Java4K 2013!

It’s the time of the year where few of our hardcore game developers actually noticed that it got a bit darker and colder outside. Some of you may even have noticed that summer-time is over. But what does it all mean? How does it correlate with the end of the world later this year? These and more of such questions will not be answered in this topic, I will however use it to announce the upcoming Java4K competition!

As always, we’re delighted with appel, who will streamline much of the competion on java4k.com which should, by now, be a household name in your parents basement. In our long-term joint effort, JGO will be the focal point of an ever growing number of work-in-progress topics on this board (not to be confused with the WIP board).

Some of you may wonder why we’d build the hype this early this year. Again, does it have to do with our shared sense of impending doom? I like to presume I’m not allowed to disclose such matters. I can however reveal to you that we’ve had a huge influx of newbies awesome members this year, who might be oblivious to our annual competition.

Therefore I urge you to stock up on energy drinks, clear your schedule in the upcoming holidays and surprise us with your smallest creations. We can only imagine what you’ll come up with in the upcoming weeks, as there are only [\countdown/]1354384843[/countdown] until the contest officially starts!

Is now the time to ask whether the judging system is changing this year? There was a discussion last year after the contest about ways to lighten the load on the judges.

It would indeed be a good time to discuss this - I bet appel has thought about it already.

Ho ho ho… appel claus is here!

The 4k contest started here on JGO in 2002 (contest 2002-2003) so this is the 10th anniversary of the contest. Hopefully we’ll see something new this time around.

I’d like your ideas on what we can do to shake things up a bit. I already have some ideas but nothing rock solid. Let’s hear some ideas from you guys first, ideas on website, ideas on judging process, ideas on contest itself, etc.

Whoa, that was faster than I expected. I did quite a bit of work with appel earlier trying to find all the games that were not working. Hopefully, some of the people who worked on 4K games in the past will come and take a look at the new stuff. I have a few suggestions…

Website

Actually, if there was a way to flag games that were not working, it would be helpful in keeping the site organized. A little banner on the front page, as well as a way for people to restore the broken games would be nice.

Judging

I actually like the judging process as it is. The judges take time to dissect your game and give it a good, fair, and clean review. I don’t mind waiting a bit longer in the judging period to get that feedback. I think the deadline for the judging should be pushed back with how many game entries were put in the year.

Contest

I had a small idea to introduce a little community based award system. The awards would be split into 4 categories that will help promote games people in the past competitions wanted to see. The categories were “Technical, Presentation, Originality, Symphony”. A little medal on the game would be used to signify it.

However, I’ll leave all the decision making to appel. I guess all that is left now is to start creating some games for this competition. I will definitely be in the running for 2013.

Good Suggestions ^^^

Hmmm… Can’t decide if I will enter or not.

Are you allowed Applications still?
If not, I won’t be bothered as I haven’t learnt how to make Applets yet and I am not going to anytime soon.

Otherwise, I may enter once I remember how to use Java2D.

There are “skeletons” in the resource threads from previous years which take care of the applet side of things.

Converting an application to an applet isn’t too hard anyways, especially with simple games like these.

I just want to say I ready to be a judge if needed, since I’ve graduated and jobless now :slight_smile:

I can help out by providing new games :wink:

I’ll support you by looking at the games, and as a result, crouch sobbing in corner, wondering how people can make such awesome things and I can’t… :point:

Damn it, I need an idea…

thanks for the link

I propose that we officially allow code compiled with Java 7.

Target JRE 7? Sounds OK to me.

Java 7? need to download :stuck_out_tongue:

If only LWJGL was allowed on the classpath :slight_smile:

Cas :slight_smile:

Even if it was, you really think you could make a game with it? Meaning, doesn’t it require much more code to just do stuff?

Why? I can’t see that a java4k game would benefit from invokedynamic, because we minimise the number of methods we have, but I can see that the requirement to include StackMapTable attributes would penalise anyone who uses it.