The Third Annual Festive Amiga Game Making Competition (2011)

[Cammy]

Seasons greetings, one and all! Well, it's approaching that time of year again when we put our personal lives on hold and ignore our health as we rekindle our imaginations and use our skills and talents to create exciting new games to enter into the traditional Festive Amiga Game Making Competition. While in previous years the focus of the competition was on producing games for original Amiga hardware only, this year we are including two categories: Classic Amiga and Next Generation Amiga. The NG category includes games made for AmigaOS4, MorphOS, Aros or RTG OS3 systems. The Classic category requires the game to run on at least an Amiga 1200 with extra RAM or an accelerator. If it requires a 060 and a graphics card, it'll go in the NG category. Also this year we will have a panel of experienced judges who will play and rate the games, and then combine and tally the results to find our two major prize winners. Games will be rated on the usual aspects of gameplay, graphics, sound, but also on originality, good use of the hardware, or anything else that clearly shows the effort that has gone into making the game.

The rules for this year's competition are different to the two previous years, where the goal was to produce a Christmas, Winter or Holiday-themed game. This time we thought we'd try something a bit more fun, giving people a chance to try something they may have wanted to make for a while but never got around to it.

Remember back to when you were younger. Christmas time was when all the publishers would rush their development teams to get their games on the shelves, and often the big sellers at this time of year were adaptions of the latest silverscreen blockbuster. What if you were one of those game developers, and it was up to you to create an adaption of a popular franchise intended to be the number one seller at Christmas time? How would you do it?

This year's Festive Amiga Game Making Competition's rule is this: Create an Amiga game adaption of the film, television or book franchise of your choice! The only exception is you cannot make a game based on something that was already made into an Amiga game. Also, please let us know in the thread what you are going to base your game on so hopefully others can choose something different. If you are unsure if there already is an Amiga game of the series you're considering, please check the Hall of Light - http://hol.abime.net

Think about all the brilliant games we got that would never have been if it weren't for a movie or a comic book being popular enough for an adaption. But also remember the awful games based on series which should never have had games made about them at all, and try not to make the same mistake.

You will have two months to produce something, and it doesn't have to be a full game. It can be a single level, or an incomplete game, but make sure it is at least playable, and of course more complete games will probably be rated higher. On December 24th you should upload what you have completed so far of your game to an online host where we can download it from and re-host it on the Amiga Christmas Tree website (where the competition details will also be hosted).

You can use any language or tools you like to create your game. This includes programming and compiling your own code, designing it with a GUI-based game-editor tool, or even producing it in some multimedia presentation software, as long as it can be run from an icon, CLI or booted from a disk.

Details on the prizes for each of the categories will follow. We'd appreciate any donations to the prize pool, and remember the more tempting the prizes the more likely our talented community is to come up with something fun for us and our families and friends to enjoy this holiday season.

Thanks for reading, everyone, and good luck to anyone interested in entering. I hope you like the theme, I think most of us could think of a story we enjoyed that we thought could be made into a game. If you have any questions, please ask.

Have fun!

AMIGA RULEZ!

[prowler]

Thanks for running the competition again this year, Cammy!

[FOL]

Incase people are interested in previous year pages.

http://amigachristmastree.ultimateamiga.co.uk/

Will also add act.ultimateamiga.co.uk as above is a bit of a mouth full, .

EDIT:-
made it domain wide.

http://act.ultimateamiga.co.uk/
http://amigachristmastree.ultimateamiga.com/
http://act.ultimateamiga.com/
http://amigachristmastree.pspuae.com/
http://act.pspuae.com/

If some dont work, dont worry, they are still propagating / updating.

[Raislin77it]

i was thinking, it is possible to create a game , based on a movie/anime witch is based on a game?

something like i remake resident evil for amiga, because :

1 : amiga doesn't have a resident evil game
2 : my work is based frome the first movie of re

[nujack]

Originally Posted by Raislin77it

something like i remake resident evil for amiga, because :

1 : amiga doesn't have a resident evil game
2 : my work is based frome the first movie of re

Amiga has a Resident Evil Game, but only a demo was available: http://hol.abime.net/5548. BTW I like that idea and think there shouldn't be a problem with the new rules.

[Cammy]

Thanks for the subdomain links FOL!

A game based on the Resident Evil movie using the characters and locations from the film would be great, and totally within the rules, but a remake of the Playstation original wouldn't really be suitable. Put Milla Jovovich on the titlescreen and it'll be fine.

[Raislin77it]

Originally Posted by Cammy

Thanks for the subdomain links FOL!

A game based on the Resident Evil movie using the characters and locations from the film would be great, and totally within the rules, but a remake of the Playstation original wouldn't really be suitable. Put Milla Jovovich on the titlescreen and it'll be fine.

Ok thanks (the RE is just an example)

[Djay]

Originally Posted by Raislin77it

i was thinking, it is possible to create a game , based on a movie/anime witch is based on a game?

something like i remake resident evil for amiga, because :

1 : amiga doesn't have a resident evil game
2 : my work is based frome the first movie of re

http://hol.abime.net/5548
Sort of

[S0ulA55a551n]

Sorry hadn't seen the posting on here as spend more time amiga.org.

