Gp2x Demo Competition: 750$ prize money

[synkro]

This compo would almost make me buy a gp2x. h34r:

Just win and you got a free gp2x, guru status and pussy galore all at once...

 

[Dzz]

I still don't get rlyeh's gpe compressor to work under Linux but the UCL readme states that the decompressor has a size around 200bytes. I remember that Spiv's on the gp32 packed pretty well...

I have gotten it to work on Windows (well i just downloaded it and ran it) and it works great on large files. The decompression "stub" it puts in the resulting file is about 43kb though, which makes it of marginal use for tiny demos. For the "normal" (non-64kb) demo category there is no real need for a compressor.

I have been intending to make a more appropriate UCL-based compressor as part of my article series; if somebody else beats me to it, that's great. I don't think I'll be working on that for another month or so.

 

[synkro]

I still don't get rlyeh's gpe compressor to work under Linux but the UCL readme states that the decompressor has a size around 200bytes. I remember that Spiv's on the gp32 packed pretty well...

I have gotten it to work on Windows (well i just downloaded it and ran it) and it works great on large files. The decompression "stub" it puts in the resulting file is about 43kb though, which makes it of marginal use for tiny demos. For the "normal" (non-64kb) demo category there is no real need for a compressor.

I have been intending to make a more appropriate UCL-based compressor as part of my article series; if somebody else beats me to it, that's great. I don't think I'll be working on that for another month or so.

well, I dunno what you want to do with your article series but I am willing to help. (well UCL is abit much for me atm) like putting old, overworked and bug fixed articles into PDFs.. I also have fine fixed point code here (well as we don't have -lm I have a already build a sine LUT)

 

[aapje89]

Cool cool cool
I cant wait to see some leet demo's!

64kb is definitly possible, look at 64kb pc demos, some have got really really nice 3d effects and are very long.


btw. some very cool pc demos here:
http://asd.demoscene.gr/index.php?where=prods

 

[Dzz]

Cool cool cool
I cant wait to see some leet demo's!

64kb is definitly possible, look at 64kb pc demos, some have got really really nice 3d effects and are very long.

We have to walk before we can run so probably the first batch won't be super elite but we'll learn a lot at least.

Those amazing PC demos have several advantages over us: First, they are usually built by teams of 3-10 people who have been optimizing their codebases for a long time. Second, a modern PC is much faster than a gp2x. Third, PC's have very fast floating point performance which helps a lot. Finally (and most importantly) those demos rely on fast hardware-accelerated 3D cards.

Still, the gp2x is also a pretty decent little piece of hardware and we should be able to make it dance at least a little bit!

well, I dunno what you want to do with your article series but I am willing to help. (well UCL is abit much for me atm) like putting old, overworked and bug fixed articles into PDFs.. I also have fine fixed point code here (well as we don't have -lm I have a already build a sine LUT)

Nifty. Don't worry about my article series; I'm not even an expert on demos, I'm just having fun looking into the issues as I try to build one and writing up what I do. So if you want to share some code for building sine tables or doing fixed point math or whatever, I'm sure everybody would appreciate it.

 

[Squidge]

I plan on making a compressor, but it's certainly not work for all files, as it'll be missing virtually all the ELF stuff, relocation, linking external libs/etc, so the code will have to be written with the compressor in mind and not use any external libraries. I'm hoping the result will be a very small and fast decompressor.

 

[aapje89]

Dzz, just a little question:

why are you actually doing this, you say "Dzz games announces:"
do you own a company related to the gp2x and would like some demos to show off to potential customers?

 

[Julius]

Ok, I am completely honest... I don't really see the point in Demos Sure they look nice and are often technologigal impressive, but still pretty useless.

That said, if anyone needs some good 3D models contact me

 

[Talyz]

If only I knew how to program in C or C++... :rolleyes:

Great idea, Dzz! Hope you get some really nice contributions!

 

[sam fisher]

If only I knew how to program in C or C++... :rolleyes:

Great idea, Dzz! Hope you get some really nice contributions!

If only I knew how to code in C or C++. Fenix is fun but no good for this.

 

[ragnor]

Demos attract sceners, sceners create scene, scene keep the platform alive .

With a little advertisement i did today, a couple of sceners from Turkiye got interested with this competition. If they make a demo for gp2x and like it, gp2x scene will gain some good coders, artist and musicians. And think about programs and game made by the sceners got interested in gp2x.

Yeah demos are pointless .

By the way, i want to ask a question. Is SDL included to the demo machine or are we have to add it to our package?

 

[nickspoon]

This looks like a Vimacs rename...

 

[sam fisher]

I believe yo uhave to include it with your package.

 

[Dzz]

Dzz, just a little question:

why are you actually doing this, you say "Dzz games announces:"
do you own a company related to the gp2x and would like some demos to show off to potential customers?

"Dzz games" is just a little joke.

In 1985 I bought myself an Amiga 1000 and then added a (gasp) hard disk drive to it a little later. We had a local user group and had a grand time playing with stuff. One of the fun things to do was watch these "demos" (or "intros") that these great coders (mostly from northern europe if I remember right) would develop. If you are younger and used to computers that can display moving video and play high quality audio you have no idea how astonishing it was to see that stuff of a computer.

