As a quick sideline project from my remake of Rockstar Ate My Hamster I am coding a Deal Or No Deal game for the GP2X. If you are not familiar with the game, its a gameshow shown in a few countries, more info at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deal_or_no_deal

More information and loads of screenshots of the game can be found on my homebrew site at http://www.emuboards.com/guyfawkes/

[UPDATE] September 19th - Just sent out the very final beta to the testers. The 'todo' list is empty and all known bugs have been fixed, so if all goes well the game should be ready for release in a couple of days, hopefully Thursday or Friday.

Man, everone stands round at work watching this on the telle right now. Its going to be as big as who wants to be a millionare. Well done on the idea to do a game.

That shows a good idea, and a game based off it surely cant be bad, I just dont like Noel Edmons talking so bloody much throughout! OPEN THE GODDAMN BOXES! But yea good luck!

A damn fine idea, I look forward to playing it. keep up the good work, GF

Who wants to be a millionaire was fucking terrible. I hope this show isn't that bad.

Superb! I was thinking of doing a DOND game myself, it's only chance. Oooh I hope there is little Noel Edmunds in the game

SEX

"Deal or No Deal is a television game show format owned by Rob Hipskind-based production company Endemol"

Dutch ^^

btw: That show sucks!

Genius, I love deal or no deal. I'd offer to help if I was artistically challenged!

Great idea!! I'll take a crack at helping out with the graphics later today/nite.

Guyfawkes, will you add in a SDL_Delay(0xFFFFFFFF) before every event to make it more realistic?

LOL

Great - looking forward to this one.

Please put the UK option in - after all, the game started (I think!) in the UK - 1p up to £250,000.

Sound effects will make the game more fun.

It was first on Dutch TV, then in Australia. The UK and US versions were 2 years after Australia.

In italy it's called Affari Tuoi. I can't believe that this show is popular elsewhere, it's complete garbage.

If the format is the same then basically you choose a box at random and then spend half an hour doing bugger all until eventually you find out what your prize was.

Sure, you get a couple of offers for your box to let you cash in if you're not feeling like gambling, but basically the whole program could be replaced by spinning a wheel with 20-odd prizes of assorted value on it.

Whoop-de-do.

heres a new screenshot from the latest build of the game. it has a new logo and background image which a mate gave to me, they are near the same as the ones used in the US gameshow apparently.



I would still like to see other ideas for logos, backgrounds and hand cursor sprites, so if you was working on them please continue to do so.


To answer a few questions, yeah the UK version of the game drags on for too long but it does add alot of tension to the game. Number of times us lot have been swearing at the tv to no deal etc, pefect example was saturdays game if you watched it If it didnt drag on the game would take under 5 minutes to play which is too quick and expensive for the tv companies. Personally, I love the game, best gameshow since millionaire

The idea of the game is basically to try and get the most out of the banker, it is pure luck the value is in the case/box you get and what is contained in the others you pick. But there is some logic to the game as you need to think about the odds of picking a low or high box and when to deal or not.

I havent finished coding the game but I would guess a full game would take maybe ten minutes if you play it properly. I have thought about adding in photo support for Noel Edmunds and other countries presenters as well as displaying your own photo, this may be an unlockable feature i.e. you have to win a certain amount before its unlocked.

I am also planning on adding some speech for the game. Things like 'Pick your first/second/third etc case/box', some general chat like 'we want the next round to be low numbers' and of course 'deal or no deal' and so on. These will be skippable so you dont have to listen to them. My mate is making some background music which will add suspense and there will also be audience sfx for groans and cheers, phone ringing etc.

Keep the posts coming, its good to see alot of replies for a game that isnt released yet and is pushing me to keep working on the game during spare time.

Good on ya! Its allways nice to see idea's materialize into games and I think all levels of critisism only push you to achive a game which makes those who perhaps dont like the tv show sit up and say 'but I like Guyfawkes game'.
Nice one.

It's really popular here in Spain too. I reckon it will work well on the handheld. I like the idea of speech and unlockable extras (unlocking presenters from round the world could be good - you could have a screen with a map of the world and their images over their countries or a tile set like Tekken etc).

