Same time next year?

[bjgil2]

I was just wondering if the competition will be running again next year?

I started an entry for this year when I saw the news item on GameDev.net but I am doing a single person dev of the game and trying to do all the coding, modelling, artwork, sound, etc in the few months since the contest was announced is just impossible when I think about the time I have to devote to Real Life (tm) (work and writing my Masters thesis).

I'm going to continue work on my game and hope that the contest is running next year so I can submit it then...

Good Luck to those still entering this year!

Brett

[digitprop]

I second that - a new edition of the contest in 2005 would be great!

The contest - and the contestants - were truly inspiring, and definitely brought some momentum and motivation to java gaming.

Congratulations to the winners - I think those are really great games. As were a lot of the non-winners.

Seeing another competition next year would be very nice...

[princec]

With some grander prizes

Cas

Games published by our own members! Go get 'em!

[SpuTTer]

I dont think it would be a good idea necessarily for the community unless more time were spend managing the project and making sure that people questions and such are answered.

I think a lot of people spent a lot of time this year and I it seemed like most people didn't feel they got the same amount of effort back from Sun on it.

The community itself could host it's own constest with thier own rules. That could be rather fun.

[princec]

Ok, here's a compo for you:

He or she or it who ports the LWJGL to OSX to the same standard as the Windows and Linux ports gets a brand new spankin' bestest that-there-is Mac. With the teeny proviso that they get it to 1.0 along with us on the other two ports.

Cas

[SpuTTer]

That's a pretty cool offer! Someone should take you up on that!!

[blahblahblahh]

The community itself could host it's own constest with thier own rules. That could be rather fun.

Sometime after JGF moves to it's own server + CMS platform I'll run a community contest. Actually, I'd like to do frequent mini-contests too, without prizes - just glory to the winners! - a bit like the Sun one, i.e. you don't have to write the game during the contest, you can submit something you already did.

(PS if anyone has a good relationship with their hosting company and that company does JVM's on their servers, and you think they might consider donating a server for JGF to run on please let me know. Sorting out the server is the only thing currently standing in the way of getting a domain and moving JGF to it's own private CMS...)

[princec]

Dedicated servers cost $49/mo...

Cas

[blahblahblahh]

Dedicated servers with root access (so you can upgrade the JVM and delete apache and other crud) and many gigabytes of bandwidth (JGF already is using multiple Gb per month with relatively little traffic - and it's not even serving any games at the moment!) from hosting companies that don't:

- accidentally delete your server
- accidentally remove you from their DNS
- get on the spam blacklist

etc are not too easy to find. All the trustworthy ones that offer 10Gb-15Gb/month transfer (about the minimum we could tolerate) at a reasonable price don't seem to allow JVM's / shell access.

I also don't want to have it burst to 30Gb one month and get a crippling surcharge .

[princec]

My new server has 1500GB month and root access. I share it with Elias and a few others. $49/month it costs. www.servermatrix.com

If you need download bandwidth, use an auxiliary download service like filekicker.

Cas

Games published by our own members! Go get 'em!

[blahblahblahh]

My new server has 1500GB month and root access. I share it with Elias and a few others. $49/month it costs.

...plus a $300 setup fee to line their pockets.

...plus $20 a month for basics normally included free like Plesk (which I can happily do without, assuming you get full root shell access?).

But your point stands that it's a shedload of b/w for almost nothing. I'm impressed; then again, isn't this the same company that arbitrarily deleted puppygames.net?

Re: your experiences with this server, what are the servers like? Any weird stuff installed that's a pain to get rid of? (or do you just use the standard LAMP and so not care?)

[Middy]

Would be cool to know if it came up next year. I would definitly paticipate ( and ofcourse win   )

[digitprop]

I like the idea of mini contests. Something to spur the community. I definitely agree that the most important aspect of such a competition would be the dialog. And you are right in that is something that probably could have been better organized by Sun in the first place.

[blahblahblahh]

I like the idea of mini contests. Something to spur the

The critical question is whether there would be enough entrants to flesh out more than just the first 2 or 3 mini-contests! The J2ME-ers are still out in the cold as far as java gaming goes (why? Is it because even places like JGO are still dominated by Americans? We've had thousands of great java mobile games to choose from for years over here in Europe...), leaving a very small number of java-games studios and a lot of hobbyists - most of whom only have/reserve the time to do a new game infrequently.

I definitely agree that the most important aspect of such a competition would be the dialog. And you are right in that is something that probably could have been better organized by Sun in the first place.

I've run bigger competitions than Sun's before - measured either by prize money or number of entrants - and would certainly expect to get the organization and communications aspects spot-on! Might need some help with the promotion side, though...

