24 mini-contest, One binary control

[unknown]

The contest is to write a game that takes only one binary control to play, any more controls will be against the rules :rolleyes:

contest starts on Sunday 18th '05 thats:
12.01 am to 11.59pm sunday GMT
irc.freenode.net
#idevgames-mini-contest

No prizes, just fun,
Good luck to all those going to enter!

[Leisure Suit Lurie]

I look forward to all the Track And Field and Test Your Strength games...

[zKing]

Someone's gonna clean up with a text adventure game where you have to type in morse code.
:lol:

[kelvin]

What about a 1-key beat-mania? Instead of using different keys for different columns, just have the input scan across the columns. :)

[diordna]

How 'bout one of them hot air balloon games where you hold the key to go up and let go to drop?

[unknown]

Sounds like some good ideas!
I still dont know what to make though :rolleyes:

[PowerMacX]

Err... "24 hours mini contest"... isn't the time over? :P

[BeyondCloister]

Err... "24 hours mini contest"... isn't the time over? :P

Not when it does not start for another 5 days.

[PowerMacX]

Not when it does not start for another 5 days.

Ooops :blush: Didn't see the "18th"

[unknown]

Yeah, its Sunday coming up, so any questions ask now.

[dfmoore]

how can a contest, which starts in a week, have a 24 hour time limit?
"I won't start beforehand-Scout's honor"? :)

i'd say "24 hour game contest this sunday, criteria to be announced at start!"
then again maybe i'm just insane-Its been suggested to me before.

[unknown]

Im announcing early in the hope that anyone who cheats will be overcome with guilt and kill themselves setting an example to others.

Most importantly it gives people time to think.

[ThemsAllTook]

I think people in this community are generally honest enough not to cheat on this sort of thing. Why would they, anyway? There aren't any prizes or anything. This is just for fun, so if someone wants to cheat themselves out of a good challenge, it's their own fault for being so stupid.

[aarku]

Can I have command-Q to quit in addition to the one binary control?

[aarku]

Can the one input control be remapped dynamically or must it remain constant? Space Bar for one moment, Return for another, the "T" key another...

[unknown]

Can I have command-Q to quit
Yes.

Can the one input control be remapped dynamically or must it remain constant?
Difficult question, I think ill say no.

[aarku]

Good. :)

[zKing]

Difficult question, I think ill say no.

There goes all the Dragon's Lair clones. ;)

[dfmoore]

haha yeah i dont think anyone would cheat on a 24 hour contest, you're quite right... just thinking if "24 hour" is really a misnomer...

because we should be considering game concept design as part of development...
riiiighttt??
(and i know a lot of industry games that most certainly should have!)
but yeah, i get the point. :)

[aarku]

http://www.gamasutra.com/features/20050602/green_01.shtml

[Nick]

If my control is a single mouse button, can I use the coordinates of the mouse click location in my program?

[unknown]

no coordinates, sorry.

[Tesa]

I'd recommend you guys to take a look at this site:
http://www.oneswitch.org.uk/

Maybe some of you already know of ideas such as these have thought about them or have heard about similar sites.

Earlier this year, OneSwitch.org.uk (http://www.oneswitch.org.uk/) arranged a longer competition together with Retro Remakes (http://www.retroremakes.com/), focusing on creating and exploring the idea of "one switch" games. These could be playable by people with disabilities or illnesses that make it impossible for them to play ordinary multi-control games.
All the games released during the competition were targetted towards Windows machines (given as the people on the Retro Remakes forums mostly are Windows programmers). Several of the games were pretty high quality, and implemented the one switch idea in several ways. You can see reviews of some of the finished games from this competition at Acid-Play (http://acid-play.com/search.php?type=search&query=OneSwitch&page=1).

I am sure Barry from OneSwitch.org.uk would love to see more "one switch" games for the Mac as well. If you manage get some good ideas, or produce some interesting tidbits for the Mac during these 24 hours, please consider polishing/finishing your product a little more afterwards once you get the time. If you get a version good enough for people to enjoy and play, let OneSwitch.org.uk (http://www.oneswitch.org.uk/) know about its existence. You could make some otherwise disadvantaged players very happy.

