask the other people to create parts of the game that they need. Such as a tilemap system, animated sprite class, 3D level code with col.det., whatever...
The key is probably to create as little ´tiers´ as possible so there will be less stalling in the process.

just my two cents

What is StarFox like? I don´t know the game.

I agree with R. Phipps too; a gfx intensive 3d game would be doomed from the start. Starfox would be good for this as Oscar G. pointed out; although the number and complexity of levels would be prohibitive. So how about doing only the first few levels? Or the Atari 2600 tank combat game could be kinda neat in a top down, 3d view.

What did you have in mind for Druid Krzysztof K.? A few simple models? What file format? Or something more ambitious?

I'd like to help with the modeling, but I would basically be learning as I go.

If the game requires any thing other than the most simple physics/col.det then I think something like opcode or ode should be used for sure. I've looked into these and they typically only require a list of verts and triangle indices to set up the geometry then you merely set some callbacks and update stuff.

I imagine Krzysztof already has a solid basis for an engine so his work would be an invaluable starting point.

Well, I don't have one, but I have solid motivation for this one. Anyway, have some code here and there which can be used for stuffing some classes so probably this could be helpful too.

If anyone doesn't know by now, Druid is Gauntlet-style game but with some more spells. Since it was 2D, making 3D engine that would behave exactly like original should be rather simple. We could even start doing it in 2D (I have already some gfx ripped from C64) and then only replace rendering part leaving entire game under it unchanged. The only change here is using 3D models instead of sprites and tilemap.

The only thing that keeps worrying me is if there will be enough work to do because there is already a lot of coders at Team Allegro and 8/16-bit games were rather simple, so probably extending original game will be required anyway.

Modelling is a lot of work. I read the rules but haven't familiarized myself with what games have and have not been done...

We'll see this year's rules when they come out, but I suggest we start on some generic framework code to get the project divided up. If no one else has some already, I can do that, as I seem to be the leader with Epoch71...

Last time I've checked (a day or two ago), Druid wasn't listed on their page as done remake. Also was there any leader voting BAF was talking about? And I'd suggest doing complete OO design before starting actual work (well, starting from game design would be even better, but there is no game picked yet).

Yeah, that's what I mean. I don't know how well I'll be able to handle management of the team, so I'm open for voting [BAF] and Kanzure seem to recommend me though

Well, I don't want to be impolite or something, but I guess you'd agree MMRTS didn't go to well. But if you have ideas why it didn't, then it's all fine.

Starfox consists of more static models than most games in 3D would ...

But the hard part is the models ... the engine should be easy for most choices.

Well, keeping it modular is good (content should be easily swappable), but I agree with creating the content alongside the engine, at least in part. Both can have placeholders to speed development (placeholder AI, graphics, animation code, etc)

i asked if i should set it up (voting)

So what ? Do you want people to vote to choose whether you should set a voting system up or not ?

Yes, voting would be a good idea. Both for the leader/czar and for the final game. I'd say make it the type of vote were everyone gets three votes (not sure what its called).

I nominate K.K. (Krzysztof Kluczek) for the leader position.

Outrun!!!!

You suck. Starfox was the bomb. I couldn't play that game without twisting around in my seat to steer (like it helps ).

I'm on a Blender kick right now, so if you guys are making a SF remake (great idea!) I can help with modeling. Just let me know when the project's a go.

Don't encourage them.. it will never happen..

I ahven't given up on MMRTS by any means. DDustin is still actively working on it. I just need to get around to writing makefiles for it, which I REALLY don't want to do.

We shall crush Team Allegro with our remake of Fist 2 for C64!

i'll add a voting page. Voting will only be enabled for the team leader at the moment.

I haven't said you have given up on MMRTS but it suffered a bit from lack of communications between team members. Surely it was partially my fault since I haven't spent too much time on it, but I also haven't seen any design docs or anything of this kind and I think IRC communication is not enough for team project. Probably lack of time and team member communications slowed MMRTS development so much. Anyway, I'm still willing to help in developing MMRTS. I still have some code that could be submited (some network and GUI stuff), but I almost completely don't know how game components are meant to work with each other.

nonnus29: I'd love to, but:
a) I really have no experience in team projects.
b) I haven't finished anything myself.
c) Team Allegro wasn't my idea and somebody else should get credit for being it's leader.

