The Second Annual Festive Amiga Game Making Competition

[Cammy]

Seasons Greetings! In the spirit of Christmas, and due to the previous year's success we are hosting the Second Annual Festive Amiga Game Making Competition!

This year the competition is very much the same as it was last year, except you now have three full weeks to work on your game rather than two. Remember we had seven playable entries made within the time limit last year, so don't doubt yourselves about being able to get something basic produced before Christmas, you can do it! I believe in you!

Last year we had some prizes on offer, but unfortunately I have nothing left to offer as prizes to the winners of this year's competition. Regrettably I also had trouble trying to save enough money to have the certificates printed and send the prizes out, so I'd rather not promise awards this time around unless anyone else is willing to help by donating Amiga-related hardware, software or money to help pay for the postage of the prizes.

Nevertheless, I think there is more fun to be had making games for the Amiga than winning prizes, so I really hope you will consider giving it a go. It's rewarding to see people enjoying the work you've put into something, helping out and making people happy are in the spirit of the season too!

The rules are pretty easy going:

1. You have until December 24th to finish your entry, that gives you a full three weeks from the starting date. If your game isn't finished by Christmas Eve, upload what you have finished so far anyway, just try to make sure it's playable.
2. Your game must run on a classic OCS or AGA Amiga. This way, anyone should be able to play all the games, either on their old hardware or through UAE. Unfortunately OS4, Aros and MorphOS specific entries at this stage wouldn't reach enough people and couldn't compete for votes.
3. You can create your game with any software you like. This includes programming it yourself too. If you have no coding knowledge, feel free to use any of the available game making software such as Backbone, SEUCK, GRAC, GRAAL, Reality, Game Engine, or anything else you can find.
4. Your game must be themed around Christmas or the festive season. It doesn't necessarily have to contain religious references, but it must be identifiable. Try to make something you or a child you know would enjoy playing during the holidays.

That's all there is to it, hopefully the rules are lenient enough for anyone to be able to contribute. I will post further details about where the games should be uploaded, and if there will be any prizes this year once I have more information, hopefully we'll build this into something worthwhile over the next few weeks.

I hope everyone has a happy festive season and that we get some fabulous new Amiga games to play again this year.

For more information about the previous year's competition and links to the games that were made, check out the Amiga Christmas Tree website. At the moment it's still last year's site, but I will start working on one for this year soon and have a link to the two previous years from there. http://amigachristmastree.ultimateamiga.co.uk/

[Cammy]

There is no need to learn a new programming language. Here is a post from Rebel from last year's competition:

You don't need to have any programming knowledge to make decent games on an Amiga. Here are some useful links to help people get started:


Backbone - Easily build your own platform games and overhead multi-directional shooters.

The full Backbone game making package - http://aminet.net/package/dev/misc/Backbone_Full
Final update for Backbone - http://aminet.net/package/dev/misc/Backbone_Upd
Free keyfile to unlock all Backbone's features - http://aminet.net/package/dev/misc/Backbone_Key


GRaphic Adventure Creator and GRaphic Adventure Authoring Language - Create your own Point & Click Adventure games.

Full GRAC 2 package - http://aminet.net/package/game/role/GRAC2
Extras for GRAC 2 - http://aminet.net/package/game/role/GRACUser1
Intro creator for GRAC 2 - http://aminet.net/package/game/role/IntroCreate
GRAAL 2.3 A - http://aminet.net/package/game/role/graal2a
GRAAL 2.3 B - http://aminet.net/package/game/role/graal2b
GRAAL 2.3 C - http://aminet.net/package/game/role/graal2c
GRAAL 2.3 D - http://aminet.net/package/game/role/graal2d


3D Game Creator - Create your own three dimensional game worlds.

3D Game Creator - http://aminet.net/game/shoot/DBIB.lha


Some nice Christmas sprites to rip and use in your platform or horizontal shooter - http://www.nes-snes-sprites.com/Daze...Christmas.html
Some Christmas mod music to use in your game - http://www.westnet.com/Holiday/mod.html

[NovaCoder]

Hiya,

Would ScummVM AGA qualify?

[Cammy]

Originally Posted by NovaCoder

Hiya,

Would ScummVM AGA qualify?

