The Daily Click

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The Daily Click “Funtition” sponsored by Clickteam!
News posted 4th June, 2012 by Hagar
Well ladies and gentlemen, the summer is rapidly approaching. So what could be better than starting a competition for the summer? ( A vacation you say? D- for you!) The theme of the competition is rather simple and is that of Summer. The type of game you wish to create is purely up to you. We have also decided on one other restriction, and that is no extensions or objects are allowed apart from those which came with the original TGF. Also all game data must be stored within the game, and no data (except for music) should be stored externally. Entries shall be judged by a panel of judges and shall be marked purely on : a) How fun it is to play, which will account for 50% of the total mark b) How well it is presented, which by definition will account for 50% of the total mark. Presentation shall include graphics, music, sounds, and general impressions of the game itself. Judging will be carried out by a team of judges, including TDC's very own resident SMR as he has run numerous competitions on TDC’s forums. Yes folks, absolutely zero marks shall be awarded for coding. We really want this competition to be about old school clicking, making fun games for fun with the inbuilt level editor. Any tool can be used (from KNP all the way up to MMF 2), and games should be submitted as a compiled EXE file. Now then, what is a competition without prizes ? The most excellent people at Clickteam have kindly sponsored this competition and have provided an awesome selection of prizes: 1st Prize: MMF2 Dev + iOS + Flash + XNA or $250 cash via paypal 2nd Prize: Choice of MMF2 Standard, iOS Export Module, Flash Export Module, XNA Export Module or $100 via paypal 3rd Prize: An iPhone Game Development book plus 2000 DC points The closing date is the 12th of August, and the competition starts now so get cracking as there is awesome prizes to be won ! For reference TGFs objects are: Quick Backdrop, Backdrop, Active Object, Counter, Score, Lives, Hi Score, INI ( only to be used for storing game progress, number of lives, no level data must be stored externally!), text (string), Q&A, edit boxes, buttons, and all of the media objects (avi, quicktime, flc, mpg, CD, MCI, picture and mixer). Tweet

Posted by One Man Army Games

4th June, 2012

How would we include Music? I dont quite get it completely.

Posted by Retired Kliker Lazarus

4th June, 2012

Sounds delicious!

Posted by Retired Kliker Lazarus

4th June, 2012

So does this mean we're stuck with making counter-based engines, though? Hm... Might be fun to modify the regular platform engine instead. I dunno. We'll see.

Posted by Pete Devlin

4th June, 2012

Yes, oh bring it on

Posted by Otter

4th June, 2012

Sounds awesome guys! And nice prizes. I will not be competing though since I'm in the 64digits compo, but good luck to whoever competes!

Posted by Chris Burrows

4th June, 2012

So just to clarify. No Array object, no Layer object, no String Parser object and no HWA?

Posted by One Man Army Games

4th June, 2012

No HWA? Seriously?

Posted by OMC

4th June, 2012

HMMMMM. Might have to make some room-time for this.

Posted by Muz

4th June, 2012

Lol, I was going to join a competition, haven't made games in a while, but MMF (or rather TGF) without scripting is rather annoying

Lack of array object might also be a problem.

BTW, any limitations on team projects?

Posted by Chris Burrows

4th June, 2012

I didn't say we couldn't use HWA, I was asking if we could...

HWA, amongst other things, allows for transparency in objects. The Layer object, amongst other things, allows for transparency in layers. It seems counter intuitive to allow one and not the other...

And plus 1 in protest for the beloved Array object!

Posted by jamesh

4th June, 2012

Does the original TGF include transparency, and/or scaling?

Posted by Fanotherpg

4th June, 2012

No scaling only object semitransparency. And what about fastloops?
Comment edited by Fanotherpg on 6/4/2012

Posted by Zezard

4th June, 2012

I'm a little confused regarding the prizes. iOS, Flash and XNA are very confusing terms. Are we talking about the exporters?

Posted by AndyUK

4th June, 2012

Oh yeah thats a good point. Fastloop wasn't a feature on the original TGF.
Although it would be quite easy to get around that, it takes loads of time to copy/paste events.

Posted by Fanotherpg

4th June, 2012

They talk about exporters but prizes bundles are not equal cash however it's nice to have a choice.

Posted by Hagar

4th June, 2012

To clarify:

Rescaling or rotation is not allowed.

Only 1 layer.

Seeing as crude fast loops can be created via loop unrolling there is no problem in their use. This will be only exception in terms of extensions from the original TGF.

Under no circumstances should level data be stored externally. Player stats, music and videos are fine.

All of the ink effects from TGF1 are valid, but HWA and HWA pixel shaders are disallowed.

Try to be efficient with alterable values as possible. No one is going to be strict about this, but try to keep in the spirit of TGF era game making.

I am going to check on team projects, but I am guessing CT will want to give the prize to a singular person.

