Amiga Game Development Contest

[Cobe]

Lazycow made a point:

Originally Posted by Lazycow

How many participants do you expect?

So, no matter how fair and justified it is to have categories, in our(Amiga) case maybe its better not to have them.

And noone has to be worried cause most of us Amigans value the same hw requirements and achievements as the gameplay.
If you'd let eab users to vote i'm pretty sure they'd be pretty pretty harsh on game that requires 030.

[Amigajay]

I concur, i think just one open category would be best, if/when it should grow then re-evaluate then, but the judges should take in mind how much effort has gone into a certain game, or how many people were involved, it should just be down to the judges to judge based on a number of factors, the first being is the game fun to play!?

[Amiten]

Long life to the Amiga! I put 50 euros in the pot.

[Shatterhand]

E-Penguin 20 Euros
LeCaravage 15 Euros
Alpha One 50 Euros
McGeezer 50 Euros
Robisonb5 50 Euros
DamienD 200 Euros
Amiten 50 Euros
Total so far: 435 Euros

Originally Posted by Amigajay

I concur, i think just one open category would be best, if/when it should grow then re-evaluate then, but the judges should take in mind how much effort has gone into a certain game, or how many people were involved, it should just be down to the judges to judge based on a number of factors, the first being is the game fun to play!?

I must say I am inclined to this direction too, at least for a first contest. Open category, let judges weight in on their final vote all those aspects. (Is the game a port? Does it use "stoles" assets? Was it made by a huge team? etc)

Like I said, I think each judge could using those factors:

Graphics: A grade between 0 and 5
Sounds: A grade between 0 and 5
Technical Aspects (Give me a better name for this please ): a grade between 0 and 5
Gameplay: A grade between 0 and 15

This will give a total score of 30 per game per each judge. If 2 or more games are tied, the total on Gameplay should be the tie-breaker.

Then we add those rules:

If the game...:

Uses "stolen" art: loses 1 point on graphics and 1 point on technical
Uses free mods: loses 1 point on graphics and 1 point on technical
Is a port: loses 1 point on technical
Needs more hardware than it really should: Loses 3 points on technical
Was fully made by a single guy: Earns 1 point on technical



And the graphical aspect should be judged against on what chipset the game is running. It's obviously easier to do a prettier game on AGA than on OCS/ECS.

[Tsak]

This is an interesting ruleset Shatterhand. Having just one big, open category is also fine by me if there are specifics that protect fair play and originality (obviously placing someone else's ground work -including music, sfx, gfx, story, level design, gameplay design and even code- against an 100% original one ain't that fair).

I think instead of a sum points system, where all games will compete against all for 1st, 2nd, 3rd position e.t.c. it would make more sense to have winners in each department seperately.

F.e. all games can compete in regards to their gfx. In the end, the game with more points in that department wins the "best gfx" award. If a game does not have original gfx (at all) it simply should not be nominated for that award and if it partially does then this factors in negatively in the final score for this category (and this category alone).

Doing it like this will also allow us to have more winners, including teams and individual artists.
Some sort of oscar-esque competition that is.
...and the next AmiGame-Oscar goes to:...?

[Shatterhand]

Originally Posted by Tsak

I think instead of a sum points system, where all games will compete against all for 1st, 2nd, 3rd position e.t.c. it would make more sense to have winners in each department seperately.

F.e. all games can compete in regards to their gfx. In the end, the game with more points in that department wins the "best gfx" award. If a game does not have original gfx (at all) it simply should not be nominated for that award and if it partially does then this factors in negatively in the final score for this category (and this category alone).

Doing it like this will also allow us to have more winners, including teams and individual artists.
Some sort of oscar-esque competition that is.
...and the next AmiGame-Oscar goes to:...?

My concern with this idea is that we may ending up having too many prizes and the same game may win more than one. Which in a certain way indeed is like the Oscar And because we are giving real prizes in money (that's what the donations are for), not just "virtual awards", this may become an issue, I dunno. In the other hand.. yeah, it's a way to value more a guy who "only" did graphics in a game, for example.


I'd still prefer to have 1st, 2nd and 3rd place overral prizes, but I'd like to also hear more of what other people think about this.

[Dunny]

Removing points simply because it's a port is grossly unfair. The problem with you lot is that you don't seem to understand that just because the graphics are a done deal doesn't mean that the game logic is also done and dusted.

I mean, haven't we been having this argument over and over again these past years?

[E-Penguin]

We'd need to ensure the judges were sufficiently technically minded to appreciate the limitations of ocs vs ecs vs aga vs vampire vs ppc... It seems overly open to interpretation.

If we're going with one category let's set a target architecture, and people will just have to make it fit. OCS 512+512 would seem to be the most common, historically.

Regarding prizes, how about :
1st : 50%
2nd : 30%
3rd : 15%
Notable Entry : 5%

With the last prize being given for a non winning game which is in some way particularly noteworthy. A new genre, novel use of some techniques, amazing music, or whatever.

