Amiga Game Development Contest

[Shatterhand]

Ian, I agree, and I like the rules. I just agree with the overall idea that there's no need to say if the game was made with Backbone, Redpill, Blitz or whatever. Even more when most of the time its so damn obvious anyway Back at the time I had no idea that a game was made with Amos, Blitz, C or whatever (and from time to time I am surprised to find out a game I used to play was actually made in Amos). And I agree Backbone users may feel less encourage to participate.

And I'll probably release my source code. I thought about doing it with Quasarius and Roadtrip and I am still not sure why I didn't (I guess I was just ashamed of people seeing it and pointing out "eeh, you are really a lousy coder" ). But I guess there's no need to say it's "encouraged".

" as the competition makes no claim to ownership, licencing or distribution rights, which belong to their respective owners, the contestants may choose to release their games under any licensing model, including open-source models", or something on this direction with a better written english

[E-Penguin]

OK, it seems we have an majority in favour of not caring about backbone. I offer rules v3:

1. Single hardware category. Submission should mention target hardware (OCS 1Mb,AGA,Anything) and judges may take into consideration appropriate use of resources when scoring. Each submitter can submit up to two entries.

2. Prizes to be distributed 1st = 50%, 2nd = 30%, 3rd = 20% of prize fund, based on averaged judge score

3. Games must not have been published in any form before the competition

4. Games may be subsequently released commercially in whatever form the submitter chooses, but the submission for the competition should be distrubuted as part of the competition. Judgement will be made on the publically available submission (That is, what the judges play is the same as what anyone else following the competition can play).

5. Judges willl provide a single score, and consider the following criteria, with the following weighting:
Game play 40%
Graphics 20%
Sound/Music 20%
Originality 20%

6. Use of public domain resources (graphics, sound, plot, etc) is permitted but should be declared. Non-declared work is considered to be the submitter's own.

7. Judges will be selected by the organisers from the Amiga gaming community. Judges may not submit an entry for the competition.

8. Ports of existing games from other platforms are permitted, but as per Rule 6, re-used elements must be declared.

9. The competition will last 6 months from the official start date, and final submissions must be made by 23:59 UTC on the last day.

10. Submissions must be in the form of a disk image (or images) playable on both emulated and real hardware, according to the stated target hardware configuration. Instructions, etc, to be provided as necessary, as determined by the submitter.

11. Each submission will have one responsible lead, but he may receive support from up to other 2 people, and those should be credited properly.

The competition makes no claim to ownership, licencing or distribution rights, which belong to their respective owners. Submitting an entry to the competition expressly grants the competition organisers the right to distribute the entry for purposes of the competition only, as per Rule 4.

Note; open source is not a requirement but is encouraged to help build the Amiga game development community.

[mcgeezer]

Yep - I like it.

[Tsak]

I like E-penguin's draft also. I'd like to comment on some individual points though:

>1. ...Each submitter can submit up to two entries.

I find this an arbitary restriction. Why 2 and not 1? Or 3? Submitting more games doesn't raise your chance of winning since the basic criteria here is quality so I don't think number of submissions made is an issue.

>11. Each submission will have one responsible lead, but he may receive support from up to other 2 people, and those should be credited properly.

I think this rule tries to tackle again the issue of how many submissions are permitted. And it complicates things as many artists tend to participate in different projects often by completely different teams. Also it seems a bit unclear what this "but he may receive support from up to other 2 people" means.
F.e.
-only teams with 3 people max are allowed?
-Is this a way to dictate how the prize gained by one game will be distributed among it's members?
-If someone makes music for 4 submitted games and 3 of them end up winning he can only be credited by 1, or 2, or?
e.t.c.

>3. Games must not have been published in any form before the competition

I think it makes sense since this is a 2018 competition to simply allow all releases made in 2018 (demos, full games or otherwise). The window for the submissions is already small and it favors games being made for a long time now but not released yet (or are planned to be released within this time frame).

