Contest Rules

[woogley]

See the rules here: http://javaunlimited.net/contests/java4k.php

[Morre]

Perhaps you should add the submission link here as well, just to be on the safe side. The submission process and rules were so confusing last year that I reckon it's worth it

[Markus_Persson]

From what I understand from those rules, applets are allowed? Sweet! =D

I've changed my mind about not joining the competition. I just can't stay away.

Games published by our own members! Check 'em out!

[Alan_W]

From what I understand from those rules, applets are allowed? Sweet! =D

I've changed my mind about not joining the competition. I just can't stay away.

Great news.  I really liked Hunters4k and Dungeon4k last year and look forward to shouting "how the **** did he do that" again this year

[Morre]

Yay, Markus is back in!

The good news: Markus is back in. Better games, thus twice the fun!
The bad news: There goes the chance for the rest of us

[Markus_Persson]

Quick question about the rules;

Does the application have to quit gracefully under "normal" conditions, or is it ok to kill it by, say, throwing an uncaught exception?

[woogley]

markus:
first off, yes, applets are allowed (the submit page hints at them even).

second, I don't see a problem with throwing the exception... what's the worst that could happen?

[jbanes]

second, I don't see a problem with throwing the exception... what's the worst that could happen?

The worst that could happen is that the game doesn't quit. Keep in mind that the Java APIs create threads all over creation, some of which will stop the application from exiting.

Besides, creating and throwing an exception won't save much at all over "System.exit(0)". Depending on the design of your game, System.exit() may actually compress better.

[kevglass]

Ah, but you can let IOExceptions from reading data files just fall out of main this way. They shouldn't happen if the data file is present so you don't really want to catch them anyway

Its definitely cheaper than try, catch, exception, exit.

Kev

[Anon666]

Or *accidentally* generate a NullPointerException..... or an ArrayIndexOutOfBoundsException or a.... or a.....

Games published by our own members! Check 'em out!

[Markus_Persson]

Yeah.. "oops".

[kevglass]

pah, you're going to write a 4k game so complicated that you haven't already tested all paths of execution by this point. And hell, even if you did, at least you'd get the stack trace

Kev

[jbanes]

Ah, but you can let IOExceptions from reading data files just fall out of main this way. They shouldn't happen if the data file is present so you don't really want to catch them anyway

Its definitely cheaper than try, catch, exception, exit.

True. As I remember, I actually introduced that little trick of adding "throws Exception" to the main method. (Primarily because I didn't like Abuse's method of hacking the initializer thread to run his game.)  Getting an unexpected exception seems unlikely if you've properly tested your code. I think what Markus was getting at was exiting the game using a trick like this:

"String blah = null; blah.toString();"

That just smacks as bad programming practice to me. He may save himself all of 10 bytes, but I'm going to be staying away from that one with a ten foot pole.

[kevglass]

God I hope not! Thats so disgusting it didn' t even occur to me....

*Kev goes to change his code

[Markus_Persson]

Yeah, because writing a game in 4k is all about "good programming". 

[nonnus29]

Yeah, because writing a game in 4k is all about "good programming". 

Yeah, but if your coding an applet, does it matter?

 

[jbanes]

Yeah, because writing a game in 4k is all about "good programming". 

I've said it before and I'll say it again: The entire point of contests like this is not to break the rules. The point of contests like this is to show your mastery by knowing when to break the rules. IMHO, using creative algorithms, sophisticated toolkits, and space saving programming practices of ways of breaking the rules in a "good" way. I draw the line at anything that smells like a hack, as it's bound to get you in trouble. (As oNyx learned the hard way with the sound bank.) 

[Markus_Persson]

Writing a game in 4k _is_ a hack. There's no way around that.

Nothing about this contest is about good programming in any way, it's about hacking.

[Morre]

Why do you guys turn this into such a big deal? Let everyone do as they want, and then we'll see what works. It's 4k, the rules should obviously allow this kind of hack, although not everyone may like it. I myself use System.exit(0)

[jbanes]

Why do you guys turn this into such a big deal?

Who's making it into a big deal? We're just having an intelligent dicussion about the best way to create 4K games.

There's nothing in the rules that says you can't pull every hack you can possibly come up with. It's just that if the judges have difficulty running your entry, it'll seriously hurt your score.

[Morre]

Agreed, thus, let him have his hacks. If they work, it's fine, if they don't it's not your problem anyway

[Markus_Persson]

It didn't kill the awt thread(s) anyway, so I'm back to System.exit(0).

Talk about pointless argument.

[oNyx]

[...]I draw the line at anything that smells like a hack, as it's bound to get you in trouble. (As oNyx learned the hard way with the sound bank.)

Hey. It was a gray area, because that bit was completely left open. Since the contest was from devs for devs I assumed it would be fine to rely on the soundbank (which is there by default with the sdk/jdk).

This year I certainly wont use any sound (only ~90 bytes left anyways)

[arne]

There's this issue with a Java Application box, when the app isn't signed.
see http://www.java-gaming.org/forums/index.php?topic=11654.0

I think it should be one of the points the games should get judged at, because it's much less fun to play a game, where you don't (or might not) see important information.

Examples are LadyBug and Speed.

Arne

[Rick]

I did not realize this was an issue. I had compensated in the LadyBug game on windows as the box appears at the bottom.  So I left some blank spacew at the bottom that could be safely covered up. I guess you screen shot is from a Mac or linux platform. I could always add some blank sace at the top as well. I hate to have to sign my game not only does it waste space it also makes me grant permission for the game to run. Who knows what the game will do. I much prefer to see a game that needs no protected calls so will run with out the need to be signed.

[mlk]

Woohoo, yummy games to play.

Boo, so little time at the moment!

[Morre]

Agreed, lack of time is a problem, although this is the last day with lots to do in school
After today, I might find the time to create a few more games, perhaps better ones at that (better than my old games that is, they still won't be anywhere near comparable with some of the other games in this contest).

[DonaldEKnuth]

I have a question about the rules. It doesn't say which the minimum resolution used by the judges will be. I am creating an applet and thought that I would make it 768px wide so that I would have some game space. I thought that "everyone" used at least 800*600 now days. Is that all right or should I go for something smaller?

Everyone seems to be designing really small things, which made me think that it's an implicit rule which you have agreed on during earlier years? (This is my first time in the competition.)

[jbanes]

There's no rule about resolution. These young wipper-snappers seem to think that we're all still 15 and can read the tiniest screen without eye strain. God forbid that anyone should figure out how to scale images! </grumpy-old-man> 

1024x768 or greater is a pretty safe assumption these days. Any developer running at less than that needs his head checked. (Especially his eyeglass perscription.) Any user running at less than that is WAAAAAAYYY behind the curve.

[Markus_Persson]

it'd suck to make a 1024x768 game and get rated down because "didn't fit the screen on my <obscure laptop>", so I'd also like to hear an official ruling on this.