PGD Challenge in the Winter?

[WILL]

Hey folks!

Who would be up for another Challenge sometime this Winter? I have a great idea for a mini compo, something that I'd love to have had put forward as a theme for a long time so I wouldn't mind doing it this winter. (2012)

I'd set it for about a month of development time. Platforms I'd be looking at both Windows, Mac and HTML5 for supported platforms from the volunteer judges. If I add myself as a judge this time, I could also add Android to the list of platforms.

The next one would be like the first with a more technical challenge than a game play theme.

[de_jean_7777]

I'm up for this. Though, I hope there won't be any unpredicted personal problems like the last compo. I still regret not being able to work on my game due to all the things that were happening. But, I look forward to the next one :)

[SilverWarior]

I'm deffinitly up to this even thou I'm having some hard time geting myself to do any programing lately. I hope that this time I will atleast manage to finish my entry and not like in first two PGD mini competition where I alwys ran out of time (I always try to something which is actually beyond my capabilities - capabilites to make it in aloted time). But hey atleast everytime I learn something new and for me this is something.

[WILL]

I may, if I have time, write a small "How to get ready for the PGD Challenge" article for those. It'd be sort of a short list of items to get yourself ready on the start date of any game development competition.

Key stuff is usually tools; make sure all your tools are in order and working. Then there is your libraries and API; use what you know to use and make sure that you know to use what you need such as graphics, texture/sprite loading, audio, input controls, windows management, etc. And for crying out loud stick to the platforms that you know that your method of passing copies of your game to will easily support your game and the required distributable link libraries are included with your packaging. :)

It's more in depth than that, but that is some of the basics.

[code_glitch]

Heck, I could write you a 'how NOT to get ready for any coding competition, ever' article at this rate. I only have a few Ludum Dare "completions" to my name :D

[paul_nicholls]

So when you say 'Winter' do you mean in around 3 months time? It has just become spring here in Hobart, Tasmania, Australia :D
I guess it will depend on how my job hunting has gone...

[WILL]

Hmm.. I mean November/December time-frame.

PS: I still don't get how that whole Australia gets opposite weather than we do thing. :P

[paul_nicholls]

Hmm.. I mean November/December time-frame.

PS: I still don't get how that whole Australia gets opposite weather than we do thing. :P


The Earth is tilted on its axis, and depending on the time of the year, either the northern or southern hemisphere is tilted toward the Sun, while the other half must, of course, be tilted away.


In June, the Northern hemisphere tilts towards the sun. This makes the day longer and the Sun is higher in the sky, giving what sunlight hits the ground more intensity. This is summer.
At the same time, the Southern hemisphere is experiencing winter, with shorter days and the Sun lower in the sky, giving less intense sunlight.


When December comes, the situation is reversed, with winter in the Northern hemisphere and summer in the Southern.


http://wiki.answers.com/Q/Why_are_the_seasons_different_in_the_northern_and_ southern_hemispheres

cheers,
Paul

[paul_nicholls]

Here is a diagram to help explain it more:


http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/1/12/Seasons.svg/266px-Seasons.svg.png

[WILL]

Here is a diagram to help explain it more:


http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/1/12/Seasons.svg/266px-Seasons.svg.png

lol I guess I was asking for it. ;)

[Cybermonkey]

I am still wondering what kind of christmas songs are sung in Australia: "I am dreaming of a white Christmas ...". Santa Claus is surfing ... ?

[User137]

Technical challenge sounds good to me.

I would hope there was different result system though, like letting forum members vote. Wouldn't need judges. Most importantly i'm not after the rewards. All that stuff make the contest feel more pressing and bigger than it should be. It could be in big part a self-maintained system.