It is a very simple game as far as the rules go but some of the best ones are. I reckon it could be quite a laugh.

Looking forward to this.

Didn't know they had dug Noel up to present it back home!!!

Slightly off topic: I am really glad to see a lot of lovely looking homebrew stuff coming through at the moment. Whilst I like the emulation, there is something special about sharing stuff made specifically for and by the community. Nice one guys.

Look what I just found:

Deal or no deal

Any relation?

yeah I copied the layout of the game from the flash you posted as I have no idea what the US version of the gameshow looks like, so I am using that design until I get hold of a US version of the show to see what it looks like. i drew the gfx myself apart from the logo and the background, a friend got those for me (probably from that flash?).

The UK version is a bit different to the US version, heres a screengrab of the UK show I took last week. Instead of cases we have boxes and theres only 22 instead of 26 to pick from, also the order they are picked is different, groups of 3 instead of 6,5,4 etc. The layout is pretty much the same though, the boxes go in the middle of the screen and the numbers go along the left and right sides.

as sad as Noel Edmunds and as sad as playing slot machines or video poker.

15 boxes with some numbers inside, pick a box to open, spin this out for 30 minutes by opening all other boxes 1 by 1...............zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

man.... great idea Guyfawkes - I'm disappointed that I didn't think of it

Quick update on the progress. Today I have been working on the speech for the game. I am using the same method as my Darts game for the GP32 in which it strings together sound samples to make up a sentance. So saying 'for 215,000 dollars, deal or no deal' is made up of individual samples, 'for - 2 - hundred - and - 15 - thousand - dollars - deal or no deal'. This means the speech can be a little odd and unnatural but it also saves ALOT of space on the card rather than sampling alot more number combinations. It worked fairly well for Darts and with a bit of cleaning up should be fine on DOND. I have uploaded an early example of the above sentance for everyone to check out at http://www.emuboards.com/images/dond-sample.mp3

I am also planning on adding other speech for prompts on what to do next, general chatter etc. Not sure how much there will be as I want to keep the game a respectable size and adding loads of speech increases it alot. All the games graphics at the moment takes up just 60K of space, while the music and speech currently uses just over 2MB, at a guess I would say no more than 5MB of speech, the music around 3MB.

After the speech is done the game is mostly finished, just need to tweak the banker AI and start cleaning everything up. I may ask for some beta testers so keep an eye out here sometime in the next week or so for more information.

The number sounded fine, but then when he said, "Deal Or No Deal?" it sounded choppy to me. Are those separate clips, or is that one clip?

the 'deal or no deal' part is all one sample as it doesnt need to be cut down anymore. the rest of the sentance is made up of individual samples.

Yeah, that's what I thought you meant in your other message. Hmm, maybe I'll have to go back and listen again.

it sounds ok to me, when a single word is generated it sometimes sounds differently than a sentance would because it flows better.

heres the same example sentance which is generated as one sample instead of individual samples, http://www.emuboards.com/images/dond-sample2.mp3. Mine is actually a bit better when saying the number, it says 'and' during it while the second sample misses this out, but the second sounds slightly better as it flows more naturally. I will sort this out later today, its just a matter of cutting the blank space at the end of each sample.

As an aside, it might be interesting to have a few different "Deal Or No Deal" samples and choose one at random each time. That phrase will be used so often that it might be nice to change it up a bit and have different inflections and whatnot.

Or, I suppose you could do it so that "Deal Or No Deal" sounds different depending on how high the banker's offer was.

I'm looking forward to this. My kids are driving me mad asking when it will be finished.
Good Work GF

good idea flavor, ill give the different variants of the 'deal or no deal' sample a go later on.

Done some more work on the game today. I changed the way the money offered is spoken as saying the full sentance took too long. i.e. saying 245,678 dollars takes ages so I have put in an option to say just 245 thousand dollars which is much faster and sounds nicer.

I also finally got to watch the US version of the show, as I expected alot 'bigger' than the UK version but the format is mostly the same. I noticed on the US scoreboard it has an animated background thingy every few seconds so I added in a quick bump map in the game to add some authenticity It travels in the background and lights up the area its currently on, looks pretty good I think.

