Comments on: Future Dare

By: Breakdance McFunkypants

Breakdance McFunkypants — Fri, 23 Jul 2010 16:52:36 +0000

Sounds fair. We can use homegrown game engines as long as they are available to anyone else who may want to use em. As long as 100% all gameplay, graphics and sounds are made during the 48 hours, it sounds like we can use any engine we want. Perfect!

By: dertom

dertom — Wed, 21 Jul 2010 16:52:48 +0000

>Am I right about the commercial middleware ok, homebrew middleware not ok rule?

Yes. If you want to use your homebrew middleware you have to publish it a couple of days before the competition

By: Breakdance McFunkypants

Breakdance McFunkypants — Wed, 21 Jul 2010 16:00:12 +0000

Sorry my mistake.

So we CAN use middleware (Unity, Shockwave, Gamemaker, Unreal) for the main compo.

What about home-made middleware? My understanding (and again I could be wrong) is that if I have my own game engine with three years of fulltime development put into it… I can’t use that.

The rule being that you can use middleware that everyone has access to, but not your own internal game engines or modifications of other games you’ve made in the past. I’d love to make a game using previous work as a starting point but I don’t want to be disqualified.

Am I right about the commercial middleware ok, homebrew middleware not ok rule?

By: dertom

dertom — Wed, 21 Jul 2010 08:56:58 +0000

>So you can’t use Unreal or Unity for the compo part – only the Jam part, right?

No. What let you think that?

By: Breakdance McFunkypants

Breakdance McFunkypants — Fri, 16 Jul 2010 03:15:33 +0000

So you can’t use Unreal or Unity for the compo part – only the Jam part, right?
That’s how I understand the above. Am I correct in this assumption?
Sounds totally fair, after all “from scratch” should mean starting from an empty text file.

By: lluudduummddaarree

lluudduummddaarree — Fri, 02 Jul 2010 14:46:06 +0000

So you want a game development ‘event’ without time limits or rules?

Isn’t that just plain-old creating an indie game?

By: geti

geti — Wed, 12 May 2010 05:08:29 +0000

Huh. It’d be cool to see them adapted into jammier (is that even pretend English I don’t even) shindigs, but it’s nice to see that they do happen.

By: demonpants

demonpants — Mon, 10 May 2010 19:17:58 +0000

I honestly don’t see the point in limiting the time for the jam at all. Personally, I’d rather have some idea of what I want to make, work for a couple hours every day during the proceeding week, adapt things to whatever the theme happens to be, and then just work for another 6 hours or so that weekend. For me spending every single minute of a weekend coding (even if we get an extra day, we are pretty much doing that) is just not fun or possible. I am a full time game developer already, so making the next week of work sure to suck by getting no sleep and burning myself out over the weekend is not really a good idea.

So, yeah. It’s a jam. Why not make it completely and totally informal for people like me?

By: Codexus

Codexus — Mon, 10 May 2010 10:41:41 +0000

Self evaluation is a terrible way to judge what should go into the competition as there is very little correlation between what the author thinks his entry is worth and an objective evaluation.

Basically you’d just end up selecting entries based on the personality of the author. Arrogant jerks will still submit their crap games while interesting games made by more humble people will not get submitted.

By: DrPetter

DrPetter — Mon, 10 May 2010 10:21:18 +0000

Make sure that you add a clear message in future LD introduction to the effect of “entering the competition has a community cost associated with it” – i.e. if you feel that your entry is sub-par with no chances of placing decently, don’t enter it into the competition. I hear other compos have something similar.

It obviously can’t be a rule, but it’s a fair code to observe. A lot of people readily admit that their game is crap, and it shouldn’t have to consume hours of collective rating unless they care about its cometitiveness.

Perhaps there could be a self-culling process when all competition entries have been submitted, where you get to see a list of the final entries and you can voluntarily revoke yours (moving it to the Jam) if there are many of them, and you feel that yours will likely place in the bottom half. We don’t want to end up with only five final entries, but we also don’t want to vote on 150 if most of them are crummy, now that there are two bins.

50 is probably a decent target number. That’s a lot but not a drowning mass.

By: PoV

PoV — Mon, 10 May 2010 09:51:52 +0000

Is there a strong reason not to have voting in the Jam category? Not even some simplified rating?

We’d rather not over-promise and under-deliver.

By: Diet Chugg

Diet Chugg — Mon, 10 May 2010 03:47:31 +0000

My guess is people are still allowed to comment but not judge. As for why no judging could easily be because these games could keep getting changed over and over as they are online? not sure really myself

By: jolle

jolle — Fri, 07 May 2010 17:02:04 +0000

Is there a strong reason not to have voting in the Jam category? Not even some simplified rating?

By: PoV

PoV — Fri, 30 Apr 2010 21:00:41 +0000

I agree. It sounds like many people don’t know we also do monthlies.

By: nitram_cero

nitram_cero — Fri, 30 Apr 2010 16:41:54 +0000

Great initiative!
I love the idea of double uploads (one strict and other not)

By: Hamumu

Hamumu — Fri, 30 Apr 2010 14:18:39 +0000

Methinks word about Mini-LD needs to spread…

By: geti

geti — Thu, 29 Apr 2010 20:37:34 +0000

This is exactly what I wanted to happen
Be nice to have monthly jams too, to give us something to do in the gap, but yeah, awesome. Very much looking forward to the next one.

By: PoV

PoV — Thu, 29 Apr 2010 20:26:24 +0000

Yeah, by strict, it’s more about saying what we mean in bullet points. If I was to invent a number, I’d say something like 97% of people would not be affected, and anyone that is probably just missed something in the rules.

By: Codexus

Codexus — Thu, 29 Apr 2010 14:43:08 +0000

Yay!

By: Hamumu

Hamumu — Thu, 29 Apr 2010 14:32:00 +0000

The rules are (I believe) what you are used to, not stricter. They’re just more explicit, and backed by actual ‘disqualification’ instead of “eh, whatever”. Disqualification means “moving your game into the jam”. I made a draft of proposed rules (the main gist is to condense them down to a few short, giant print, rules, with fine print for the details that is hidden by default because you don’t really need it). I would share it, but I don’t know if I am allowed. But anyway, it says the same stuff you old-timers know the rules to be, it’s just clear about them. Unity is legal (it says that in the fine print!).