[code_glitch]

About the christmas song thing, I used to live in South Africa and to be honest it was rarely cold enough for us to consider it 'winter' like everyone else. Winter over (june time of year) tends to be the dry season so we spent most of our time outside and in winter (december time) we went out whenever we could. Santa just 'came' by our tree (which one year was just A tree..). Presents under a cycad - kinda stands out less than you think :D

More on topic, a technical challenge does sound fun and I can't disagree with User137s' mor community oriented idea - maybe have the voting split 50/50 with official judges counting as half the say and the community the other? And I must say I agree on the rewards side - Ludum Dare is now one of the biggest competitions of that type and its only reward is to finish. In other words, as long as the challenge is big/daunting/tough enough the simple fact of saying "I did that" tends to be quite rewarding ;)

[SilverWarior]

In other words, as long as the challenge is big/daunting/tough enough the simple fact of saying "I did that" tends to be quite rewarding ;)

That is true in a way. But if you having to tough challenge can repel many of potentional contestants. So it is imperative to set challenge difficulty acoring to the knowledge of potentional contestants. And this is where there is a big difference between PGD chalange and Ludum Dare.
You see with the diference of PGD chalanges where you can program only in pascal in Ludum Dare you can program in many different programing languages and we have to admit that most of them are much more popular in game development than pascal. This means that there are much more potentional contestants for Ludum Dare than for PGD competitions so Ludum Dare can ford to have dificult challenges.
But we here on PGD can't aford to have to demanding challanges becouse with our challenges we tend to atract new pepole into game programing and this in many times means pepole with less expirience. So having to tough challenge will repel most of theese from even entering the competition.

[Daikrys]

sounds fun, i think i can handle it when its really in winter (~december)

going for the top places again and maybe without bonus points this time
hope we get plenty of entries to compete at a high level and get some great games out of it

[Ñuño Martínez]

The next one would be like the first with a more technical challenge than a game play theme. I think I'll try it again. I hope that left Linux out of the equation would make my entry more stable... ::)

[WILL]

I would hope there was different result system though, like letting forum members vote. Wouldn't need judges. Most importantly i'm not after the rewards. All that stuff make the contest feel more pressing and bigger than it should be. It could be in big part a self-maintained system.

The problem with this is the validity of those scores. Platform Popularity is the main issue that will either drive down any game entry that doesn't run on the most popular OS or you run into the problem of people scoring based off the videos shown because they can run the game thus scores based mostly on how the game "looks" rather than the actual end result of the finished game after playing it.

I can't see getting away from actual judges with posted system hardware specs. You'd drive away all the new platform development and limit those that would feel it's worth competing.

[WILL]

A thought: We could always just hold a game jam type of event, however people seem to respond more to a competitive challenge rather than something that is more open ended. (Experience!)

We could try it sometime and have the community vote/rate on each game's popularity, but those scores would be a bit flaky in some cases as, I've explained above that they'll be biased off impressions rather than just the actual game. How can you "vote" or rate a game that you can't get running on any of your computers?

The rating system in that case would be less serious as it's not classified as a competition so it's not like pitting a Mac game against a Windows game for example.

My first goal is to include everybody not so much exclude specific people or lay bias on their work because they are doing something different. (a less common OS) Innovation is different and we can all agree that that kind of different is good. :)

[User137]

The problem with this is the validity of those scores. Platform Popularity is the main issue that will either drive down any game entry that doesn't run on the most popular OS or you run into the problem of people scoring based off the videos shown because they can run the game thus scores based mostly on how the game "looks" rather than the actual end result of the finished game after playing it.
Each entry could have downloads for more than 1 platform, if it's supported. For Delphi there's no way around only for windows, but others may be able to run on linux. It's something contestant would need to do by himself, or if giving source code, then site admins could modify the sent competition package and add different OS binaries to it.

It's at least better than not being able to test them at all after contest ends. I was a little disappointed in not being able to test more than half of the entries in this contest too. All projects should run at least on windows in my opinion. If it's freepascal project, that should already be given.

