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Lynx 2020 Programming Competition


Igor

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Nice! Really phenomenal prizes! ? :thumbsup:

Do you happen to have any details about the AtariAge release? At least their Atari 2600 releases seem to be high quality. I was just curious if you happen to know any details? For example if the cart will be 3D printed or injection molded / laser cut, or if the box will be printed on a "home printer" or printed "for real". Also I'm wondering if the developer(s) of the game have any say about the box art and "art direction" of the box art or the graphic design of the box?

I'm just asking because I recently tried to do some soul searching about "retro game dev", and I realised that it's not only about the game itself, the graphics or the music. It's about the whole thing, bringing something beautiful and fun into the world (and at least I haven't done that myself full out yet with a Lynx release, with box art, boxed release and all).

*To clarify I'm not saying that a box printed with a home printer and a 3D printed cart wouldn't be beautiful! :)

 

On 4/6/2020 at 12:57 PM, Igor said:

The physical release will probably be different to the competition version anyway.

 

What exactly does this mean? I was just thinking if devs are expected to make changes and/or additions after the compo?

Edited by Turbo Laser Lynx
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Good questions and the answer to most of them is - it will be between you and @Albert to work out the details. We did talk about injection moulded carts but not other details. I would not expect anything less than what the other AA releases have.

 

What I meant by that is for a physical release you will have additional time so you may want to polish it, add extra levels or game modes, maybe different artwork, etc.

 

Does that clarify?

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As Carl is the guy working on molded carts and US based electronics assembly for it my guess is that both the carts and the boxes will be top notch! I got all his boxes and they are so beautiful.

 

I am not even collecting for boxed carts but I still decided to get them as decorations to my "man cave". (That is after it is no longer a COVID19 home office.)

Here is a first view of my Lynxpad entry. Still just animated beats to the music. (There is no audio in this yet)

 

lpad.gif.6b88039af75136d8aaa8bd9b62b2e68f.gif

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On 4/7/2020 at 12:26 PM, agradeneu said:

Got my hands full to finish the games/projects from last year. Sadly, gotta skip that one.  Resources and time are limited. 

Good news is we are dedicated to turn Odynexus Demo into a full game.:-) And I'm living and breathing my other project, Gravitic Mines for the Atari Jaguar, for the rest of the year.

Edited by agradeneu
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Igor, right now, my project is a bit ambitious, so I'd like to create a public page on itch.io with devlogs and alpha devs version release during the contest.

Is it OK for you, or do I have to keep the game under the radar until the end of the contest ?

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2 hours ago, Fadest said:

Igor, right now, my project is a bit ambitious, so I'd like to create a public page on itch.io with devlogs and alpha devs version release during the contest.

Is it OK for you, or do I have to keep the game under the radar until the end of the contest ?

As my entry Lynxpad already has a topic of its own and the source is public. So I assume that it is ok to follow the development on a public page.

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I'm a bit late to the party (crazy times), but woaw, this is amazing!

I've just joined the compo too, so we're at 13 participants now!

 

I honestly have no idea of what I'll do yet, but I'll try my best to do something by the end of the compo deadline :)

 

Thanks Igor for organizing a great compo again, I'm looking forward all the entries :)!

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On 4/11/2020 at 2:29 AM, karri said:

As my entry Lynxpad already has a topic of its own and the source is public. So I assume that it is ok to follow the development on a public page.

 

On 4/11/2020 at 12:14 AM, Fadest said:

Igor, right now, my project is a bit ambitious, so I'd like to create a public page on itch.io with devlogs and alpha devs version release during the contest.

Is it OK for you, or do I have to keep the game under the radar until the end of the contest ?

 

Yeah go for it, alpha releases are fine, the only rule is that it wasn't released before the competition, doesn't say that it can't be released after the competition was announced ?

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10 hours ago, drludos said:

I'm a bit late to the party (crazy times), but woaw, this is amazing!

I've just joined the compo too, so we're at 13 participants now!

 

I honestly have no idea of what I'll do yet, but I'll try my best to do something by the end of the compo deadline :)

 

Thanks Igor for organizing a great compo again, I'm looking forward all the entries :)!

Welcome to the party! This competition is kicking off some new collaborations between Atari Gamer and AtariAge too, especially @Albert's offer to publish winning games. We're also working on having some cross-linking on the sites, specifically around the forums (notice the new header images in all the Lynx forums yet?)

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  • 3 weeks later...

Probably I will not submit my entry because working on the two projects for OCEO and Retroguru is taking all my time.

 

There is a litte chance I'll make a simple game in the last month (just to try to steal the last place to @karri this year ?).

 

Retroguru decided to not preview the Retroguru entry, that is already almost finished. We only miss a good music artist for converting the soundtrack mod files to chipper (it's a really too complex job for me this time). If someone wants to join the project, please contact me in PM.

 

The OCEO project started as a minimal game (so it's name: MINIMAL) than turned in a very complex game: originally was a platformer with pre designed levels, but now we are trying to implement procedurally generated maps (heavily inspired by Spelunky). The project is in it's early stage, so don't know if we can complete it, but we have 4 months ...

 

Maybe in some weeks we could preview something.

