3rd Annual PGD Competition due to start Feb 1st...

**technomage** · 23-01-2007, 11:51 AM

Originally Posted by cairnswm

In the local game dev contest they had a prize for the best new comer entry. So anyone that had previously entered a contest or anyone that was considered a regular and knowledgable member of the community was excluded from winning the prize.

Its easy to add a prize like this (newcomer as defined by the judges) to the prize pool to attrach complete beginners.

great idea

**savage** · 23-01-2007, 12:54 PM

Originally Posted by cairnswm

Its easy to add a prize like this (newcomer as defined by the judges) to the prize pool to attrach complete beginners.

I also like this idea and will do my best to have a prize for said team/individual.

**Robert Kosek** · 23-01-2007, 02:20 PM

Originally Posted by Traveler

Originally Posted by Robert Kosek

I was considering joining the competition this year. But if it will degrade to this you can forget it!

That would be our loss then.

As Dean wrote

I think that that fact that all the competitors help each other out in the competitions shows what a great community this is.

Surely, for that alone you'll want to be part of it.

It's not that I envy more resourceful developers, Yuri. In fact I salute them for having come that far already.
I was merely afraid people would not join because of the thought that other competitors would use engines and thus have a head start. (and yes, I was referring to engines such as the ones you wrote Robert. Not the various libraries).

Certainly I do want to join in, with or without the help from other developers as the simple experience in making an attempt would do me good. It wasn't so much the talk about banning an engine that bothers me, but that some people would consider a library an engine.

I worked through a good half the NeHe tutorials straight from the C code to Pascal, my brain interpreting it on the fly. It's a skill I have learned to take a tutorial for another language and visualize it in pascal, but it is invaluable to say the least. Working directly with an API is difficult for a newbie or novice such as myself, and for some time I worked with dotGL which was an enhanced openGL header. But I didn't get so far because my math skills in the 3d realm are poor, especially for camera manipulation and such. So I need a library at least until I improve my mathematics and programming skills, so any talk of banning that would literally pull the carpet right from beneath my feet.

Surely you all understand this sentiment, and why I resent sentiments such as:

Originally Posted by WILL

Thats just the thing, they're not. This is life. So instead of trying to pull down the more experienced guys (frustrating them more than anything) to make everyone equal is doing more harm than good.

It's not about pulling the experienced guys that I want or even care about, but just giving a novice programmer/designer a fair chance. And if that comes through letting them use an advanced library or an engine, then so be it.

I want this as much as anyone!

It's not so much that you were wrong to voice the argument as it was that your original point was construed into something more harsh than that, nearly to the point of making me feel my participation wasn't wanted. I may be a "regular" member, mostly a lurker, but I am by no means a very skilled or experienced programmer; especially where games are concerned. I think cairnswm's idea of a newcomer rank would make this more enjoyable for the experienced folk, and more fair to the beginners.

**jdarling** · 23-01-2007, 02:32 PM

Originally Posted by savage

Originally Posted by cairnswm

Its easy to add a prize like this (newcomer as defined by the judges) to the prize pool to attrach complete beginners.

I also like this idea and will do my best to have a prize for said team/individual.

Along the same idea, how about a best of 2D and a best of 3D award? We already have best in sound, graphics, and something else (my memory fails me, time for an upgrade).

Lifepower, sorry for the mis-spelling, I'm famious for them unless I'm working in Word with Spellcheck turned on and IT recoginizes the word

.

**Robert Kosek** · 23-01-2007, 02:49 PM

Originally Posted by jdarling

Along the same idea, how about a best of 2D and a best of 3D award? We already have best in sound, graphics, and something else (my memory fails me, time for an upgrade).

I like that idea. It would make the competition more interesting in my opinion.

Originally Posted by jdarling

Lifepower, sorry for the mis-spelling, I'm famious for them unless I'm working in Word with Spellcheck turned on and IT recoginizes the word

.

Try Firefox 2, it has built in spellcheking.

And if you do any web design, the FireBug extension is a Godsend.

**Sascha Willems** · 23-01-2007, 03:41 PM

Just wanted to note that I posted news about this years PGD contest over at the german Delphi-OpenGL-Community and that I'll keep them also informed about the theme when the compo starts on february 1st. There are some talented people out there, so maybe some of them will compete this year.

**savage** · 23-01-2007, 05:09 PM

Thanks Sascha great stuff.

**WILL** · 24-01-2007, 03:06 AM

Nice!

I hope some will participate.

Also everyone look out for a few mini-ads for the PGD Annual soon to come out on YouTube.

I'll of course post a News item here on the site.

**Huehnerschaender** · 24-01-2007, 12:34 PM

Just a little statement from me

I am working in the big world of software development. It is my job to build software for other companys and customers.

It is very very necessary to code things in a way that they can be REUSED. Modular programming, units which can be useful in other projects etc. So why the heck do some people want to avoid the biggest advantage of object oriented programming? A framework or even an engine is a piece of software which can be reused in a new project. So please DO THIS! If this is not allowed, then please do not allow to use Borlands units, too!

uses windows, types; <------------ NO! You did not code the functions yourself!

I think this whole discussion is worthless. Build a car without using parts which other people manufactured! Try it please

So every entry which uses engines, frameworks etc should be valid in my opinion.

The biggest quest here is to make a funny, stable, playable, original game using object pascal, not to reinvent the wheel!

In addition to this: some of you mentioned the graphics which are "just plugged into an engine". Anyone knows how hard it is to make good looking graphics? Should we ban people who are familiar with 3DS Max, too? Or people who are able to work with photoshop?

Please stop this discussion

Just my two eurocents *hihi*

**WILL** · 24-01-2007, 02:59 PM

Just a little advance notice for everyone about what I've been working on for the last couple days.

As mentioned in my Video Ad thread, I've been planning to release video ads on sites like YouTube and Google Video. The first of these is going to be from footage captured from many of the games entered into the last 2 competitions.

What I've got so far looks great and I hope to be able to make at least one more just with the clips I'm gathering...

More will follow with further creativity.

Keep an eye out for these when they come out, I'll be posting a news item on the site in case you're not already on top of the 'YouTube craze' yet.