FBGD Rescue The Colors Competition (Nov 2011 - end of Jan 2012), 250 $ 1st prize

[N3trunn3r]

I never worked with color changing but lets see what I can write...

[KristopherWindsor]

I may be participating.

[axipher]

After a long absence, I think I'll take part in this for fun

[Lachie Dazdarian]

Welcome, newbie.

Anyway, this is really great news guys. I would appreciate when any of you decides on a concept and starts developing it, to inform the community, so we can track better the  progress of the competition, predict the final number of entries, etc.

Good luck!

[Ryan]

I've been planning my concept out on graph paper to see if it works, as I was going to go for a puzzle game.  I also have some sweeeet graphics to use, and I'll even deign to share them. There's a 1-bit roguelike / sci-fi expansion tileset produced by the TigSource Assemblee competition a couple years ago that'll rock your socks off:

http://forums.tigsource.com/index.php?topic=8970.0

As soon as I'm sure I'll go for it, I'll start a Game Dev thread about it and see how far I get this time.

[ssjx]

Hi,
I've put together a very early demo of my idea.

http://ssjx.co.uk/windows/fbgd.php

Yes, i am aware the player is not mono

The actual aim will be probably be shoot the ghosts/whatevers collect what they leave and use this restore the whole level to it's proper coloured state.

In the linked version above, if you stand in the water or in front of a plant and press space it revives it. In the game this will be done using the collectables that get left by the enemy. The main effect is that with the plants restored you can use them like ladders and reach higher platforms and continue your task.

The actual graphical theme and story has not been thought through yet.

The other reason for this post is to check that this is a valid entry idea, as although you are adding colour which does effect the game. I am not 100% sure if it is classed as finding / unlocking.

Thanks for looking!

Edit : Forgot to mention, collision detection is  a bit ropey so you may get stuck in the movable blocks.

[Lachie Dazdarian]

Adding color to objects/painting levels is ok. Anyway, competition theme is not a strict rule. It's...a THEME. As I said, you can think outside the box and the unlocking of colors doesn't have to be a linear progression. Just be careful not to make a game about painting/coloring and/or using colors in a multi-color world (in other words, a game about colors). The gameplay or at least the story has to be based on the concept of going from black and white to more colors in some sense. Adding/unlocking/finding color to progress/change something in the game should be the core of your entries, not mere color manipulation, if you know what you mean. Then that would be a colors themed competition.

To repeat...your idea is withing the competition theme.

[Tusike]

I thought my idea was perfect until I read your latest post Lachie... I may need to rethink it, but I hope not

My idea was to actually rescue the colors. The blocks in the breakout type game represent the colors, and when you hit a block with the ball, the world around it gets colored in a little. I was thinking of having 5-6 level sets representing one famous place on each continent.

So you'd start out with a black background and white blocks, and after 5 levels or so, you'd have a background of a grey scale Eiffel tower or something. Each block you hit would increase the brightness of the surrounding pixels by 10-20%. This does mean that after the first hit, there will already be more than 2 colors... but you'd only get like 10 extra very dark shades of grey, so it won't be very noticeable. By the end you'd have 256 colors (x, x, x).

Then the next 5 or so levels feature red/green/blue blocks, and the background would slowly get colored in colors such as (Red, x, x), (x, Green, x) or (x, x, Blue), and (x, x, x).

Finally, you'd have full 32bit colored blocks, so by the end every color would appear in the form (red, green, blue) = (shades of yellow, purple, orange, etc...), and you'd get to see the real picture of the Eiffel tower.

I can wrap the whole thing up in a story e.g. aliens who lost all their colors have stolen ours. So basically you have a nice goal, and the feeling of the game slowly changes as more and more colors appear.

Here's the code I have for generating the images after you advance in each era. The more colorful picture you use, the greater the effect, so the hard part will be finding pictures of famous places which have a lot of colors... until then, you can test it with something like this one: http://kaleidoscope.cultural-china.com/chinaWH/upload/Image/colors2.jpg

Code: Select All | Copy To Clipboard

#include "fbgfx.bi"
using fb

const r0 = 0.17697
const g0 = 0.8124
const b0 = 0.01063

dim shared as fb.image ptr pic
dim as string fname = "colors.bmp"
dim shared as integer l, h

open fname for binary as #1 len = 1
get #1, 19, l
get #1, 23, h
close #1
ScreenControl(FB.SET_DRIVER_NAME, "GDI")
screenres l, h, 32

pic = ImageCreate(l, h)