[SilverWarior]

@Will
I totally agree that public scoring for competition won't be good especially if pepole can't run the entries becouse of lacking proper OS or dependancies. That's why we have judges who can runn entries on any competition supported platform.
But still I think it would be good to alow other PGD members to express their own impresions on the entries. Offcourse this will be only informative and would mostly serve just as fedback to the developers (more fedback is always better).

@User137
Making game to be able to run on multiple platforms isn't easy especially if you don't have sufficient expirience with target platform.
While windows is still most popular platform on PC computers this is no guarantee that all of us have suficient expirience with it even due the fact that probably all of us used Windows at some point. But if someone is using MAC OS for the last 5 yers it will have a lot of troubles making game to run smothly on Windows due to qute some changes in Windows architercture (changed various paths, lots of changes in acces premisons etc.).
Same will go for me if I would try to make my game runable on MAC OS or Linux becouse I have no expirience with MAC OS and verry litle expirience with Linux.

[code_glitch]

Or... Package your game into a vmdk with something which uses WINE and XFCE or LightDm... Just a handful of megabytes and everyone is happy :) Plus, no need for installers or the like. Write once, run anywhere... If that rings a bell :D

[Ñuño Martínez]

Or... Package your game into a vmdk with something which uses WINE and XFCE or LightDm... Just a handful of megabytes and everyone is happy :) Plus, no need for installers or the like. Write once, run anywhere... If that rings a bell :D Another project of mine is do something like that: a simple Linux/FreeDOS/ReactOS distro that can run on CD (AKA. Live CD) and make it simple for developers to add games/apps. That is the modern version of good old autoboot diskettes. 8)

[code_glitch]

In theory a minimal system with just the desktop environment on top of the linux kernel and the libraries you need should zip up pretty small... So it'd be like a Java VM, just full on x86 :D

Might do this for my entries from now on...

[User137]

Making game to be able to run on multiple platforms isn't easy especially if you don't have sufficient expirience with target platform. While windows is still most popular platform on PC computers this is no guarantee that all of us have suficient expirience with it even due the fact that probably all of us used Windows at some point. But if someone is using MAC OS for the last 5 yers it will have a lot of troubles making game to run smothly on Windows due to qute some changes in Windows architercture (changed various paths, lots of changes in acces premisons etc.). Same will go for me if I would try to make my game runable on MAC OS or Linux becouse I have no expirience with MAC OS and verry litle expirience with Linux.
It's not that difficult when you are making apps with Lazarus :) Simplest requirement is not to include Windows in the uses list. Second is converting all paths to fit operating system. For this there is a internal constant PathDelim, which is \ or / depending on OS. But also you can get tips from nxPascal FixPath() function (http://code.google.com/p/nxpascal/source/browse/trunk/src/nxTypes.pas#188)

That should be all there is to crossplatform. Use OpenGL, not DirectX. Some differences with dll libraries, but that's a problem outside of compiled executable.

[LP]

It's not that difficult when you are making apps with Lazarus :) Simplest requirement is not to include Windows in the uses list. Second is converting all paths to fit operating system. For this there is a internal constant PathDelim, which is \ or / depending on OS. But also you can get tips from nxPascal FixPath() function (http://code.google.com/p/nxpascal/source/browse/trunk/src/nxTypes.pas#188)

That should be all there is to crossplatform. Use OpenGL, not DirectX. Some differences with dll libraries, but that's a problem outside of compiled executable.

Actually, this is much easier to say than to do. In reality, when you have worked on Windows platform for too long, it *is* difficult porting to other platforms. OpenGL is nice, but its initialization differs (unless you use GLUT or similar helpers, which have its own problems - for one, they are not readily available on Windows and are outdated). Sockets (anything beyond trivial) are considerably different due to WinSock specifics. Other helpers such as temporary path folders, registry configuration, dynamic libraries, etc. all all different too.

Also, you need to be very careful with the code you write to keep it portable.

