Igor Posted April 29, 2019 Share Posted April 29, 2019 (edited) Atari Lynx turns 30 this year and we here at Atari Gamer are set on making this a birthday to remember. As part of the celebration we've created the best Lynx games voting page and are now introducing the Atari Lynx 30th Birthday Programming Competition! ? 2X Update! For competition details, rules, prizes, registration and other information please see this page - https://atarigamer.com/pages/atari-lynx-30th-birthday-programming-competition The competition is officially happening so get your registrations in! The ZIP of all competition entries can be found here: AtariGamer.Com - Atari Lynx 30th Birthday ROMs.zip Edited September 9, 2019 by necrocia 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cyprian Posted April 29, 2019 Share Posted April 29, 2019 great idea 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Nop90 Posted April 29, 2019 Share Posted April 29, 2019 (edited) I'm in. But don't have anything to submit yet, so have to find something first... Edited April 29, 2019 by Nop90 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Igor Posted April 29, 2019 Author Share Posted April 29, 2019 Fantastic! We'll need a good amount of entrants to actually make this work because I don't want to have people win by default Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+karri Posted April 29, 2019 Share Posted April 29, 2019 I am probably on board with something... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Fadest Posted April 29, 2019 Share Posted April 29, 2019 I will probably try to do something as I will unfortunately have some spare time during this period, but on the other side, I have so many things I'd like to finish before... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Igor Posted April 30, 2019 Author Share Posted April 30, 2019 Based on feedback from other threads and on Facebook I've decided to remove this rule... Your demo/game must be substantial i.e. short 1 minute demos or simple one-level type games will be disqualified It will come down to judges agreeing on what's good and what's not. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Turbo Laser Lynx Posted April 30, 2019 Share Posted April 30, 2019 (edited) Aah. I forgot about the French developers. Sorry. Of course 24 hours is enough They must have some magic potion! You mean that I can not make a lynx reinvention of Half minute Hero ? (my son discovered and loved the concept of the game some weeks ago) Yep. "On Duty" has been silently in the works for more than a year. And I coded several full days in this year already. Hopefully I get it done by September or November this year. It is trivial to grab a game like minesweeper and just change the end game a little and claim it to be a new idea. (I wonder if anyone falls for this? ) But creating a playable game from scratch, balancing the play, writing the plot, graphics, music. It really takes time. I could not produce anything of quality in 3 months. Inventing new things is hard. Baron Lovejoy has already been in the works for years. "Shaken, not stirred" took a few years to finally become a game. But making a single level game like "Find a way to my heart" takes a week or two. It requires very little inventions. You just write it. I think it would be safe to assume that it's allowed to borrow ideas? Truly new ideas probably emerge once every few years? I agree 100% that completely new ideas in games are the most exciting ones, but expanding a little bit on proven formulas might be the safest bet for most game creators? I think adding a little feeling and twist of your own usually is enough. Personally I've come to like simple games and "archetypes" of games more and more, I guess it's a less is more and back to the roots thing. I had to check some files and dates, Baron Lovejoy is actually only one and a half years old but yeah, I think the idea had to grow from conception 'til I made the first pixelart another six months, so two years already Probably more than ten years if you count "Catacomb Rider" that was a similar idea -_-; but then I had a long break from "retro-coding" in between. VectrexRoli puts it in a really funny way here why he enjoys those old simple games more: https://youtu.be/0LVAp23opAo?t=635 (maybe two minutes on from there) Edited April 30, 2019 by Turbo Laser Lynx Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Igor Posted April 30, 2019 Author Share Posted April 30, 2019 Of course, borrow ideas as you like, just don't produce a "Pong port" or a "Space Invaders port". The rule against ports is for copyright reasons. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Turbo Laser Lynx Posted April 30, 2019 Share Posted April 30, 2019 (edited) Based on feedback from other threads and on Facebook I've decided to remove this rule... It will come down to judges agreeing on what's good and what's not. Of course, borrow ideas as you like, just don't produce a "Pong port" or a "Space Invaders port". The rule against ports is for copyright reasons. Good news! Thanks. Edited April 30, 2019 by Turbo Laser Lynx 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+karri Posted April 30, 2019 Share Posted April 30, 2019 Great! I will probably fine tune "Find a way to my heart" with difficulty levels (12, 15 or 20 bombs for easy, normal, hard). Making different layouts does not make the game better. So I may spend time on better quality graphics and sound. How about hi-res images on McWill? There was some project that tackled this? