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View Full Version : PGD Annual 2011 Competition; Thoughts



WILL
20-09-2010, 03:55 PM
Hey everyone, just wanted to start the buzz about the next PGD Annual. It's long past due for us to have one, but there is another in the works in case you were wondering. ;)

What are your ideas, thoughts about the next competition?

We will most probably not do one in 2010, but instead 2011 to give us time to plan, talk to sponsors, acquire judges and advertise. We want to do it right with this next one so we are starting a bit early with a few things done a bit differently.

We're keeping the simplified format, there will be a new theme, but it might be a bit shorter and you'll have more notice before it starts to get prepared and tell all your friends about it.

In fact I'll be going around to all the forums I know and indie game development news websites and posting about it, so if you know of any sites that I should visit early next year drop them onto a list here!

Now this is all early so don't get too excited just yet, nothing is official, I'm just talking openly about it with you all to get input and ideas. Mostly to do with advertising and to help spread WOM about the competitions.

And of course all the donated money to the PGD fund will go into advertising and prizes of this next competition so feel free to donate. :)

chronozphere
21-09-2010, 08:08 AM
Like I stated before, I think that simplicity must be key in such a competition. We have to make sure that it's something that can be done on a small time budget. For example, we could try to organize it in one week or weekend. It's way more fun to see 8 small finished games than 3 finished games made in 5 months (like the last competition).

I think this is the most important part. The theme is not that important to me, because even If I don't really like it, I can still spend a few days to make something crazy. :P

WILL
21-09-2010, 03:46 PM
Yeah, we'll be keeping the theme simple this time around to keep the competition more accessable to all skill levels. I'll also be providing the Awards for Excellence Awards.

AthenaOfDelphi
21-09-2010, 06:44 PM
Like I stated before, I think that simplicity must be key in such a competition. We have to make sure that it's something that can be done on a small time budget. For example, we could try to organize it in one week or weekend. It's way more fun to see 8 small finished games than 3 finished games made in 5 months (like the last competition).

I think this is the most important part. The theme is not that important to me, because even If I don't really like it, I can still spend a few days to make something crazy. :P

WILL's organising the next big one, but it was always my plan with the PGD Annual site to allow smaller competitions that are done just for kicks... short, sharp, coding bonanzas... as you say weekenders or week long ones.

WILL
21-09-2010, 10:02 PM
Yeah, I may also run a few couple-of-weeks ones under a different brand, maybe call them 'challenges' instead or something. I was thinking of doing this under Pascal Gamer though, but since we are all one big happy family, once we get organized for competitions again, they can be ran through the PGD Annual site like the 'big one' it's self.

JSoftware
21-09-2010, 11:45 PM
Sounds good :)

code_glitch
22-09-2010, 03:17 PM
all sounds good, might enter myself. How 'simple' are we talking here? Thats my main question and what is the standard of the games submitted?
*worries while sifting through the library of half finished games*
and do you have a 'half-finished-sort-of-working-but-not-too-well' competition?

phibermon
22-09-2010, 04:48 PM
oh awesome, I totally wasn't around for the last PGD and I totally want to be part of this next one. Are we talking 1D? because if it is I've got an excellent idea for a game, I call it 'line'. The object of the game is to move along the line meeting other 1 Dimensional characters who ask variations on the question "Do you think higher dimensions exist?" at which point the player has to select from range of responses that reject the notion of higher dimensions as pure fantasy.

Once a suitable response has been given, the player continues upon their journey, safe in the knowledge that they'll never fall off anything.

Ñuño Martínez
06-10-2010, 11:28 AM
WILL's organising the next big one, but it was always my plan with the PGD Annual site to allow smaller competitions that are done just for kicks... short, sharp, coding bonanzas... as you say weekenders or week long ones.

I agree. I've joined some week-end contests and they were funny, and people did interesting games too. Actually I did my best game in one of these contests: Train (here you have the development blog (http://amarillion.bafsoft.net/tins06/msglog.php?user_id=38)).

chronozphere
06-10-2010, 04:51 PM
Are we talking 1D? because if it is I've got an excellent idea for a game, I call it 'line'. The object of the game is to move along the line meeting other 1 Dimensional characters who ask variations on the question "Do you think higher dimensions exist?" at which point the player has to select from range of responses that reject the notion of higher dimensions as pure fantasy.

Once a suitable response has been given, the player continues upon their journey, safe in the knowledge that they'll never fall off anything.

LOL! :D Fantastic idea. Keep in mind that you should add a dialog to let the player choose one of the following screen resolutions: 1x800, 1x1024 and 1x1280. :P

WILL
07-10-2010, 03:12 AM
I can confirm that the next PGD Annual theme will be simpler than the last few years.

chronozphere
07-10-2010, 07:09 AM
I also think that we have to ask ourselves what the best time is to organize a competition. Personally, I dont have any time left in 2010. Februari/March would probably be good for me. :)



I can confirm that the next PGD Annual theme will be simpler than the last few years.


