Amiga Game Development Contest

[E-Penguin]

Is that not a fourth category then, or at least a subcategory. You can also do much larger, quicker reads from CD than from floppy so the crafty programmer could get away with more just-in-time loading than someone targeting a vanilla A1200, saving memory otherwise used to preload.

[donnie]

the amiga community in a nutshell. Lets have more categories than contestants. I am just waiting for an vampire category...

[Aladin]

AGA = Memory Fast (32bits) mandatory, otherwise the aga is bridled

[E-Penguin]

If everyone gets their own category can we all have prizes? I'm claiming the "threw something together at the last minute" category.

[mcgeezer]

Originally Posted by Shatterhand

3 categories

1) OCS/ECS 68000 1mb
2) AGA 68020 2mb
3) Whatever the heck you want to use

and I still think maybe 1) and 2) could be the same category.

This gets my vote. Nice and simple. I suspect 1 and 2 will get us some nice new games.

Agree with Damien though, mixing 1 and 2 would be a mistake.

[britelite]

Why do we need categories in a GAME compo? Shouldn't a game be judged by it's gameplay, and not for it's coding tricks?

[mcgeezer]

Originally Posted by britelite

Why do we need categories in a GAME compo? Shouldn't a game be judged by it's gameplay, and not for it's coding tricks?

This is true.

But then if we were stuck with once technical category then we are likely to limit game developers.

BTW - I'm more than happy to put a bit of ca$h in for the prize money.

[alpine9000]

Maybe the discussion about a comp should be moved into a new thread with appropriate title? Probably many people are unaware of this discussion due to the mismatch of discussion and thread topic?

[alpine9000]

Originally Posted by britelite

Why do we need categories in a GAME compo? Shouldn't a game be judged by it's gameplay, and not for it's coding tricks?

You make a good point.

If someone makes a backbone game that’s addictive as hell and everyone can’t stop playing it -vs- a game that eeks out evey last cycle of DMA but is boring and no-one plays it?

I know which one i’d vote for!

[Tsak]

Originally Posted by alpine9000

Maybe the discussion about a comp should be moved into a new thread with appropriate title? Probably many people are unaware of this discussion due to the mismatch of discussion and thread topic?

Indeed. And besides, this thread has served it's purpose already. It was relevant 3 years ago, but now it feels all the more misleading... Seems that a big majority of casual visitors is simply unaware of the boom and growth we're witnessing lately.

Originally Posted by alpine9000

You make a good point.

If someone makes a backbone game that’s addictive as hell and everyone can’t stop playing it -vs- a game that eeks out evey last cycle of DMA but is boring and no-one plays it?

I know which one i’d vote for!

Agree 100%!

Basically, the type of contest that 'd make the best sense to me would have the following rules:

-No specs categories: whether it plays on AGA, OCS, or Vampire or was made with Amos, Blitz, ASM or Backbone, in the end all that matters is the game itself. Since the point here is to attract as much interest as possible, we should allow creators to use whatever tool they feel more comfortable with and target whatever Amiga sub-platform they want to.

-All entries should contest in all the following categories equally:
) Best game
) Technical excellence
) Best graphics
) Best music
) Best sfx
) Best gameplay
) Original idea
) Overal polish

In this sense we not only promote all and any Amiga game creation and the teams behind them, but also the individual artists themselves. And this is a big point, cause a good game is not just code and 'mumbo-jumbo' under the hood or plain'old good graphics.

[Shatterhand]

Well, some people expressed their concern that this would lead to lots of simple games that should be running on a 8 bits machine but its actually asking for a 68040 and 4mb Ram. And I agree with this point of view. The MSX dev has 2 categories now, one for the "Barebone MSX 1" and another one for games using whatever hardware the developer wants (New or old).

In the case of the MSX dev I guess they want to make sure there's a flux of new games that anyone with any MSX can play. Having at least an OCS/1mb (or 512 kb) category would guarantee this too.


Also, I've been in a game-dev competition before where community judged the games and it was a mess. Usually this works better with a Jury. Again taking the the MSX-Dev as an example, that comp probably has a Jury for a reason. There is a "Favourite game by community" prize, but the main competition has a jury to judge the games.

[alpine9000]

Well I guess a simple game that needs 4mb of ram and an 040 won’t be winning any prizes for “technical excellence”, but by the same token if that artist couldn’t find a coder that could make it work on 1mb OCS, would we rather have the 040/4mb version still released?

I have seen some cool little red pill games this year, they need a powerful system to run, but still glad they were made.

[Tsak]

That's right.

The point here -imho- is to expand the competition, not limit it. Bring in newcomers, people that are just now developing their skills in gamemaking, coding or game art as well as more seasoned dudes. If we disallow entries based on performance and coding skill, should we not disallow (by the same extend) entries with crap gameplay, music or gfx? I think this runs contrary to the goals of a competition like this in general (which is to actually inspire more people to engage in any way or form with game making on Amiga).

[Retro1234]

People want games for stock machines and Good games like Sqrxz don't get enough attention, plus it's hard to get a group of honest people to help who don't just want to make some money or something.

[swinkamor12]

2 categories

1) Amiga 500 way - OCS 68000 1MB RAM (0.5 MB CHIP + 0.5 MB SLOW) floppy (Gotek)

Games made as in good old times of Amiga 500.
No ECS extension - in golden era of Amiga 500 standard was OCS, only 0.5 MB of chip and one floppy disk drive.
Hardware banging, loading code and data from tracks etc.

2) System category - Amiga OS 3.x/4.x, MOS, linux 68k/ppc.

[Aladin]

No more OCS with the vampire, AGA for ALL amiga ...

1) AGA (68020-68080)

[idrougge]

Originally Posted by Steril707

Going into 68040/RTG Territory you can basically already just run SDL-Games, so what's the fun in there?

Even an SDL Tetris clone crawls on a 68040 with graphics card.

[4mat_]

Amiga 500 is the only machine that would get any traction outside the userbase. The 68020 and up was way after most people had left. In general people thinking Amiga think OCS, that's really not going to go away.

[Thorham]

Originally Posted by idrougge

Even an SDL Tetris clone crawls on a 68040 with graphics card.

Really? Wow

[DamienD]

Originally Posted by alpine9000

Maybe the discussion about a comp should be moved into a new thread with appropriate title? Probably many people are unaware of this discussion due to the mismatch of discussion and thread topic?

Originally Posted by Tsak

Indeed. And besides, this thread has served it's purpose already. It was relevant 3 years ago, but now it feels all the more misleading... Seems that a big majority of casual visitors is simply unaware of the boom and growth we're witnessing lately.

Yup agree

...but I'm going through huge personal issues again today with my ex-girlfriend regarding the £60K (with interest) that she still owes me and it's getting very nasty; get a lawyer and all that were her last words to me...

Someone please let a GM know exactly which post's i.e. numbers, we should move to a new thread and it will be done.