I uploaded a video taken on my phone camera (so not great quality) to show the progress. The phone ringing sfx is a bit too high so turn your speaker volume down a bit until after its finished. You can view it at http://207.44.176.77/~admin28/dond-1.wmv

I posted some new screenshots of the game on my site at http://www.emuboards.com/invision/index.php?showtopic=26221 let me know what you think either here or on my site (guest posting allowed).

Wow, I can't believe I've missed this thread!
This game looks GREAT, Guyfawkes!
This is the game I'm looking forward to the most right now.

Thanx!
-BobBorakovitz

deal or no deal is for idiots, for gods sake, they clap when someone opens a box with a low number, as if to say well done you've got skill in opening boxes!!!

game looks good though.

Game looks nice though.

Game looks well put together though.

Game looks impressive though.

I can't see it being actually good... but that could just be me.

If I want to open things for the thrill of finding out what the random contents are I'll take the labels off my cans. At least that way I get to eat whatever I found.

Here's my version of Deal or no deal. It'll compile for the gp2x with only minor modifications.


[/end slightly mean anti-DonD rant]

I just had a quick game of that flash versijon linked earlier.

Amazing, the game is more boring than the show itself.
Why the hell anyone would want to play a computer version of a show that is purely luck and you can't win anything anyway is beyond me. At least Millionaire has a quiz element to it.



Yeah, and (at least in the Aussie version) the host makes out like it was the faulkt of the person opening the box that there was a high value inside!

For christs sake, the show is stupid and the game is worse. How people actually could want this garbage is beyond me. It proves the people really will play/watch any old crap.

bound to get a few people that dont like the game like most games played on a computer you dont 'win' anything, if your lucky you get your name in an highscore table and some nice screens to look at... pretty much the same end result as playing deal or no deal on a computer

Wow, this looks great...do we get a demo soon?

I love this show and play it on the NBC site all the time, but their
'Banker's Formula' seems screwed up sometimes, offering the wrong amt.

If you are still looking for help with graphics, let me know.
I dont know how much I could help.. but am willing.

No demo unfortunately. I should have finished the game by now but have been very busy the past weeks or two, my brother recently got out of hospital after an operation to remove a slipped disc so I have been helping out looking after him. Next week I am aiming to get the game to a mostly finished state and give to a few beta testers.

I want to get the banker offers to a reasonable level, this is usually a rough average of the remaining prizes on the board but I want to make it a bit more advanced and make offers based on the previous choices and whats left on the board i.e. if you picked all high prizes the previous round you would get a slighly lower offer than expected. This way the banker is more devious and hopefully makes a better game.

The gfx is mostly done now, I drew most of the gfx myself a few weeks ago but I still need a hand cursor sprite. It should be 13x17 pixels in size with a transparency value of 255,0,255 (#FF00FF) and in BMP format. It should be a light colour as the backgrounds are dark. Check out the earlier screenshots for what it currently looks like, if you need more information let me know, I might even send you a beta to try


Oh just remembered, I am looking for ideas for unlockable features in the game which you can open by winning a certain amount of money. One idea I have is that you can unlock a custom background for the game which if you wanted shows a photo of yourself so it looks a bit like the TV show. If you have any ideas for unlockable features let me know.

Sorry to hear about your brother. Hope he is healing well.
How do you figure out the banker levels? Is there a set formula for the remaining dollar amounts? You mentioned you wanted to 'tweak' the formula to make the dealer more devious.

Maybe if this involves tweaking a 'set' formula, you can also include the original 'bankers formula' as an option for normal gameplay.

Any chance you are cropping out pictures of the hosts for the title screen or pictures of the models? (The models have individual BIOS and Pictures on the NBC site) I'm in the US and would love to see Howie's mug on the title screen of the game.

More questions about the US version, are you planning the 'Money bars' to be a single yellow color, like in the flash version that was posted above, or multi-colored
like on the NBC website (which looks more like the TV Show)

I'll be looking forward to any possible betas you might be able to slip my way...
and maybe I can come up with some unlockables or other ideas for you.

One idea: since you really aren't playing for real money, people seem to just 'go for it' because there is nothing really on the line.
If you have a 2 player challenge, you could figure the winner based on totals from 3 to 5 games. That way, a player may be tempted to take the larger banker offers instead of just opening cases to see what they have.