Anyway, I guess nobody here has much experience in leading team projects so I'd recommend CGames since he has most of it.

btw. CGames: I could try writing makefiles, but I'd have to know what they should be doing. Also DevC++ can generate ones and maybe it could be useful.

EDIT: BAF: How this voting system works? I can't see any form of anything like this.

I'm not entering this team, but I'd like to share with you two things I have seen in previous huge programming teams.

1) Don't overdesign. If you try to cover everything before doing any coding you'll end up with nothing. Do the overall design and let the people that will actually implement the code take care of the details

2) Don't lose time with endless discussions. When the leader makes an informed decision, all the others must do as he says. That's why the leader must be someone with experience in design and programming, someone everyone here trusts

3) Don't try to create the most flexible solution. Make it work, then improve it. If there's no time to improve, at least there'll be something!

My 2 cents

thanks for the tips!

The voting system is up. Each registered user gets 3 unchangable votes. At the top of the team allegro page, you will see a Vote for Team Allegro Leader link or soemthing of that sort. Click it, and vote there. The votes are stored in the database, along with who you voted for (that part is mainly incase anyone cough*CGames*cough hacks my db by creating more accounts. This way when i remove the extra accounts, i can also fix the votes,and deduct some from you

Where Krzysztof Kluczek said that he shouldn't get credit for Team Allegro by being it's leader, that means I should be the leader , it was 100% my idea. But, I don't know how well I could lead a team project, (I could most likely do it), and it may be better for me to try my hand at it with a team that has a little less than 10 people on it

But if people elect me to leadership, I will manage the team good, and, if needed, call in assistance

Great, but now what do I do with these three votes? Who wants to be leader? And what should be the requirements to be the leaser (does he needs to know about software design, or another person will do this) ?

whoever you would think would be beset for leader is who you vote for. Simple as that.

[edit][note] each user you chose gets 1 point. If you think someone deserves 2 points towards being leader, vote for them twice. Or 3. You can vote for anyone up to 3 times, but that is all you can vote The person with the most votes wins.

Well, I don't know who to vote on, since I don't know how much (anything) about you.
N33D M0R3 D474!!`

Anyway, to make things a bit clearer, something about me:
- I'm 22
- I'm studying Informatics in Gdansk University of Technology (3/5 years there already)
- programming since... long time, I was probably somewhere 7-10 when I've started playing with C64 Basic
- C64 (Basic) -> Amiga (AMOS) -> PC (Pascal->C/C++)
- good knowledge about algorithms (finalist of two Polish Olympiads in Informatics)
- I've produced tons of code, but haven't finished anything
- Overall idea about code design (as much as they taught me at uni)
- My productions you could have seen:
-- ScreenHack`04: Bartenstein (raycaster) - 2nd place
-- Ludum Dare 48h: Infected (in my sig) - 4th place in gfx
-- SpeedHack`04: SpeedHack

Let me know if I've missed something essential.

EDIT: Of course I'd suggest everyone putting some info here too.

Me? I'm 16, consider myself poor in math and logic, and enjoy coding.

I started coding in C++, then moved on to more advanced languages like C64 BASIC. Then I came back to C++.
I have some nice tech demos lying around the internet, but nothing finished.
I consider myself to be the "leader" of 2 team projects (ltln, mmrts), and I'm running 1 of my own (lscript).
I write clean code and I CAN do algorithms but they probably will have lots of off-by-one errors.

well, i decided to jump in on this (i have this thing for coding in teams), and heres a bit-o-info-bout-the-badger

21, in college (4th year) for computer science
been coding since around... 4th grade? (about the age of 7)
went from Apple Basic->Atari Basic->QBasic->Visual Basic->C++->Java
im currently the leader of a 8 month 2 man game programming project for school.

i dont really ever finish to much, but i have random experience with openGL, directX, xbox coding, etc.

and despite numerouse stupid questions, i really do know what im doing. ha.

i dont wanna be leader, but I felt like sharing

Ok, here's who I am:

• 23 years old.

