3H-GDC m.VII

TL;DR Summary: Make a puzzle game in 3 hours. Win GDNet+ Membership. April 10th, 2100 UTC. Prizes: #3: a PayPal transfer worth 3 months of GDNet+ membership ($12.95). #2: a full year of GDNet+ ($39.95). #1: a $75 gift card for Amazon.com (email gift card). Description: For the seventh competition ever (it seems weird to me that we've done 6 of these things already, and yet the last one was over 3 years ago.), we are going to mix things up this time. I've just open sourced some code for creating grid-and-tile puzzles, ala Tetris or Dr. Mario or whatever. It provides a very basic framework for defining pieces and figuring out different ways to place them on a board. Included in the distribution is an example of the Tetris game. On top of that, there are two examples of UI implementations for the game, using either the system console or Windows Forms, demonstrating a sort of MVC setup for game development. Also, I've included the NUnit tests in the source code; if you want to run them, you will need to install the framework (the solution file is current configured to not build the test project when building the solution, to avoid errors for anyone who doesn't have NUnit installed). It's pretty simple, but if you have any questions, feel free to ask. So, the contest will be based in some way on puzzle games: you can use my library if you want or not, you can spend the next few weeks porting my library to your favorite language if you want (I've released under the MIT license), you can develop your own puzzle game library if you want, it doesn't really matter, as long as you meet the secret theme. If you would use my library, I would greatly appreciate it, to give it a sort of "real world" test, see what people make of it, and see where it should be taken from here. But, it's not required. We usually have prizes for this contest, typically a certain amount of cash via PayPal intended to be used to purchase a GDNet+ membership. Prizes are donated by the community as a whole. I've donated games before as well. At the very least, I'll end up covering 1 year, 3 months, and 1 month of GDNet+ membership fees as the top 3 prizes. I might dig through my hardware pile and find something interesting. Anyone else is free to offer something. Date/Time: Saturday, April 10th. Theme: "Spring" The past six contests were "Black and White," "Fire," "Crackers," "CARTS," "The Stars", and "The Pits". The emphasis is originality in interpretation. With the Crackers theme there were entries that featured fire crackers, saltines, people "cracking" windows open to prevent leathal doses of methane gas, and southern honkeys. I'm getting rid of the ASCII art requirement this time. If you want to do that, that's up to you, I like ASCII art games. I personally think the contest is easier if you do ASCII art, but that's just me. You might find it easier to do it in HTML5 or Flash, which is perfectly acceptable. Rules:

1. Submissions must meet a predetermined theme (which will be revealed 15 minutes before the beginning of the contest)
2. Any Language (C, Java, C#, Python, &#106avascript, Brainf***, I don't care) or API (SDL, Allegro, PyGame, JOGL, even SVG in HTML5 is cool) are acceptable, as long as you handle all distribution yourself (Ideally include all assemblies. You may link to download page, but please, don't just link to the project's homepage). This is especially true if you use a "game maker", I don't want to have to hunt anything down to play your game.</li> <li>Writing the code in the time limit is "on your honor". That's why I keep the theme a secret: you might be able to make a generic game between now and then, but you won't be able to make anything specific to the theme. But seriously, why would you cheat for such a simple contest?</li> <li>Judges will judge on a full binary version of the software. They will not compile the software. Source code is not required, though you may request source code to be posted with your submission.</li> <li>Judging is conducted by a panel of non-competitors</li> <li>Judging is based mostly on overall gameplay and originallity of game design. We understand that content will be light, that graphics will be underdeveloped, that input MIGHT be a bit akward. Gameplay and concepts are key.</li> <li>prizes (when available) are listed above, runners up receive nothing.</li> </ol> Three hours is plenty of time to make a classic arcade game, or something new with simple gameplay. The threads for the previous contests are available below. Unfortunately, all of the links are broken. I still have an archive of all of the games, I just need to find a place to put them (<a href="http://www.gamedev.net/community/forums/topic.asp?topic_id=563724">maybe CodePlex?</a>) <ul> <li><a href="http://www.gamedev.net/community/forums/topic.asp?topic_id=332402">The first 3H-GDC</a></li> <li><a href="http://www.gamedev.net/community/forums/topic.asp?topic_id=333131">3H-GDC m.II</a></li> <li><a href="http://www.gamedev.net/community/forums/topic.asp?topic_id=344998">3H-GDC m.III</a></li> <li><a href="http://www.gamedev.net/community/forums/topic.asp?topic_id=362505">3H-GDC m.IV</a></li> <li><a href="http://www.gamedev.net/community/forums/topic.asp?topic_id=373000">3H-GDC m.V</a></li> <li><a href="http://www.gamedev.net/community/forums/topic.asp?topic_id=430874">3H-GDC m.VI</a></li> </ul> If anyone wants to volunteer as a Judge, please post here and list your machine specs as well as your pertinent software running on your computer. For example, I'm: Processor: Intel Core 2 Duo E8600 Memory: 8GB RAM GFX: NVidia GeForce 8800 GTS OS: Windows Vista Ultimate 64bit Browsers: Google Chrome (default), IE8, FireFox 3.6 Other Software: Whatever the lastest, non-beta versions of Java, .NET, Python, Ruby, DirectX, and XNA are available. I don't remember, but I'll make sure everything is up to date before the contest. Not that it's terribly important, given the low level graphics this contest will require. <!--EDIT--><span class="editedby"><!--/EDIT-->[Edited by - capn_midnight on April 10, 2010 3:41:54 PM]<!--EDIT--></span><!--/EDIT-->