Short and Sweet (SSGC) contest

[Opry99er]

By the way-- i was wondering how I should go about doing this diskette--- would you all like the manuals/docs in DV80 format on the disk, or would you like a printed manual?

[InfernalKeith]

Wow.. Well, I'm in---- if Mark Wills isn't starting a Crap Game contest, this one would be very cool!!! I bet we could get Keith Bergman to enter this one--- right up his alley... So I'm taking bets.... I bet he'll find a way to torture frogs this time.

 

 

Actually, what Adam mentions is part of the problem I'm having 'raising' that Atlantis game from cassette to bring into the emulator world. I'm actually taking an entire day off tomorrow (minus an hour when I have to do a phone interview) and working on that project - it may involve loading, deleting lines, saving, loading, deleting the other half of the lines, saving, then loading each half-section, saving to CF7, bringing each half to the PC and merging them in text editor. And that doesn't include the conversion to "BXB" so it'll run in extended BASIC, OR the extraction of all the variable data from the data file on side 2 of the tape!

 

I may need more than one afternoon. :/

 

Congratulations to the winners and to everyone for making this cool idea come to life. It's neat to see individual programming style, graphical style, etc emerging in each of us as we submit more work for public consumption. Although I'm not sure I dig being "known" as a chronic abuser of crudely-drawn virtual animals... none of my next game projects will feature ANY creatures being even slightly inconvenienced, I promise.

[sometimes99er]

Hi Owen and all

 

Thanks for putting my game entry between the best. I dont think much of it myself (my game that is). I compiled a list quickly myself simply by estimating the time I had spent on each entry. To me there were clearly 3 that stood out, Dark Maze, Beryl Reichardt: The Helm of Wooldridge and Space Trap. I know you must have had a hard time judging, taking so many things into consideration.

 

You have really kicked some life into the old community. 17 entries of amazing high quality for what it is. I did work on 3 other entries, but they didnt get far. I soon found myself concentrating on the main game loops, and I never got the flow or sprite precision I wanted. The last try was after I was blown away by Inaccurate Invaders.

 

My list of projects is almost endless, and Im deliberately jumping from one to another. It has to be fun.

 

Now, I dont have any real hardware. My wife would probably crucify me if I suggested the idea. Though its been tempting for years, I like to keep my room and desk somewhat manageable. Its nagging me that I cant test my own demos and games on the real deal, also to be able to give quality feedback to Tursi and Zapf.

 

Well, when it comes to the magnificent price, it would surely make a marvellous statuette, but then I try not to be a collector. Save the postage this time around and put the price in some other contest/event.

 

Thank you again. And thanks everybody.

 

Karsten

Edited April 29, 2010 by sometimes99er

[+adamantyr]

Actually, what Adam mentions is part of the problem I'm having 'raising' that Atlantis game from cassette to bring into the emulator world. I'm actually taking an entire day off tomorrow (minus an hour when I have to do a phone interview) and working on that project - it may involve loading, deleting lines, saving, loading, deleting the other half of the lines, saving, then loading each half-section, saving to CF7, bringing each half to the PC and merging them in text editor. And that doesn't include the conversion to "BXB" so it'll run in extended BASIC, OR the extraction of all the variable data from the data file on side 2 of the tape!

 

I don't have access to my TI stuff at the moment, most of it's packed up to move hopefully this weekend... but there is a way to make a program loadable and usable in Extended BASIC that uses character definitions beyond 143. (Which is always the problem with loading large BASIC programs.) Someone gave it to me so I could get a Not-Polyoptics program moved over to disk a few years back. It was a MERGE file that would free up the character spaces and shut off sprites.

 

Adamantyr

[Opry99er]

Thanks for your words Karsten--- and yea... It was very hard. The games I have "spent the most time on" are not necessarily the games that won. For me, Dark Maze has been ky most played game as well. But Dark Maze didn't run as quick on the real TI, and your game, sniffing zombie, runs like an assembly program! I know there isn't a ton to the concept, but it is certainly my second "most played" game---

 

As you can see, this judging stuff is hard as hell..... It killed me to leave off 3 or 4 of these games. Fly guy was my favorite concept game--- just didn't deliver on the real deal as well as the sequel (written in TMS9900) will. Beryl Reichardt was a real blast, once I got the hang of it--- god, this sucks.. . I look at this now, at 6:30 AM and I'm thinking my list might have been slightly different had I picked this morning rather than last night.

Edited April 29, 2010 by Opry99er

[+retroclouds]

Congratulations on the contest :thumbsup:

 

I think this is one of the best TI game development years in a very long time

[Opry99er]

You're absolutely right Filip. And your efforts to get us on Atariage and do the first contest has a major role to play in this Renaissance. We all bid you thanks--- and ON WITH TUTANKHAM!!!

