4k Flash Game Competition

[urbansquall]

The 4k Flash Game Competition is officially GO.

http://www.gamepoetry.com/blog/2009/...zes-and-rules/

Best of luck!

[bluemagica]

the plan is great and there will be loads of interested people with the >4k size theme! But i wish this was a month later, since my exams are starting on monday, theres no way for me to participate!

[tonypa]

Does the game have to be new or do you also consider previously published games?
Can the game load any external assets (probably not because it would spoil the idea but worth mentioning)?
Which countries are you able to send prize to or is the competition stricktly limited to specific countries?

[urbansquall]

Doesn't have to be new, but you have to be willing to release source so I can make sure you're not loading external assets and stuff. (look, 2 questions answered in one go!)

For prizes I'm oscillating between cold hard cash (via Paypal) and something that benefits other indie game developers (so you pick some indie games, and I buy them for you). I'll have more details when I know how many people are interested. Obviously, if your country doesn't accept Paypal, then we might have some issues.

[urbansquall]

Okay, that's enough interest to make it worth doing, so I'll kick it off next week.

[Pazil]

Sounds great!

[hatu]

I'd love to enter if I can find some time

[Sietjp]

Yeah, this is geat. A 40 or 50 days window would better IMO.

I guess we have to use variable names like "a", "b", "c" to make the game very light...

Is the source code must be public, or only for your eyes ?

[Squize]

Out of interest, does anyone know which byte code is the smaller, as2 or 3 ? ( Or even as1 *shudder* ).

I'm also curious about how hardcore we can go ( I don't mean in terms of comp. restrictions ), for example if there would be any saving in having the code in a compressed byte array and unpacking that at run-time ( Old school 4k intro thinking I know ).

Squize.

[renderhjs]

I would be interested as well

[tonypa]

Isnt swfs compressed anyway?

[renderhjs]

I am thinking of creating a editor to create the assets and then compress it like Werkzeug from Farbrausch

http://www.werkkzeug.com/kkoncept/proceduraltextures
propably using binary data to store coordinates and generating bitmapDatas.

other than that perhaps more than ever reusing functions even for the smallest things.

[abseeley]

im majorly interested i love these, as small as possible contests, and just the idea in general, never been a good flash one though, so im looking forward to this

[.hooligan]

Sounds cool.

[iopred]

I wonder if making the swf.. converting it to a ByteArray and compressing it is a good reduction technique.

The submitted swf would then just do a ByteArray uncompress, and a Loader.

[Sietjp]

I think you will gain the same thing you gain when you compress twice a .zip. Very few but still a few bytes. But in this case we deal with a small amount of KB so maybe the archive headers might be a problem.

[renderhjs]

some nice read I found:
http://www.nowrap.de/flasm.html#optimization

File size difference

After assembling Flasm source or updating SWF with Flasm you'll often see your SWF having few less bytes even if you haven't changed anything in the bytecode. Besides of trivial optimizations Flasm does in update mode, there is one more reason for it. Flash may save block lengthes in the SWF as 2 or 6 byte records. 6 bytes are only needed if the block is larger than 62 bytes. Flash, however, often uses 6 bytes where 2 bytes will do. Although Flasm does this too in certain cases, most blocks are optimized during assembling. So I get 400 less bytes on the file of 90kB length without optimizing anything. I don't know of any disadvantages, enjoy this unexpected Flasm bonus. Side note: ironically, there are places where long lengthes are required because of Flash player bugs, but Flasm is aware of this and will let them untouched.

[Squize]

Yeah swf's are packed with zip style packing anyway, but I was thinking there may be a better alternative for raw data like that ( Possibly a lot more trouble than it's worth, I was just shooting it out there ).

Yep Render Flasm does remove any junk byte-code ( I remember back in the day running that over all my code when a game was gold. Ha, the little things that matter ), it would be nice if there was something for as3 that did the same too ( Or at least compiled it better, Alchemy is proof that the job could be done a lot better ).

Squize.

[Squize]

This is my main singleton that I use in all my as3 projects:

package {
	import Classes.Init;
	
	import flash.display.DisplayObject;
	import flash.display.Sprite;
	import flash.display.Stage;
	import flash.display.StageQuality;
	import flash.display.StageScaleMode;
	import flash.events.Event;

	[SWF(width="800", height="600", frameRate="31", backgroundColor="#000000")]

	public class Main extends Sprite{

//---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
// Properties
//---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
		private static var instance:Main;
		private static var __parent:DisplayObject;
		private static var stage:Stage;
		private static var init:Init;
	
//---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
// Static ( Singleton )
//---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
		public function Main(){
			if(instance){
				throw new Error( "Singleton and can only be accessed through Singleton.getInstance()" );
			} else {
				instance=this;
			}
			waiting();
		}

//---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
// Public
//---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
		public override function toString():String {
			return "Main";
		}		

//---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
		public function waiting():void{
			addEventListener(Event.ADDED_TO_STAGE,mainAddedToStage);
		}

//---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
// Getters
//---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
		public static function getInstance():Main {
			return instance;
		}

//----------------------------------------------------------------------
		public function getMainMovie():DisplayObject{
			return __parent;	
		}

//----------------------------------------------------------------------
		public function getStage():Stage{
			return stage;	
		}

//----------------------------------------------------------------------
		public function getInit():Init{
			return init;	
		}

//---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
// Private
//---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
		private function mainAddedToStage(e:Event):void{
			stage=this.stage;
			stage.showDefaultContextMenu=false;
			stage.quality = StageQuality.LOW;
			stage.scaleMode = StageScaleMode.NO_SCALE;

			__parent=this.root;
			
			init=new Init();
		}


//---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
	}
}

As I'm starting a new game today I thought I'd have a quick look and that published in Flex comes in at 1.28k !

Looks like it's going to be as1 for me.

Squize.

[iopred]

Going AS3, you should'nt need Singleton references and things, everything would probably go into the Main class.