To resume, for some very basic or crippled games/applications that will work and look poorly on all platforms - sure, it is relatively easy to acomplish, but as soon as you start working on features beyond trivial you *have* to start using platform-specific routes, which makes the code considerably more complex by adding many different code paths. Just take a look at actual LCL source code to see the real scope of a cross-platform project.

However, it is still a good idea to pursue multi-platform PGD challange and it will help people to work out issues in their code. Making and running your applications on different platforms is an ultimate challenge for writing applications, that requires discipline and experience to make proper architectural decisions.

[paul_nicholls]

Or you could write it using Oxygene for Java and it will run on Windows, Linux, and Mac OSX if Java is installed LOL :D

[LP]

Or you could write it using Oxygene for Java and it will run on Windows, Linux, and Mac OSX if Java is installed LOL :D
Similarly, you could write it in Delphi Prism, or alternatively in Embarcadero HTML5 Builder and it will in any HTML5-based browser, even on Android. ;)

[paul_nicholls]

Similarly, you could write it in Delphi Prism, or alternatively in Embarcadero HTML5 Builder and it will in any HTML5-based browser, even on Android. ;)

Or Smart Mobile Studio as HTML5 application too :)

[WILL]

You know guys, if this was a Delphi-only competition then things might be a little easier. I joke! ;)

However multiple platforms does provide the bulk of the tool, development and testing logistical problems of running competitions. And in the future it looks to be even more level of a playing field with at least 5 (maybe 6 including the web browser with HTML5?) major platforms PC and mobile combined. I can only see volunteered "judges" as the way to make official scores for entries.

However there can be some kind of unofficial scoring or value I guess, even for those that don't make their game for ALL possible platforms. That would require all entries to submit at least 1 video capture of their game after being completed, being played, recorded and posted on YouTube or Vimeo for public viewing. That does have a little bit of a problem of course as not everyone may have the software or know-how to make such a recording of their game or an account on YouTube or Vimeo to post with.

Not as big a problem as trying to port or code their game for all top platforms, so it's a possible solution. All submissions that wanted to take part in the "community impressions" scoring would need to make a thread and post the video so that it's embeded into the post so it can be watched here on PGD. From there all PGD community members can vote by using the "Rate This Thread" option and giving it their own personal rating as they seem it fit. That's an easy way of doing that, but is it anywhere near what you guys would like in the next competition?

[WILL]

It's not that difficult when you are making apps with Lazarus :) Simplest requirement is not to include Windows in the uses list. Second is converting all paths to fit operating system. For this there is a internal constant PathDelim, which is \ or / depending on OS. But also you can get tips from nxPascal FixPath() function (http://code.google.com/p/nxpascal/source/browse/trunk/src/nxTypes.pas#188)

That should be all there is to crossplatform. Use OpenGL, not DirectX. Some differences with dll libraries, but that's a problem outside of compiled executable.

From personal experience (I develop on a Mac exclusively now.) setting up your project from Windows to a Mac takes a lot of IFDEFs or a separate unit to handle resource paths (like what I use now) and some extra configuration in the Project Options to account for multiple platform compilation and bundling. It's not impossible or so complicated that it's barely doable without a rocket scientist degree, but it is a wee bit involved (you need to know Lazarus well!) and you might need some extra guidance from someone that has done it themselves often enough before.

It took me a good month or so to get Lazarus working for me on my Mac and to convert some of my projects so that they'll compile and run in the IDE and debug properly.

Sadly with the removal of X11 as standard in the latest version of Mac OS X (Mountain Lion) you now require a 3rd party (open source) project version of X11 for Mac to run my games. I still haven't weeded out X11 linking from my projects yet it seems. I have yet to figure it out.

So there is a lot of know-how involved when developing across platforms...