>2. Prizes to be distributed 1st = 50%, 2nd = 30%, 3rd = 20% of prize fund, based on averaged judge score

This is the most importand point. I agree that if there are many prizes, or if the prizes are streched too much, then the pot is made thinner. However there are other key issues we need to consider:

- Since Ports, usage of game makers and reusing assets is penaltised, it thins out signifficantly the possibility of any similar games to even make it close to the top (not talking about winning any prizes here). So if your game belongs to any of the above and there's zero chance to win something (or even come close), then why enter the competition in the first place?
- Similarly, if we manage to get into the competition the biggest productions of the current Amiga game making scene (which hell we want!), this alone can create a big counter motivation to any small or new developer. Nobody wants to see his name last in a long list of games and even though participating in a similar competition is a motivation on it's own, having a chance to win something (even if it's not a money prize) means a lot.

Based on the above, I'd suggest again that either we stretch the monetary prizes to more fields (gameplay, gfx e.t.c.), so more games will have a chance to win, or we just keep the monetary prize for the "best game" category alone but we allow more categories in overal (even without a clear monetary prize involved).

I think this is a good compromise cause it allows every game submitted to have an equal chance to win something (even if not the big prize).

[Ian]

OK, enough now. I will have a good look through the suggestions and put some rules up maybe tomorrow.

I also do not agree with all items, so it's time to go dictator on the issue

Some may not like it, some may do, but it will get us cracking.

It also won't be a legally binding document, but obviously if someone breaks the rules, they forfeit any rights to the prize.

[E-Penguin]

I don't see why there's any need to impose rules or discount the consensus we're building nor why you in particular have a right to impose any terms. Rather than being a dictator why not let us reach a conclusion?

[alpine9000]

Ian I’d also consider if point 5 is needed. It imposes some restrictions on the games (must have music, must have graphics).

Who knows, maybe the best game in the compo ends up being a text adventure, but rule 5 would rule it out of contention.

I think the weighting for judging should be: 100% - how much the judges like the game

[Shatterhand]

>

I think this rule tries to tackle again the issue of how many submissions are permitted. And it complicates things as many artists tend to participate in different projects often by completely different teams. Also it seems a bit unclear what this "but he may receive support from up to other 2 people" means.
F.e.
-only teams with 3 people max are allowed?
-Is this a way to dictate how the prize gained by one game will be distributed among it's members?
-If someone makes music for 4 submitted games and 3 of them end up winning he can only be credited by 1, or 2, or?
e.t.c.

I never said someone may work on only 1 project. I also agree people may submit how many entries he want, and artists may work on many games as they want.

The thing with having one responsible is that it's easier for the organization to know with whom they have to talk about regarding a submission.

And the limit of 2 people helping was exactly establishing limit for the size of a team, as this was mentioned at some point. Some people prefered to have games made by a single guy, other people said it would better to allow teams. This is a compromise IMO.

But to me, the same guy may be responsible for more than one entry, and he can even be an "artist" on another one, and we could even have all games with music made by JMD, for me it's fine

Ian I’d also consider if point 5 is needed. It imposes some restrictions on the games (must have music, must have graphics).

Who knows, maybe the best game in the compo ends up being a text adventure, but rule 5 would rule it out of contention.

I think the weighting for judging should be: 100% - how much the judges like the game

Even though I was the first to suggest the division of notes between different aspects of the game, I concur with this vision. 100% how much the judges like the game. Perfect and better than my 1st suggestion Judges gave a grade of 0 to 10 for each game, the best average wins the competition. Fine for me

[MickGyver]

Originally Posted by Tsak

- Since Ports, usage of game makers and reusing assets is penaltised, it thins out signifficantly the possibility of any similar games to even make it close to the top (not talking about winning any prizes here). So if your game belongs to any of the above and there's zero chance to win something (or even come close), then why enter the competition in the first place?

About reusing assets, I think the license for the asset should be valued, if the asset requires attribution, then give it, if it is public domain then it should be free to use (in other words normal licensing rules). Tools that have been used shouldn't need to be mentioned if their license doesn't require it.

About ports (again), fine if you allow ports but I just have a hard time understanding how to compare a port of a game to an original game. How do you compare a reproduction of Mona Lisa to an original painting by another author?