I'm not quite sure what you mean. If you'd like to enter your port of SCUMMVM as a game entry then it's not really in line with the rules. I don't think it's really fair to enter something you've been working on since before the competition started, but if you were to write a game that uses SCUMMVM and submit it that would totally be okay. Last year there was a game based on Sam & Max entered in the competition for example. It used one of the Amiga adventure game languages and graphics taken from other games, but was still all put together from scratch for the competition. If you could script your own Christmas game that requires SCUMMVM AGA to run, sure that'd be awesome!

[NovaCoder]

Ok, fair enough

[Cammy]

First prize in the Second Annual Festive Amiga Games Competition includes an Amiga 600 personal computer!

This A600 is kindly donated by JJ, and postage costs are being covered by Franko. Thanks guys!

Remember everyone, you're welcome to work in a team! If you're good at coding but aren't feeling creative, or if you've got some good ideas or creative talent don't be afraid to team up with someone. If you end up winning prizes, you'll have to work out who gets what between yourselves though I'll try to get certificates printed for everyone involved though.

Also, if anyone is a member of an Amiga forum where I haven't posted about this competition yet, please feel free to quote or replicate my first post or link back to this forum. We want to involve the whole international Amiga community, not just the English-speaking part of it!

Thanks everyone, and good luck!

[Dreedo]

^^, people sure are generous in the Amiga world.

Might start looking at game development on the Amiga tonight, now i have my PCMCIA-CF setup working.

[Cammy]

Dreedo, a quick way of making a game with your A600 would be to use Shoot Em Up Construction Kit, as long as it's a vertically-scrolling shooter you want to make. But it's really easy to learn and use, even if it's pretty basic, and some people have made some really fun games with it.

You could also try your luck with GRAC or GRAAL, but I'm not too sure about them running on a 1MB system. Backbone definitely needs at least an extra 2MB to run, but it does run nicely on my A600 (with 4MB all up). One option would be for you to set up UAE on your home computer and emulate Workbench and these game maker programs, put something together that way, then compile it and test it on the A600.

Don't forget to download the entries for last year's competition to see what other people made. Some of those games were made with easy game-maker programs rather than coded in a programming language.

Congratulations on getting the PCMCIA CF setup working!

[Dreedo]

Congratulations on getting the PCMCIA CF setup working!

Thanks, took me ages, but Thomas was highly patient, eventually got it working.

One option would be for you to set up UAE on your home computer and emulate Workbench and these game maker programs, put something together that way, then compile it and test it on the A600.

Might try that to a partial extent, its actually probably easier for me to program via the Amiga, as the PC is shared by 3 of us, so its not always available, noone wants my Miggy though . I will use it tonight to see what kind of things my A600 will run however.

[Cammy]

Good luck Dreedo, if you need a hand finding any software to use just ask. And if you have a particular type of game in mind that you'd like to make, let me know and I can try and find the most appropriate program or language to create it with.

If anyone wants to check out what last year's games looked like, maybe to get some ideas of what you can achieve in under a month, have a look here - http://amigachristmastree.ultimateam...mpetition.html

[Dreedo]

Just doing all my plotting at the moment, still figuring out how to work the theme into my game.... prob be the most difficult part of the game. :P

[clenched]

I'm almost done with my entry. Here is a screenshot and readme as of 12/17. I plan to send the game via e-mail to Miss Cammy no later than the 20th. I will let her distribute it to all the places it should go.

 
  H O W  T H E  G R O U C H  S T O L E  C H R I S T M A S
  =======================================================
                          Clenched Fist
 
  You've heard of the Grinch? Well this is the story of
his evil little nephew Grouch. Grouch is ashamed of his
uncle for going soft and vows to clear the family name
by stealing Christmas once and for all.
 
  To this end, Grouch has broken into Santa's workshop
and made off with a load of Amigas destined for Whatville.
These are wrapped in a giant red box. Also taken were a
few assorted packages which had their contents emptied.
 
  This cargo was then hauled to a nearby igloo. The red
Amiga box was shoved to the back. Then the empty packages
were filled with gravel, dirt, whatever and pushed in too.
A few loose blocks of ice were used to fill in as much space
as possible. Only the red box can exit the igloo.
 
