I am going to attempt to make a game in time for the deadline… however with work commitments as well as looking for a house AND organising an engagement party there is very little time left over!
My game makes use of the tiles from the “worldmap.png” sprite sheet. however there are some missing map tile types which i have “constructed” using the existing sprites and layering them on eachother to create the missing tiles. Is this acceptable?
i don’t have a problem with that. that’s pretty much the same as just drawing two sprites on top of eachother at runtime. but who’s to know if you did it at runtime or in photoshop, yes? 
I construct portions of the level by making scenes in mspaint using the given sprites (without altering color, ect.) and then outlining the collision detection in the program.
This is within the rules right?
I guess it is.
of course. you’re talking about development strategies… things that aren’t “noticable” when the game is played. most will assume you’re drawing the individual sprites at runtime, even if you had done it in mspaint yourself.
as long as the final outcome is using the allowed graphics [with the allowed modifications of the sprites]… you’re in the clear. I’m not really concerned with how you develop it to be honest
As i feared I will not be able to devote the time needed to get an entry in by the due date… work, my engagement and other factors all conspire against me 
I will however continue to work on the project to a state where it is play able and release to the public.
To keep with the spirit of the competition I will continue to honour the rules of the comp. i.e. no user made sprites etc.
I have decided to create a much more powerful level editor than initally anticipated that will be similar to that of Blizzard’s Starcraft’s map editor. This is to help facilitate the making of levels. It can also mean that other people can make levels with ease.
The game concept:
Title: Super mario (a pun from Superman)
The perspective will be top down and mario will be able to move in 360 degree freedom.
Mario will have two modes of movement: walking and flying.
When walking he is vaunerable to most enemies.
When flying he is able to fly over some obstacles and gain access to parts of the levels which are blocked by cliffs etc.
He is only able to fly for limited time and needs mushrooms to replenish this flying power.
The enemies will be varied of land/air based, fixed/non fixed with different levels and types of “intelligence”.
It is envisioned that the levels will be combination of puzzles and action based.
title screen
flying mario
walking mario
inital level editor
woogley requested some screens/playable demo/stuff/news/whatever …
so here it is:
webstartable, using LWJGL, so have a OpenGL enabled graphics card at hand.
hope that’s enough, woogley
My entry for the contest will be:
A Boulder Dash-style game with mario graphics. I would really like your feedback about how it runs on different systems and Java versions (especially on how it runs on a Mac (if it runs at all))
http://www.freeweb.hu/danieleff/smallshot.jpg
(Java 5 required)
runs very well on my macbook pro, nice game btw
That is absolutely awesome! I’m loving the smooth falling blocks, giving me a chance to “run away”. Can you start a thread on Your Games Here so we can wax lyrical about the development
Kev
Hi Guys,
Yipeeee, I may be in too. Only saw this post a couple of days ago so a bit of catching up to do, have written a few 2D Java games using GTGE, contemplated using this (and changing graphics of existing games), but thats cheating really, instead have opted to use JME for me first 3D game.
Have started coding tonight, hopefully may get somthing ready & playable on time as time is tight and not too familiar with JME engine… Its ‘hopefully’ going to be a 3D platform game (inspired by Kevs Martian Madness which I thought was excellent). As usual, will just make it up as I go along…
Happy coding.
S
sounds awesome, looking forward to whatever you can dish out
As it turns out, I might not be able to participate. I’m getting less time as I’m starting school, and thus I want to focus on the 4k contest. Sorry about that (I had a really awesome idea for a multiplayer battle game, that I was going to make together with laundon). 
here is a work in progress of my entry: Lakitu’s Adventure
http://eigenvektor.de/LakitusAdventure/LakitusAdventure.png
http://eigenvektor.de/LakitusAdventure/
at the moment it especially lacks a scoring mechanism.
hopefully i can make it in time.
Sweet, a super mario shooter
It plays really smoothly. I like that a lot. I could see myself getting into this game.
But as an avid shmup player myself, there’s some shmup no-nos you’ve done I’m afraid…
background is too busy, distracts from the enemies and makes it hard to see where your bullets are. Look at most shooters, the backgrounds are muted, simple and sometimes completely barren with just decorations on the fringes (think Gradius). In manic shooters, the priority is seeing things that can hit you and seeing your own bullets, which is why they are often a bright neon color.
Why does he throw the spikeys at different levels? I couldn’t figure out what determined how he’d throw it.
The enemies come too fast for the rate he throws the spikes. Either increase the throw rate or decrease the enemy speed (again look at shooters, a shmup like R-Type, the bullets are slow but so are the enemies, a shmup like Dodonpachi, things are fast as hell, but your ship and bullets are too to compensate)
But I think you’ve got a really cool idea on your hands, I’ll keep my eye on this one
EDIT: and a minor nitpick, I’d prefer the fire button be on the keyboard.
looks pretty nice! I’m actually using the same foreground for scrolling (yoshi’s island just has some of the coolest artwork!). since it’s not done yet, I would maybe reduce 1 or 2 layers of that parallax scrolling so its a little easier to see what we’re aiming at
can’t wait to see what you do with this!