[WILL]

Or you could write it using Oxygene for Java and it will run on Windows, Linux, and Mac OSX if Java is installed LOL :D

I think you still need to get Platformation working on all 3 platforms though don't you Paul? ;)

[paul_nicholls]

I think you still need to get Platformation working on all 3 platforms though don't you Paul? ;)

LOL yes :D
I tried Platformation in the latest Oxygene for Java, and I am having to change a bunch of things due to compiler changes...so that hasn't happened yet ;)

[LP]

However multiple platforms does provide the bulk of the tool, development and testing logistical problems of running competitions. And in the future it looks to be even more level of a playing field with at least 5 (maybe 6 including the web browser with HTML5?) major platforms PC and mobile combined. I can only see volunteered "judges" as the way to make official scores for entries.
Well, there's always Apple Store for Macs and iOS, and Google Play for Android, so if competition entry appears there, it would be easy installing it. On the other hand, doing so might require quite an effort and specifically regarding iOS might require payment.

It would be really awesome if they'd be some sort of mobile-exclusive Pascal compo. :) (maybe you can request Apple some iOS-development program donations prior the compo? :))



However there can be some kind of unofficial scoring or value I guess, even for those that don't make their game for ALL possible platforms. That would require all entries to submit at least 1 video capture of their game after being completed, being played, recorded and posted on YouTube or Vimeo for public viewing. That does have a little bit of a problem of course as not everyone may have the software or know-how to make such a recording of their game or an account on YouTube or Vimeo to post with.
Then the game development competition will become visual demo competition. You won't have opportunity to actually "feel" or "measure" the actual ingame experience, the gameplay, fun factor, etc. Video is not gameplay.

[WILL]

Well, there's always Apple Store for Macs and iOS, and Google Play for Android, so if competition entry appears there, it would be easy installing it. On the other hand, doing so might require quite an effort and specifically regarding iOS might require payment.

To get your games onto the Mac App Store and the iTunes App Store, you'll need to pay an annual fee of $99 each. (totally worth it if you plan on going commercial with your games!) I currently am registered as an iOS developer, but not a Mac App Store developer. The biggest issue with submitting a game to these is not only the cost, but the time it takes for Apple to get to your game with it's approval process. I'm not knocking the approval process (I've not put a single trogan or malware app on my iPad or iPhone to date!) but it does make for a slow submission time-frame. And it varies in length of time.

That's the only reason I'd not try a mobile competition with iOS at this time. Then again maybe if there was a year-long event or challenge I could come up with something including iOS.


Then the game development competition will become visual demo competition. You won't have opportunity to actually "feel" or "measure" the actual ingame experience, the gameplay, fun factor, etc. Video is not gameplay.

Well the results of that side-portion of the challenge rating, would reflect only the "looks" of what everyone submitted, yes. There are a lot of competitions that go for this however. NecroSOFT and Dirk Nordhusen would often push visuals no matter what they released so this could just be a side thing to offer up a "something for everyone" solution. It would not be the "official" scores of the challenge competition though. Just a side rating that PGD members all could have a say in.

[phibermon]

I'm personally ok to submit a game in Win,OSX,Linux but developing stable support requires all 3 platforms working with capable hardware, least of all the fact that it requires an in-depth knowledge of the platform APIs, it's no trivial task and takes time to achieve acceptable stability and performance on all 3. I'm interested in seeing submissions in JVM bytecode or HTML5, see what people can get out of the related restricted hardware!

[code_glitch]

Well, as you all know I'm one for simplicity and tried and tested methods... There will be 3 versions of my entry: Linux, Windows and vmdk... And thats mainly because a lot of the stuff I do for windows is a quick scan through my code and the kludgiest of fixes, so the vmdk will be the recommended method - I'm already playing with minimal installs at the moment and using ubuntu server as a base (since its the closest to JeOS I can find for ubuntu like stuff...) although I am now strongly considering a DSL setup :)

[code_glitch]

Well, I've been toying with that idea, and I get a decent experience dished out to every user (granted they need 128m of ram and at least 800mhz of shunt) within 20 seconds of them hitting go. And when the virtual image is all zipped up, it fits in a 65-70MiB envelope. Would anyone consider this an excessive download?