I believe NES quality games should still be producible within these limitations. It also acts as a great levelling tool for people that maybe still using TGF1, or lesser tools compared to MMF2.
Comment edited by ..::hagar::.. on 6/4/2012

Posted by Chris Burrows

4th June, 2012

At a time when our precious little community is at her weakest, an officially endorsed competition with a theme as open as "Summer" is EXACTLY what we need! We are in no position to discriminate against our users. I vote the restriction be reduced to: "No third party extension allowed"

Posted by AndyUK

4th June, 2012

I already started using layers... damnit.

Posted by Hagar

4th June, 2012

Hold your horses Adny, discussing with other admins if we should loosen up the restrictions a little.

Chris: In a similar vein allowing anything would be discriminating against people with less knowledge or lesser tools.

Posted by Pete Devlin

4th June, 2012

Second what Chris said, this is the most lively I've seen the site in a while so great compo guys and girls, I've been mad busy today with my ideas. Incidentally, how do you submit in such a way that you want your game considered, put it in the game title such as:

Summer comp entry: GAME NAME

?

P.s....Project started! http://www.create-games.com/project.asp?view=main&id=2309
Comment edited by Pete Devlin on 6/4/2012

Posted by Chris Burrows

4th June, 2012

Hagar, I didn't say "allow anything", I said "reduce the restriction to no third party extensions"

The competition is, in it's current state, equivalent to a Photoshop competition only allowing tools from Ms Paint. Now don't get me wrong, I grew up with TGF1 and I love it to tiny little pieces, but it is SIXTEEN YEARS OLD!!!

Posted by AndyUK

4th June, 2012

There's also the 50 frames per second limitation and the 262 Active object limit per frame in TGF1. Also you can't change a counter's X or Y position at runtime or play mod,it,xm files.

You know I think we'll need a detailed list of exactly what we can and can't do.

Alpha channel transparency, Layers,

Posted by Fanotherpg

4th June, 2012

We should be limited to old TGF:

No global variables or strings
No Alterable Strings
Only 3 variables per Object
No global objects
No fastloops
No mathematic functions like Tan and Atan which were not present in TGF or KnP.
Only 252 Active Objects
1400 events limit
No OR Statements
64 actions per line
4096 backdrop objects
Maximum of 512 frames
No Framerate changers only 50 FPS.
Comment edited by Fanotherpg on 6/4/2012

Posted by jamesh

4th June, 2012

I think these kind of restrictions can be good for creativity.

Posted by columbo borgi :C

4th June, 2012

deadline?

Posted by Otter

5th June, 2012

August 12th they said

Posted by Knudde (Shab)

5th June, 2012

Man, complaints abound! Tgf has more than enough power to pull off a very good, competant game. I know many people who used no extensions in tgf to make amazing games. Ninjuken is a great example. Think of it like a puzzle, you want to accomplish something that TGF doesn't "do", then get creative! Through being clever, and working within your limitations, you will be amazed at what you can accomplish. An artist doesn't stop making art because he only has a ballpoint pen. Why should game developers stop making games when they have "only" 256 objects? That's alot of damn objects!

I do take issue with the no external files however, when I was using base tgfI used ini's all the time for levels.

Posted by Bricnic

5th June, 2012

Seems like it would be hard to police these restrictions if you are only required to submit your entry in .exe format. How will you know whether people are actually not using e.g. Array, String Parser, Direction Calculator etc. which have no obvious visual effects?

Also, is there a filesize limit?

Posted by Pete Devlin

5th June, 2012

Lol, it's all getting a bit heated up in here!

Posted by jamesh

5th June, 2012

Is scaling and rotating allowed in the picture editor?

Remember, it's perfectly possible to make a sound game in KNP - even if only one person ever managed it

Posted by Hagar

5th June, 2012

Please see the following link for clarification on any issues:

http://www.create-games.com/forum_post.asp?id=294858

Posted by Fanotherpg

5th June, 2012

Fastloops should be disallowed.

Posted by AndyUK

5th June, 2012

Oh right yeah I forgot about the Alterable value limit. It's 3 Per object isn't it.

Posted by Duncan

5th June, 2012

I like the spirit of the competition, but the rules are just unworkable. Look at Fanotherpg's suggestions up there - they're just absurdly anal. And look at the poll over there on the right: we're all MMF2 users. You're asking us to ignore vast portions of its functionality - stuff that's second nature to most of us, like trig, or not having to work around alterable value limitations. Agree 100% with Chris Burrows

Posted by Zezard

5th June, 2012

Well, other rules would make for another competition. Hagar has clarified the rules (which was needed, thanks Andy and Hagar) so it should be simple enough to follow them. Chris Burrows, most professionals would probably argue that MMF2 is like using Paint compared to "proper" development tools. Besides, like Bricnic mentioned, the grading does not seem to relate to the limitations and there is nothing about discualification or proving that rules are followed so that judges will most likely let lots of stuff slip.

Posted by MasterM

6th June, 2012

"Yes folks, absolutely zero marks shall be awarded for coding."

