The animations and game systems are slowly coming together!

Ugh. This animation cost me so much time. But now it’s done!

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Update: Hey, 18 games so far! Good job everybody. I am happy to see that there are more retro lovers out there! I’ll leave the submissions open for a couple more days, so that everybody who hasn’t finished yet can still submit!

Update 2: Okay, 19 games in total, more than I had feared! As promised I started recording all the games that I could get running on ony of my retro machines. Here is the first video, containing all the games that I got working without much work on my 486 in DOS:

It’s been two and a half years since the last one of these happened, so here we go!

This MiniLD’s theme is THE RETRO CHALLENGE and that means something very specific: The game must run on old (“retro”) hardware and/or operating systems. To get this a bit more unambiguous, here’s what I think is a good definition of “old”:

Hardware/Software Limitations

• The game must run on hardware and software that was available in the year 2000.
• That (deliberately) includes Windows 95 and Windows 2000, so it should be easier to participate even if you never programmed for any retro machine.
• That also includes CPUs as new as early Pentium 3s and GPUs in the range of GeForce 2 or the Voodoo 3 (I would LOVE to see a Glide game or two!)
• You are not limited to “modern” PCs thought, in fact, every hardware platform from that time or earlier is encouraged (especially DOS games!)
• That includes (but is not limited to): Commodore 64 (and siblings), Amiga,  NES, SNES, N64, Gameboy (including “Color”, but not “Advance”) , Master System, Mega Drive (that’s “Genesis” to many of you),  Game Gear, Dreamcast, every Atari console or home computer ever made, Neo Geo, MSX computers, Playstation (PS2 is kind of borderline), 3DO, Vectrex, Coleco Vision, every Sinclair Computer, every Apple Computer up and including the G3 Macs, old mobile phones and calculators and so on.
• It doesn’t have to work on real hardware, as long as there is an emulator available in which it runs (at reasonable speeds without cheating by increasing emulation speed!)
• You can use whatever (modern) programming language, tools or libraries  are available for your target platform.

Secondary Theme

This time there is a secondary theme, just so you get some extra inspiration: MODERN TECHNOLOGY. So make a game on that theme that works on one of the old hardware platforms mentioned above!

When?

The MiniLD starts effectively NOW, and runs until February 5th. That gives you some extra time to learn how to program for your new target platform. In fact, it would be great if this MiniLD inspired you to learn how to program for a new platform you have never programed for.

Prizes

None, as usual. I promise to play and record every game that runs on a C64, 486 or Pentium 2 on actual hardware though.

Getting Started

Here are a few links that should get you started if you have no idea how to program for any old system.

• http://github.com/rxi/lovedos.git – Game programming framework similar to LÖVE, just for DOS. This is probably the easiest way to make a retro game.
• http://nesdev.com – NES development community with good tutorials and references
• http://wiki.superfamicom.org – SNES development
• http://gbdev.gg8.se – Gameboy
• http://www.smspower.org/Development/Index – Master System
• http://www.psxdev.net/ – Playstation
• https://www.c64-wiki.com/ – A lot of info about C64
• https://www.neoflash.com/forum/index.php?topic=7444.0 – Getting started with N64 development (thanks Avant-Marde!)
• http://scicompanion.com/ – Modern IDE for the original Sierra Point&Click Adventure Engine (thanks Tijn!)
• Post more links in the comments, I will add them to this list!

This has cost me more time and nerves than I had hoped…

Ever wondered what it looks like to get locked into a missile control room?

Please ignore the grain effect, it’s just a quick render and then cheaply converted to GIF

Graphics Scene almost done! Just a few details are missing, then I can start rendering all the small animations I’ll need.

This is what it looks like. I still don’t have a clue about how to make the game work and I haven’t even written a single line of code yet. Oh dear.

The theme left me with frustration in the beginning, because I couldn’t come up with a game for it. I figured something out now, though.

You’re sitting in locked down in a 70s command center for your country’s nuclear arms. On your desk: a teletype terminal and a big red button.

Will you press the button?

Here’s the teletype prop I made. It’s not finished but good enough for now.

LD is basically the only time ever I clean my desk so that I am not distracted when time is short. Here’s the result: Software updated, desks cleaned (mostly). Ready to rumble

Here’s Sheepolution’s legendary keynote for LD37:

Just so we can also enjoy it on this old site