Next JGO Petite?

[Eli Delventhal]

When do you guys want to do the next one? How long should it be? Were there any rules that should be changed? How were the images? Can we think of a GMT time of day that will be doable for every time zone?

[Riven]

I think it should be 4 hours, must have a theme, to prevent people working ahead of time, and should have less generic graphics.

[h3ckboy]

sometime this week , cause I am on vacation, so I can do it anytime(within reason)

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[woogley]

4 hours may be a bit long.. 1 hour was almost good enough, I think 2 might be perfect, 3 at most.

The graphics need to definitely be themed next time. As it is now, we can just use any game that acts on multiple types of objects/tiles and not really care what the images are.

[DzzD]

4 hours may be a bit long.. 1 hour was almost good enough, I think 2 might be perfect, 3 at most.

The graphics need to definitely be themed next time. As it is now, we can just use any game that acts on multiple types of objects/tiles and not really care what the images are.

+1 for both time and graphics

[jimsmi6]

The graphics choice was pretty good, we all managed to come up with something. Though I think limiting it to a particular theme might cut down on the freedom a bit but I'm still open to the idea.

One hour worked fine for me, but I would have loved to continue on it. If I had more time on CrapAssassin I would have added some map stuff.

And about the Java vs. anything discussion that we briefly had on IRC, I don't mind personally but it makes sense for everyone to make Java games as we're on a Java-based forum.

The time that today's was at worked out pretty well, but it should probably be a couple hours earlier.

[Alan_W]

I managed to write a basic Pong game in 2 hours with no existing code (except for my Java4k applet template).  However I'd still prefer 3 hours, as this would give some time to make some nice(ish) graphics.  18:00hours GMT is usually doable for me, but not Tuesdays or Thursdays.  Maybe next month.

A theme would be nice: e.g. Whales in Space; Blue Ninja Rabbits;
Or maybe a 'best use of sound' competition, since this rarely gets a look in in Java4k.

[DzzD]

NB: having more participants may also give more fun, any idea on how to grab more people ? competition website ? some kind of prices ?

[kappa]

we could do 2 hours for creating the game (maybe 2 and half hours even) plus 30 minutes for setting up your distribution method (applet, jws, etc).

[moogie]

well, i will never be able to participate due to the time... i live in Australia and it would mean a 2:30am/3am start... and with a newborn i cant afford to give up any sleep

of course that is why i would prefer a 48hr comp

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[kappa]

Maybe we can have two contests, to accommodate the people in the other half to worlds timezones. 12 hour gap, so everyone can code roughly mid day Sunday. It'd be the same contest, I'm sure every one running the second contest won't try to cheat by getting the images/theme early, if people still feel strongly about this we could just have a second set of images.

The images for this contest were decent, the size was reasonably OK and they were nice and generic. However the art styles were pretty inconsistent, this can lead to ugly looking games.

[h3ckboy]

could it not be sunday , or atleast not always.... cuase I would like to participate, but I dont code on sundays(dont ask)

[pjt33]

NB: having more participants may also give more fun, any idea on how to grab more people ?

There seem to me to be a lot of game programming competitions. What makes Petite worth entering? It's main distinctive seemed to be that it has the most restrictive time-frame of any competition, and I'm not sure how wide an appeal that has. Speaking for myself, and leaving aside the considerations of other plans I had this weekend, I didn't see the point of entering a competition which IMO doesn't allow enough time to do anything.

I used to write minigames professionally. For a while I held the company record for quickest production of an alpha version of a game at 2.5 hours. After a while one of my colleagues knocked it down to 2. But most games (and remember, these are minigames) took at least 8 hours to alpha, and that was starting with a solid framework.

[ShannonSmith]

I not a huge fan of time as a restriction for a game contest. You are really unlikely to get anything fun as getting something working becomes your main focus. I do think some restrictions are a good idea because they can really encourage creativity. I personally wouldn't mind seeing a contest based around a 40x30 EGA game, Markus did a super cool rendition of Eye of the Beholder http://www.mojang.com/notch/eoo/ and inspired me to do this one:



And the great thing is you could get all the entries on a single screen.

[DzzD]

if rules are up to the contest organizer : here is the one I would like to propose in a later date if I can get some time to prepare it:
- 3  hours
- website to submit
- java+applet only with fixed/same size working on java 1.5+ ( IMO better for contest viewer & tests)
- imposed graphics & theme (maybe sounds effects )too given at start of the contest

[jojoh]

I used to write minigames professionally. For a while I held the company record for quickest production of an alpha version of a game at 2.5 hours. After a while one of my colleagues knocked it down to 2. But most games (and remember, these are minigames) took at least 8 hours to alpha, and that was starting with a solid framework.

Agree!

I will not take part in a 1h contest, because I will not be able to create anything useful in that time. Not saying that it is a bad competition, but doesn't work for me. I have been talking to some people about what kind of competition that could filling the void after 4K. I have created a fair share of 4k games, but feel now that I now rather would use the time spend on compressing the code, on polishing and tuning the game. Time restricted compos has a tendency to not fit with my schedule as well.

What I would like instead would be a 12h (or so) compo that you are allowed to spend as you like during a weeks period (two weekends, honor system). Split up at 8h coding, 2h GFX and SFX, and 2h bugfix, tuning and feedback adjustment. Unlimited thinking about the game during the time-period On-line blog for progress would be really cool. I think a theme would be good, but more for feeding ideas, than restricting. Something like destructible - composeable. I think that should be enough to allow people to create games that actually could be fun to play (and make) and it wouldn't be too much work to do it either, probably less than a 4K game.

Any framework should be allowed, as long as it is available before start of competition, and a simple reference game with source-code is available, so that anybody should be able to use it.

I'd be willing to set up such a competition if enough people are interested. I'd say at least 10 games submitted would be a min target. It is the kind of compo I'd like to take part in, but situation is different for each of us, so let me know.

- website to submit

I'd be willing to create a competition section at games4j.com. Voting, feedback, wiki, applet submission and more is already there. That is what I was planning for the 12h compo. Just make sure it is not during the same time

[teletubo]

I not a huge fan of time as a restriction for a game contest. You are really unlikely to get anything fun as getting something working becomes your main focus. I do think some restrictions are a good idea because they can really encourage creativity. I personally wouldn't mind seeing a contest based around a 40x30 EGA game, Markus did a super cool rendition of Eye of the Beholder http://www.mojang.com/notch/eoo/ and inspired me to do this one:



And the great thing is you could get all the entries on a single screen.

Why don't you host a competition like that  ? I think I would join

[Eli Delventhal]

Lots of great ideas in this thread, although many of them are contrasting so you couldn't have a contest with all of them together.

So - please host! If you've got a good idea, make a thread for it here and I'll do my best as a mod to promote it. Just please try to make sure we only have 1 JGO Petite at once, first hosted first served. For me this should all just be done with the goal of making a better JGO community, and perhaps bring others in (one reason to allow other programming languages and engines). Oh, and definitely to have fun!

For me, the first one-hour JGO petite was about doing something different that many people could do (being a short time period) and to have fun with. I was by no means expecting anyone to make something spectacular, and was in fact very impressed with everyones' entries given the time period. Then again I agree I could have definitely used a bit more time.

[DzzD]

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wow long time

so ?

[Eli Delventhal]

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wow long time

so ?

I'd do another soon if people remain interested.

[Mads]

I'd do another soon if people remain interested.

I can't work that fast  I'd love to be a spectator though 

[Eli Delventhal]

I can't work that fast  I'd love to be a spectator though 

Just think very small. This sort of contest is very good for distilling down to the most simple idea.