This....is going to be a thing of beauty.

Edit: since this will be a single file, could we simply use a google doc, so multiple people can edit at the same time. Not sure how well this would work with code, and also not sure how well google identifies who has made what changes.

Why not just jump over the offending code? >=D

A splendid and well thought through idea!

I have one more request: Can we completely exclude external assets? I think it would be much easier to work on this if it's all dumped into one gigantic source file for easy copying and pasting. It could get quite messy and painful if everyone starts throwing their zip files all around the place. Again, just inline the assets.

Can we completely exclude external assets?

Ideally the sprites should be hand coded as arrays.

Or std::maps with x,y hash key and an RGB struct.

And obviously, the xy hash key should be encoded as a char array (allocated by "new") and not have a null terminator for efficiency

Sounds good for a larf - I vote c++ (I don't actually know SFML but since the S stands for simple I can't imagine it'll be too hard to pick up)

Can we completely exclude external assets?

That is certainly an option. I believe the GIMP has a built-in way to export an image as C source.

The downside is for large assets the code becomes very verbose, this will probably affect the thread load time and the performance of the syntax highlighter.

I had been thinking that an asset is posted just once - in the post that created it, not maintained as a ZIP in each post. That way, if you want to contribute you just need to download any assets that have been created since you last contributed.

Edit: since this will be a single file, could we simply use a google doc, so multiple people can edit at the same time. Not sure how well this would work with code, and also not sure how well google identifies who has made what changes.

Interesting idea, but I like the thought of seeing the history of the progress directly here. I also am intentionally trying to minimise the barriers to entry, otherwise I'd be using Github or something rather than specifying that a GD.net thread as a version control system.

Do you really think you need art for such an experiment? You could just generate some bitmaps in memory procedurally, which could add some interesting code.

Do you really think you need art for such an experiment? You could just generate some bitmaps in memory procedurally, which could add some interesting code.

+1

Procedural generation FTW.

Do you really think you need art for such an experiment? You could just generate some bitmaps in memory procedurally, which could add some interesting code.

+1, and I second the C suggestion as well (though for making a mess C++ is unparalleled).

Also, I don't think google docs would work out, really. By the time you get to compile and test your stuff someone will have edited the google docs, and by the time you've merged someone else will have probably broken what you were working on, requiring you to fix your code, and so on. That said, the "don't remove or alter code" does make merging changes quite a bit easier, assuming steps are taken to make sure commits are consistent with one another (i.e. one doesn't logically conflict with the other). But maybe it's part of the experiment to battle with another member until some kind of equilibrium is reached

Love it, and topic pinned!

Once you sort out all the details and get this thing started -- assuming you decide to go ahead -- might I suggest pinning the official topic in the "coding horrors" forum for the duration and linking from the lounge like the "PUTT" contest is currently doing?

It'll be interesting -- and terrifying -- to see what's produced!