• Studying Computer Engineering at Facultat d'Informàtica de Barcelona. Done 3/5 years.

• Programming projects done at uni (not including small ones):

• Software specification knowledge.

• Software design knowledge: architectonic patterns, design patterns (most in the OO architectonic pattern).

• Out of uni projects:

• Other:

[edit] edited

Just signed up. I think I'd be most of help if you decide to do a 3d remake, but I think, I'll find a way to be useful even if it'll be 2d.
Following KK's advice (and knowing that most of you probably don't even recognize my nick , here's some info about me:

- 18 years old
- going for Informatics on University of Maria Curie-Sklodowska in Lublin this year
- programming career(:P):ZX Spectrum Basic/ASM, Amiga(AMOS,C,ASM), PC(Pascal, C, C++)
- I feel good in 3d. I write clean, readable code, and I like to think it is also well-designed... Currently I have one big project, Wriggle, which is close to being finished and will become finished even if I'd have to bite someone to death to do it. I've also completed some projects on the Amiga, simple things, like Pacman, Yacht-zee, Minesweeper.
- has experience with PHP/MySQL and web-design (professional, or at least: paid for )

I think the remake should be something simple, but expandable, like Druid. After we finish the core, we can add new monsters/levels/spells/special effects/characters - whatever we see fit.

I also think we shouldn't worry about the team being to big. Two thirds of us will probably end up being too lazy to actually do a thing .
And I would also like to point out that we seem not to have a 2d artist onboard. That's bad. I can do not-so-crappy gfx, but I suck at characters/animation.

There must have been a mistake. Why am I on the ballet? I don't know how to make a game!?!?!? Don't vote for me (heh).

So do we assume you guys who are posting your skills want to be considered for the job?

EDIT: hey BAF why not put phpbb on you site? would be a good place to do planning or something...

In the past, CGamesPlay has shown outstanding leadership capabilities. BAFSoft has done nothing. BAFSoft's plan for healthcare denies support for the neediest citizens while increasing support for the rich. I'm CGamesPlay, and I approved this message.

[edit]
woot reply 100!

Heh, I am certainly not applying for the job . I have one project to lead already .

I was just thinking that you should know what to expect from me, and what you should expect not.

[EDIT] Added quote to make it clear what was I replying to.

nonnus29: everyone who signed up is on the ballot

and, as soon as i get the new page php generation code finished, i will have a copy of phpbb up (possibly, depends on if i can integrate the users system) following my site's design.

[edit]
I am 14, in 10th grade next school year (they bumped me past 4th grade cause i `was too smart for it`). Been fiddling with computers since i was about 5, programming since i waslike 10 or 11. i have completed a couple crappy games, and one semi-ok game (Relaze). Note: the semi-ok game was made under the extremely streesful and pressureful speedhack compo.

That is about it.

[edit2]
I will have my new site going in the next couple of days, hopefully, and it will have phpbb integrated with it. Just hang in there till then

I wish I could offer help as a coder but unfortunately I'm notorious for one thing: messy and unencapsulated code . I could help as an artist if you're desperate - I'm not bad if I really try...

Seeing as people are having fun writing stuff about themselves I'm going to join in .

-I'm 19.
-I started in C and continued in C for 4 years. Then I decided to try C++ but 3 days later went back to C and have used nothing else ever since .
-I studied Maths,Futher Maths and Physics at A-level and then started Maths with Physics at Warwick Uni but dropped out because I wanted to do computer science instead.
-My maths is pretty good and algorithm-wise I can usually do most things pretty fast but my code is filthy.
-For every one thing I'm good at there are at least two people here who are better than me at that one thing so I don't think I would be very useful for anything .
I have an IQ of 138 (according to an IQ test I just did an hour ago) 8).
I can juggle a reverse cascade with paperweights 8).
-My left baby finger is shorter than my right .
-When I was small I had a pet chameleon called smiley .
-It's way past my bedtime.

