How is everyone doing on their projects? Run into any snags or problems? Remember, Sept. 1 is coming up real soon!

Good luck everyone.

The following are some guidelines for when you submit projects. A real quick note first: by submitting your project multiple times up to the deadline, I can give you feedback and/or help. Please note, I will not give you any code, or any links to code. All I will simply do is point you in the right direction. This should even the playing field a bit for newbies.

1. Please provide a project file and/or makefile for me to compile your code depending on the target platform.
2. Please include any and all libraries involved with your project; already compiled. I don’t want to have to sit here for hours compiling libraries that are used in your project. Exceptions: if the library is easy to grab myself, simply let me know in a ReadMe.txt or something (i.e., being able to apt-get what I need, or simply download).
3. Please compress your project into a single file, and email it to me with the subject: CONTEST – [My Project Name] ; remember, email to: kizare [at] gmail.com
4. Though you can submit projects ahead of time for help, please do not submit your project more than once a week to me. I will provide help, but very limited; remember, this is a contest. I would only ask for help if you really need it; it’s very likely I’ll give more kudos to a project that asked for very little to no help, v. the person that asked every week.
5. Please…. please! Comment your code. Please.

In a few days I’ll post all of this up on a single page, timestamped, to make everything easier for people to see, and so the posts don’t get lost in the coming months.

Update:
To keep things a bit more in-line with the prize, the deadline has been moved to September 1, 2009.

After some thought, I would like to be able to give more of a prize to the winner. If anyone has any ideas, donations, suggestions, I am all ears. Seeing as this is a volunteer driven community, it’s hard to gather resources for something like this, especially since this is the first time. I want to be able to be nice to all those outside of the U.S. as well. Again, any ideas welcome.

Updates to Contest:

1. No more than 2 people per project
2. You may submit as many projects as you like

Here it is! The first (possibly annual) SDL Game Contest. Woo hoo!

The Goal: Make a side-scrolling shooter.
The Inspirition: R-Type
The Rules: This contest is open to all game developers, with the following requirements and/or conditions:

1. No more than 2 people per project
2. You may submit as many projects as you like
3. I prefer SDL / C/C++ (optionally can use OpenGL with SDL); SDL must be used. Other languages allowed: Delphi, VC++.NET, Java
4. Project must compile/work on at least one major operating system (Windows, Mac OSX, *nix); extra bonus points for cross-platformy*
5. You give SDLtutorials.com permission to use any and all submitted resources, code, and/or files for non-commercial use. Submitter retains the rights to his/her project. (SDLtutorials.com will most likely use the winning project as the basis for a tutorial)
6. All code, resources, and/or files submitted must be the submitters original work, with the exception of use of 3rd party open-source libraries, and/or royalty free resources. No commercial libraries and/or resources are allowed, and will result in immediate disqualification.
7. No plagiarism is allowed, with the exception of the “minor”** use of code from tutorials. Code used from tutorials cannot make up more than 20%** of a submitted project’s code. You may use the framework provided on this website without limitation.
8. SDLtutorials.com has full discretion to accept/reject any projects submitted, and can cancel this contest at any time.

* No actual points are involved in the judging of entries.
** This, obviously, is hard to determine. Be fair, do your own work; if you use code from online, make it your own.

The Details:

• You must make one complete level that has at minimum 3 minutes of game-play
• You must provide a scalable structure that allows players to easily add additional levels
• You must provide a basic menu (Start, Exit at minimum)
• You must provide lives, and score at minimum
• You must provide at least 3 different weapons
• You may make the side-scroller shooter any theme you would like (i.e., a banana flying through the air with a machine gun)
• It is not required to provide any sound effects/music, but this would be a major plus
• You must provide at least 3 basic enemies, and 1 boss
• The game may be 2D or 3D (using OpenGL), and may use scripting

The Prize:

• $200 (PayPal) (Thanks Sergey Tikhonov for the donation!)
• Permission to help moderate SDLtutorials.com (if the winner wishes)
• SDLtutorials.com email address (if the winner wishes)
• Has first grabs at joining (as a developer) Tim’s upcoming Indie Game Development Website.
• Free Copy of Half Life 2 (via Steam)

The Deadline:
September 1, 2009

Once all entries are received, I will post 5 of the top projects received. The community will then be able to voice their opinion (which should help weed out any plagiarism). A week after the deadline, I will post who is the winner. If I cannot contact the winner within 30 days, the 2nd place project will become the winner (and so on).

Be creative as possible. If you want 30 enemies, that’s fine. If you want 30 bosses, that’s fine. “The Details” section is sort of a general guideline, but aim to go above and beyond it.

Please send all completed Projects to: kizare [at] gmail.com

You may send your project multiple times up to the deadline. The last project I receive before midnight is the one that I will use.

Good luck everyone!

Terms are subject to change at any time; I will give notice to such changes.

Update (6.5.2009):
The following are some guidelines for when you submit projects. A real quick note first: by submitting your project multiple times up to the deadline, I can give you feedback and/or help. Please note, I will not give you any code, or any links to code. All I will simply do is point you in the right direction. This should even the playing field a bit for newbies.

