it's a bit late to enter the contest, but i felt like making something related to the topic anyways, and have been playing a lot of Steel Storm recently, so here's the beginnings of a tank fighting game of some sort. adding in smooth scrolling maps + bullets + collision detection will add a HUGE amount of overhead, but this is running with 11 AI's and at 6MHz, so i think it might be doable with 2-3 AI's at a time and at 15MHz, with some optimisation.

It's a lot late. Only 5 days left.

Not really, it's just procrastination at it's finest. I could still write an ok entry in five days if I threw most my time on it.

Couldn't have said it better myself.

it's rather simple, actually. right now, they just have a 2/3 chance of accelerating forward, 1/3 backward, turn towards the player, and stop moving forward within a certain distance. i'm going to add in side to side motion as well and have them slide a bit ambiently and have a chance of swerving when the player fires his weapon/they hit a wall.

EDIT: builder, what do you recommend for a map setting?
DOUBLE EDIT: what should i do for collision detection? is there a better method than progressional pixel testing?

It's looking nice so far!
Keep it going!

DOUBLE EDIT: what should i do for collision detection? is there a better method than progressional pixel testing?

I use a hackish radial-distance method for collisions in Embers - I pretend every enemy and item exists within a diamond given by distance=distancex+distancey, which is basically a optimal corruption of pythagorean distance=root(dx^2+dy^2). It's not as graphically perfect as using pixel masks but it sure is a hell of a lot faster.

it's a bit late to enter the contest, but i felt like making something related to the topic anyways, and have been playing a lot of Steel Storm recently, so here's the beginnings of a tank fighting game of some sort. adding in smooth scrolling maps + bullets + collision detection will add a HUGE amount of overhead, but this is running with 11 AI's and at 6MHz, so i think it might be doable with 2-3 AI's at a time and at 15MHz, with some optimisation.

Looks awesome.

Looks  fun. Looks like a good start for a game.