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Knud Posted April 30, 2019 Share Posted April 30, 2019 Based on feedback from other threads and on Facebook I've decided to remove this rule... It will come down to judges agreeing on what's good and what's not. I think it is a good idea to remove this. It would be optional for the developers if the feedback is good to expand it into a full blown game. Not that i have anything to submit, but i have seen this in other homebrew scenes. Good idea to have this competition, not that i do have any skills to show at this but will be fun seeing the outcome. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+karri Posted April 30, 2019 Share Posted April 30, 2019 Actually the Lynx is best for short sessions. So I rather spend 5 minutes playing a polished game than an hour wandering through a maze with a slow and crappy user interface. Lemmings is a great example. Short levels, polished stuff. EOTB is the opposite. Tedious to play. (On Duty will be my first experiment with a long game. Time will tell if it works or not.) 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Nop90 Posted April 30, 2019 Share Posted April 30, 2019 Tonight I had the inspiration for my entry. Now I'll setup a barebone POC of the game and if it works as expected I'll submit my entry title before the end of May. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
LordKraken Posted April 30, 2019 Share Posted April 30, 2019 I will very likely be in parental leave (damned swedish socialism ) this summer, so I guess I can manage to finish bombercats AND submit something new 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Igor Posted April 30, 2019 Author Share Posted April 30, 2019 I think we're going to have some really great entries! I hope it's not just the usual people submitting though! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Igor Posted May 1, 2019 Author Share Posted May 1, 2019 After discussions with SainT (the other major sponsor of this competition), we decided that in the interest of encouraging participants to enter and so we can see more Atari Lynx games come to life, we decided to modify this rule... Your demo/game must not have been released in the past or have any parts of it released in the past to this... Your demo/game must not have been released in the past So if you've had half-finished projects sitting around, dig them out and finish them. Lets get as much done for the Lynx 30th birthday as we can! 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+bhall408 Posted May 1, 2019 Share Posted May 1, 2019 So if you've had half-finished projects sitting around, dig them out and finish them. Lets get as much done for the Lynx 30th birthday as we can! Yes! 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Nop90 Posted May 1, 2019 Share Posted May 1, 2019 Is it posible to present more tha one entry? I'm goint to present a game specifically desged for the contest, but probably I'll finish other things not alredy released for september. And, must all the games be presented in september or can one be releases earlier if completed? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Igor Posted May 1, 2019 Author Share Posted May 1, 2019 You're limited to one entry for judging so if you include multiple entries, please specify which one you want judged. All entries will end up on the Lynx SD cart as default ROMs (unless you don't want it to appear there). The intent is to not have anything released before results are announced, this is so all the participants have an equal opportunity. Submissions are in August by the way, not September. Registrations will not be accepted after the 20th of July 2019 Final submissions close on the 11th August 2019 Winners will be announced on the 1st of September 2019 I suggest that if you have a dedicated game for the competition, do not release it until the results are announced, but feel free to release the second game any time you want. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+karri Posted May 1, 2019 Share Posted May 1, 2019 I have a problem with this "one entry" thing as I am participating as a member of two teams - White Lynx Productions and OCEO. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Nop90 Posted May 1, 2019 Share Posted May 1, 2019 I have a problem with this "one entry" thing as I am participating as a member of two teams - White Lynx Productions and OCEO. Good point because I was planning to release a second entry as a Retroguru title (inspired from an already existing game but with original content for lynx). For this other title coding will be mine but there will be original musics and gfx from other artists, and the game concept is usually defined with the help of other 3-4 members of the team. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SainT Posted May 1, 2019 Share Posted May 1, 2019 My take on this would be -- Only one entry per category per team A team can consist of one or more people A team must consist of a unique group of people, but one single person may be part of multiple teams If we have multiple entries for a single person in a single category for instance, it gets to the point they almost win by default. I'd rather see more effort put into a single entry than lots of simpler single entries, personally. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Igor Posted May 1, 2019 Author Share Posted May 1, 2019 Thanks for summarising our discussion SainT. Rules have been updated to reflect the above. Now you all stop asking for rule changes and encourage more participants so this competition can kick off. We need a worthwhile number of entries to make this happen. 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Igor Posted May 2, 2019 Author Share Posted May 2, 2019 We've got two teams registered so far, we need several more registrations to kick the competition off, so get registered and get others to register if you want this to happen (we don't want anyone winning by default) 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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