dMZX Forums: A brief suggestion to all those releasing games:: - dMZX Forums

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Message from the Management

When you finish a new game, demo, engine, or utility, the first thing to do is submit it to the archive for approval. (Log in first, then Upload a New Game from the sidebar.) Then feel free to post about it in this forum; in fact, please continue to do this. This is so people will actually know about your game and play it. As nice as it is to have archive uploads automated, it's not going to help much if no one knows you have a new game to play.

When uploading your games to the archive, please zip up your game using the .ZIP format, even if it is just a .MZX file. As for less popular formats (such as RAR and 7Z), games uploaded in these formats will be rejected. This is because as wonderful as those compression algorithms might be, ZIP is a near universal compression standard, and the only one that will work with the in-game archive browser planned for MZX.

You can also attach your game to a new thread in this forum. In this case, you can use whatever compression format you find suitable. NOTE: Games posted this way won't be put into the archive unless submitted to the archive proper, or unless the author states he/she wants the game in.

Lastly, we suggest you post a suitable screenshot of your submission (in PNG format) along with the game.
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A brief suggestion to all those releasing games:: (You may get on with life afterwards)

#31 User is offline   Galladin 

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Posted 25 August 2004 - 05:22 AM

Pyro1588, on Aug 25 2004, 12:54 AM, said:

rayne: come on. one topic i can understand. two? i mean, are we just going around reviving pinned threads for the heck of it?
edit:

i couldn't find a decent "oh no not again" pic, so this is the best i can do.

I think he provided some useful info this time (for new MZX/ZZTers), though.

Also, don't start a journal right after you've made the first boards for your game.

This post has been edited by Galladin: 25 August 2004 - 05:24 AM

Interactive (F) Fantasies

<Beige> In Finland, they defecate on each other's sleeping areas.
<Beige> It's a cultural sign of respect.
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#32 User is offline   ZzCrook 

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Posted 25 August 2004 - 05:37 AM

Okay... for all you wannabe mods... SHUT UP.

Both threads were pinned, therefore I will post in them as I please. If the admin wanted them to die, they would unpin them. Makes sense, doesn't it?

Therefore if I feel I want to post in a pinned topic, I will, unless it specifically says otherwise.

And now... back to your regularly scheduled program.
- ZzCrook
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#33 User is offline   Chronos 

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Posted 24 February 2005 - 01:36 PM

Try to optimize your Robotic code the first time. I ran into this issue when working on Arthelion--if you don't optimize your code (learn how to use advanced features--It saves time!) you'll run into a major headache when you need to make changes (I recoded a 12K robot into under 1K with this).

This post has been edited by Chronos: 24 February 2005 - 01:37 PM

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#34 User is offline   Padz 

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Posted 24 February 2005 - 05:57 PM

Thats fair enough to say but most people dont have the knowledge to optimise. You end up learning new ways of doing something then going back and changing it to reduce memory.
He who has not faced death can never understand life
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#35 User is offline   Torte 

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Posted 24 February 2005 - 06:15 PM

In smaller games, optimizing doesn't matter that much, but in larger games it will matter, so you'd better learn to do it eventually, but you don't have to learn how to optimize the first thing you do =P.
Phasing in and out now and then.
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#36 User is offline   Chronos 

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Posted 24 February 2005 - 08:30 PM

LeDgEnD, on Feb 24 2005, 12:57 PM, said:

Thats fair enough to say but most people dont have the knowledge to optimise. You end up learning new ways of doing something then going back and changing it to reduce memory.

Very true. I guess I should rephrase that then, to "Optimize the first time, if you can." I'd at least suggest looking at what you want to do from different angles, depending on the current build's capabilities. For instance, imost of my code was cleaned up by using MZMs instead of row after row of "Write Overlay" lines in one big IF cluster. (for a status display)
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#37 User is offline   Dr Lancer-X 

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Posted 24 February 2005 - 08:33 PM

Seriously don't overdo it though. I run into this kind of thing a lot- you can only optimise so far before you get bored of working on your game and only have a load of optimised main engines.

Nihilist Entente <3
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#38 User is offline   Chronos 

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Posted 24 February 2005 - 08:42 PM

Excellent points, Lancer and Torte. Both important points to remember.'

I guess I'll add this then: You can't (nor should you try to) optimize everything. It may be quicker and smaller to optimize, but sometimes it's just simpler to have unoptimized code for some things.
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#39 User is offline   (^_^) 

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Post icon  Posted 10 May 2006 - 06:42 PM

wildweasel, on Dec 29 2003, 05:58 PM, said:

Koji, on Dec 29 2003, 03:42 AM, said:

But the quality of the flush may change.

And that my friend, makes ALL the difference!

And that is why I am here! I provide only the BEST flushing sounds!

Sugoi!

When in doubt, compress your drive (Applys to slow OS WIN XP)

Then again, my computer is always crashing, so this may have no topical value
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#40 User is offline   paulguy 

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Posted 10 May 2006 - 08:14 PM

[backseat moderation]

This thread is 1 year and a few months old. If it was on topic then it woulddn't be a problem but it has little to do with the thread.