Actually, the "arcade" theme of previous year was really easy. The stupid thing was that I just ignored that and made one of the most complicated pascal games.. (math-wise) :? I really shouldn't fall into that trap again.

Nitrogen
07-10-2010, 08:41 PM
I've always wanted to do something that has a strong interaction between the action on the screen and the sound effects and music.

Something like Everyday Shooter where every time you blow up something, it adds notes to the music.
Or that Song Rider game where you ride on a glowing line that represents the music track currently playing, and it gets twistier the more energetic the music is.

chronozphere
07-10-2010, 08:50 PM
Or that Song Rider game where you ride on a glowing line that represents the music track currently playing, and it gets twistier the more energetic the music is.

I immediatly thought about audiosurf. :D Yeah.. those kind of games are very interesting. The problem is that they have some pretty complex code to get the right information from the music track like bpm and such. :)

Nitrogen
08-10-2010, 10:40 AM
Yeah thats the name, Audiosurf!

True, but FMOD has a DSP function that returns an array of floating point numbers telling you how loud each frequency band is right now, so you wouldnt be able to do something that requires future knowledge of the music, but you could do real time animation for instance against it..

NecroDOME
09-10-2010, 10:02 AM
Can't wait... This time I'm going to make something simple... monochrome, 320x480...

WILL
11-04-2011, 10:43 PM
Continuing from these posts in this thread http://www.pascalgamedevelopment.com/showthread.php?8132-MapleStory-Project&p=56086&viewfull=1#post56086...



Any hints on the theme? :D

Indeed, any hints to a theme or potential themes/ideas to do with the next PGD? Looking forward to it already...

I can make a suggestion... get some assets ready and start to pick out the library/engine or get your own engine ready before-hand. I find that not having enough assets like sprites or having portions of my game code not working really slows down my development.

Actually often this is usually the case of what I hear from most competitors who's entries don't get submitted.

paul_nicholls
11-04-2011, 11:27 PM
Thanks for the tips Jason :)

cheers,
Paul

dazappa
11-04-2011, 11:30 PM
It's hard to focus on creating assets when 90% of them might not end up being used due to a specific theme; as for base code hopefully it won't take 3-5 months to get that ready :P

code_glitch
12-04-2011, 04:22 PM
Could we have the basis for an entire game ready already? I mean, I have 2d tile drawing, map files from TileD, gravity and soon to be particle effects all working together, all I need is the tiles and place those in maps and presto: any 2d game is almost done. Except for space where I have to change over to my 'Open Movement' engine where its not based on 'steps' from tile to tile...

From that perspective it seems rather easy, so is that even allowed? But I agree with dazappa, it is hard trying to create random assets for almost no reason at all and without knowing if they will ever be used. Hey, anyone know of a good spriting/tile drawing/pixel art tutorial for GIMP/similar?

cheers,
code_glitch

WILL
09-08-2011, 05:59 PM
It's almost time to start the competition wheels back up again! ;)

I've been narrowing down some even better ideas for competition theme that I'm sure you all will love one way or the other, but I have to pick one already. :D Are you guys getting excited for it yet?

I know, I know, you are still waiting for the PGD Challenge results. They're coming. I've gotten all mine done and we are just waiting for Stoney who has had some delays, but they'll be ready soon.

I'm hoping for a Late October/Early to Mid-November start date. I'm also in between making it 3 months or 4 months. taking us to about Jan or Feburary. What do you guys think? Any of you in school, maybe you can help guide us to the best time you can take part. I've done a poll in the past and it seems that November is probably the most productive time for all PGD members.

Also what do you all feel about the IGF entry fee as top prize? Results after some of the past winners being given the opportunity have been mixed. And in most cases it's too short of a timeframe to complete your entries to make an IGF worthy submission. What are your thoughts?

Traveler
09-08-2011, 08:46 PM
In regards to the timeframe, I advise not to make it a long competition. 3 months max is more than enough, though I rather even see it become two (initially?).
If there is something I've learned (through my work) it's that shorter timeframes usually give better results. It may sound odd but you'll stand a better change of actually finishing the project if you don't have that much time to work with. For example, you tend to be more realistic about your capabilities and there's less time to get side tracked/lose interest in the project.

