Stage 3 Results Posted

[WILL]

Hey everybody,

The last of our judges has just finished scoring the submitted entries. And with that I've posted them on the Results page.

You can check them out here: Competition Results Page (http://www.pascalgamedevelopment.com/competitions.php?p=results&c=3)

Good luck to everyone in Stage 4!

[Traveler]

Excellent!

Thanks for posting and a good luck from me as well for the next stage!

[technomage]

Well done Judges.

Keep up the good work. Everyone.

[Huehnerschaender]

Hey, great to know the standings. Thank you very much @judges.

Seems that I have some things to fix for further releases :)

[3_of_8]

Uh, that's what I call a really bad score. Seems like I gotta strain a little more.

And BTW, to Clootie: In your comment you said that there is no need for terrain CLOD. Perhaps you wouldn't have said that if you knew how bloodily slow my notebook is. :lol:
Without CLOD, I get no more than 25 FPS.

[NecroDOME]

Everyone good look with teh compo!!

[rtf]

Uh, that's what I call a really bad score. Seems like I gotta strain a little more.

Same. The judgements as to whether I had finished the "gameplay" requirement were reversed this time, but not for the better. From 2/3 to 1/3. :lol: The things they didn't like will be remedied through more gameplay additions, tuning, and an options menu.

I don't really like facing the wide variation of opinion - and assumptions on technical matters - our judges have, but I have to admit that it keeps me focused on solving all the problems, not just the ones I'm interested in.

I think it'll be easy going from here. I won't have to worry much about gameplay judgements until the end, the engine is usable and won't slow me down again, and I have motivation; I'm going to show and test builds of the game for a game design class and get feedback from peers. They'll all be working on games of their own, so it'll bring me from thinking in the "competition" mode (bad) to the "collaboration" mode (good).

[jasonf]

I agree, it's better to have gameplay elements discussed during the development process while you still have a chance to change/alter/correct them.

I quite like the idea of releasing test builds for peer review, partly because it lets you know how people are reacting to certain elements of your game, what people think is cool, what people think is bad also any compatability issues can be ironed out early on so you don't have a TODO: list the length of a small oil tanker to complete the night before final submission.

In a book on gameplpay design that I've read, it reccommends play testing often by many different people to get feedback.

Basically, (and it's the same with all software development) If you're stuck in front of your game all day, you become used to it's little flaws and quirks.. things which might annoy other users and destroy the immersion. You skip over the things that are broken and learn not to do certain things because you know it won't work properly... but the end user doesn't have this knowledge and soon become frustrated by the game, failing to see it's coolness because all they see is faults.

The general rule is, get as many people involved as you can, as quickly as you can, get feedback, make note of what people say and then decide what to improve, take out, add, alter.. etc.. but be wary of scope creep.