The gp2x has some similarities to the amiga -- it's an underdog platform with an active following/community and some interesting/difficult hardware features, and is pretty easy to develop code for. But it's not TOO similar. Still, it makes me a little bit nostalgic -- not so much to play the old games again (most of them kind of stunk anyway), but for the spirit of adventure the machine evoked in its owners.

So: I'm doing this becase I like the concept of demos, and like encouraging people to put their brains to use and express their creativity by creating beautiful things. That's all there is to it.

I'm not rich, but the prize money involved here is not a big deal to me (someday, after many years of training and a long career, you may earn a good paycheck too). Many hobbies involve occasional expenditures of money. Just ask somebody who owns a nice sailboat how expensive hobbies can be!

Is SDL included to the demo machine or are we have to add it to our package?

You should include it. I want everybody to easily be able to run the demos without any extra fuss. If you are making a 5-megabyte-maximum demo, that's simple to do.

If you are wanting to use SDL in your 64k demo, that's a bit trickier. I'm requiring that the demo run on a stock gp2x running firmware 1.2.1, 1.4.0, AND I may at a later date require that it run on another version of the firmware if that would be required to make sure that almost every gp2x owner can view your demo. Whether that happens depends on what GPH does regarding firmware updates or whether an independent firmware achieves a high degree of popularity.

I'm glad you're going to participate. Your recently-released demo for the gp2x was the spark that led me to announce the competition although I had been thinking about it for some time.

 

[aapje89]

Dzz, just a little question:

why are you actually doing this, you say "Dzz games announces:"
do you own a company related to the gp2x and would like some demos to show off to potential customers?

"Dzz games" is just a little joke.

In 1985 I bought myself an Amiga 1000 and then added a (gasp) hard disk drive to it a little later. We had a local user group and had a grand time playing with stuff. One of the fun things to do was watch these "demos" (or "intros") that these great coders (mostly from northern europe if I remember right) would develop. If you are younger and used to computers that can display moving video and play high quality audio you have no idea how astonishing it was to see that stuff of a computer.

The gp2x has some similarities to the amiga -- it's an underdog platform with an active following/community and some interesting/difficult hardware features. But it's not TOO similar. Still, it makes me a little bit nostalgic -- not so much to play the old games again (most of them kind of stunk anyway), but for the spirit of adventure the machine evoked in its owners.

So: I'm doing this becase I like the concept of demos, and like encouraging people to put their brains to use and express their creativity by creating beautiful things. That's all there is to it.

I'm not rich, but the prize money involved here is not a big deal to me (someday, after many years of training and a long career, you may earn a good paycheck too). Many hobbies involve occasional expenditures of money.

yeah, thats right. Too bad im only 16 years old, ah well that also has it fun sides .
But im 17 in 9 days, then im a big guy B) haha

 

[xafier]

I wouldn't mind entering this competition, but dunno if I have the time, my spare time lately is spent relaxing as much as I can as I'm working my ass off at work lately with a stupid deadline for something for VISA (they throw money at my company and suddenly everything needs doing faster than is realistically possible!)

but maybe once I leave my job end of June I can work on something for a month... we'll see... I've never been much of a tech demo person, utilities, small games maybe... tech demo's no... but for $300... hell why not lol

 

[Sevish]

I'd love to do some music work for demos but my main comp is down and I'm unable to do any thing. But if after the comp people are still making demos on the GP2x, I'd be most interested in joining a group to provide them the choons! If you're up to it, please gimme a quick message and when I'm set up with my new box in a month you'll always have sounds for your demos. If this kind of stuff can help devs figure out the best ways to program for this marvellous little platform, then anything has gotta help, right?

Love to the GP2X scene,
Sev

 

[kraft]

yeah, thats right. Too bad im only 16 years old, ah well that also has it fun sides .
But im 17 in 9 days, then im a big guy B) haha

That's no excuse There is no age limit when it comes to participating in the scene. I know sceners whose ages spread right across the spectrum, both very old and very young. At your age a scener called Scout (better known as Kalms of the group TBL today) was coding full-blown hardcore trackmos on the Amiga and competing with the very best demo veterans of the time. Me and Kalms are about the same age (+/- a year or so) and I remember when I was 15 and struggling to code simple ASM demo scenes, this guy was coding advanced Phong shaded 3D scenes - in Assembler, at the age of 15! Today, all these years on and with a full-time career, etc etc, he's still active on the scene. In fact only last year he released arguably one of the best Classic Amiga demos of all time: http://ada.untergrund.net/showdemo.php?demoid=478

And today in the modern-scene it's the same situation...you have young spotty-faced teens "playing" along-side the "adults" and learning a lot from them. As long as you try your best and attempt to create something worth watching nobody really cares what age you are. And I would say that the younger you start the better. So go grab yourself a C manual, read Dzz’s demo tutorial and start practicing. You’re in a great position because you have that little extra enthusiasm in you that youth brings!

 

[nickspoon]

Bah.

*learns ASM*

 

[aapje89]

I really don't have time for things like that, got 2 side jobs. In the summer vacation im going to do something, but I think more like webdesigning, makes good money .