[endolf]

...plus a $300 setup fee to line their pockets.

they do a few price levels, the more the setup fee, the less the monthly cost. 49 a month for over a terabyte of data is still rather nice

...plus $20 a month for basics normally included free like Plesk (which I can happily do without, assuming you get full root shell access?).

Didn't bother getting that, the silver support (or what ever it's called) is free and means they do the security updates for you. This comes as fun when they update certain things and iptables stops working. When it comes to the firewall being down I don't leave it that way long, and as I don't have the time to investigate it, the only thing to do is a reboot, but everything comes right back fine it seems. I did have to go through and delete some crap when we first got our box, like rpc was still enabled, but after that I have to say I am impressed with the service, I put in a support call to get them to change the schedule for updates (so it's done when the UK is in bed, rather than when the yanks are) and it was all delt with quickly. They give you complete root access, you are the one with the root password. If you go for the silver support package you have to give them the root password too. My pseudo random sequence of lower case, upper case, numbers and symbols seems to be happily used by them, I have no idea what it is these days and don't care, I set up sudoers so I never log in as root anyway.

But your point stands that it's a shedload of b/w for almost nothing. I'm impressed

me too

Re: your experiences with this server, what are the servers like? Any weird stuff installed that's a pain to get rid of? (or do you just use the standard LAMP and so not care?)

the servers seem shiney and responsive, the latency from the UK isn't great, but then it's a box in the US, so it's to be expected. I've managed to download from it at 60 KB (ie, filled me ADSL pipe), and I managed to d/l to it from another site in the US at 200kB. It's a standard deadrat install, so there is some crap to be removed, but it's not hard to stop it comming up on bootup, or to shut it down. The disk space is 80gig on ours, so i've not bothered uninstalling it, I just up the shields on the firewall, and stop any service I don't want to run, so in theory, even if the firewall is down, the only ports that can be got to, are the ones that can be got at anyway.

I certainly have no complaints yet, apart from the iptables one, but i'm not too unsurprised as I seem to get problems with iptables at random times on my own machines running gentoo. (install new kernel, iptables needs a rebuild etc).

HTH

Endolf

[blahblahblahh]

Thanks, endolf, that's great. Now I just need to find someone who's using their Debian install... (I've used most versions of RH, and Debian is like Mandrake in that it does undocumented fatal / catastrophic weird stuff (i.e. they break other people's software) because the devs are too lazy to tell anyone what they've done - but it's STILL better organized than RH )

[princec]

We're not (yet) having any trouble with RH9. So far the server is doing just fine but we've not used it in anger (have to wait for Chaz to do a new website).

Cas

[c_lilian]

I was just wondering if the competition will be running again next year?

2005 contest seems to be official now : https://games-contest-winners.dev.java.net/ ;-)

Lilian

[DanK]

I don't see anything on that page indicating a contest for next year, though it is good that the final results are posted somewhere. I thought sun would be showing off the winners or something to that extent, publicity for the winners and all, so far I haven't seen a link to any of the sites for the games that won (other than the links that were available from the forums).

Those zodiac PDA things look pretty cool, I've been secretly considering learning how to build gameboy advance games, if those PDA toys can run java that should pretty well kill any urges to build gameboy games I might get in the near future.

[endolf]

Thanks to all the contestants for your submissions, please join us again next year for the 2005 Java Technology Game Development Contest!

Endolf

[markush]

I don't see anything on that page indicating a contest for next year

Thanks to all the contestants for your submissions, please join us again next year for the 2005 Java Technology Game Development Contest!

[DanK]

Not sure how I missed that last night, it's not like there is that much text on the page, I'm prescribing myself ten lashings with the stupid stick now.

[nonnus29]

Those zodiac PDA things look pretty cool, I've been secretly considering learning how to build gameboy advance games, if those PDA toys can run java that should pretty well kill any urges to build gameboy games I might get in the near future.

Dust off your c/c++ compiler and fight pointers for a while, that will cure you too.

[blahblahblahh]

Sometime after JGF moves to it's own server + CMS platform I'll run a community contest.

Starting to gather thoughts for this now:

http://www.java-gaming.org/cgi-bin/JGNetForums/YaBB.cgi?board=Announcements;action=display;num=1097763765

[darkprophet]

just a thought.

princec, have you had that AMD64 yet?

DP

[princec]

Er........................................................................................

...........no.

Cas

[darkprophet]

Nearly a century later. A package appears on my driveway. I open it...and its an old PC with the words AMD64 written on the side...  

Heh, dont think i want to enter any more sun competitions now because if I put that much effort into it, and then get nothing....well...

Hope it arrives before AMD128 comes out.

DP

[nonnus29]

Er........................................................................................

...........no.

Cas

REALLY?

Wow....  howabout that.

Hmmph.  That  really makes you think doesn't it?

[princec]

Well, in fairness we only finished the game yesterday

Cas