Night night!

Considering everyone else is posting their personalia...

• I'm 24

• Programming-wise, I started off in QuickBASIC, then moved to Pascal and C. I have used C++ now and then. I also know x86 assembler, but haven't used it much over the past six years so my knowledge is somewhat dated and rusty. Oh, I also know a little Fortran

• I'm good at writing modular and reusable code: in programming courses, I started off being a week behind the rest in finishing assignments, and ended up finnishing a week early.

• Oh, education-wise, I have a Masters degree in physics and am a PhD student in Astrophysics.

I'd like to do something group-based for a change, but note that time constraints may force me to withdraw...

• I'm 14

• I know 99% of C

• I'm almost destroyed by school:)

• I program almost 30% of my day

• I have no programming education, but learn it myself.

• I learn fast and detailed

• I'm the best in my class with maths, learning more every day

• I have 2 years of experience with C, and know a bit C++.

• I have almost allways found a bug8-)

Careful what you say...

You do not know C that well after only two years. I read comp.lang.c for a while a few years back. Saying things like that would get you burned to a crisp.

I do know C well after two years

and, maybe sink the value to 90%

Well, after all it depends on the way you count "percents", Avenger ...
I read once in a game programming book that the first 90 % of a game take as much time than the last 10 % ( Well, now that I think of it, I might as well have seen that on a Murphy's laws list )

OK. I know much C.

Trust me, you don't. You may know it well enough, but that is something different.

Ya!!! Go Starfox GO!!!!

That was my most favorite game when I was younger, the SNES slayed an amazing amount of 4$$

If you guys need models, im pretty decent w/ blender 3D, like 23. And could help you out with that. (I would love to make some starfox models )

My bio.

I find that point of the rules logical but quite funny . Just wanted to point it out

I know about 10-12% of C and use about 6% (we're talking all the standard libraries here right?). I also never use preprocessor commands.

On the other hand I've had 6 years experience of nothing but game programming so I'm pretty nifty with what I do know . If you were to go through my old games and compare the quality of the games with the level of my programming knowledge you would be very impressed I'm sure.

It's not about how much you know, it's about what you can do with what little you do know.

So... I actually meant syntax, and I know about 20% of the library functions

Considering that the entire C syntax consists of something like 50 keywords, that's not surprising.

I've only had like six years experience with C, and four years C++ experience, and I don't know even a third of everything that's out. Probably much much less.

Since this seems to become more and more a nice thread about everybody's backgrounds, I might just as well sum mine up:
-Studying mechanical engineering at TU Delft
-19 years old
-I´ve been programming C/Cpp about 5 years now.
-I´m creating Unreal-like package/scripting system with serialization etc..., as well as an 3d engine with it. I´ve been doing that for about a year now.
-I´ve participated in the First Age project (www.sf.net/projects/firstage). We stopped after months of talking, a bit of code and a bit of art, but I learned a lot from it about community projects.
-I did a couple of speedhacks (last one, with Ghost Flyer, TINS with MarsColonizer and another speedhack with BEA.) Only the last one got sort of finished (it implemented all the rules).
-I like to think my code design is reasonable, though I do use a lot of RTTI. I wonder why people say its bad design, I think it´s great.

I usually don't either, but at times they are necessary (like winsock/bsd socks cross compatability without 'porting' it)

You guys don't use '#include'? I found it rather convenient.

Yeah, by that logic I mastered Java in 3 hours.

Too late, but I cannot let pass such an offense to Star Fox!

Nintendo always broke rules. Super Mario Bros was the first hit in the console market, followed by Super Mario 3. Super Mario World was another milestone, Zelda III and some time later, Star Fox. It was the first polygonal game with such quality. It was like jumping from an Atari to a PC. And then Stunt Trax FX, until reaching Donkey Kong Country (which I believe to be the best example of how to make a game console scream until it had nothing left inside). Nowadays, if there is a game that exploits 75% of PS (Play Station I, note I am talking about a 5 years old machine) I would be surprised.