Originally Posted by Tsak

- Similarly, if we manage to get into the competition the biggest productions of the current Amiga game making scene (which hell we want!), this alone can create a big counter motivation to any small or new developer. Nobody wants to see his name last in a long list of games and even though participating in a similar competition is a motivation on it's own, having a chance to win something (even if it's not a money prize) means a lot.

True, hard to compete with something that has been in the works for several years. I don't think it's necessary to order the games that didn't win any prizes, maybe just order the top 5 or 10 (depending on how many games there will be in the competition). A list of all games could be in "no particular order".

[E-Penguin]

Regarding rule 5, judging criteria - I think it's fairer and more consistent if there are some guidelines for all judges to follow, although I take the point that not all apply equally to all games. How about adding "where appropriate", to allow some discretion?

On ports - the rules don't (and aren't suppose to) penalise reuse, only to ensure it is properly declared so that credit isn't given for the work of others. I concur with MickGyver that comparing original games to ports is difficult, but acknowledging it is a port is at least necessary. I'm open to suggestions on improvements to the wording.

Team sizes / number of submissions - I think in the interests of fairness they should be limited, and agree with Shatterhand. A comprise is needed here.

Development window - IMHO games should only be submitted which are developed for the competition. Then everyone has the same window of opportunity. I recognise it is hard to enforce and difficult to judge whether a game based on some prior work is new development,.

[Lazycow]

Originally Posted by alpine9000

maybe the best game in the compo ends up being a text adventure

You're kidding, do you want a text adventure winning an AMIGA GAME COMPO?
Do something with parallax scrolling, 32 colour graphics, copper effects and protracker overtures!

[Shatterhand]

Would you guys bother if I send some invitations to some users asking them to be judges of this competition? (I'd do it by PM)

Originally Posted by Lazycow

You're kidding, do you want a text adventure winning an AMIGA GAME COMPO?
Do something with parallax scrolling, 32 colour graphics, copper effects and protracker overtures!

And on true Amiga spirit run ate 12 fps OR have boring gameplay.

[Samurai_Crow]

Originally Posted by Lazycow

You're kidding, do you want a text adventure winning an AMIGA GAME COMPO?
Do something with parallax scrolling, 32 colour graphics, copper effects and protracker overtures!

Remember, these are the same people that wanted to disallow belly slot RAM on an A500. :-p

[darkwave]

Put me down for €40 by the way. We can contribute and still enter the competition, right? Time permitting I'd hope to be entering something. Has anybody contacted any Amiga retailers/companies to see if they'd be up for offering any prizes alongside the cash?

[DamienD]

Originally Posted by darkwave

Has anybody contacted any Amiga retailers/companies to see if they'd be up for offering any prizes alongside the cash?

I don't think anyone has as yet...

This is why I suggested maybe speaking with meckert. He has done an outstanding job with all of the below; raised donations, support / products from Amiga vendors, structured the competition, arranged prizes, promoted etc...

Originally Posted by DamienD

meckert has run numerous competions and I also contributed funds towards this:

... 3rd RetroKomp GameDev Compo announcement
... RetroKomp/LoadError Game Development Competition
... RetroKomp/LoadError Party 2017 Announcement

I'll send him a PM and point him to this thread

[Ian]

Originally Posted by E-Penguin

I don't see why there's any need to impose rules or discount the consensus we're building nor why you in particular have a right to impose any terms. Rather than being a dictator why not let us reach a conclusion?

Because it's not a consensus, several people have said to not include open source for example and yet it is still mentioned at the bottom, plus I assume we want the competition to start sometime this year?

No real problem with anything you said, but it over complicates what is a nice idea and lovely gesture from the donators, yourself included, with too many restrictions. It's just a bit of fun after all where someone is going to get a bit of cash to spend as they wish.

For example, Cammy's old compos had 4 simple rules (an one of those was simply stipulating that as it was an xmas competition, it had to be about xmas) and I don't believe anyone had any trouble with them.

We all appreciate what you have tried to do, but I think it's shown exactly why committees don't work, you are trying to please everyone including yourself.

The general rules should be very straight forward.

For example:

1. A single entry per person/team - team entries must be indicated at the start, with names put forward. Any prize will be distributed evenly between all parties by the competition paypal admin so everyone gets their fair share.