[unhuman]

Thank you, thank you all for your help and support. Without you all I couldn't be here today reliving my youth and pissing off my wife (she barely tolerates my pile-o-crap in the basement). But, alas, I must thank her as well. She actually congratulated me this morning.

 

This truly was a blast for me.

 

Thanks!

 

-Howie

 

BTW - guess I need to write a manual.

Edited April 29, 2010 by unhuman

[The Codex]

Congratulations to all entrants, and to those who placed in the winner's circle. Though really the winner is the TI community, which has gotten more "buzz" and new games from this than it has it a while!

 

In the spirit of sharing that Karsten started, and thanks to him for select my Beryl title, I'll list my picks for the top three - Thin Ice, Dark Maze, and ZomBXB. Each captivated me with technical brilliance and replayability. Inaccurate Invaders, Chronicle of Sniffing Zombie and SSGC Racer easily fit those criteria as well and were also very enjoyable.

 

Although I'm not sure I dig being "known" as a chronic abuser of crudely-drawn virtual animals... none of my next game projects will feature ANY creatures being even slightly inconvenienced, I promise.

 

Perhaps you shouldn't have leaked the screenshot from your upcoming Whack-A-Seal before saying that.

 

Edited April 29, 2010 by The Codex

[marc.hull]

Howdy everyone!!! Well, it's been the hardest thing I've ever done as pertaining to the TI. It made programming "Honeycomb Rapture" feel like a walk in the park!!! I've expanded the winning prizes to 4. Below are the prizes for the winners. I had to pick an order of winners, but I won't select your prizes. 1st place picks first, 2nd place picks second, etc. Anyway, here are the prizes

 

*CF7+ sidecar peripheral (slimline)

*Myarc rs232 card with original manual & Terminal Emulator II cartridge with original manual

*A 64k Jon Guidry cartridge board and game case (for making homebrew carts)

*A Navarrone 3 cartridge expander device (allows for three carts to be plugged in at once... select with 3 way toggle)

 

This contest was amazing. There were brilliant games... some I enjoyed playing more than others... and some that worked better on the real TI than others. In the end, I had to balance my criteria and find the best games that would fit into as many of them as possible. The selection process for the final 6 was tough. Narrowing it down to 5 took me 3 days. Narrowing it down to 4 took me up until about a half hour ago. I wish I could give out 17 CF7+s to each of you who entered. However, since I can't do that, I had to rip parts of my SOUL out to narrow these down. =) I found that I had an emotional attachment to several of these early on... There are a couple that I'm addicted to and want to see expanded. It appears that Fly Guy has a sequel in the works, thanks to Matthew180. Much excitement has been stirred up during the course of this contest, and the community owes you all respect and gratitude. You are all already on 2 websites, soon to be 3, so your games are DLable by anyone. If this was your first TI experience, I hope it was a good one. Anyway, without further adieu......

 

(S)hort and (S)weet (G)aming ©ontest Winners!!!

 

1) Lunar Rescue (Marc.Hull)

2) Inaccurate Invaders (unHUman)

3) SSGC Racer (Kurt Woloch)

4) Chronicle of Sniffing Zombie (Sometimes99er)

 

There were games like Fly Guy, Beryl Reichardt, and Dark Maze that I really considered hard... Thin Ice, another... Wow. Canyon bomber reminded me of an old 2600 I used to have!! Gravity Run was soooo slick and responsive on the real hardware. ZomBXB and the accompanying TI Farmer were all amazing. TI Simon, I have to say, brought me back to my childhood. In the end, Lunar Rescue won because of how smooth it was on hardware, the scoring engine was fair and tough, and the graphics were great. Inaccurate Invaders, the updated version, was stronger on hardware than I thought it would be. You cannot play this game thinking about TI invaders... This game stands on its own, and a work of art for the contraints of this contest. SSGC Racer was unbelievable in every way. In CPU Overdrive, the gameplay/racing is second to none. I actually liked playing this game in CPU overdrive better than I like playing Pole Position! The only problem is that if you play the game in CPU overdrive, the music and speech are messed up... too fast. Chronicle of Sniffing Zombie is amazing. It is clean, fast, fun, and challenging all at once.

 

In the end, I didn't select my 4 favorite games. Had I selected my 4 favorite games, the winning list would be very different. Since I'm an RPG guy, I was very excited about Dark Maze and Beryl Reichardt. In CPU Overdrive, these games make my road trips FLY by. Loved these games, truly.

