Gp2x Demo Competition: 750$ prize money

[Wolfsclaw]

I don't know why, but Creep Tea is only showing a black screen to me.
I got the two .3do files, the .gpe plus the mod all in one folder, what am i doing wrong?

 

[Iorgy77]

These are all awesome. Thanks very much guys, excellent work and thank you DZZ for bringing these to the gp2x.

 

[muphicks]

I was just trying to write that here in germany (gmt+1) we have 01:49 AM meaning an hour back would be 0:49

Germany is GMT+1 but you're also observing daylight savings time (DTS) atm so really you're GMT+2. UK is GMT+0 but likewise observing DST atm (otherwise known as BST) so we're currently GMT+1

Where it gets weird is when different countries finish observing DST at different days in the year.

Shame that internet time thing swatch did never took off, although it wasn't exactly intuitive.

I've just downloaded all the demos, few quick comments, I'll leave the meaty reviews to the judges

Babylon Bastard: Some pretty neat effects, I liked the large cube made from pulsating smaller cubes.
CodeAlone: At first I thought it hadn't run until the menu started rotating Couldn't find out how to exit it though on other demos "start" returned to the main menu.
CreepTea: Loved the sun beam effect near the start and end.
CubeEffects: Pretty simple, rotating cube. It would probably make for a good set of useful tutorials though. I did like the cube inside a cube effect
Debris: Bonus points for been sync'd to the music in places Quite liked the whole of this demo.
Demo1: The terrain was quite good, although more of a tech demo than a demo demo
Pooldemo: A bit too short and the background made watching it a little hard, still the bouncing physics were nice to see.
Waking the dead: Other than a plasm effect there wasn't much to this demo, the music seemed to skip a bit on my gp2x as well? Still the text said they were short on time and had few ideas, at least they made something

Favourite demo probably "BabylonBastard" or "Debirs". Technically wise, I quite liked "Demo1" with the terrain

Nice work by all though, good luck with your entries in the comp

 

[MadDog]

After seeing all the other entries I have realized a few things...

A) Submitting a 2D demo that runs at 300+ FPS against 3D demos that run at 30+ FPS was probably a bit naive of me.

B) Not filling the 64k with textures was probably a waste. I'll get my revenge in the 8k and 1k categories some day

C) *O* *M* *G*, those 3D effects, by which I mean every demo except mine, are amazing. I have renewed faith in the future of the GP2X community. A thriving demo scene can do nothing but help the gaming scene.

Yer, after I did mine I though, mmmm, that voxel would be way cool done in 1k which I think is doable. But I made the mistake of getting a new bike and so being distracted.

Mine will win the "Coder got bored the quickest" category.

EDIT: Just watched them, very cool! Fav is Debris and BabylonBastard.

Ps CreepTea will not run.

 

[Mr.Jabberwocky]

I don't know why, but Creep Tea is only showing a black screen to me.
I got the two .3do files, the .gpe plus the mod all in one folder, what am i doing wrong?

I had to reset before running it - but I cannot get Debris to run. I just get a black screen, even from a fresh reboot

 

[MadDog]

I don't know why, but Creep Tea is only showing a black screen to me.
I got the two .3do files, the .gpe plus the mod all in one folder, what am i doing wrong?

I had to reset before running it - but I cannot get Debris to run. I just get a black screen, even from a fresh reboot

Thats odd, i'm guessing your on FW2.0, I am.

 

[Dzz]

Will these be added to the gp2x archive? Don't want them to get lost after a time, right?

I think it's best if the individual authors add their demos to the archive. The entries from the coding contest in february got added automatically and it was a bit of a pain because the authors could not update their own files with new versions.

Somebody could add the entire thing I suppose as a snapshot in time of what was entered. If nobody else does it, I'll do that along with a results text file after the judging is done.

 

[Optimus]

I was mistaken about the cubes demo. I probably ran another demo before that made it run quite slow. Now it runs fast enough! ;P

 

[Mr.Jabberwocky]

Thats odd, i'm guessing your on FW2.0, I am.

I am still on the first firmware released on the 'first edition'. Very nice terrain effect by the way. Someone said it was too slow !!? If it went any faster I wouldn't be able to see it ! Nice work.
It seems some demos are screwing up the environment and causing the next demo to malfunction, and some need their folders to be placed in the root. Bummer if you want a demo folder to keep them all in. But, taking this into consideration, I still cannot get Debris to work - black screen.

 

[Dzz]

Thats odd, i'm guessing your on FW2.0, I am.