[dfmoore]

Interesting, :shock: I hadn't even thought of the implications of one (or maybe just two) button games. If I'm not packing up to go home after finals, I'll be in.

[Skorche]

How liberally can we take this binary control idea. Would it be looked down upon to use that binary control in different ways (tap, double tap, hold).

[unknown]

Of course not!

[OneSadCookie]

"one binary control" means that there's one button which is either down or up. I recommend the space bar ;)

How you interpret the state of that button is entirely up to you. Aarku's article had a number of good ideas, and an interactive demo of some of them.

[Skorche]

So the spirit of the contest isn't that you should have only one dimension of control over the game, but rather only one physical binary input.

I actually prefer the any key personally.

[dfmoore]

grrr.. that ever elusive any key... I'll find you some day... :ninja: :ninja: :ninja:

[PowerMacX]

grrr.. that ever elusive any key... I'll find you some day... :ninja: :ninja: :ninja:

Found it! (http://uncyclopedia.org/wiki/Any_Key) :p

[Mark Levin]

This sounds like a really cool contest!

[aarku]

grrr.. that ever elusive any key... I'll find you some day... :ninja: :ninja: :ninja:

Here's some help for that : http://web14.compaq.com/falco/detail.asp?FAQnum=FAQ2859

[Kilofer]

right, i'm gonna compete, this will be probably my first serious game made in metal, so don't expect anything great. anyways, it will be a fishing game, so don't steal idea
i just wanted to ask if i can use my key to do multiple things, depending on situation, position, place or whatever

[Nick]

So is it against the rules to allow the player to press any key as long as each key is does the exact same thing? I figure with a game that requires one button, the user should be able to choose his/her favorite button to press.

[OneSadCookie]

I'd say so, since that allows sequences of key events like *down* *down* *up* *up* which aren't possible if you're only using one key. That's not to say you'd take advantage of that, but it allows a dimension of interaction not allowed by the rules.

[ThemsAllTook]

Agreed. How about we standardize on spacebar?

[unknown]

Great to have you on board Kilofer (ededed from SQ btw), yeah use your control for what ever you wish.

Well said OSC,

Freenode is down atm but it will hopefully be back in time if not this will be on another server, check back tommorow.

Edit: I dont want to have only the space bar in use, I was personally going to use the return key (my space bar make an annoying sound).

[BeyondCloister]

Freenode is down atm but it will hopefully be back in time if not this will be on another server, check back tommorow.

Visit their website for the full story.

[OneSadCookie]

read http://freenode.net/ -- you can still connect.

[aarku]

Is it one button per player, or one button?

I'd like to attempt a two player game.

[OneSadCookie]

Hmm, if the players are playing cooperatively, that's kinda like having two buttons :p

My personal feeling is that if they're antagonists, then one button each is fine, but this is Ed's competition; he should make the final call.

[aarku]

It'd essentially be two players playing the same one-player game, except comparing scores at the end.

[unknown]

One binary control only, you can still make two player games both players need to use the same control.
If you wanted to do two player one thing you could do is have player1 go against no-one, then player2 afterwards against the player1 ghost and so on..

[unknown]

chat.freenode.net
#idevgames-mini-contest

GO!!!!!!!!!!!

[OneSadCookie]

http://onesadcookie.com/~keith/OneButtonShooter.tar.bz2

About an hour & 15 minutes went into that.

I'm going out now, so that might be all from me for this competition. If I have time later I might add some scenery.

[geezusfreeek]

Here's my little quickie: http://www.eng.uah.edu/~mcarthj/BrainFry.zip

Took me a bit longer than OSC because I had to work out some dependencies, but I finished so early because it's simple as heck. :wacko:

Edit: Okay, new version. This one is harder and has more specific instructions.
Edit 2: Alright, I took OSC's advice and made a .command so that it at least has a double-clickable icon. I also made use of the face of one of my friends for the icon.
Edit 3: Not a DMG anymore because of an apparent bug in Terminal that makes the DMG not eject until you quit Terminal.