As for the IGF price, IMO, it has never really been a great success. It was a nice idea, but I think the money could be better spend on a different price (or prices).

phibermon
10-08-2011, 12:55 AM
(You have to pay to submit to IGF? That doesn't.. well, it seems wrong some how)

Some random ideas for prizes :

- Paying for a suitably priced graphics artist, 3D or otherwise to create some content of the winners choice (or in a similar vein, voice-over artist etc)

- A suitably priced licence for a library or application of some sorts (BASS audio lib shareware licence, Milkshape 3d etc)

- A kiss'o'gram dressed up as Princess Leia or Jack Harkness (I'm only half joking ;) )

- Pretty much anything from thinkgeek.com (I'm so getting an enterprise pizza cutter)

- Money donated to charity of winners choice (or a couple of acres of Rain Forest from the World Land Trust)

- A copy of one of the 'Game Programming Gems' books (Volume 5 has some lovely techniques)

---

You know what? it's hard thinking of ideas :\

WILL
10-08-2011, 06:24 AM
Well if you look at past competitions (see showcase! (http://www.pascalgamer.com/pgdannual/)) there was a lot of software and licenses given out. Some hardware was also given, but the creme de la creme was a shiny new copy of Delphi from Borland. Well Borland is gone and they cheaped out during the last one, pre-Embarcadero, so hopefully David I. is still interested in supporting the PGD Annual like previous years with a new version of Delphi. In this case Delphi XE2 Starter edition and perhaps even Professional. The idea of getting Architecture Edition was nice and all, but to be honest, it was always overkill as most of whats in the higher versions was never used in game development and the 'cost' would have been better put towards getting more copies rather than a single costly, overkill version to one person.

We've also done books and sound cards too...

We've thought of publishing deals in the past as well, but we've never really had the contacts and honestly only a portion of the games were even close to being publish quality.

Here is a new idea though...

I did think about having a yearly awards nominations, maybe something like how DelphiGL does it, where you can submit your game for presentation no matter when it's development started and we would award from those nominations (usual registration required) for similar past awards like best graphics and best music & audio, most innovative, etc... Each game can be submitted as many years as possible, but they can only win once. Once they have won something, it's no longer valid for renomination.

The question for the last idea is do we have enough projects generated yearly to make it work? I believe so since I see new games published year to year from specific developers. So it's possible to do the yearly awards seperate from the game dev competitions. The Jan Horn award should stay with the competitions though.

Thoughts on that last idea?

paul_nicholls
10-08-2011, 06:34 AM
I did think about having a yearly awards nominations, maybe something like how DelphiGL does it, where you can submit your game for presentation no matter when it's development started and we would award from those nominations (usual registration required) for similar past awards like best graphics and best music & audio, most innovative, etc... Each game can be submitted as many years as possible, but they can only win once. Once they have won something, it's no longer valid for renomination.

The question for the last idea is do we have enough projects generated yearly to make it work? I believe so since I see new games published year to year from specific developers. So it's possible to do the yearly awards seperate from the game dev competitions. The Jan Horn award should stay with the competitions though.

Thoughts on that last idea?

hmm...I like these ideas :)

cheers,
Paul

chronozphere
13-08-2011, 11:26 PM
Also what do you all feel about the IGF entry fee as top prize? Results after some of the past winners being given the opportunity have been mixed. And in most cases it's too short of a timeframe to complete your entries to make an IGF worthy submission. What are your thoughts?


That's quite an interesting question. I know that i'm guilty of not finishing an (in my eyes) IGF worthy game while I won that prize, so I feel like giving a comment on this. I think the basic idea of the IGF prize is rather good but it's succes really depends on the motivation of the winner to continue the project and to make a beautifully polished inspiring game. In my case, I couldn't pull that off. :( It might be worthwhile to make this prize optional. If the winner decides not to continue the game, it may be possible to offer an extra book/video-game or maybe a piece of hardware. I bet everybody likes that. When you sacrifice the IGF prize and one book you could offer a piece of nice video-hardware instead.. yummy!

But above all, I think that the prize pool was huge. If I look at the value of the prizes, my PGD annual entry was the most profitable project I have ever worked on. :D Not complaining here. :)

WILL
06-09-2011, 12:40 AM
Well I liked the idea of recognizing more than just a handful of those that took part in the competition. I know it'll never be anything like the IGF, but in a small way we can at least reward those who complete projects and release games in this way.

As for the IGF prize, it had it's run but it never really got anyone into the final selections the three years we did it. To be honest a good part of this is because of the short time-frame that the PGD Annual projects were started compared to how long some of these other indie developers have been at it with theirs, it's not that fair to throw such a new project at another competition like that. I think it was, in part, a substitution to an earlier idea I had that we were hoping to land a publishing deal with a game distributor. That didn't fan out well either.

1st thru 3rd do get prizes though. In fact most of the competitions allowed for someone to hold something in their hands after winning. Except maybe the 2nd one, it was all software and licenses I believe. (The Big Boss)