 

I selected these 4 on their replayability, graphics, performance on hardware, overall design and user interface. Truly, there were games that were unbelievably designed, but they just didn't cut it on the real TI. I could have selected any number of others, but these were the ones I settled on. Each of you will receive a diskette with all the games and a nice printed manual with the docs you provided. This has been so much fun, until the judging. =) You are all deserving and you have all made an excellent contribution to the TI community. Thank you all very much.

 

If you want a copy of the diskette, PM me your address and I will have a physical diskette for you within the month.

 

BTW, my wife says I should give all my stuff away, consoles, PEBs, carts, peripherals, everything to you guys as prizes... I don't think she fully appreciates the majesty of the silver and black... As a matter of fact, she said she would pay for shipping on all that stuff. She really doesn't like my hobby. =)

 

 

Well Thank you Owen, I appreciate it. My favorite game actually turned out to be Chronic farmer or whatever the hell it was called. I downloaded all the games, converted them and played them last night. When I came across the farmer game I didn't quite get it until the stoner came to help me for free weed. When it finally dawned on me what was going on I had a HUGE laugh, turned on the black light, got my old bong out and ..... (actually I had another beer but had I been 18 again and had some weed well who knows I actually think that the congrats go to you and your successful promotion of this event. I have not seen excitement like this since I have been back on the scene.

 

I feel that one of the appeals of the machine is the fact that there is still so much un-done for it. There are many ports that could be made for the machine yet and events like this help encourage this to happen as well as show that a lot of what has been stated about the shortcomings of the machine in the past is BS.

 

Also thanks to Retro for this forum. The OLUG is nice but it is of a different flavor. I perceive this forum to be more of a doer's forum as far as programming goes (as is clearly seen by the production of the last few months !) Hell even Tesch got involved and he doesn't get involved in anything =) I have a huge 9900 project that I am having trouble starting perhaps I should bring it here and get everyone involved. The enthusiasm may just be the kick in the ass I need.

 

Owen I had a blast doing the XB contest and trash talking on the smack talk forum with a group who can both take it and dish it out. Kudos for a a great event !

 

Marcus the Destroyer....

[marc.hull]

Thank you, thank you all for your help and support. Without you all I couldn't be here today reliving my youth and pissing off my wife (she barely tolerates my pile-o-crap in the basement). But, alas, I must thank her as well. She actually congratulated me this morning.

 

This truly was a blast for me.

 

Thanks!

 

-Howie

 

BTW - guess I need to write a manual.

 

 

 

 

Just tell you wife that it's always better to be pissed off than pissed on (and report back her response =)

[marc.hull]

We'll wait for Marc. . You out there, Okie?

 

I'm here, just not much of a night owl anymore. 10:30 is about my limit which turned out to be a good thing since It prevented me from watching the Laker's slaughter of the Thunder Tuesday night. I guess I'd like to play around with the CF unit for a while anyway and see what it is all about. When I'm done I'll pass it along to someone here....

 

Marc

[Opry99er]

Thanks for the awesome responses guys. There were so many excellent choices... And as i said, I simply couldn't just pick my 4 favorite games--- Thin Ice rapidly became one of my favorites as well--- I can't wait to see it in it's full glory when Keith decides to make it an XBox 360 game!!! And that pic of whack-a-seal?!? HAHAHAHAHAHa!!!!!!!!!!! Whatever. You're right on the point of the "final frontier," Marc... This system is really a frontier!!! If we can do Pitfall and Never-Lander on this thing, we can do about anything....

[Opry99er]

And TI Chronic---- yea.... Had Codex entered that one "officially" into the contest, it would have won all 4 prizes and a bag of chips, and a cupcake.... And some donuts.... And a bag if cheddar popcorn... And a 2 liter.... And cheddar popcorn.... Wait dude, did I already say that one? Whooooaaahhh

[The Codex]

Ah, just to mention something about the compilation, if Owen wants to do a printed manual then I'm happy to volunteer page layout services. If everyone wants to submit a one-page description and play guide for their game, I'd be glad to lay them out together into a consistent manual. I can post a page template if there is interest in this.

[unhuman]

Now that you're offering that - a TI-style manual would rock. You kick ass.

 

Ah, just to mention something about the compilation, if Owen wants to do a printed manual then I'm happy to volunteer page layout services. If everyone wants to submit a one-page description and play guide for their game, I'd be glad to lay them out together into a consistent manual. I can post a page template if there is interest in this.

[Opry99er]

Wow Codex--- great offer!!! Seeing what you've done with the SSGC entry manuals on the other thread, it would be a marvellous contribution and save me some grief!! Thanks a million man!!! You're a true gentleman

[The Codex]

Cheers fellows, more than happy to oblidge. I'll work up a page template tonight and post it here for your comments, and once we settle on the final look then everyone can send their content. I definitely want to try to match the look, feel, and dimensions of the original TI manuals for this one.

