Competition Genre Suggestions...

[dmantione]

Here's a thought for the cut scene idea (or any other idea for that matter), why not team up with an art related forum such as http://www.threedy.com/ and run a joint compo, developers from this forum could team up with artists from the other forums to compete. Additional categories would need to be added so that Artists would have a goal to work to as well as developers (artists probably won't be interested in winning a Chrome license for example but might be interested in a photoshop or Xara license).

As with the 2007 compo idea's would be posted so developers or artists could recruit people to help with entries.

This could of course open a can of worms because people would be working with people they don't know and what happens if your artist or developer pulls out half way through.

But it might help introduce artists to this forum for future projects

I like this idea. Yes, it would have to managed well to prevent unfinished games, but those happen anyway. From previous years it seems only about 1/4 of all games is finished.

[ianatwork]

[list]Cut Scene engine - Thats right basically a story telling engine that is typically used to push the story along. Think Machinima, but could be 2D or 3D. Maybe picking your favourite movie scene and re-creating it with computer graphics and code. NO pre-rendered stuff, it must all be scripted and real-time.

A game that can be controlled by someone with disabilities. EG, controlled by 1 key press, voice recognition, webcam interaction etc.

A maze based game.

A sport based game (arcade or manager/statistical style) as it is the Olympics this year.

An educational game.

I strongly disagree with these. They are genres, not themes.

OK I can see your point but you need to look at these in a different way.

A sports based game, this could be a made up sport or futuristic one. You're right in that all the entries would be sports based but there is no need to expect all the entries to be football games etc

A maze based game, OK so may be you'd expect all the entries to be pacman clones but what's to stop you having a first person shooter in a labyrinth. What about a "first out of the maze" driving game where you can drop road blocks to change the maze and hinder others ?

A game for someone with disabilities. This could be any type of game you just need to control it in a different way. If someone has limited movement or some other impartment, why should they be denied the fun of playing the games we do.

An educational game, again this could be almost any type of game. You would just need to implement some form of learning. Off the top of my head I'm thinking of a stealth shooter style of game. At various points you have to hack into a computer. You actually have to write some "Pascal" code in the game to complete a task. See how you are teaching someone Pascal and they are playing a game. OK so its not going to be used in schools but I'm just trying to get across that you need to think outside of the box.

[jasonf]

Did anyone ever play that game when they were kids where you get a piece of paper and fold it into a zig zag shape with about 3 or 4 folds.. then one person draws the head, another draws the body and someone else eventually draws the feet.. in the end you get this mad looking person. the key being that none of the other people knew what the other drawings looked like, they just had the guidelines for the next part to go from.

I've seen this done with stories too, different people have a chapter to write using only the character's basic information for guidelines.

This sort of thing would be great as a competition where there was one standard engine to use and different people were working on different parts of the game, but in secret.

Everyone just uses placeholder graphics, which are of the same size as the main char.

The level designer doesn't know what the final textures will look like

No-one knows what the music will be

The sound effects could be anything.

Perhaps this sort of competition should be for multiple forums, some sort of inter-community project.

it would make some really mad games though and might accidentally make a classic.

You could get some mad Physics based platform game featuring pandas shooting bananas at skate punks in a post apocalyptic jellybean factory to the tune of ride of the Valkyries..

[paul_nicholls]

You could get some mad Physics based platform game featuring pandas shooting bananas at skate punks in a post apocalyptic jellybean factory to the tune of ride of the Valkyries..

LOL!!!!

I can picture it now...

cheers,
Paul

[3_of_8]

:lol:

Project title: Bananas NOW!

[ianatwork]

One of the problems with this years competition is the shortage of time available to the PGD team to organise it. I've offered my services to Savage to help it happen but my day job restricts what I can do.

Did anyone ever play that game when they were kids where you get a piece of paper and fold it into a zig zag shape with about 3 or 4 folds.. then one person draws the head, another draws the body and someone else eventually draws the feet.. in the end you get this mad looking person. the key being that none of the other people knew what the other drawings looked like, they just had the guidelines for the next part to go from

Your concept certainly sounds interesting but has the potential to be difficult to implement. From personal experience it's difficult to find people willing to produce graphics etc. Creating a set of rules for such a game would also be tricky and time consuming.

The different competition ideas shown at the beginning of this thread were devised to allow programmers to get back to basics and concentrate on coding rather than spending a lot of time producing very graphically intensive games.

If someone wants to write a game featuring "pandas shooting bananas at skate punks in a post apocalyptic jellybean factory" then I'm sure it could be designed around one of the suggested topics.

There's lots of good ideas appearing and there certainly seems to be plenty of people that want to take part in a competition.

Can we have some feedback on the originally suggested topics such as any that you really don't like and the ones you don't mind. Maybe we can then narrow the options (and add some of the ones mentioned by the forum members) and then put them to a vote.

[Huehnerschaender]

Some of the suggested things would force people to team up with unknown people... mostly artists. I don't like to be forced into such situatons. There is always the problem of being dependand from this person you don't know. He can suddenly vanish (ask WILL and he can tell you tons of storys about this) or lose interest.

If someone WANTS to team up, there ya go, but please do not force people.

I don't like the cutscene suggestion. I don't think it is of much interest to most of us. No game mechanics, way too much graphical dependancy. This one would fit in a artists/scripters forum, but not in the game development forum. Cutscenes can raise the games value, but they do not make a game.

All other suggestions are ok to me. I really would love to see some people here coding sports games. I can't remember a single sportsgame here on the forums. Would be funny I think. Think about Yeti sports, Viking sports (throwing pigs etc). We could make a lot of funny stuff with this theme

Greetings,
Dirk

[ianatwork]

Think about Yeti sports, Viking sports (throwing pigs etc). We could make a lot of funny stuff with this theme

Very good, that made me laugh out loud (good job I'm not at work). This is an excellent example which shows the unexpected ideas that can come out.

[cronodragon]

I'd like a contest that involves procedural texture generation, in order to get rid of assets But that's just my preference.

[Mirage]

I'd like a contest that involves procedural texture generation, in order to get rid of assets But that's just my preference.

Programmer's art competition!