[Nick]

Just finished mine. I might do some more in the morning (ugh.. it's 3:30am here), but I think I'm pretty much done. Not really sure what else I could've done with my idea and one button.

Action Button Base Jumping (http://www.simrealitystudios.com/Action Button Base Jumping.zip)

BTW, were we going for best gameplay using 1 button or most creative use of 1 button or just best overall game use 1 button? I'm not sure that any of those are that different, but at 3:30am it seemed like a legitamite question.

[geezusfreeek]

I was under the impression that it would be best overall game using one button.

[unknown]

Finished!
Game: http://www.fax.evolpenguin.com/01.zip
Source Code: http://www.fax.evolpenguin.com/01_src.zip
Enjoy!

(Theres a special animation at the end if you win btw, but its hard)

(I hope Evol doesnt mind me hosting that there just now, if you do sorry)
*faints*

[aarku]

Finished(ish)

The goal of the game is to play your drum along with the music accurately.

Space Bar is the default "action" key. It installs two sample songs into your user's Application Support folder under "DrumThug". The songs consist of a QuickTime recognizable audio file and a .dts file. It's rather hacked up, but the comments in there should make it possible for you to make your own song if you feel like it. Just make sure the exact beginning of the song is the 1st beat. (Works well with electronically generated songs)

Thanks to Taxx for the last minute applause sound effect!

http://www.cs.umn.edu/~czeck/DrumThug.zip

(Yeah, names are hard.)

There are a couple of bugs but I think it's okay enough to release for the moment. And yeah, the music is recycled.

-Jon

edit: Just realized the titlescreen will look really bad unless you have some gfx card that supports some kind of pixel shader, so here's a screenshot.
http://www-users.cs.umn.edu/~czeck/DrumThug.jpg

[aarku]

FYI, the textures on the menu items are broke on GeForce 2 MXs. That's what I get for using a beta, I guess. :)

[NicholasFrancis]

Nice game there, aarku... My son loves it.

[Tools10]

I need sleep!!! :cry:
wellwell, here comes something terrible for all of you out there, and of course it's even worse because it's hosted on my own FTP which means I won't have that much uptime.

ftp://ngt:ngt@213.114.209.239/DTBB.app.zip

[geezusfreeek]

One Button Shooter: I expected at least one person to do something of this nature. Works well, just needs polish and a way for the game to get more difficult and to end.

Brain Fry: I think the best thing it has going for it is a nice steadily rising difficulty level, which isn't saying much. It's just a command-line game, and it's extremely simple, so I'm not expecting too much. It's mine, so my word might be biased here.

Action Base Jumping: I like the concept. I'm having difficulty telling at what point the speed is too great for my little skydiver though.

01: I absolutely can't follow what is going on in this one.

Drum Thug: Ah, single-button DDR. This one is definitely the most polished game here so far. It needs to be a bit harder though. I made it through both songs flawlessly the first time.

Dodge the Blue Blokes: It took me a while to figure out what pressing the button did, and even after I figured it out, it was still too hard to use. Maybe I just need to play with it some more or something.

[BeyondCloister]

A development version of my entry, Ricochet, can be downloaded from http://www.cloisterroom.com/ricochet/Ricochet002.zip

Possibly more to follow later.

[Nick]

Action Base Jumping: I like the concept. I'm having difficulty telling at what point the speed is too great for my little skydiver though.

Yeah, I put that on the about screen. It's 15 m/s. Probably should've made it more obvious.

[Kilofer]

i won't make it :( i had problems with metal so i switched to tnt
i have everything but i had to stop production five minutes ago due to sort of error on my comp which i was unable to handle
i will finish it and publish anyway, but i have to drop contest :cry: good luck for you all
and ed, i think you've already told me that it's you, but "hi" anyways

[BeyondCloister]

A new version of Ricochet can be got from here http://www.cloisterroom.com/ricochet/Ricochet003.zip

Some minor polishing and addition of new types of balls.