  Your mission is to use the mouse to slide the boxes and ice
around and get the big red box to the exit so Rudolph can   
return the Amigas to Santa. I think he will become the
brown-nose reindeer.
NOTES:
1 - move piece only one square at a time even if two are clear.
2 - to move piece click and hold, move pointer to new location
    release button.
3 - to install, extract archive to hard drive.
4 - This is Blitz BASIC baby, all I could learn in two days.
5 - I sometimes experienced severely flashing blittering
    while testing on WinUAE, especially while moving the mouse.
    This could be greatly diminished if not eliminated by using
    "immediate blitter" checkbox.
6 - Don't go too far right with mouse. Try it and see why.    
7 - Some will recognize this game right off; especially Linux
    folks. Anyway the cheesy story and graphics are still mine :)

[Dreedo]

Been working on and off on mine, not very well again though so not sure how much i'll get completed by the 24th. At the moment i've done about 50% of the sprites, and some various other stuff, I'm making it in SEUCK as its all i can be bothered to learn at such short notice, run into a few problems but will be able to fix them in about 30 minutes, if i feel up to it. :P

[rockersuke]

I liked this year entrants, well, at least 2 of them, the other one I'm still struggling to run anywhere . I couldn't resolve Grouch puzzle, and I got stuck in Arctic Hunter third screen, but both of them are easy and fun to play with, and as such, I truly think they can be nice and entertaining works if they got their full levels developed. Surely they are not the most outstandingly looking games ever, but there are not graphics glitches and controls do respond nicely. Just like last year, I think X-mas Disaster was the rightful winner for its technical merits, but my favourite one was Cornelius for its pure cheerful playabilty.

Couldn't get Looking For Christmas to work. OS3 version seems to require some very specific RTG card (it asks me for cybergraphics.library) and AROS port refused to work in both my AROS machines (desktop PC and netbook) claiming that the executable was not an executable ^_^'. Hope I find a way to make it work soon, as this "all-amigas" approach looked promising.

And thanks to everyone involved, organizers for organizing and authors for authoring!

--

[Retro1234]

Yep - Well done everyone who entered

[clenched]

The blitting was equally bad on my real Amiga. After reflection, my post almost makes it sound like the trouble is exclusive to WinUAE and that is not so. I just posted WinUAE findings because it had a way to cope with the trouble. Anyway it doesn't matter because the animation was removed.

[rockersuke]

Originally Posted by rockersuke

Couldn't get Looking For Christmas to work. OS3 version seems to require some very specific RTG card (it asks me for cybergraphics.library) and AROS port refused to work in both my AROS machines (desktop PC and netbook) claiming that the executable was not an executable ^_^'. Hope I find a way to make it work soon, as this "all-amigas" approach looked promising.

And more than a month later I finally could play the thing! I almost did it under WinUAE, but just out of pure ignorance wasn't able to set up a proper RTG configuration. Meanwhile we were discussing about it with the author at AROS Exec forums and were making step by step progress in locating the cause of the errors. It finally was discovered that the problem lied in the mp3 soundtrack not beeing properly supported by AROS ports of Hollywood programs. It was possible anyway to replace the mp3 file with just any supported sound file and the game would work!

And It did! I took the music from my last year Christmas Adventure (to keep in the mood ), renamed it and moved it to the proper folder. Even if it was a .mod file the game accepted it as his own and now I'm playing with it under AROS with my Christmas tune as soundtrack!

The game itself is quite simple: you must locate semi-transparent objects scattered on a backdrop image, which can get tricky, as sometimes they can be real hard to spot. As usually happens with this minimalistic stuff, it can get dangerously addictive (not to mention the pain in the eyes after a long game session )

A nice game to have fun with!

--

[Dreedo]

Sorry for not submitting my game, i was too ill over xmas to do anything on my Amiga, could barely play my PSP when my mate came round.

Round my nans atm due to moving house, might use the time to gain experience with backbone on WinUAE and see what i can come up with, as i can't use my Amiga here.

[roberthazelby]

@Cammy - In your second post you detail a number of game creating resources. I wonder if it would be a good idea to expand on this (detail various AMOS/Amiblitz links, and anything else relevant) nice little lowdown, and have it pinned in the "project.Amiga Game Factory" folder?

Just a suggestion.

[kriz]

Nice tradition allready, really cool!