[ti99iuc]

Congratulation to Opry for all and congratulation to the Winners !!!

 

but a big Big BIG -T H A N K S- to all programmers !!!

 

I am very happy to live this new moment of ti99 , is a revenge for me to live what I couldn't when I was too young.

Edited April 29, 2010 by ti99userclub

[Opry99er]

I would love to see a TI color manual in full glory!!! However printing all these pages in color can get expensive!!! Perhaps we could maybe do the cover and back in color and the rest in B&W?

[The Codex]

Yep, that's what I'm thinking Owen. Something along the lines of the XB manual, in terms of look and feel, only stapled instead of squarebound since it will be much thinner. I need to do some measurements but I suspect that folded paper of the right dimensions will work, which would mean just one color copy and maybe about 8 double-sided black-and-white copies per book. Should be cost effective, and a place like Kinkos will print, collate, and staple bind them for you at a reasonable cost. I can get you some hard numbers on the likely price once I've finished the initial layout scheme.

[Opry99er]

I'll send you a PDF of my Lemonade Stand manual I gave out with the first 20 disks that sold at the Faire last year. It was 16 pages, all color, and staple-bound. That's how I know what manuals cost to print. . 4 full sized pages, folded in half, double sided=16 "pages." I was pretty proud of that manual.

[Opry99er]

It would be cool to use some kind of "futuristic" font for the text itself--- kinda like what Marc used in his games.... Just a thought.

[+Vorticon]

Howdy everyone!!! Well, it's been the hardest thing I've ever done as pertaining to the TI. It made programming "Honeycomb Rapture" feel like a walk in the park!!! I've expanded the winning prizes to 4. Below are the prizes for the winners. I had to pick an order of winners, but I won't select your prizes. 1st place picks first, 2nd place picks second, etc. Anyway, here are the prizes

 

*CF7+ sidecar peripheral (slimline)

*Myarc rs232 card with original manual & Terminal Emulator II cartridge with original manual

*A 64k Jon Guidry cartridge board and game case (for making homebrew carts)

*A Navarrone 3 cartridge expander device (allows for three carts to be plugged in at once... select with 3 way toggle)

 

This contest was amazing. There were brilliant games... some I enjoyed playing more than others... and some that worked better on the real TI than others. In the end, I had to balance my criteria and find the best games that would fit into as many of them as possible. The selection process for the final 6 was tough. Narrowing it down to 5 took me 3 days. Narrowing it down to 4 took me up until about a half hour ago. I wish I could give out 17 CF7+s to each of you who entered. However, since I can't do that, I had to rip parts of my SOUL out to narrow these down. =) I found that I had an emotional attachment to several of these early on... There are a couple that I'm addicted to and want to see expanded. It appears that Fly Guy has a sequel in the works, thanks to Matthew180. Much excitement has been stirred up during the course of this contest, and the community owes you all respect and gratitude. You are all already on 2 websites, soon to be 3, so your games are DLable by anyone. If this was your first TI experience, I hope it was a good one. Anyway, without further adieu......

 

(S)hort and (S)weet (G)aming ©ontest Winners!!!

 

1) Lunar Rescue (Marc.Hull)

2) Inaccurate Invaders (unHUman)

3) SSGC Racer (Kurt Woloch)

4) Chronicle of Sniffing Zombie (Sometimes99er)

 

 

Thanks Owen for putting this contest together. It was really great fun and I enjoyed participating thoroughly. I fully agree with your choice of winners, although I have to say that it must have been really difficult to pick them out of so many great games. It is just amazing what can be done with XB, and it is a blooming shame that the TI engineers crippled its speed so much...

[Opry99er]

Thanks Walid. Your game was superb, especially with the shield function!!! This was INSANELY difficuly to judge... in the end, I feel like I cheated several games out of winning prizes... The game I play most of all didnt even make the top 4!!! I had to ask myself why I didn't put that game in the top 4... It was just really a matter of how the game played on the real TI--- CPU Overdrive is awesome, but this was a TI-99 Extended BASIC contest, and not a Classic99 CPU Overdrive contest... I loved so many of these games, and they will always be in my DSK1 from now on!!! Kudos to all of you... I'd say the contest was a success, and I can't wait to see more games and programmers enter the fold. Walid, it looks like you have some work to do on the TI Gameshelf!!!! Don't envy you that task. =) My SSGC contest page on Opry99er was pretty much a clone of the Gameshelf format... That's an excellent site, and one of my #1 bookmarked sites!! Any of you who haven't been to see what XB is capable of, go to Walid's site, DL some of these games and have fun... Particularly the games by Willi Doeltsch!!!! Also, for you RPGers out there, download Old Dark Cave and Legends. WOW!!!