[unknown]

To play 01:
Hold return to put up barriers that bounce the objects inside off,
Try and keep all the tetraheardron's but let the cube's go. Once its only tetraheadrons then it will get faster, until It resets the speed and add's another object.

[BeyondCloister]

Yet another version of Ricochet: http://www.cloisterroom.com/ricochet/Ricochet004.zip

Some colour changes and new ball type.

[geezusfreeek]

To play 01:
Hold return to put up barriers that bounce the objects inside off,
Try and keep all the tetraheardron's but let the cube's go. Once its only tetraheadrons then it will get faster, until It resets the speed and add's another object.

I'm talking about distinguishing tetrahedrons from cubes. Is 01 supposed to look like this?

http://www.eng.uah.edu/~mcarthj/01.png

[BeyondCloister]

I think this will be the final version of Ricochet for this contest:

http://www.cloisterroom.com/ricochet/Ricochet005.zip

The game now ends if you hit too many bombs, but it is safe to ricochet other balls off a bomb.

Also you get a Ricochet bonus for number of balls hit in a shot.

[unknown]

Is 01 supposed to look like this?
No, its supposed to be in motion. Deciphering which is which is part of the puzzle.

[Skorche]

http://cda.morris.umn.edu/~lemb0029/SmileDelivery.zip

I wrote this on Friday so it should be considered unofficial I guess. I'll be studying for finals today. (blech)

It requires some pretty good timing because if you mess up and start wildly clicking in a desperate attempt to save the ball you pretty much lose control.

Hint:
Pressing tap - hold quickly is interpreted as tap - double tap - hold, which translates to turn around, jump, and then accelerate. So it jumps and accelerates you in the opposite direction. Tap - tap - hold makes you jump but continue accelerating in the same direction.

[OneSadCookie]

That's really neat, skorche.

Makes you wonder why games these days seem to need 27 controls :)

[geezusfreeek]

Okay, final version of Brain Fry. It now has a better scoring system and gives you a break if you lose a life by slowing back down a little bit.

http://www.eng.uah.edu/~mcarthj/BrainFry.zip

[aarku]

Drum Thug: Ah, single-button DDR. This one is definitely the most polished game here so far. It needs to be a bit harder though. I made it through both songs flawlessly the first time.

It says "Great Job!" even if you get -1000 points. ;) I highly doubt you made through them flawlessly, (Your score is floating point precise behind the scenes) but since I didn't get some harder songs up there... you can edit one number in them to make them a lot harder. Open up for instance, Bug Surfing.dts in the Songs folder and change the note spacing from 0.50 to 2 and good luck :p

I was working on an internal beat recorder (for better songs without hand editing) but was having a bit of trouble with synchronization so I didn't get it done in time.

-Jon

[geezusfreeek]

It says "Great Job!" even if you get -1000 points. ;) I highly doubt you made through them flawlessly, (Your score is floating point precise behind the scenes) but since I didn't get some harder songs up there... you can edit one number in them to make them a lot harder. Open up for instance, Bug Surfing.dts in the Songs folder and change the note spacing from 0.50 to 2 and good luck :p

I was working on an internal beat recorder (for better songs without hand editing) but was having a bit of trouble with synchronization so I didn't get it done in time.

-Jon

Well, I was as precise as I am on DDR, which is good enough for "perfect" in DDR.

[Tools10]

I just wanted to add some additions to my last post, as I said I was tired and forgot to mention a couple of things :p
If you go into the Dodge the Blue Blokes.app/Contents/Resources/Java folder you will find a pilot.txt file that will allow you to change the name that appears in the highscore, you will also find a smoked.file (pure-text) that allows you to change the highscore ^^
However I also discovered a bug in the highscore which isn't that surprising considering it was the last thing I added to the game, it simply won't display the highscore as it should be.