Talk to you soon.

currently the banker offers are just a basic average calculation based on whats left on the board. the AI i am planning will be similar but the offers may differ slightly depending on what is left on the board, so if you had more lower numbers than high you would get a a slighly lower than average offer. i see this quite a bit in the UK version of the show and its an interesting tactic from the banker as the slightly lower than expected offer plays mind games and makes you want to continue to get an higher offer, it goes the same way reversed for slightly higher than average offers, the player has to think more carefully about dealing or not.

i was thinking about adding in the the presenter and models stuff. definately a possibility and i can tie that in with the speech for the presenter to ask to open the case. only problem is the UK show doesnt have models to open the boxes, instead they use the contestants waiting to play the game. one idea i had was to maybe add a few gp2x owners in the game, maybe the people that beta test or donate to the game

both the US and UK 'bars' have gradients which I havent done yet, my gfx skills dont reach that far so it isnt something I planned to do. if you or anyone else can help out with that it would be good to have in the game.

multiplayer is something i am planning to add. not 100% sure if this will be in the first release as I want to see how popular the game is before I spend more time working on it.

about the betas, I will post here to ask for some when the game is mostly finished. in the past I have given out betas and got crap feedback like 'yeah its fine' when i know there are bugs (i leave some in on purpose to see how good they are at testing) so i only want people that are prepared to sit down and properly play for a few times and give good feedback, i.e. bug reports, suggestions on what to change, new ideas etc.

Okay, you can count on me for beta testing.
As far as the 'money bars', can you send me one sample of each
(US & UK) and I'll see if I can come up with something you can use?
I've been dabbling in Photoshop recently and this could be a good test.
Best way to get a hold of me is: dgrams2000@charter.net

Awesome, I love this show

dgrams2000 - i just sent an email to you with the gfx for the UK and US versions of the bars. thanks for offering to help out!

Sent ya some back.
The graphics are so small (go figure)
that I wan't able to do much more than to blend the colors
a bit.

Plus, in the UK screengrab you sent me, I wasn't sure
what the bars looked like after the numbers had been wiped
off the board.

For US bars, I sent you a 'gold' bar and a 'brown' bar.

If you dont like 'em, just toss em. If you have any other ideas, let me know.

posted a quick work in progress update with some new screenshots on my site here for anyone thats interested.

Well, I have to say, as much as I hate DoND these screen shots are really impressive. If nothing else I'll have to have a go just to admire the spit and polish you've applied to the game.

Kudos.

Hey guys, just want to let you know that Guyfawks 'Deal or No Deal'
is looking very good at this point.

Those of you who like the show will like the game.

The first time I tested it for him, the game was in pretty good shape
already and was better than I was expecting.

There were not a lot of options to tweak in the early versions, and Guyfawks
is still polishing it up as we speak. He mentioned a few more options
that he may throw into the game to make the GP2X version a little more like the tv show.

If you don't like the show, I guess you won't like the game - but for those who
do, its fun to simulate the show and play through making your own choices.

The trick to making the game 'fun' (since no real money is involved) is just
kind of pretending that you are on the show and that you are trying to leave with the
highest amount that you can - without necessarily playing all the way through to just see what
is in your case... Maybe playing the 'best out of 3' against someone to see who comes up with the
higher 'total amount' for example...

Sounding all good!

Just implement a highscore table for all us old 'highscore' skoolers, and it will be perfect i reckon.

i havent got around to the options side of things yet as I am still working on the actual game, this will probably be done last as its the most boring part

the highest winnings table will definately be there, i am thinking about the multiplayer mode so that may be added maybe after the first release. the second release will probably add some new features that people suggest, at the moment only dgrams2000 has played the game and gave some great feedback but once its out to more people i guess there will be more suggestions.

ive been busy working on my site this week as I want to add blog software and make some other changes so I havent had any time to work on the game. im taking a break from the site coding today so will probably spend some time working on the game. the release date keeps getting pushed back every week so I cant say when its going to be released exactly, maybe in a week or two if i get the time.

Glad you're still cracking on with this GF - I'm looking forward to it