[Dreedo]

Started work on my game today, should be able to finish it before the holidays.

Be my first Amiga game if i finish it.

[rockersuke]

This year's rules encourage us (in fact, almost force us) to work with copyrighted stuff, which is totally OK for me. Indeed, my personal opinion on copyright enforcers, just in case anyone has doubts about it, is that they should:

-go to hell
-then, die
-once dead, go to hell again
-resurrect and repeat the whole process in an endless loop until intelectual property laws meet common sense

Anyway, I had the intention to enter the comp with a text adventure, as usual. Adapting some current franchise into a short interactive story won't be a trouble with the comp organizers, but most probably I would like to upload or link the game later in some Interactive Fiction related sites, and I'm not 100% sure that using unlicensed material there won't be an issue.

With that in mind I've been researching into public domain works, open source characters, copyright-expired novels or movies, thinking that would be a nice workaround. That itself has been a lot of fun, as there are a lot of really weird stuff hanging around out there. But in the end, aiming to be in the totally safe side of the law means jumping back to the pre-Sherlock Holmes age, and I don't feel that fits the spirit of the comp (though it would be valid, of course, and Holmes himself was one of the first ideas which came to my mind, but then, there is already a Sherlock Holmes text adventure for the Amiga, what's more, a very good one!)

I've got two ideas for this comp. One of then is about a current on-air TV-series and, of course, means "To hell with copyright and go with it". The other one seemed to be the perfect balance of something that is simultaneously "Hot-news" and free of copyright... too good to be true... it had the same stigma that would have had Sherlock Holmes, I mean: while the original source material has had its copyright expired, there is an active trademark on it... so in the end it would also mean "To hell with copyright and go with it!"

(the work I was thinking of is exactly going to be "hot news" somewhere around march 2012 and is at the same time "public domain" stuff -now, a no prize goes to the first to guess what it was - it's the trademark thing what could spoil it )

Anyway, I just wanted to share my thoughts on this matter. What's your take? I mean, are you on the "To hell with copyrights" side or would you rather look for a workaround if possible? I haven't decided yet.

By the way, in this temp comp webpage Cammy has built there are mentions to at least a couple of franchises already on the works for an entry, Satrgate and BMX Bandits (nice!). Anymore people thinking of something to adapt into an Amiga game?

--

[DeafDaz]

Hi cammy
just had a look at tge rules above, do the rules also cover games made with WinUAE and other emulators? or does it have to be on a real machine? I only have WinUAE

[Cammy]

Oh, WinUAE is included of course. If the game runs in UAE but requires RTG, it will be included in the Next-Gen competition, and if it works using the Chipset emulation then it will be in the Classic competition.

I'm sure once you've uploaded it plenty of people will be able to try it on real Amigas and let you know if it works or not.

[DeafDaz]

Thank you.

[mihcael]

Gday Cammy, thought you might be interested to read http://aros-exec.org/modules/newbb/v...?topic_id=6476

3-D RPG Maker for AROS, hopefully it is ready before competition completes.

[Dreedo]

Bah so forgetful, forgot all about this.

My SEUCK game was doing quite well, managed to design most of the sprites in the first day of making it.

Have to work on it during the week.

Hope we get some interesting games this year.

[Dreedo]

Feeling ill again, but luckily earlier than last year, so hopefully be well enough to work on it for the last week of the competition, I'm almost finished with it.

[rockersuke]

And now, as usual, is when I say I'm not going to make it in time... again...

I took off with a lot of energies, but real life struck really hard and I've been struggling these last weeks loosing some precious sleep time that I needed for the christmas rush at job. The result: now I'm both phisically and mentally exhausted and my work in progress isn't even close to a playable demo. I thought of making something that could be considered a "proof of concept" but just a few minutes ago a friend has called me up to tell me about a reunion of old friends who hadn't met for a long time tomorrow, ruining my very slim and last chance to finish something for Christmas day!

Now for the good news...

I've got a very solid idea of what I pretended to do, so the project is unstoppable now, and will eventually be finished in, eer, not a long time! In the proccess I've learned a few AMOS tricks and my text adventure engine has evolved quite a few steps! So I must first of all give Cammy a really big thanks for her enthusiasm and her competitions, without which none of this would have ever happened!

A few pics of the WIP:

Now, what about the rest of you? How are you doing? Better than me, I hope!

--

[Ze Emulatron]

Originally Posted by rockersuke

Now, what about the rest of you? How are you doing? Better than me, I hope!

I think most of mine is done, I was working on one game but I couldn't achieve what I wanted to do in the language (AmigaBASIC), so I gave up on that one and started working on something else.

I think all I have to do is work on the sound, fix up the colours and graphics, make the Title / Intro screen, fix the bug I know of and a few more small bits and pieces.

EDIT : I forgot I hadn't made the ending yet, I'll have to get back to it.

[Ze Emulatron]

I have finished my game it is based on Deal or No Deal and was written for classic amigas

http://www..com/?6l5foull57ha9k3