Agreed, thus, let him have his hacks. If they work, it’s fine, if they don’t it’s not your problem anyway 
It didn’t kill the awt thread(s) anyway, so I’m back to System.exit(0). ;D
Talk about pointless argument. 
[quote=“jbanes,post:17,topic:25403”]
Hey. It was a gray area, because that bit was completely left open. Since the contest was from devs for devs I assumed it would be fine to rely on the soundbank (which is there by default with the sdk/jdk).
This year I certainly wont use any sound (only ~90 bytes left anyways)
There’s this issue with a Java Application box, when the app isn’t signed.
see http://www.java-gaming.org/forums/index.php?topic=11654.0
I think it should be one of the points the games should get judged at, because it’s much less fun to play a game, where you don’t (or might not) see important information.
Examples are LadyBug and Speed.
Arne
I did not realize this was an issue. I had compensated in the LadyBug game on windows as the box appears at the bottom. So I left some blank spacew at the bottom that could be safely covered up. I guess you screen shot is from a Mac or linux platform. I could always add some blank sace at the top as well. I hate to have to sign my game not only does it waste space it also makes me grant permission for the game to run. Who knows what the game will do. I much prefer to see a game that needs no protected calls so will run with out the need to be signed.
Woohoo, yummy games to play.
Boo, so little time at the moment! 
Agreed, lack of time is a problem, although this is the last day with lots to do in school 
After today, I might find the time to create a few more games, perhaps better ones at that (better than my old games that is, they still won’t be anywhere near comparable with some of the other games in this contest).
I have a question about the rules. It doesn’t say which the minimum resolution used by the judges will be. I am creating an applet and thought that I would make it 768px wide so that I would have some game space. I thought that “everyone” used at least 800*600 now days. Is that all right or should I go for something smaller?
Everyone seems to be designing really small things, which made me think that it’s an implicit rule which you have agreed on during earlier years? (This is my first time in the competition.)
There’s no rule about resolution. These young wipper-snappers seem to think that we’re all still 15 and can read the tiniest screen without eye strain. God forbid that anyone should figure out how to scale images! ;D 
1024x768 or greater is a pretty safe assumption these days. Any developer running at less than that needs his head checked. (Especially his eyeglass perscription.) Any user running at less than that is WAAAAAAYYY behind the curve.
it’d suck to make a 1024x768 game and get rated down because "didn’t fit the screen on my ", so I’d also like to hear an official ruling on this.
hmmm… how bout this. If the game is fullscreen, you can use any resolution you want as long as the user’s monitor supports it.
applets and non-fullscreen applications should stick to fitting inside a 1024x768 resolution (so an 800x600 app would be about the max window size that would fit inside the 1024x768 resolution). Especially applets should follow the 800x600 rule because not only are the limited to screen size, but also browser space… who knows how many freakin toolbars some people have installed or use AOL that takes up half of the vertical space…
Well most browsers have a “Full screen” mode which could be turned on to get rid of all those toolbars, why not have the same restriction on the size of applets and other non-full screen games? (To make things easier and clear for developers participating in the competition.) Anyway, it would be nice with some direction here so that no unpleasant surprises will occur later on.
My first game will probably not take up that much space, it’s 640*320 at the moment (but I guess I will have to compensate some for the java applet message (when run through webstart) and add some vspace on top and bottom as I’m not planning on signing it [so that the paranoid users will try it out as well ] )
not even half of gamers will know about a browser’s fullscreen option or even bother to switch to it.
why are you even messing with applets anyway? They don’t really provide any advantage… I would stick with just JFrame if I were you
anyway for people who are wondering: applet and window sizes are not to exceed 800x600 unless you’re switching to fullscreen mode. And when I say fullscreen, I don’t mean a browser - I mean java’s fullscreen.
[quote=“woogley,post:33,topic:25403”]
True
[quote=“woogley,post:33,topic:25403”]
I like to have it visible immediately on a web page when I am done, without web start. And I’m fairly new to Java, this is my first applet. So for learning purposes as well I guess.
[quote=“woogley,post:33,topic:25403”]
Great! Sounds fair, it’s good to know. Thank you!
Okay. Sounds fair.
Jbanes: I’m using smaller resolution because I like it. Neither of my games so far is fullscreen, and, well, freefall’s too high and thin to be fullscreen, and for gumblocks it just seemed right. Dunno. :>
EDIT: Question: woogley, Freefall was made before this ruling and, well… it’s playing area is 600 pixels in height, but then there’s the window bar-thingy that is always there, plus the webstart “java application” banner. Would you allow that, or do I need to change it?
the webstart sandbox bar can be removed in the webstarta cache gui, preferences, advanced, sandbox notification (or something likely) . It should display an option to remove that bar when clicking on it, to be more user-friendly, well, maybe it’s the next step after removing the scary confirmation dialog
Morre, if it doesn’t really affect the gameplay much I would prefer you subtract maybe 50 pixels off. Since yours is a scrolling game it really shouldn’t hurt the game. Even better, if you have enough bytes to sign it, players won’t have to go through the webstart preferences.
Okay, I’ll remove some of it, I guess. The thing is, 600 pixels for drawing is a nice and even number, so I think you should set the limit at how much you can draw, not how big the window is. 640, 480, something like that. I don’t really want to sign it though - did that before but I prefer the safe sandbox mode, I think more players might test it that way.
The actual Window size will differ between operating systems, therefore it’s not a good way to set the restriction. I have finished my game and it’s playing area is 672x480 based on the 800x600 window size limitation above. So please do not change that requirement and lower it now (I think that the screen size restriction should also be stated on the rules page).
I have one question as well. As I created a Java applet, it’s jar file size is 4093 bytes. But when i submitted the “resource archive” I had to include a web page to execute it (or am I wrong?) as well, and the size went up >4096 byte. Is that all right? As I see it it’s the same as with an webstart application, which also has additional requirements for running it which are not considered to be its file size. If it isn’t all right (I can’t imagine why) I guess I’ll have to make it run through webstart.
(Also I somehow couldn’t submit the game using my gmail address, I hade to use my student e-mail.)
I agree that the window size should be stated in the rules page, something I’ll edit soon. You’re right about the window sizing changing between OSs, but for JFrames I said it needs to fit inside 1024x768 which should be easy to estimate (I’m not going to pull out a ruler or anything), and applets should follow the “no larger than 800x600” rule because they are sized exactly in the browser (I wont measure AppletViewer’s window either ;))
the archive file, whether an executable JAR or ZIP file, must be below the 4096 limit. My best advice is to port it to a JFrame or try another zipping program. Also make sure you use the applet tag - NOT the object tag, that will save you some bytes
as far as gmail failing, not sure whats wrong with that - I don’t do any email validation as far as testing if it exists, perhaps you typed it wrong (i.e. you forgot an ‘@’ or ‘.’ character which the script’s regex looks for).