 

 

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38 minutes ago, Igor said:

Maybe, in the end it's up to each developer

I'm just wondering why it is handled differently to last year or Silly Venture. Generally i don't think it is a good idea to reveal/promote entries months before the actual compo. For me it kills the excitement. It might be unfair if one entry is promoted heavily and others not. Makes impartial judgement on entries somewhat questionable.

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That is why I asked before publishing. My goal is not to make advertising or promotion (I don't even try, I really suck at this). I did not post in first intention outside itch.io (and did not activate it for public reasearch) or here. But as I said, until I decide to give up and go for a rather less ambitious project (which could one of the mini games made for this), may intention is to make an ambitious project, with many features (main missions in various environment, small games for hacking/data tracking, conversations, encyclopedia, RPG light feature like inventory, competences...) and it is quite hard to test all this alone. So putting routines in public can help me to have feedback. I do have intention to put the main scenario into the alpha release before official end of contest.

Another reason is that maybe if I get some positive feedback, I will not give up on this one...

 

And last year, we also had some insights before the end of the contest, On Duty, Nutmeg, Find a way to my heart we officially announced. It was easy to know that Assembloids and Growing Ties were in the contest... 

 

@Igor, there is also Karri's Lynxpad in the work that if public.

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4 hours ago, Nop90 said:

There is a litte chance I'll make a simple game in the last month (just to try to steal the last place to @karri this year ?).

Not a chance. My entry will be too large, too complex and apply to a very small audience ( = me ).

Besides, I will probably be disqualified anyway as my entry will use a co-processor STM32F103 to provide access to a real keyboard or launchpad for better real-time performance than just banging on A, B, Opt1 and Opt2.

But this project is so fun to do. I am currently researching ways to produce a large style library as a starting point to the musician. Right now the plan is to provide 8 patterns for every style:

 

One column of the pad would have 8 buttons:
A- Fill in to Original pattern
B- Original pattern
C- Fill in to Variation pattern
D- Variation pattern

Then the last four rows could be:

E- minor Original pattern
F- 7th Original pattern
G- minor Variation pattern

H- 7th Variation pattern

 

The columns would be
1- Percussions
2- Bass
3- Accompanion
4- Solo

 

The cost of these STM32 CPU's is amazing. Just €2 with free postage. Yesterday I also ordered an i2c SD card reader/writer for €4 from Germany. So the complete picture would be like:

Lynx -- STM32 -- USB keyboard or USB Launchpad
          |
       SD card

 

The power comes through the ComLynx cable and the completed Handy Music source files will be generated on a removable SD card.


If you use a keyboard for playing then the layout is:
 

F1 F2 F3 F4 F5 F6 F7 F8
 1  2  3  4  5  6  7  8  9  
 Q  W  E  R  T  Y  U  I  O
 A  S  D  F  G  H  J  K  L
 Z  X  C  V  B  N  M  ,  .
 1  2  3  4  5  6  7  8  9 (with SHIFT pressed)  
 Q  W  E  R  T  Y  U  I  O (with SHIFT pressed)
 A  S  D  F  G  H  J  K  L (with SHIFT pressed)
 Z  X  C  V  B  N  M  ,  . (with SHIFT pressed)

 

Actually, I might still swap the pad to make the lower 2 rows become a piano pad...

So I am going to SPOIL the surprise by keeping a blog of development and providing playable content.

 

Actually you may soon see my first video clip of me dancing to some tune of the Lynx Pad.

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The whole competition is being handled differently this year, last year was the first run of it, so lots of lessons learned, but if contestants want to reveal their games early, there's nothing to stop them.

 

Karri that is a cool project but I don't know how it could be judged, if you had videos of it then it would be possible...the rules do not disqualify the use of modified carts, so go for it!

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6 minutes ago, Igor said:

The whole competition is being handled differently this year, last year was the first run of it, so lots of lessons learned, but if contestants want to reveal their games early, there's nothing to stop them.

 

Karri that is a cool project but I don't know how it could be judged, if you had videos of it then it would be possible...the rules do not disqualify the use of modified carts, so go for it!

Thanks. You can also run it on a plain Lynx. But then you have to use the joypad to move your fingers to the right keys and press the buttons A, B, Opt1 or Opt2. So creating enjoyable music may require a little more practicing.

 

In theory you can also store the Handy Music sources on a SainT SD cart as it has the capability to let the Lynx write directly to the SD cart. So you could create 5 files like:

/saves/LPINST.TXT
/saves/LPDRUMS.TXT
/saves/LPBASS.TXT
/saves/LPACC.TXT
/saves/LPSOLO.TXT

 

After your stellar performance you move the files to your excellent game in the game/music folder and compile it with your game.

 

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7 minutes ago, Igor said:

That's cool, will you make the design for the custom cart available too?

There is no special cart. You can use anything like AgaCart, SD cart, burn your own cart, whatever.

 

The STM32 unit is a separate small box connected with a ComLynx cable to the Lynx. That design will be public.

The size will be a 3D printed box with a SD card socket on one end and a mini-USB connection on the other and. In the middle of the box there is a plug for a ComLynx cable. So just like in this drawing.

SD card -- STM32 -- USB keyboard or USB Launchpad
            |
          Lynx

The size will be 25mm x 25mm x 55mm. And it has no PSU - just steals the power from the ComLynx. So it is basically just a Lynx keyboard with extra memory for the music.

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