bload fname, pic

sub grayscale()
    dim as uinteger clor
    dim as ubyte r, g, b
    dim as single lum
    dim as single k=.6
    for y as integer = 0 to h
        for x as integer = 0 to l
            clor = point(x, y, pic)
            r = (clor shr 16) and 255
            g = (clor shr 8) and 255
            b = clor and 255
            lum = r*r0+g*g0+b*b0
            lum *= k
            pset (x, y), rgb(lum, lum, lum)           
        next
    next
   
end sub

sub colorscale()   
    dim as uinteger clor
    dim as ubyte r, g, b
    dim as single lum, k
    k=.7
    for y as integer = 0 to h
        for x as integer = 0 to l
            clor = point(x, y, pic)
            r = (clor shr 16) and 255
            g = (clor shr 8) and 255
            b = clor and 255
            lum = r*r0+g*g0+b*b0
            lum *= k
            pset (x, y), rgb(lum, lum, lum)           
            if r > g and r > b then                 
                lum = (g*g0+b*b0)/(g0+b0)
                lum *= k
                pset (x, y), rgb(r*k, lum, lum)
            end if
            if g > r and g > b then                 
                lum = (r*r0+b*b0)/(r0+b0)   
                lum *= k
                pset (x, y), rgb(lum, g*k, lum)
            end if
            if b > r and b > g then               
                lum = (g*g0+r*r0)/(g0+r0)
                lum *= k
                pset (x, y), rgb(lum, lum, b*k)
            end if
           
        next
    next
   
end sub
screenlock
grayscale
screenunlock
sleep

screenlock
colorscale
screenunlock
sleep
put (0, 0), pic, trans
sleep

system

[Lachie Dazdarian]

Tusike, your idea is also well within the theme-scope, and a very interesting one. So don't worry. I was just trying to say that a game about colors as colors (really can't think of a good example right now) would be outside the competition theme. I don't know. A game about mixing colors or comparing colors or whatnot, would not be within the competition theme.

[ssjx]

Just a quick post to show i am still working on my entry, albeit not very quickly:

http://ssjx.co.uk/windows/fbgd.php

It's still more a test of the various elements that will be included in the game.

I am going for a Dizzy ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dizzy_series ) look to my entry and a medieval theme. Still not worked out everything yet but it will probably also involve waking various sleeping characters dotted around.

Thanks for looking!

Edit 2/12/11 : Just realised the link was pointing to the old version! This has been fixed now!

[Lachie Dazdarian]

It's been some 20 days since the start of the competition, so I would appreciate your updates or first news on your projects, if you haven't disclosed them yet, but feel comfortable doing so now.

For now confirmed entries in development (some I got via email):
ssjx's platform game
Tusike's breakout game
Ryan's puzzle game (started yet?)
Lithium's entry (not sure how much he wants to be revealed atm)
FXG861's ASCII entry

[Ryan]

I'm torn.  I've progressed on my puzzle game, tentatively titled Biochroma (in homage to Brandon Sanderson's Warbreaker), but I'm just not convinced it's a simple enough concept to be fun.  The core mechanic involved turn based play where you have to engineer the movements of people around a biochroma extraction plant using variously colored blocks.  The people would each have their own biochromatic aura that would interact with the colored blocks differently to force them to move in particular ways.

But then I'm not sure where to go from there - if the game should simply be about fixing the movement patterns within the plant so there are no more clogs or if it should turn into a rescue operation for a subset of the people who possess a randomly predetermined biochromatic aura.

The approach I've taken thus far is to just build the engine that advances people around so I could start to see the actual movement of the sprites in relation to the colored blocks to see if I could get an enjoyable game out of it.  I also just need to see all the moving pieces to figure out what sorts of puzzles I can include.  All I have is a little alien dude wandering around the screen right now...



Click for large view - Uploaded with Skitch

That said, I thought another fun game could be an exploration of prejudice.  The title of the idea was Colorblind, where in "black and white" mode everyone looks just like you.  As you play and interact with people, you pick up colored visors along the way that represent prejudices, causing different characters in the game to appear inferior (or superior) to yours and changing the way you interact with people.  Wasn't sure what the end game would be, but it seemed like a nice idea for the concept of the challenge.

That one's up for grabs if anyone wants to try it out.

[Lithium]

Here's a very early prototype, no shooting, collision detection, or enemies/npcs

Colour stealing will be done with filters



Dl: http://cs.smu.ca/~c_adams1/relativity.zip

[Clay Dragon]

That Competition Theme is so cool!

Too bad that announcement did not hit my mailbox because of that damn mailbox filter!  !

Anyway, count me in, Lachie!  

[ssjx]

Just tried Lithiums prototype, very cool so far!

Ryan's idea reminds me a little of Game of Life ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conway%27s_Game_of_Life ), well that and chu-chu rocket! Sounds interesting whatever it's like!

I've just realised that the link to my latest version was wrong and still pointing to the first upload, this has now been fixed!