Discuss the future of 4k contest

[princec]

Only vanilla Swing looks shit. Try the Synthetica Blackeye L&F (http://www.jyloo.com/synthetica/themes/)

Cas

[pjt33]

@Groboclown

Somewhere along the line I introduced a bad bug where the loaded applets are returning “null” from a getGraphics() call. I’m assuming I’m just not parenting it correctly. This is part of the reason the applets weren’t visible - they were crashing!

Applets which actually crash on that have bigger problems, because (in at least some point releases of JRE 6) applets might get null from getGraphics() due to a bug in the standard applet container’s lifecycle.

@Groboclown

Conversion from the HTML non-ascii characters and the Java string isn’t working right - you’ll notice some of the names aren’t showing up right.

That’s a years-old problem with the java4k.org site.

[appel]

So, what’s the plan? ;D

Open up Dec 1st (tomorrow) as is?

Applet launcher can appear on the site when it’s ready. I’m going to add json services to retrieve game list and such, so it doesn’t depend on some html code that could possibly change.

(New rule will be added, no more than 5 games per developer).

[moogie]

sounds good to me

[Groboclown]

@appel

Open up Dec 1st (tomorrow) as is?

Applet launcher can appear on the site when it’s ready. I’m going to add json services to retrieve game list and such, so it doesn’t depend on some html code that could possibly change.

Sounds like a good plan. Developers can start testing out the launcher as it updates (located here: https://pikacode.com/groboclown/java4k-launcher/file/default/java4k-launcher.zip). Once the new forum opens, I’ll start a thread there for bugs, feature requests, updates, and so on.

[Riven]

[quote=“appel,post:163,topic:43899”]
This would only affect zeroone… which makes me wonder… why?

[ctomni231]

[quote=“Riven,post:166,topic:43899”]

@appel

This would only affect zeroone… which makes me wonder… why?

It might also be a shot against Apo… I double that notion, why?

[appel]

It’s not meant to target anyone.

I just find it peculiar when 25-35% of the games in the contest is from the same person.

The goal is not to churn out as many games as possible.

[appel]

We could make it 10 games :

Ok, the contest is open! Riven will hopefully add a new contest forum.

[zeroone]

[quote=“Riven,post:166,topic:43899”]

@appel

This would only affect zeroone… which makes me wonder… why?

Time is a limited resource and there are plenty of things to explore out there. A cap on the number of entries is fine with me

[Varkas]

@jonjava

I find the 4k contest is a lot akin to the the demoscene subculture. By us - for us kind of thing. Showing off what kind of neat tricks you can pull off with only 4k.

That’s been my thoughts too. The java way of demo witchery. I once considered to join the 4k contest, but had to realize that it requires very specific skills and methods to produce such compact code which still does something sensible, and I don’t have those - and I wasn’t willing to sacrifice my coding habits just to squeeze some function into 4k bytecode.

So for me it already was a pretty closed contest for those who are like the old assembly wizards from the demo scene who made other people just “wow - I had no idea that this can even be done”.

[teletubo]

@Varkas

@jonjava

I find the 4k contest is a lot akin to the the demoscene subculture. By us - for us kind of thing. Showing off what kind of neat tricks you can pull off with only 4k.

That’s been my thoughts too. The java way of demo witchery. I once considered to join the 4k contest, but had to realize that it requires very specific skills and methods to produce such compact code which still does something sensible, and I don’t have those - and I wasn’t willing to sacrifice my coding habits just to squeeze some function into 4k bytecode.

So for me it already was a pretty closed contest for those who are like the old assembly wizards from the demo scene who made other people just “wow - I had no idea that this can even be done”.

This is what I thought the past few years and I never joined the competition because of that. But last year I tried, and with the toolset you can use (obfuscator, proguard, shrinker) you don’t need to ruin your code to fit everything. My games even had 3 or 4 classes, not just 1 like people normally do.
It is perfectly doable, just give it a try.

[xsvenson]

I have not participated in this contest and I also feel, it’s not for me.
But I am glad that this thread took a positive direction and I wish You all the best.
The launcher is nice, keep it up.

[Sunsword]

@Varkas

I once considered to join the 4k contest, but had to realize that it requires very specific skills and methods to produce such compact code which still does something sensible, and I don’t have those - and I wasn’t willing to sacrifice my coding habits just to squeeze some function into 4k bytecode.

So for me it already was a pretty closed contest for those who are like the old assembly wizards from the demo scene who made other people just “wow - I had no idea that this can even be done”.

That issue gets raised a lot, but a while back Groboclown put together a good set of ANT scripts that you can use (quoted post below.) I don’t know how much it has changed in the past two years, but when I used it it all I had to do was put in the paths to some tools I downloaded like proguard and kzip, and then I just used Eclipse to run the script. Doesn’t get much easier than 1-click compression!

If you look at the source for many of the games on java4k.com, the fully commented well-laid out code is what was fed in to the ANT scripts, and they spit out an obfuscated, maximum compression 4k jar at the other end. My two games had a main game loop, but separate methods for drawing the splash screen, handling menu actions, drawing sprites, and loading and playing music. There’s a bit of trade-off between OO design and minimized byte code, for example my use of a method to draw sprites instead of delegating that to a separate Sprite object that decides how to draw itself. Along with that decision, I used 2d int arrays to keep track of my sprites and their attributes, rather than introduce another object definition. But you can do things like define as many constants as you want (to avoid remembering the purpose of a magic number), since proguard will replace them with the values in your code.

@Groboclown

@Sunsword

Groboclown put together a great set of ANT scripts two years ago. It’s what I used for the 2012 competition. It does proguard, packing, gzip, etc, even with different block sizes. I think I had to get proguard and a 7zip separately and configure the script with their locations, but having that toolkit does lower the entry bar significantly.

Thanks for the reference. I’m now maintaining this over in my sourceforge project: http://sourceforge.net/p/groboutils/java4k/ci/default/tree/

[moogie]

Perhaps special recognition award for the best “new comer” entry would help include those who are not considering entering being intimidated by the fantastic entries of the old hands?

[SimonH]

OK, sorry I’ve been a bit stressy about this launcher business but I’m pretty much¹ won round now.

[quote=“moogie,post:175,topic:43899”]
Superb² idea! A ‘Best Newcomer’ category would be an excellent addition to the contest.

¹Nothing to do with one of my games being used for the demo - honest!
²On the J4K website news the word ‘superb’ has been typoed to ‘supberb’ - just saying…

[appel]

I have a long holiday coming up in a few days, I’ll put some work into the site and try to modernize things a little.