This one has uses LuaJIT instead of standard lua, which is supposed to provide a near-c speed for lua scripting.

The only drawback is the LuaJIT only works on windows as a DLL, so there is now one dll required. Might be worth the trade though, if the speed is substantially improved though. Hard to tell just from the demo app.

Anyway, here it is – have fun:
http://www.bitjets.com/RetroEngine-LuaJIT.zip

I have created an exe using visual studio 2008 that has ALL dependencies statically linked (ok, that was a huge pain and way more work than I thought it would be). But now with this version there is just one exe and no dlls required to run! (I don’t know why I do these things, but figuring out dependencies and compiling issues is kinda like my version of doing the crossword puzzle I guess).

It is compiled in Release Mode with all speed optimizations turned on, so it should be pretty fast as well. It is actually reasonably sized as well.

Also, I added some argument passing, so you can create shortcuts to the exe to control window or fullscreen mode and control the amount of scaling (I like my game huge and pixellated on my gigantic screen). Just look at the existing shortcuts for details.

Anyway, now I just have to learn lua!! This should be fun!

http://www.bitjets.com/RetroEngine.zip

Is using this library required, or can we simply use some ‘retro’ design restrictions?

The easiest way is:

sudo apt-get install libsdl1.2-dev libsdl-image1.2-dev libsdl-mixer1.2-dev liblua5.1-0-dev scons

And then run “scons” in the source directory. This will build the retro executable. I hope
If you make one succesfully, don’t hesitate to make a zip of it and I can add it to the download page. Good luck

And yes, do participate =)
I hope it’s gonna be fun.

Windows Binaries

MinGW32 only, I couldn’t do VC ones, because VC express can’t produce .libs.

Checked and working.
Lua runtime binary included.

Also, I’m startiing to like this and I might push myself to participate.

Sadly, I don’t think I’m going to be available for the official weekend, but I’ll be sure to do something soon after that.

The engine looks great, looking through the source now. I might compile it for Windows tomorrow, if nobody else beats me to it. Looks very simple and manageable and I applaud you for that.

I think the problem is more that many people who want to create games aren’t so good at the gfx part, and getting better at that takes time. At the same time they don’t want to bring in other artists for whatever reason. So, out of options, they declare the graphics as “not important” and throw something together. Which i think is underestimating the importance of the visuals, but hey, at least they released a game right?

It’s a bit like the difference between a book and a movie.. A book can only describe a scene with text (well, unless it’s illustrated, but most books aren’t), and your imagination does the rest, possibly adding your own little details and putting everything together into a more or less conherent whole. A movie just shows it to you. If you’re watching the movie version of a book you’ve read previously, things will probably look different than you imagined them, because you’re not watching your own imagination, but somebody else’s. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing, it’s just a different way to tell stories.. Point is there’s room for both, and one doesn’t make the other obsolete.

So making a game have huge pixels _does_ make it artistic–if the huge pixels are matched by creativity in their use.

I just went to upload a game then saw that the max size is 2MB. Since I used py2exe with the PyGame libraries bundled my zip file is 4.5MB. I’m not sure what to do about this.