Those games made history.

(Edited: Woo-hoo! Tactic Ogre! Is the one where your teams could have a leader and two big guys, or one big and two small, or four small ones? I love it!)

(Edited 2: Now I doubt... it was Battle Ogre or Tactic Ogre? I think Battle Ogre... I loved that game).

Voting has been open. Go vote! Plus, by popular demand, you can now see who is in the voting lineup by hitting voting stats. Have fun!

Tomasu! Tomasu! Tomasu!

And F-zero. Since my Outrun suggestion has been ignored..

Hm, strange . 12 people have voted, and there is only 23 votes altogether. That means some 13 of them are missing, BAF? . Also, I voted for someone 3 times and he's got only 2 votes in the table.

Looks like Operation Mindf*ck strikes again . Or a typo in PHP code .

There's some bug in BAF code. I voted, but only two of them were counted.

[Danger: a joke]BAF got sure that every third vote not on him gets ruled out [/Danger].

BAF: If you want to fix database by hand and don't know where to put these extra votes you can put them on me.

He's got it rigged so it saves who each user voted for, so if the points were put in the user table properly first but not counted properly second then it'll be fine. Furthermore,

.... emm... I forgot. I cycled from the window for a bit and forgot

the 2nd reason was incase someone like cough cgames cough makes many accounts to rig the voting

I have been seeing this bug a lot, i am just going to go through the db and tally up who got what votes, and fix the numbers. I shall do that now

(its a good thing i made it save who voted for who, i almost didnt)

[edit]
All fixed. Kryzeik (i know i misspelled it) is leading with 8 votes, followed by a tie with Oscar, Epoch, and CGamesPlay for 2nd place. But you can always look at the voting early-results page

[edit2]
We are going to have forums up on the site soon, as soon as i can make phpBB look like my site

Thanks all so far! I'll do my best if I'm picked.

Anyway, this isn't main purpose of this post. It's (mainly to BAF):

1) Voting status page is broken - Oscar Giner had 6 votes IIRC and he now has 2.

2) Some people haven't voted yet. Maybe there should be deadline specified? I'd suggest 1th July - date when compo starts.

3) Vote everyone!

I keep my saying: I cannot vote until we chose a game genre.

Hmm, why?

Anyway, we can't choose game genre until we know contest rules which will be available when contest starts.

Well, I trust some people more for 3D design and programming than others, as I do trust people for doing RPGs more than others, as I do trust some more when making arcades than others.

Just my opinion.

Hey BAF, tell me how to make phpbb look unugly when you figure it out (ie I want to use my logo in place of ugly 'phpbb' logo, yuck!)

Like I said somewhere else; I don't expect anyone to actually use this jsgc thing, I put it on sourceforge mainly so I can have free web hosting [/disclaimer]

Edit; oops, thanks, hehe

Play with styles. And the logo is in "templates/subSilver/images/logo_phpBB.gif" (quick look at page source revealed this).

Or even edit the templates/subSilver/*.tpl files and/or pagehead.php and pagefooter.php.

That is how i am going to make it look good with my site

and as far as voting goes, there is a bug in the php script someplace. I'm not fixing it for a cpl people to vote. Tomorrow mornign i will recounstruct the coutns (it stores who votes for who, so i acn tally it manually and change the counts)

Votes should be secret I hope you at least encrypt the passwords

A simple voting script should NOT have these kinds of bugs in the first place. Next time you're running a vote, ask someone who knows PHP to do the script(s).

BAF, your voting system is crazy. Everytime I look the ranking is completelly different KK just moved from its 1st position with 9 votes to 5th with only 2 votes

I don't know why you're having so many problems. Don't you just have to do something like:

SELECT v.vote, COUNT(*), m.has_voted FROM votes v, members m WHERE v.vote = m.username GROUP BY v.vote

to show the results ? There aren't many places to have bugs, here

Can we just reset the vote?
I know whom I voted for and I'll probably vote for those same people again, but as it is, I don't trust the results.

i encrypt the passwords, i know who voted for who, and i dunno what is wrong with the code. Here is the offending code from ta.php, can anyone spot any bugs?

