Although I still love the idea of the Console Wars competition, it does seem to be a bit flawed. So I had a few thoughts about it.
The idea of a kind of role play still seems interesting to me. I was around back in the 80's in the latter part of the british microcomputer boom and think it would be interesting to try to create a game on one of those old formats. Of course I could grab a zx spectrum emulator and make something in pure Z80 language. However I'm not a very good programmer so I could just use MMF2 and get other clickers involved?
What would keep everyone happy in a competition based around roleplaying as a team working to a particular format's limitations? Letting everyone design their own format? letting people choose a real console/computer to 'emulate'? is the fun in the limitations?
I think the console wars is a great idea. It just needs solid rules (defined specs for each console) and a start/end date. I felt like we were getting somewhere with the last thread about this competition.
As far as the specs go, the main thing is graphics. This includes:
-Sprite size
-Number of sprites on-screen at once
-Colours
-Screen size
-Frame rate
For music, perhaps a "sample mod" can be made for each console, which would include the exact samples that can be used (sine wave, square, noise, etc) and the number of channels.
I read through the last discussion of this and I must say, this is probably the coolest contest premise ever. I would highly recommend going with Sketchy's suggestion of rigid retro-esque restrictions. For the multiple system aspect, the differences should be significant but balanced. For example, consider the Playstation vs. Nintendo 64: the Playstation discs were able to hold more content, but the 64's cartridges enabled developers to stream content and cut loading times drastically. That would be kind of stupid to simulate for a contest, but I think it's a good example of the concept.
It would be hard to force a certain amount of objects on screen at once. Or at least In my limited knowledge of mathematics it seems like it would be hard.
An alternative to this would be a limit to how many separate tiles can be made per frame or at any one time.
A cartridge based system can simply upload new tiles on the fly but with disk systems that is impossible to pull off, so that would have been a large problem for developers.
So in the competition setup that could mean
Disk based or slow loading console/computer = limited tiles
Cartridge system = no limit to tiles.
Also i love the idea of having to create our own music with limited premade samples. I found a Sega Megadrive/Genesis soundfont recently and have been ripping samples from it and making loads of music. I'm sure there are soundfonts for slightly more retro systems too.
i.e. 3d, 2.5d (visual and/or code style), altered reality, shapeshifting, weapon charging, character selection screens, fire effects, lightning effects, speed/action lines (like in dbz, comics, pokemon, and other things that use this annoying method), best platformer jump effects/feel, typing in attacks style games, etc.
It's quite easy to come up with ideas, especially for something as simple as a competition.
For me at least, the difficult part is making them happen / putting them into practice / getting people to participate / organising an event / etc.
Blood of the Ancient One, Seen only as Shadow, Faster than Lightning, Fierce as the Greatest Dragon, Nearly Invisible, Floating in a Dream, Entered through the Demon Door, Destroyer of Evil in a Realm with a Red Sky Scarred, Who could I be ?
I like the idea of emulating the ZX-era style consoles and would defo be interested, more so than doing NES/SNES/Mega Drive era games (as this is what i see alot of Klikers doing as projects anyways!)
One limitation i would try and simulate would be the memory limit, preventing you from using over a certain amount of lines of code. This would be similar to the 20-event compos, but not quite as restrictive (40 events??)
Well, since the games were coded in assembly that would take up an extremely small amount of memory so there wouldn't need to be such a huge limit. The only reason there ever was a limit is when arcade games were converted and squeezed into 48 kilobytes or something. I'd say graphics probably take up the most memory.
Blood of the Ancient One, Seen only as Shadow, Faster than Lightning, Fierce as the Greatest Dragon, Nearly Invisible, Floating in a Dream, Entered through the Demon Door, Destroyer of Evil in a Realm with a Red Sky Scarred, Who could I be ?
Disclaimer: Any sarcasm in my posts will not be mentioned as that would ruin the purpose. It is assumed that the reader is intelligent enough to tell the difference between what is sarcasm and what is not.
Sprites were generally limited per line, not per screen. IIRC the NES and SMS could show 8 sprites per line, the Colecovision could show 4 and the Atari 2600 could show 2 (in addition to three rectangular missile and ball objects)
If you're mimicking a spectrum game you should simulate color clash (or just make the whole game monochrome with a color border) I made a demo a while back: http://www.create-games.com/download.asp?id=6084
- Ok, you must admit that was the most creative cussing this site have ever seen -
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Edited by AndyUK
let's do it!!