1. Please provide a project file and/or makefile for me to compile your code depending on the target platform.
2. Please include any and all libraries involved with your project; already compiled. I don’t want to have to sit here for hours compiling libraries that are used in your project. Exceptions: if the library is easy to grab myself, simply let me know in a ReadMe.txt or something (i.e., being able to apt-get what I need, or simply download).
3. Please compress your project into a single file, and email it to me with the subject: CONTEST – [My Project Name] ; remember, email to: kizare [at] gmail.com
4. Though you can submit projects ahead of time for help, please do not submit your project more than once a week to me. I will provide help, but very limited; remember, this is a contest. I would only ask for help if you really need it; it’s very likely I’ll give more kudos to a project that asked for very little to no help, v. the person that asked every week.
5. Please…. please! Comment your code. Please.

I’ve hit another one of those “busy” periods of my life, but no worries, I am gearing up for the next batch of tutorials. Here’s the lineup I was thinking:

1. SDL Collision Events
2. SDL SpaceShooter
3. C++ Variables
4. SDL + OpenGL Basics

Someone also asked about doing Isometric games, no promises, but I might fit that in.

No word on any release dates yet for the list above. I’m also planning to have a contest very soon; more news on that later – but please state your interest now so I can see how many people are willing to participate. Also, if you haven’t noticed the Forums, please check it out and sign up.

Wow, what a ways we have come! To help celebrate this momentous occasion, drums please… I have released the new tutorial in the series! Woo hoo!

P.S.
1 year was actually a few weeks ago, but oh well.

Hey everyone, I know things have been slow going. So, in an effort to keep things from becoming dry and stale on this site, I want ideas from all of you of how I can keep things interesting. I know a new tutorial would do that, but I am looking for other things. Perhaps a forum, challenges (with rewards), and whatever. I tried user tutorials, but not very many of your are the teaching type I guess. Let me all know what you come up with (leave your idea in the comments).

Unfortunately, Gaten is unable to continue hosting of the files. So, he has sent me over all of the files and I have put them all back up. If anyone is interested in hosting any mirrors, let me know.

So, all of you that have been unable to grab the tar files shouldn’t have a problem now.

No, I did not fall off of the face of the earth, get blown up, fall in a neverending pit of doom, or get eaten by a thousand piranhas. I’ve actually just been way busy; I’ve tried to keep up with comments and help, so all you people out there feel free. Regarding the next tutorial, it’s still sitting right here in its unfinished glory. I won’t give any dates when it will come out, just look for it.

To help illustrate my point, see the pictures below:

» Read more: What’s been keeping me busy

Sorry guys, still no new tutorial yet, but I will have it ASAP. I did want to say though that I started a sort of User Project Wiki, to house projects that I have going on, or that many of you people might have going on. You can reach it here:

http://wiki.sdltutorials.com/

It will help me keep things organized, and prioritized; and hopefully that will help me push out tutorials faster.

Sorry guys, been busy in life again. The wife and I have been looking into buying some land, and building a house. So some good news in the real world. I have started the next tutorial, hopefully I can get that out to everyone as soon as possible; I feel a little bad for not putting it out sooner, I know that everyone is eagerly awaiting it. For now I encourage everyone to look at a new game I am working on called Charlie and the Banana in the SDL Games section. It has Entity to Map collision, as well as Entity to Entity collision already in place (though it uses OpenGL + SDL). That may provide a bit more help than the current Kizare release.

I also have a few side tutorials in the works (SDL_ttf), but they won’t be released until the collision tutorial. Sorry to keep everyone waiting (this is a hobby you know ).

It’s been a while since my last post, but you can notice by my comments that I am still very much alive. I’ve been working on the next tutorial, which I hope to get on here soon. A few things have taken priority, such as my wife working as a Nurse now and my having to take care of the baby in my spare time. Also, spending time with the family when I can is a must. So I use the spare moments when I am at work to add to tutorials (or make new ones), and check comments on here. Traffic has been steadily increasing lately, and it’s a little exciting, I am just wondering why there are only a handful of people posting comments? All comments are welcome, and ports are also welcome as well! I am sure there are a few people out that use pygame and such, that would love these tutorials.

Also, I am very much open to suggestions on direction to this site. Though I am following a framework in an incremental manner, I may start having side-tutorials that explain specific subjects (such as using SDL_image, SDL_mixer, and other additional libraries).

I know, this is kind of a weird thing and never heard of on tutorial sites. But hey, why not? I’ve decided to use a free live chat program to help any of you readers with whatever help you may need. Please keep the questions within the context and scope of this website, for example, don’t ask me a Java question, as I probably won’t be of much help. I will, however, take questions regarding the following languages and libraries: SDL, C/C++, OpenGL, Lua, PHP, mySQL, JavaScript, AJAX, or programming questions in general. I hope this is a useful feature to all of you out there.

Last week I decided to move over my server to Media Temple on their Grid Server. Hopefully this is a good move, since I saw both positive and negative comments about this. I have a bunch of other websites that I host, alongside a friend, so hopefully it works out for the best. This is what caused the downtime the other day, in case anyone is wondering.

On another note, I am working on the next SDL tutorial for Entities. It’ll be a little bit more complex than what we have so far. Also, I figured out a way to turn that stupid RTE editor off in WordPress, so hopefully we don’t have any half-posts, or & showing up in posts anymore. I tried to do a little bit of SEO on my posts, so you may notice function names and titles being bolded or linked back to the post. And hopefully I was able to find all the mess ups in the code thus far.

I want to say thank you to everyone for your posts so far, every comment is encouraging to me and helps me want to post more tutorials. With that said, I encourage everyone to post their comments.