Surely you mean $row3 there.

You should make it a habit to run your code on the strictest warning settings, especially during development. It will catch typos, indexes that don't exist, etc.

Also, it looks like to me that someone could vote as many times as they wanted. I know you're setting a flag, but you should be checking it before you insert values.

Also, you could easily do:

UPDATE members SET vote_count = vote_count + 1 WHERE id=$id

To do it all in one query.

Do you really need error checking with the isset? IF it is a dropdown box and they don't change it they vote for the first person. Correct?

EDIT: Or is that how you get whether they have gone to that page before? If so. Nevermind.

ML: I am checking it:

elseif($user['voted'] != 0)
  {
    print "You have already voted. If you haven't, please email BAF from the main Team Allegro page, or see the BAFSoft contact page";
  }
  else
  { ...

So if it gets stuck in that else if, the voting code is all in the last else, so it wont ever allow it to pass.

And thanks for pointing out that error to me

[edit]
Rally: That is just to make sure some browser doesn't do some funked up thing and make my query code go bonkers . I did the addition in the mysql code as well.

[edit2]
Rebuilt the voting db again, and fixed the bug. Kryzeik(sp?) is winning with 12 votes, with OscarG right behind with 10 votes. Then you can go to the voting page (link in my sig to the Team Allegro page) and see the rest..

Matthew: is there a way to do double ordering in the mysql query? First i want to order by the number of votes there are, Descending. If they are tied i then want to order by username, Ascending. I know i can just do ORDER BY leadervotes,username. But then it will do username descending too. And i dont think ORDER BY leadervotes,username DESC,ASC will work, will it?

ORDER BY leadervotes DESC, username ASC

The total number of votes given is 58.

19 people have voted. 19 * 3 votes = 57 votes.

BAF, my suggestion: destroy the votefor column.
Instead of having this column, create another table to store this info, with just two fields, user and voted_for, being the primary key the pair (user, voted_for)

Much neater this way. Probably you won't want to change this at this stage, but anyway for future reference

And all the code for updating the number of votes can be reduced to just 1 line (in fact you don't need to store this if you use the previous table):

mysql_query("UPDATE ta_members SET leadervotes = leadervotes + 1 WHERE id IN ($vote1, $vote2, $vote3)");

In general, is less probable to have a bug or typo in 1 line of code than in 18

Inphernic: i don't know why. I will be making a php script to fix the db one last time for me.

OscarG and Matthew: thank you.

2nd day of the competition. What's the game you are going to do?

RP : Take a look at the Team Allegro forums on BAFSoft.com forums...
http://bafsoft.com/forums/index.php

And you will see that the organization and the choice of the game is not very easy ...

Uh oh.. Everyone still wants to do a different game.

Do I need a seperate account to be able to use the forums? I can't seem to log in with the username and password I used for the voting.

Anyway, I as stated, I will try to help out with specific bits of code, feel free to ask. I will have to spend some more time on other projects (in particular Allegro itself) in the near future though.

BAF asked me to make music. There is a reason why I said that it depends on who will be leading the troupe.

Inphernic: Kryz. is leading the "troupe." (what does troupe mean, is it like troop?).

Evert: yes you do need to register again on the forums.. I never got around to merging the database of users... too much work, easier just to let phpBB handle it now.

Direct link to the TA Forums: http://www.bafsoft.com/forums/viewforum.php?f=1

We'll have game picked really soon. Register at forums, play possible games we are considering to remake (but no new suggestions) and put your vote.

I cant seem to login, it accepts my username and password, and then returns me to the mainpage asking me to login or register.......

And yes i have cookies enabled.

Yes, that happens to me, too.

Anyway, that account doesn't work with the forums, so you'll have to create one for the forums.

Yea, something is bugged out with the user system on the ta page... it must have something to do with some other things going on in the header. If that page is needed again, I shall fix it.