2008 Java 4K Competition

Contests 4K Game Competition - 2008
#21

An unsigned standalone jar?

The fundamental issue here is that:

  1. standalone costs you a manifest.mf in the jar, but gets you full execution privileges - hence you can go full-screen.
  2. webstart releases you of the need for a manifest.mf, but you are sandboxed - requiring signing to release you from the sandbox.

Obviously signing the jar is a great-deal more expensive than including a manifest.mf (so much so that it is impractical for a 4kb java app.).

Therefore to encourage webstart in past competitions, an oversized webstart submission was allowed to accompany the stand-alone executable jar.
Note the important distinction - it was the stand-alone executable jar that was demonstrating the game could meet the competitions rule requirements - the webstart submission was simply for convenience.

Will this competition be the same? e.g. if over sized, the webstart submission should be considered a convenience tool not an actual valid submission.

#22

This was what i was thinking…

#23

Game must work with:
java -cp .bla.jar
Eg:
java -cp .;g.jar G (win32)

As easy as that. :wink:

#24

In that case my jar is going to be named “TwoHundredAndFiftyFiveUTF16EncodedDataStream”.

System.getProperty(“java.class.path”) is a prety frickin cheap way of accessing 255*4 bytes of data (if the full unicode character set realy is supported…)

#25

I remember that it was not allowed in past years. I’ll have to look for the post.

The game should work with:
java -jar g.jar

The main-class must be in the manifest.

#26

Well, then it must run with the following command line on Windows:
java -cp .;a.jar A

And the following one on Mac/Linux:
java -cp .:a.jar A

Satisfied? :stuck_out_tongue:

#27

Been building a new PC, so I’ve been occupied 8) Got a new QuadCore machine… I’m dancing on water now ;D

Ok, back to the competition.

One of the original rules (#8) states that the game must be executed without a command line. So, normally double-clicking on the JAR should work (in Windows AFAIK). java -jar .jar should always work.

And rule #4 states “self-contained” and “no external resource”, to me that automatically excludes everything that can be passed on as arguments/parameters to the application to use as data.

Me and jojoh will think of a better wording of the rules to exclude the type of cheating Abuse talks about. I’d just hate to spend lot of time discussing rules while I could be making the system for the competition :slight_smile: So we’ll maybe make the rules more general, allowing us more elbow-space to reject games that we believe are not in the spirit of the competition.

How about:

  • Any game that uses data that is not counted as part of the (up to) 4096 bytes package will be rejected.
#28

I suppose. I’d just go what with what used the previous years; the game must either be self-executable or startable via webstart under 4k. If that means they need to sign it for webstart, fine, let them provide a standard JAR with manifest to prove it’s less than 4k unsigned.

#29

does “self contained” mean everything has to be in a jar? as in i could not have images out on their own(but still include them in the size limit?)

#30

Everything in the jar :slight_smile:

A little question : only one game or several games can be submited ? (If so I will have to choose one ???)

#31

You can make and submit many games.

#32

In past competitions, you could submit as many games as you wanted. I don’t imagine that will change.