2009 OHR 8-bit Contest!

CONTEST SUMMARY:

The OHR 8-bit contest has officially begun! This contest will last from Monday, May 11th (12AM) until Sunday, June 7th (11:59PM). That is four weeks, much longer than the first contest. This should be plenty of time for everyone who would like to participate.

Entries MUST be submitted before Sunday the 7th @ 11:59PM or they will not be considered during the voting phase. Please PM me or send an email to mballsub@gmail.com with a link to your game when it is complete.

CONTEST RULES:

- Each contestant will be able to make their own custom 16-color palette.
- You may use four max colors per map tile
- You may use three max colors per walkabout, hero and enemy sprites, attacks, and weapon graphics

- You may use 16 max colors per battle/cutscene/title backdrop
- All of these colors must come from your single 16-color palette. Failure to do so will likely get you disqualified.

- Any sound effects or music, in any format, are accepted.
- You may work alone or with partner(s)
- There are no specific rules as to what type of game you can make.

Follow the above rules, and create anything you would like, however…

BONUS – GAME THEMES:

Although not mandatory, should you implement the following in some fashion or form within your game, you will receive extra points come time for the voting phase. You will gain an additional point for each theme that you implement successfully into your title:
-Back to the Future – Implement some form of time travel into your
game.

-Sloth Love Chunk! – Have an 80’s actor/character from a movie appear in your game (can be just a short cameo)

-Express Yourself! – Have a classic music hit from the 80’s – early 90’s in your game.

VOTING:

The voting phase will begin on Monday, June 8th (12AM) and end on Sunday, June 14th (11:59PM). The entire community is welcome to vote during this time. The entries will be posted in a thread on Slime Salad and Castle Paradox. You may vote on only one game and it cannot be your own entry. Once you have decided on your vote, you should send it VIA PM to Meatballsub on CP or SS, or you may email me at mballsub@gmail.com

VOTING RULES:

- Vote for your three most favorite games. You number one will equal three points, two = two, and third will be for one point.

- You MAY NOT vote for your own game

- Votes MUST be submitted via PM on Castle Paradox or Slime Salad. You
may also mail your votes to me at mballsub@gmail.com.

The results will be posted in the next issue of Hamsterspeak (June, #28).

PRIZE:

Much like first the Terrible Games Contest, the first place winner will receive a monetary prize depending on how much extra money I have at the time of voting (likely $25-50).

If you have any questions, please let me know. Good luck!

P.S. With the extended time of the contest, I will also be entering. Will we see further adventures of Mikey T? Only time will tell, but be afraid.

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Cornbread Juice Games

In like Flynn. Let's do this.

My main complaint:



A lot of 8-bit games found ways to use more than '3 color sprites'. In fact, Plant Man in Megaman used a whopping 6 colors.

Seeing how most of the rules of the contest seem to lean towards suggesting that you're going by NES rules (color limits), you really should bump that sprite color limit up to 4, atleast.

If you're not going by "NES standards", then I should note that 8-bit only implies "16-color" in reality.

If I'm missing the point, sorry. It's just been something that's been bugging me lately (I've had this douchebag IRL recently referring to SNES games as "8-bit" *shiver*)

That's because they stacked sprites ...

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Looks sweet! I think I might enter.

I'm just wondering what the rules are as far as transparency goes. Does it count as a colour? (I'm supposing that is why we can only use three colours in some areas - not four - as one counts as transparency)

Also, can we use layered map tiles? If we do, it may appear that we used more than four colours on a tile where it is actually just another tile layered on top.

If we went on the real technical NES rules, things would get very very complicated... For instance the OHR sprites are technically too large for the NES to handle.

lost.pebble, I would guess "no" but wait for what Meatball says.

I'LL BE ENTERING! BRACE YOURSELF!

I might release an extra seven or so levels for my Mr.Triangle's Maze game for this. But sadly I will not be able to create a brand new game. Will that work alright Meatball?

Transparency is the fourth color, I apologize about the confusion on that one. So actually there are a total of four useable colors in that category (including trans).

I don't think we allowed more colors via layering on tiles last time. Layering is obviously allowed, but don't go over the four color limit.



That's kind of why I decided to keep the rules pretty much the same as last year.



Go for it! Sounds good to me.

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Cornbread Juice Games

Are OHR source edits acceptable? or can it be something aside from the standard OHR?

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I can field the first half of that question. Yes, source edits are allowed, but you should include a copy of your changes in order to comply with the GPL. The easiest way to do this is with and zip up a copy of patch.txt and included it with your game.

If anybody wants to do this and has trouble using subversion, or has trouble getting the ohr to compile, please contact me and I will gladly help.

And if you do something really cool, who knows, it might find its way back into the official builds :)

Also, I made a 16-color master palette that I would like to share if anybody is having trouble coming up with their own. This is a 16x16 24 bit BMp that you can import directly into the "View Master Palettes" menu under "Edit General Game Data"

I didn't mean in general, I meant for the contest. I just would rather have things like the hero's sprite walkabouts stacking in the source rather than handled by a plotscript. Eliminating any checks for battle beginning might also be somethind I'd do.

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As long as it is the OHR at heart, I don't see why it would be a problem. Just make sure you bundle it with the game (which I'm sure you already know).

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Cornbread Juice Games

Wait, so we're allowing the stacking of sprites to get more colors?

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♪♪♪ Du du duuuu ♪♪♪

I'd rather keep it simple and just say "no" to stacking. I guess I should have read the second post a bit better before posting.

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Cornbread Juice Games

I wasn't planning on stacking sprites for added colors, I was planning on it for less of a dollhouse effect on my game. But not being able to stack them period is pretty damn dumb.

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