Critical bug fixing after the 48h should really not be necessary, what with all the astute programmers we are here. Of course, a showstopper that is fixed in hour 49 will be okay, but in general I think it is contrary to the 48h dev cycle to give extra time for bug fixes. That’s what hour 48 is for ;]

*Forum*
– IRC doesn’t cut it if you need to leave your computer for more than 10 seconds.
*Platform Indicator*
– With mjau’s input that it should separate interpreters (Python) from operating systems (Windows). To solve DrPetter’s problem, the icons should be voted on. A game originally has ust a big question mark for the platform. When rating the game, there is a rating (1-5) of each platform. When there are 5 platform votes, then the icons appear with a bar under each, indicating the average of the votes for that platform. If a platform is under 1 for an average, then it does not appear.
*Application form*
– Is this what osgeld was thinking? There should be a competition entry page where you are presented with the condensed rules (no more than a paragraph or two). Then you press ‘I agree’ to be allowed to compete.
*Viewing ratings*
– MrFun’s idea and mjau’s idea. Rating comments should be available to visitors and the comments should appear in a consistent location.
*Votomagicotron*
– jolle’s idea.
*List game name with the entry*
– PsySal’s idea.
*Minimum voting limit*
– Gilvado’s idea. I think it should be 20 games, but what would be a fair and non-offensive indicator for not reaching the minimum? You cannot reject an entry due to the creator voting on fewer than the minimum.
*Auto-trophies*
– erik’s idea. At least award trophies for 1st, 2nd, and 3rd on each of the categories.
*Porting support*
– Maybe add a tag to your final entry: “Needs porting”
*Bugfix torrent*
-Sol_HSA’s idea.

I hope my summary helps organize this discussion, too.

48h to make a game
1 week to port (and fix deadly bugs)
2 weeks to vote

original 48h source and binary should be included in case of ports and fixes are posted. After the week of cooldown is done, torrent would be available.

Actually, two torrents. First torrent available right after 48h, second after the porting period. Having a week between the contest and voting would probably also let people rest and get some distance to things (as well as just play the damn games).

Again, just a thought. Will have to do some actual thinking about this.


osgeld> you really should have some type of form, like some simple hotscripts.com, stand alone job you can link from the homepage, that way it gets better coverage, and better results
PoV> Not sure what you mean. We have a mailing list if that's what you're suggesting.
osgeld> no, a "help" link on http://www.ludumdare.com/
osgeld> and link that to some generic sign up sheet, like softball
PoV> Ah, gotcha.


what i’m looking forward to is the distant future, where games can be submitted through the website and through interweb magick would allow for people to play and judge all the games through a virtual machine website. This would virtually eliminate the handling time of games which could double the number of games anyone could play in the same amount of time, as well as eliminating issues of not being able to play certain games because of libraries (i’m looking at the py-people here).

Initially it should be enough to have an optional content upload/download system which could remove the burden of finding hosting from developers and simplify downloading for judging. This could be funded through donations.

I don’t think requiring people to judge is a good idea, but encouraging people to seek out games which have fewer ratings to judge would help to smooth the numbers. When looking for a game to judge I look at the games list for low numbers in parenthesis. Maybe make the default sorting with lowest ratings/comments at the top. Then again, this may give early voter bias to some games as the procrastinators won’t make it to the bottom of the list. As long as they’ve got a common frame of reference I suppose, it’s strange to see ratings of 1 across the board on your game, makes you wonder. The use of expert judge panels is difficult, especially for a casual event such as LD. I guess that with a higher quantity of ratings such things will be smoothed out. What if it were youtube? Thousands of ratings per game. That’s all moot with a content viewer base which is roughly equal to the content creator base, something which is not likely to change without at least the sort of web accessible content delivery system described above. Then there’s the marketing, do you know how much it costs to get ten bikini clad volunteers together to do a commercial? Nothing, they’re volunteers. Just take your camera to the beach and start filming, cause spring is here!

Maybe Pellies could automatically be awarded as part of the Trophy system?

It might help encourage more voting if people were give an score for how many games they voted on. Maybe count the number of votes cast + the number comments made. Then in the final results, score people by how their judging contribution. I know Hamumu did something like this for the LD48 he hosted. But that was before my time. How did that turn out?

What else can we do to encourage more feedback? Maybe give each judge 20% of the list to concentrate on, with voting for the rest being optional?

I also have thoughts regarding Hamumu’s comment. I’m all for making the rules and expectations clear. But it would be less fun if the compo became strict about enforcement. It would hurt the community if your entry didn’t count because you submitted 30 seconds late. We would be worse off if Rara Racer had be removed from the voting because it used non-original youtube graphics.

It’ll magically select the entry of the entries you haven’t yet voted on by a weighted rand, where the weight is 1 + 1/(1 + nr_votes_already_got) + 0.5 * has_voted_for_you.

You all know you want it.

The winners in each category would have their brains extracted and mushed together into a motherbrain that would go on to conquer the world. Everyone else would get robot bodies and jobs as minions of the motherbrain.

Like HybridMind suggested, being able to respond to feedback would be great.

Being able to filter platforms would be quite nice too.

A list of all trophies would also be neat.

On the other hand I don’t feel a whole new submission system is urgently needed, the blog thing works pretty decently IMO.

And the 3 points mrfun raised would be nice (especially the last two).

I also agree with the rules issue, I didn’t notice many cases of illegal content but it seems a bunch of entries didn’t include source code.

However, a small plea from the bandwidth / transfer limited:

Could we also strongly encourage people who use VM type platforms (python, Love, etc) to also provide non-packaged versions in addition to any packaged ones. As nice as it is to have a one click to play packages I’d prefer not to download the same 8 or 9 MBs of DLLs / Frameworks half a dozen times.

2. After clicking someones name, there should be a link directly from there to their entry for voting, instead of having to hit that main list every time

3. Annons/non competitors should be able to see the voting comments also, I don’t believe they currently can…

Also, having an organized torrent for final entries would be great.

A centralized page showing where to get each third-party lib (pymunk, ruby, XNA, etc) would also be good. Or maybe even a second torrent for third-party libs. Of course you would have to declare what you’re using before the compo, so the organizers have time to assemble it.

And I support Gilvado’s idea. Excellent plan there.