And as a answer to geezusfreeek, there is no end to the game, however I tried playing it this morning and have a own record of 1468 that might be considered a "good score".
Try to beat me ;)

[Kilofer]

my fishing game is done! although the contest is over, here it goes:
photodesign.com.pl/kilofer/Fisherman.sit
i haven't tested it on osx so it may have some bugs, i know it has VERY simple graphics, as i'm not a graphic, there is no highscore list right now, but i may add it later
have fun!

[ThemsAllTook]

Sorry I didn't get a chance to enter this. I had a pretty cool idea, but I ended up with only about 4 hours of time that I would have been able to spend in the contest, and for the idea I had, a full 24 hours still would have been a stretch. :)

If I work up the motivation, I might write it at some point outside the contest...

[unknown]

Nice Kilofer, quite hard but good

Smile Delivery was definitly my favorite, the rotational friction was done really well.

I forgot to mention, listen to Psy-Trance while playing my game or it wont make sense :P

[kelvin]

So, I was thinking more about 1 button ideas. What about training an AI creature to behave a certain way to accomplish a goal ala Black & White. I can imagine the training interface composed of a single button. Tap fast for negative, slow for positive. Or perhaps just tap to feed (starvation for negative). When the AI is being punished or starved it'll look for new ways to earn positive feedback.

[Tools10]

Kelvin: That would be a cool idea tough quite hard for a 24 h contest. ;)

01: I think I've got what your supposed to do tough it's hard, while the graphic is cool when it's still slow enough to be visible it's just a bad format to see graphics in, I love full-screen games but having to strain my eyes like that can't be good :p

Brainfry: While it was sure easy to get the point in the game it's just to much of them same, with a high-score or someway to kick your friends ass it would be better but the command-line stuff is holding it back!

One Button Shooter: You should've continued programming on it, right now I don't consider it a game...
And worst of all, there is only one line with score!!! :(

Action Button Base Jumper: I never really got the point in getting higher score and stuff, except you get to skip watching while the unit slowly falls to the ground with a parachute.
After you get to about 400 meters you only watch him falling with a parachute anyway.

Drum Thug: A killer menu but I never got the game going, it refuses to load any song, it just says "return to main menu" when I press "start game"(I'm running OS X 10.3.9 if that might have something to do with it?)

Riochet: I hate having to get the black ball before you can get to level 2, it meant that I went to level 2 with -1 in life once, reminded me quite a lot of one of the games I played on my old performa.
And of course, I never managed to get those extra scores! :(

Smile Delivery: I'll have to put this one as my favorite to but I wouldn't have minded some more graphics and when you finish the game it shouldn't just quit, at least say "wey you've made it!" or something :p
And actually I have to say that it's games like this that makes me understand why we use several buttons, trying to break the speed just a little and instead finding yourself accelerating like h*ll over a edge sure made it a bit more difficult, no risk, no fun :lol:

Fisherman: Kinda short game and it lagged on my computer.
By force of habit I always pressed return when I wanted the rod to drop, which meant I would miss the fish because I didn't expect the "cooldown".

[aarku]

Drum Thug: A killer menu but I never got the game going, it refuses to load any song, it just says "return to main menu" when I press "start game"(I'm running OS X 10.3.9 if that might have something to do with it?)

There were unfortunately some bugs with copying the default songs into the ~/Library/Application Support/DrumThug/Songs folder.

So it doesn't find any songs and thus doesn't display any. Did you rename the application to something other than DrumThug.app ? (That's the current bug I know about)

To work around it, click on DrumThug in Finder and go "Show Package Contents", then go into Contents/Resources. Copy the Songs folder to the DrumThug folder in Application Support in your user's library folder. Then it should work.

-Jon

[Tools10]

It was stuffit expander that had put a evil suffix in the application name :wacko:
I won't edit my last post but as a overall game Drum thug is now my favorite, however I still think the gameplay is better in Smile Delivery.

[unknown]

Great contest!
Well done to everyone who entered!

We ended up with a whole bunch of games, really clever ones too. Thanks for competing!