[/I'm done]


Why-Fi: but I'M MATURE ENOUGH TO BE A MODERATOR!!!!!!!!!!
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#41 User is offline   Skylark 

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Posted 11 May 2006 - 05:46 AM

Give him a break; short of the posts he's made today, he hasn't posted in over a year.

This reeks of troll, but if he really has just come out of a coma to make 9 posts in one day in completely dead topics, then let's just point him to the faq and be on our merry way.
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#42 User is offline   Dr Lancer-X 

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Posted 14 June 2006 - 09:54 AM

Yeah, (^_^) / ultramiked just does that, and has done it multiple times in the past (reappear to post a bunch of irrelevant comments in dead threads). I just don't get it. EXPLAIN YOURSELF, UMKD.
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#43 User is offline   Frobozz 

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Posted 14 June 2006 - 11:26 AM

Well we could have an autolock feature that is automatically performed on all year-old topics. :(
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#44 User is offline   asiekierka 

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Posted 20 July 2006 - 04:16 PM

Meh, so all will refresh 2 seconds before autolock :(
Huh.
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#45 User is offline   Val 

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Posted 20 July 2006 - 05:07 PM

Congratulations.
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#46 User is offline   nupanick 

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Posted 08 May 2008 - 12:47 PM

How about a formal readme format? We could say that readme's should be the same name as the .mzx file but with a .txt extention, and that the first three lines are:

Title: <title goes here>
Author: <author goes here>
Genre: <genre in case we ever sort games this way>

Then after that should probably be a list of included files and a description of the gameplay. And as for overwriting common filenames, I just put every game in it's own directory when I unzip it, because MZX has directory support ;c)

z2's done that for a while and I just thought it was worth mentioning.
And I have asperger's syndrome fyi.
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#47 User is offline   asgromo 

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Posted 08 May 2008 - 06:10 PM

Because people want their descriptions of gameplay AFTER they've downloaded the game
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#48 User is offline   nupanick 

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Posted 08 May 2008 - 06:54 PM

if all readme's had to adhere to a strict format, it'd be possible to write a script to scan them all. Maybe the description could be made to appear on the games list, as an 'extra' or something.
Tuvf vf zl jvggl fvtangher.
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#49 User is offline   paulguy 

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Posted 09 May 2008 - 09:30 PM

Hasn't the Doom community done that with maps for the longest time? I seem to recall back in the day seeing a lot of similar looking text files.


Why-Fi: but I'M MATURE ENOUGH TO BE A MODERATOR!!!!!!!!!!
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#50 User is offline   weasel 

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Posted 10 May 2008 - 12:20 AM

Yeah, they do that in the Doom community, and the IDGames listings at Doomworld actually parse the text files for information for the search engines. I propose that a similar setup be adapted for use on DMZX, with a format similar to the following:
TITLE: [the name of your masterpiece]
AUTHOR: [who are you?]
GENRE: [action, adventure, puzzle, etc]
PLAYERS: [probably only 1 for most games, but useful for multiplayer games]
VERSION: [which MZX version you made it with, to avoid confusion]

Blaugh!
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#51 User is offline   ShloobeR 

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Posted 10 May 2008 - 01:26 AM

quake 1 did this too
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#52 User is offline   Kom 

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Posted 22 May 2008 - 12:52 AM

I am for this as well, however, I propose, perhaps, a separate discussion be made about this.
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#53 User is offline   allison 

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Posted 18 January 2011 - 03:43 PM

Anyway, I've got a great idea for optimization! Who wants that horribly long space consuming
end
command? Instead, it will be shortened to simply
e
! No more cluttered robots clogging your hard drive! Instead of THREE letters, there will only be ONE! WOW!
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#54 User is offline   Lachesis 

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Posted 18 January 2011 - 04:07 PM

Uh I think you accidentally the wrong thread :confused:

You could probably set up a macro in the config file so you can type e and it becomes end but see here's the thing with robotic in the main line of Megazeux (latest release 2.83)

"end" could be "e" or "endnghfughsdjadfhsgh999999" and it would still take up the same amount of space: a single byte of code IIRC. Your source code isn't saved; it's converted to bytecode as soon as you press enter. This is why TYPING COMMANDS IN CAPITAL LETTERS doesn't do anything and they always go back to lowercase -- to display your code on the screen, the robotic editor is parsing the bytecode and turning it into readable text.

The debytecode line of Megazeux gets away from this and stores your source exactly how you wrote it. Terryn and AJS and Lancer-X and I have converted tons of games to debytecode for testing and, to make a long story short, they don't end up taking up a whole lot of drive space. The music and sound effects will always be the biggest parts of MZX game releases. You should know this, as if I remember, you like to submit 20 MB .WAV files with your games.
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#55 User is offline   allison 

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Posted 19 January 2011 - 12:36 AM

Two things:

1. The "end" converted to "e" thing was a JOKE. A bad one, I agree.

and...

2. I regret the fact I submitted WAV files for music.... :naughty: MODs are cool, just couldn't find many remixes and didn't have access to a tracker at the time.



If I misunderstood what you said, I misunderstood what you said, because I don't want to start one of those arguments :confused:



Anyway, lets get back to game making suggestions :pirate:

This post has been edited by crazyal02: 19 January 2011 - 12:40 AM

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