I've always been intrigued by some of the visual effect demo contests that are out there, where programmers have to make the best looking visuals (no input interaction) within the confines of a few kilobytes, 64KB for some of the contests out there.

One of the rules for the 4K contest states "Must be a playable game (cannot be a pointless animation)". So, what about a contest in creating a pointless animation?

This might offer some new challenges for many in here, where the goal is not to create a game, but to create some visual animation, one that might have some storyline, in which the viewer goes on a visual journey. Programmers need to study algorithms to figure out how to procedurally generate nice looking visual patterns. This could be a benefit to some.

But I'm not quite sure if this is practical, just want to test the waters here! What you think?



edit:

Ok, here what I've gathered:

Period: June, July and August.
Juding: None. Just community voting that will be ongoing throughout the 3 month period and beyond.
Size: Maximum 4096 bytes (4 KB)
Libraries: No 3rd party libraries, just Java2D and JRE default.
JRE version: 1.5

What else do we need to define?:

Execution style: Applet and/xor Webstart?

Demo rules:
- No user interaction (mouse, keyboard input)
- Maximum of 30 or 60 seconds running
...

+1

Yeah, a different size might be best.

Not everyone are very adept in OpenGL, so it could put many at an disadvantage, reducing the number of participants.

I do wonder if Java2D is capable, but perhaps that's one of the goal, to find out?

I'm all for a 4k demo competition. Did a couple in assembly 10 years ago. Should limit it to 4k. Anything more is too much work.

Also don't forget the music, so start coding those softsynths

ho yea ! it will remember me my old ASM 

++1


4k sounds good but 1k 2k 4k 8k ... doesn't make a real difference in the game to code, maybe higer size will requiere more time

I am ready to play => source code

That's just astounding. I look forward to see what can be done in Java.

Too bad this has to be downloaded, and my virus program blocked one of the zip file, warning me about a Trojan... probably just unusual exe code.

I suggest we either allow LWJGL/JOGL for maximum sexiness, or make it (unsigned) applet only for maximum exposure.

I think OpenGL should be allowed but keep the limit at 4k. An OpenGL intro would have the advantage of hardware acceleration. But its alot more verbose api, so the amount of content would be less. I'd vote on LWJGL instead of JOGL since its a less bytes to set up and you can run the whole intro in the main method. You also get OpenAL support as well. The LWJGL version should be fixed and you have to use the files provided by the organizers.

End of August would be a good deadline. Then there would be 6 months between the game and intro competitions.

You can easily fake 3D with some matrix operations and your own rasterizer.

Much more fun too.

would be better to not allow any non-standard library, after all the game is about technic, using opengl can have some inconvenient and will be IMO less fun.

For me the purpose of the competition is to create something cool within the rules. I don't really care about showing off Java, OpenGL or anything else.

I think it would be interesting to see what can be done with OpenGL. Shaders should compress well And its optional, you can use Java2D if you want instead.

But if it puts people off its ok by me to make the competition Java2D-only.

about the time it is maybe better to let more than one month (for people who want to participate but are busy the month of the contest)

moved to top most.

30 or 60 sec, after initial loading, that is, k?
Java 5 is fine. It's not like we can't live without a few new classes and methods.
And anybody who relies on Java2D performance increase in Java 6, won't get it in any non Sun JVM anyway.

I like this idea. However, I don't think it's a good idea to allow voting during the competition period. Just set a fixed voting period (say, 2 or 3 weeks) after the contest.