SDL Game Development Contest Winners Announced

No Starch Press is pleased to announce the winners of the SDL Game Development Contest. Michael Speck won first place with LBreakout 2, an Arkanoid-genre game. Andreas Roever came in second place with Tower Toppler, a tower climbing game. And Bill Kendrick won third place with Vectoroids, an incarnation of Asteroids. All 25 entries are now available for download on the No Starch web site.

With an open call to the gaming community, contestants were challenged to create a computer game under 1 megabyte using the Simple DirectMedia Layer. Contestants responded with a wide range of game types, including clones of Asteroids, Arkanoid, Missile Command, Bomberman and Connect Four. Original concepts include Wok, a highly unconventional ball tossing game, 54321, a mind-twisting 4-dimensional puzzle game, and E-Type, a typing tutor program.

John Hall, a contributing author of Programming Linux Games, ($39.95, 1-886411-49-2) wanted to create a forum for resident game developers and newbies alike. "There is no lack of talent and creativity in the free software world, but sometimes people need a little motivation to put their ideas into code. The goal of this contest was to motivate amateur game programmers to bring their projects nearer to completion, and with several previously unseen game submissions, I believe we succeeded."

The contest was sponsored by No Starch Press, publishers of Programming Linux Games, a Linux Journal Press book, Linux Journal and Loki Software.