PyWeek - Think the theme is too easy? Take the eugman challenge. (2 mored added)

Ok, here's the deal: it's not that hard to think of an idea with robots in it so I've made a list of strange restraints to add some more challenge. Try to meet as many as you can but it's unreasonable to attempt them all. If enough people give it a try I might offer some sort of reward to the winner. The only thing I can think of right now is some free hosting.

  1. Tiny screen: Have the longest side be no longer than 240 pixels. Scaling up for visibility is permitted
  2. Long screen: Use a ratio of at least 3:1 instead of the usual 4:3
  3. Limited controls: Players should need to use only two keys to play the game. No mouse.
  4. Forget theme: No visible robots should be in the game. Find a different way to incorporate the theme. The insides or just part of a robot is ok.
  5. Tiny file: The whole zip file should be less than 1 MB. Think of the children.
  6. Pause: I know it's simple but make it so you can pause the game.
  7. Flocking: Implement some form of flocking or swarming if applicable.
  8. Help Screen: Make a help screen darnit!
  9. Procedural content: make some of your content be made on the fly.
  10. Oldschool color: some one should be able to run your game in 8 bit color mode witout any change.

— eugman on 2008/03/30 00:47 of Awesome Block Game 4
— edited on 2008/03/29 22:51

Comments: (log in to comment)

By cthulhu on 2008/03/30 00:53:

wtf is this?

By irskep on 2008/03/30 01:00:

It's a good idea, that's what.

By cthulhu on 2008/03/30 01:01:

lol

By Tee on 2008/03/30 01:03:

Hmm. My main idea (subject to change) involves 6, 7 and 8 (though 6 and 8 are pretty necessary anyway). :P I'm not taking your challenge, though, unless some goals are very easy to adapt.

cthulhu: It's just a side challenge eugman wants to offer. Has nothing to do with the rest of the Pyweek.

By Tee on 2008/03/30 01:07:

Oh, and it definitely breaks 1 to 5. I don't want to mess with screen size, controls will probably be mouse-based (so far), there are visible robots, and in case I end up using pyglet I'll include the source (not sure how big it is zipped but unzipped I see 3.9M from pyglet-1.1alpha2), so the zip won't be small (not to mention there probably will be raster graphics anyway, which take up quite some space).

By cthulhu on 2008/03/30 01:07:

Tee: I don't see the theme as too easy - there are unlimited possibilities, why restrict oneself to another's viewpoint.

By Tee on 2008/03/30 01:12:

cthulhu: I agree it's not too easy, and since there are so many possibilities I'm hoping to see lots of different ideas this time. I think eugman's idea is to restrict the theme a bit more for those who don't think it's restricted enough, just for fun, a stricter challenge. It's a nice idea but I don't want to take it.

By bjorn on 2008/03/30 01:23:

Thanks Eugman - I had the same reaction and was thinking of asking what the second place theme was and then do that one (with robots of course), just for some more creative restriction. I'll run the elements of your challenge by my team and see if they get inspired (the screen restrictions are most intriguing to me).

If we can come up with a less obvious way to encorporate 'robot' into our game w/o having it be about robts I'll be pleased.

By eugman on 2008/03/30 01:27:

Yeah, it's if nothing else, something to get you think outside of the normal. The people who love the theme as is don't have to do anything extra and those who don't, can. Everyone wins. Also I'll try to add some more options as far as restrictions go before i go to bed. Thinking of really good ones is hard.

By JDruid on 2008/03/30 02:08:

Nice sarcasm ;). I think the theme is almost as restricting as e.g. "red" or "circle".

By john on 2008/03/30 08:05:

I could do all of that, but, I can't have a pause screen, my game would only change on the click on the space and arrow keeys, so a pause screen would be useless. If I have to do one though even though the user would probably never use it then fine, so be it.

By simono on 2008/03/30 09:47:

limited controls + the screen restrictations are very interesting.
i would have loved to play around with one-button-interfaces :-)

By Dandini on 2008/03/30 10:00:

are you planing to port it somewhere?

By ServalKatze on 2008/03/30 10:06:

About challenge #10: 8-Bit would be 256 colors, right? That doesn't seem to be that challenging... unless you're doing a 3d- or a photorealistic 2d-game.

By eugman on 2008/03/30 13:11:

Ok, just a couple of responses.

@john: Noone is expected to do all of them. Some don't make much sense for certain types of games. A pause screen for a turn based game would be one.

@ServalKatze:Yeah, 256 colors. It's not that hard but it does take some consideration if you are trying to make a game with nice looking sprites.

@everybody:Some of these parts are interesting, some are pedestrian, like a help screen. Regardless, I think I've gotten some people thinking differently what they can do with a game and that was the my point. If I do this again next pyweek, I'll make sure to have bunch of high quality ones.

By john on 2008/03/30 16:58:

Procedural content: make some of your content be made on the fly. ^What does that mean?^

By eugman on 2008/03/30 18:32:

wikipedia is your friend

By Stefan on 2008/03/30 19:32:

Hmm, eugman's challenges gave me inspiration. Expectedly second one. Thanks man! :)

By Stefan on 2008/03/30 19:36:

I wanted to write "especially" instead of "expectedly". Sorry for my English :(

By lucio on 2008/03/31 21:50:

recently finished, for all cocos (trunk) users, free points in pyweek as you get pause implemented for free!