I am still on the first firmware released on the 'first edition'. Very nice terrain effect by the way. Someone said it was too slow !!? If it went any faster I wouldn't be able to see it ! Nice work.
It seems some demos are screwing up the environment and causing the next demo to malfunction, and some need their folders to be placed in the root. Bummer if you want a demo folder to keep them all in. But, taking this into consideration, I still cannot get Debris to work - black screen.

I don't think any of them require a folder at the root. Probably Debris doesn't work on that old firmware; I don't have a convenient way to test that and it wasn't a requirement for the contest.

 

[nik166]

creeptea is a real slideshow for me, maybe something like 0.2FPS?

is it what it's suposed to be?

 

[Optimus]

creeptea is a real slideshow for me, maybe something like 0.2FPS?

is it what it's suposed to be?

No. Just reset and run it again.

There is a demo, "code alone", which makes the next demos run really slow. I've made a test, tried to run the code alone demo, wait till it quits to the menu and then tried my own demo. Heh,. it was exactly as slow as you mention

p.s. I am puzzled by my demo showing a black screen to some. What could be the problem? I have firmware 2.0 here and I am compiling with some hardware accelerated SDL libs (though, I am using SW_BUFFER instead of HW_BUFFER in the init) and statically compiled. And mikmod for sound. Since I'd really like that people will watch my demo, I'll try to compile with some older SDL libs or make a log file. If I find time really soon, but if so I'll post something here. It's sad to know my demo doesn't run for some

 

[Wite_Noiz]

Are any of the entrants planing on releasing the code to their demoes? I'd be interested in seeing some of the implementations

 

[fragment]

I cannot get Debris to run. I just get a black screen, even from a fresh reboot

Okay, it seems that the FW 1.x libs are not compatible with FW 2.x libs, which Debris uses. Good to know.. Just update your firmware?

 

[Optimus]

As for the dir, mine is in mnt/sd/demos/democompo2006/creeptea, so maybe the dir is not the problem for my demo. Mmm,.. I start disliking how some things are incompatible with diferrent GP2Xs, without writting something very weird. Maybe I should go to the old SDL libs, not the modified ones and maybe I should release the code so that someone can make it run in case I won't make it running. Ugh,. and I really need to know oneday how to be sure my code runs in everyone's machine because maybe I am trying commercial game develpoment with some people in the near future here, and it would suck a commercial release to not run on someones hardware ;P. I really have to know and overcome those stupid problems ;

Anywyas, I will be back with hopefully a solution..

 

[sparr]

I probably won't be releasing the exact code to mine, if only because it is horrible. But I hope to abstract almost all of its functionality out into a simple 2d math/sprite/physics library. If that ever comes to fruition, I would probably reimplement my demo as a sample for it.

 

[ukko]

Sorry no code release for our demo , but idea and technical stuff sharing if you want.

Ukko

 

[twixn]

I tried all of the demos i could ( i only have about 4mb free on my SD, i really need
a new one).

They were all pretty cool! Coming from someone who was still unsure if the GP2x
could handle much 3d i was amazed (and encouraged) at some of the stuff done.

I don't think i will release the code for mine either, i plan to do more with it.

@Optimus:

Yeah, my demo is pretty simple, some of the effects are just infeasible except
in a small demo, and Affine texture mapping is ugly (i should have tessellated
the cube). But, im still happy with it, considering i had to write my renderer
from scratch in less than two weeks.

-Twixn-

 

[rixed]

Are any of the entrants planing on releasing the code to their demoes? I'd be interested in seeing some of the implementations

Actually the source code for my 'code alone' demo was available long before I submitted the entry.
It's all hosted in gna.org and is GPL, as is the 3d rendering library (which is the real project, in fact) :

http:///gna.org/projects/gpu940/

(go to the cvs section to browse online or checkout the whole project).

I'm not surprised, retrospectively, that the demo let the gp2x in some undefined state, as the progam loaded onto the 940 (namely, gpu940) is not unloaded. It should downclock the 940 to 50Mhz then keep reading it's command buffer in a tigh loop when the demo ends, with the vertical interrupt still happening on the 940...

Also, for people who have not their gp2x at hand, the demo is compilable for x86 targets (and runs much much faster there )

 

[Feeg]

Wow. These are seriously awesome.

IMO:

Debris has the best 'production values' of them, it feels really shiny and well put together... until it just stops, which is pretty anticlimactic. A scroller at the end might've made it feel a little less abrupt.

Code Alone - that's a clever trick with the framebuffer. Really took me by surprise which, probably makes it the single most impressive effect of any of the demos.

MadDog's voxel engine is sweet.

The rest of the demos are awesome too. I wasn't expecting there to be this many entries. Everyone should be pleased with their work.

Congrats in advance to the winners.