(I simply do not understand why anyone would want to split their time with two games, unless you are Andreas Tadic, concentrate on making your entry as good as it can be rather than hedge your bets with 2 half arsed entries)

2. Aims to be indicated beforehand, for example what genre, intended size eg levels/hours to complete, is the game an original concept and targetted spec.

(We all know things happen though, so it it's deemed more processor power is needed, then a change of spec will not be penalised - even if it is due to lack of coding skills, or tools used not being up to the task on an A500. The onus will be on the entrant to keep us updated of any changes though. I would also like this section to detail how long the entrant has worked on the game, I don't believe them working on it for years should preclude entry, but the information should be provided. A draft forum post template can be created for all this information to be supplied)

3. Games will be judged as a whole with priority being given to gameplay, although ports/remakes will also be judged against the original game. Judges will score the games in order of preference, for example the judges favourite games scores 1 point, least favourite scores 10, based on 10 entrants. Lowest score wins.

(Lets be honest, gameplay is key, everything else is secondary, and porting although requires skill for sure, it's definitely not as hard as designing and implementing a concept from scratch. Regarding scoring there could also be a public vote with names visible to all that can account for 20~50% of the total score, not sure how this could be worked at present, but I'm sure it will be simple enough works for Eurovision right... )

What I think can be open for debate are the following:

Prize split, personally I would go for the winner getting 100% of the funds. If it is to be split I would suggest something like 60%, 25% and 15%

Any legal mumbo jumbo is not an issue for the competition, but the problem of the entrant, if they want to rip something off and enter it into a competition that will bring it to the attention of others, including the people they ripped off that is their concern.

If any claim is made against a game and the claim is proven, it will of course be removed from any file storage related to the competition, and the entry will be null and void.

Judges, I am not sure being an entrant should preclude you from being a judge, but this should be avoided if possible, if it isn't possible then as the judge cannot judge their own work, each other entry has it's highest mark removed.

Sources, sharing is to be encouraged either in their entirety or on request of a certain routine by fellow entrant or other interested party. There is no requirement for this to be open source in any way and the coder can retain any rights they wish to their code.

I think the rest can be the small print rather than strict guidelines/rules and can be discussed at a later date.

[E-Penguin]

it over complicates what is a nice idea

I don't get this obsession with trying to remove all restrictions. Its a competition, not an awards ceremony. Things should be restricted. If you want a "best games of 2018" awards, go ahead and organise one, but that's not a competition.

Sources, sharing is to be encouraged either in their entirety or on request of a certain routine by fellow entrant or other interested party. There is no requirement for this to be open source in any way and the coder can retain any rights they wish to their code.

How is that any different from what I've written, that open source is encouraged? It seems as if you're being awkward for the sake of it, rather than having an actual point.

[Ian]

Open source means you are free to do with it what you like, if you meant what I said, that is not being open sourced as defined by anyone. I would also suggest if that was what you meant then no one would have an issue with it either.

Open source definition also Wikipedia

Originally Posted by E-Penguin

I don't get this obsession with trying to remove all restrictions. Its a competition, not an awards ceremony. Things should be restricted. If you want a "best games of 2018" awards, go ahead and organise one, but that's not a competition.

Seriously?

If I made a competition to build the best car I would leave it at that, not say it must have four wheels and a 1.1l engine have lights that dip and runs on the tears of children. Do what the hell you like, be creative, but make sure it's good and it does what is asked in the opening gambit eg it's a car, or in the case of this competition is a game you or you and your friends have written to submit for judging.

[Predseda]

15 pages, sorry I am lost. Basically one question for the core rules:

Genre is free and the theme will be announced at the beginning of the compo?

[Shatterhand]

Genre is free and I don't think we will even have a theme.

Regarding teams:

I think it's very possible for someone to provide music for more than one game on the competition. Same as with gfx. I doubt a coder would be able to submit more than one game, but I see no reason why se should limit that.

And I also think we should let teams decide among themselves how they split any prize they may win. Someone may see unfair that a guy who made a mod for a game in a week should get the same share of the prize of a coder/designer who worked on the game for months. I think the decision of how to split the prize should be made by the team.