What are views on requiring the entries to be open source? (non commercial?) I think it would help the community to have some real examples to help others learn.

[Tsak]

Originally Posted by Shatterhand

My concern with this idea is that we may ending up having too many prizes and the same game may win more than one.

Well, what you propose runs contrary to what you say here. If a game wins most categories isn't the same if it wins 1st position in a single category? At least if there are multiple ones then multiple games could win something.

[betajaen]

I haven't read all of the thread, but I would be happy to enter.

I recently made an Amiga Game (on a real 1200) for a Game Jam back in February in AMOS Pro. It went really well.

When would it start, and how long would it be for?

[E-Penguin]

It would need to be at least a few months, I reckon. Minimum three? I guess it depends on the expected quality (I could knock out a pong clone in an evening but it would hardly show off the capabilities of the Amiga).

[Shatterhand]

Removing points simply because it's a port is grossly unfair. The problem with you lot is that you don't seem to understand that just because the graphics are a done deal doesn't mean that the game logic is also done and dusted.

Game design. There's a reason why good arcade ports on Amiga are among the best games on the system (This is very true for shoot'em ups and scrolling beat'em up), it's because they were designed by people who know what they were doing. The programmers didn't have to bother with desigining the game, they just copied it from the "original" game.

Making a game goes way beyond drawing graphics and writing game logic. Project-X is a game with amazing graphics and extremely well coded and still is a mediocre game as its design is really lackluster.

Also, if you are working alone, time without drawing graphics is time used to code other stuff. You gain time to do better things.

What are views on requiring the entries to be open source? (non commercial?) I think it would help the community to have some real examples to help others learn.

I like it, though I am ashamed of my poor-piss coding skills But I like this idea.

Well, what you propose runs contrary to what you say here. If a game wins most categories isn't the same if it wins 1st position in a single category? At least if there are multiple ones then multiple games could win something.

Point taken. Like I said, I'd like to hear more about other people think about this.

When would it start, and how long would it be for?

We are still discussing rules , we still need someone to concentrate the donations and someone to set up a page with rules, etc.

MSX Dev lasts for 9 to 11 months. I don't think anything less than 6 months is viable. And we start when someone takes all this discussion and put the rules up on a webpage

[majikeyric]

Count me in for 1 or even 2 game projects !
gamedev compos are very exciting and motivating ! (at least for me )

[betajaen]

Interesting, much much longer than I expected to be. But makes sense since there is a cash prize.

I am interested.

[Clydos]

As a total beginner I would be sad if I could not participate because the game has to run with 4 kB. ;-) Honestly, if I would create a game for the Amiga (and I would like to), it would be nice to do that for a comp because I need some pressure. But as I newbe it would be quite simple and surely not optimized (I have no fun reading that hardware specific stuff in my little spare time; maybe later), but I would be proud and motivated if I can achieve that and somebody would give it a try.

[Amigajay]

Exactly, i thought the idea of an ‘open contest’ was to have no restrictions? having target machines will limit this and entries a huge amount, imo lets concentrate on letting the devs have free reigns on what they want to code for, and the only target should be telling them to make a game that is playable and fun which the higher marks should be rewarded for, bonus points for anything else.

[Ian]

Personally I think there should be 2 categories, individual and team entries.

It's harsh to judge a game coded by one guy with that of dedicated music and graphics artists and a coder.

Too many categories and you dwindle the prize pot making it less attractive to enter.

I also think there should be no ratings for anything other than the game in it's entirety.

Score a game 1 out of 5 for graphics, when that totally misses the point of the game is totally unfair for example.

I propose a judging panel of volunteers, say maybe 10 people (obviously not someone who has entered the competition ).

RCK could create a new sub-forum so they can then argue the toss about each entry to decide a winner that only the judges/mods have access too.

I think 10 people would be a fair amount to judge as you will have enough opinions to argue a games merits on the stuff that matters, like enjoyment, re-playability etc.

Anyway, waffling on. No point going into any more detail, just throwing it out there.

[Shatterhand]

Ian, I think I agree with everything you said.

I'd like to add thay my previous Amiga game, Roadtrip, got some harsh reviews mainly because of the "drawn by a 5-years old" graphics

[E-Penguin]

I think I'll be in for a shout at the crappest graphics

I'm coming round to the one big category idea, but perhaps have additional awards for best graphics, best solo effort, best music, best game concept... Doesn't even need to be a monetary prize if there's a worry about splitting the pot too much (although it's a fair ol' pot now so could stand a bit of splitting).

[alpine9000]

I’d be careful about mandating open source as at this stage. I think you don’t want any possible disincentives for entries.

There is no shortage of source code. Off the top of my head Turrican 3, Gloom as well as other stuff people have done recently.

I’m a fan of releasing code, and have released the code to most of my games, but not everyone wants to give away their secrets and the compo should be about encouraging game dev without any limitations.