1. It's awesome you just care about the game and the final result

2. If you don't care about how the game is coded isn't it kind of counter productive if there are so many limitations for how we could code the game. You aren't allowed to do this and you aren't allowed to do that so you will spend ages on trying to find work arounds and get frustrated with CODING (which you don't care about) while you should be spending your time on doing a fun summer themed game

just saying

also 100% disagree with duncan just because he is a fag j/k

Posted by Rick (AntiMatter Entertainment)

6th June, 2012

So, we have to use MIDI files due to no DMC2 object!? I'd like to suggest DMC2 as an exception, if I may.

If not, prepare for a bunch of submissions where the game freezes for a second every time the music loops. I think this is a great idea for a competition but MIDI is such a dated format and the idea of not being able to use DMC2 is a bit backward to me, the pause-while-music-loops thing will just harm the quality of the submissions. Good luck to the entrants, though!

Comment edited by Rick (AntiMatter Entertainment) on 6/6/2012

Posted by Alonso Martin

6th June, 2012

I remember a time in TK where compos just happened and nobody complained about the rules.

Posted by Bricnic

6th June, 2012

Rick, you can also loop a really short .wav for music that won't pause your game. It will bloat the filesize a bit, but maybe that is an acceptable cost.

Posted by Fanotherpg

6th June, 2012

I only pointed out TGF limitations.

Posted by The Chris Street

6th June, 2012

I think it's a good idea to go back to basics, I really do. Without meaning any disrespect I feel we've all been spoiled by the power of MMF2 and the extentions that have been provided to us.

What's wrong with challenging ourselves? If anything this competition will show us that we've taken MMF2 for granted.

Posted by s-m-r

6th June, 2012

An easy way to put the criteria for the competition would be, "Use whatever tool you wish, but imagine you were making one with TGF." I think Fanotherpg's list is very helpful in this regard.

My view is that people (including all you complainers) should have a go at it, regardless of the restrictions, and see what they can come up with in a casual afternoon. If it's working out well and it's something they like, then keep at it. If it's not coming together how you would like, then either head back to the drawing board to start again, or move on.

Still, $250 sounds pretty nice to me...I'd take on some restrictions to help pay my rent!

Posted by Zezard

6th June, 2012

"Without meaning any disrespect I feel we've all been spoiled by the power of MMF2 and the extentions that have been provided to us". Yeah I know, you hardly need to know what a socket or shader is these days to create muliplayer games with realistic graphics, lol. : P

Posted by Hagar

6th June, 2012

To clarify, the code shall only be looked at if we think someone has been overly lax with the rules (say multi-layer parallax backgrounds appear in a submission).

Instead of thinking of what it is not possible, why not think of what is possible? Platformer games and overhead action/adventure games are all easily doable within these rules.

Posted by Dave C

6th June, 2012

sounds good to me, can someone screenshot the TGF colour palette? I can't remember what it looks like.. I want to use it to have that TGF'ery feel.

I feel like we should have no restrictions on the music as stated above.. midi's are broken.. but whatever.

Posted by AndyUK

7th June, 2012

I think you can play mod, mp3 and various other files in TGF actually, via the build in MCI object. Never really looked into that though.

Posted by Bricnic

7th June, 2012

I don't think mp3 was ever supported by default in TGF, since there was the whole headache of having to use DMC, and the ridiculous licensing fee for bass.dll.

In any case... I don't think someone is going to get disqualified based on music. If anything, judges will probably only take a closer look at games that appear to be using fancy graphical effects, or other such obvious violations.

Posted by One Man Army Games

7th June, 2012

What about Direct Show? its been a while since I used TGF and I dont exactly remember, but is it available?

Posted by Zezard

7th June, 2012

I sincerely hope that 100mb is not a big issue for peoples' internet connections. It should not be too hard to find converters from mp3 or just about anything to wav.
...
That is, if you don't just want to take the general guess here and just have whatever sound related plugins and music files you feel like.
Comment edited by Zezard on 6/7/2012

Posted by Bibin

7th June, 2012

Definitely taking place in this.

Posted by Otter

7th June, 2012

"I sincerely hope that 100mb is not a big issue for peoples' internet connections"

Are you talking about converting mp3 to wav files? Keep in mind that you can always convert to .OGG instead. OGG has just as good quality, it plays internally, and a much smaller file format. You just can't listen to .OGGs in the media player is all, of course MMF or TGF or whatever will play them though.

Posted by SoftWarewolf

8th June, 2012

I love it

the rules might need even more clarification, is it allowed to have objects with .png transparency? It might be hard to keep it all back to basics without actually using TGF to create it.. That would be fun! although i am sure i will pull my hair out at some point.

The other thing that is oh-so-common with all competitions here, is that the games get released to late to work with the theme... it will be a shame to have all the summer games unreleased until the end of august. Is it allowed to publish games as soon as their finished?

Posted by AndyUK

8th June, 2012

I don't think TGF could play OGG files without some sort of extension.

Posted by Bibin

8th June, 2012

Everyone and their grandmother used DMC2 to play external audio files... I think allowing OGG files is still within the spirit of the competition, even though it does push the technical boundaries slightly.

Posted by MaciekO

8th June, 2012

Can i post a game maked with tgf2 Newrounds edition????

Posted by Draq

14th June, 2012