More contests.

Chard on 2010/10/19 23:01

Hey. I was thinking about the pyday competitions that pymike used to run and I thought that it was kinda cool to have short lived events like that. The investment of an entire week while really rewarding can be quite intimidating and a 24 hour affair can lead to a much happier "give it a go" sort of attitude. So in these musing I wondered whether there would be interest in establishing some sort of new more regular series of game programming events which are very short (like a day). There's a great community here and it would be good to have more frequent stuff going on.

More regular events would allow for different kinds of events too. Perhaps instead of being a phrase we could have themes that are a picture or a piece of music. Or maybe some kind of game programming version of "Consequences", not sure how that would work. What would inspire more creativity? What contest restrictions help and what gets in the way? There's lots to think about.

Anyway if you're interested in helping get such a thing going say so and we can start kicking some ideas around. Obviously there's an issue of setting up some kind of infrastructure but I figure the first step's to get people interested and to get more ideas.

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Comments

richard on 2010/10/20 00:04:

I heartily endorse this product and/or service! I can offer no support beyond that except web hosting, if you need it.

The old pygame.draw challenge was quite fun, and some time before that there was a pygame.font challenge. Both ran for much longer than 24 hours, but probably would've been just as much fun in the shorter time.

shundread on 2010/10/20 10:53:

+1.

Some more specific contests or contest constraints I'd like to see:
  • Party games: Every entry must be playable as a party game, i.e. simple & short gameplay, with real-time multiplayer or turn-taking multiplayer.
  • Network games: Every entry must work over the net. That brings me to the project I said I'd be working on, but I've been slacking off on it. =P To be fair with myself, I'm trying to graduate, though.
  • Dual-Analog Joystick games: Every entry must be playable with a dual-analog joystick, kinda like one for PS2. Bonus points for usage of both analogs.
  • Experimental games: If your game can comfortably classified as a platformer, FPS, shoot-em-up, racing game, RTS, you're disqualified. (too difficult?)
  • Random game name generator contest: Once you register to the competition, your game name is generated automatically by the server. Deal with it.
Am I going too off-topic here?

Chard on 2010/10/20 13:43:

@richard: Hosting will probably be useful, thanks. :-)

@shundread: All great ideas! There're no concerns over a challenge being too difficult because we could do it once then never again if it doesn't work out.

I'd like to see more contest ideas that stretch beyond changing the rules and restrictions. The random game name generator for example, playing with the format a little. Maybe an event where instead of having individual entries we do one monolithic entry that everyone contributes to over the course of a day. Perhaps before the competition everyone can choose an object/idea and when it starts the objects are distributed to the participants and everyone makes a game based on the one they got (but not explicitly including it) then everyone gets to guess who got theirs. Sort of the secret santa version. :-)

These are all just ideas but I figure if events are more frequent we can experiment and see what works. Doing the less popular things less often.

Anyway, I shall be setting some sort of (likely django-based) project to run this. Obviously not too complex immediately as I'd like to start doing things as soon as possible. Anyone who wants to be a part of that let me know.

Perhaps more important would be a name for the project. I'm really bad at these so I'd appreciate help.

And again, anyone else interested in being part of it let us know.

Cosmologicon on 2010/10/20 13:45:

I'm all for it. But assuming you have at least one dedicated person working on the logistics, what's going to make or break it is participation. How are you planning to get people to actually do it?

Since I don't have anyone I can get to help me playtest Python games on short notice, and I don't have a joystick of any kind, I'm not crazy about shundread's first three ideas. So I will add:
  • One key: your game must be completely playable, from start to finish, using only the space bar.
But I think that being less restrictive will help get participation up. So I would make the contest a free for all until you've shown it's a success.

Chard on 2010/10/20 14:05:

@Cosmologicon: Love the one key idea. I'm aware participation is the issue, that's why I figured it would be good to open up the discussion rather than just start doing it.

Less restrictive in general is a good thing here I reckon. In a one-day challenge it might be better to do away with code reuse rules for example. Language restriction I'm less sure about. Python is an excellent language for making something quickly and for being portable so I'm tempted to replace a Python restriction with a Python suggestion. :-) Finally I was hoping to get people who are really excited about it to talk to people they know, this community is just a start. I certainly know a few people who'll participate semi-regularly.

Still, a "free-for-all" as you put it would be a good start. In the planned structure of later its a kind of a null event. No restrictions, no rules, one day. That's be a good place to start.

 Any other thoughts?

Cosmologicon on 2010/10/20 17:22:

Wait, if you get rid of the Python restriction, how is it not just a smaller Ludum Dare?

I like having the restriction, because it means I have a reasonable chance of running the majority of the games.

Hey, that reminds me, I'd really like to be able to rate games on a whole bunch of different categories. LD has 9, I think, but I'd even like as many as 15 or 20. You could have a lot more different "prizes", then, for winning each category.

bjorn on 2010/10/20 18:18:

I like the constraint theme.  Reminds me of a few pyweeks ago and the theme was thought to be too general, by some, so an additional challenge was proposed to make your game satisfy one or more of several constraints; I forget exactly what those were though.  One was about unorthadox dimensions of the game window (tall and skinny or very wide and short).  Could probably do multi-view-port as well or some such.

Had another interesting though, which may be fun, or may just not work at all, but give everybody a simple base game to start from (but with actual game play etc) and see what people can tweak it into with a day's work.

Unfortunately I'm in the camp of "I enthusiastically support this idea, and am fairly certain I won't be able to participate due to unfortunate lack of free time." :(

blakeohare on 2010/10/20 19:32:

I would definitely be interested in participating in this, and I may be able to round up a few others that may also be interested.

Chard on 2010/10/20 20:36:

@Cosmologicon: Good point on the Python thing. How entries are rated is definitely worth experimenting with. More categories would be exciting, maybe some categories should just be yes/no type things. Was the game original? Was the game exciting?

@bjorn: Somebody would have to write the base game, definite potential though.

@blakeohare: Good news!

Still trying to think of a name... pyggy was a good name... pyxy... pyzazz... I don't know.

blakeohare on 2010/10/20 21:55:

"PyDay"?

Chard on 2010/10/20 22:08:

Maybe pyday. There was a brief contest called pyday that doesn't seem to happen anymore.

RB[0] on 2010/10/21 19:11:

Indeed, Pymike was in the process of setting up another PyDay "soon", but then he went totally inactive - no email responses for like 8 months to a year.

I love the general idea of this - and depending on when it runs would definitely be interested in competing :)

mauve on 2010/10/25 21:48:

I like the random name generator idea, but I'd hate to be stuck trying to fit a game to "Croissant Paragliding" or something. Oh wait, that would be awesome. But you know what I mean.

As for theme suggestions... it's not very quirky, but how about just having to use a full Newtonian physics engine? Because I'd like to see more inventive ways of using them, and PyWeek is only throwing up one or two per contest.

Cosmologicon on 2010/10/26 03:08:

Chard, I think you should make a poll to determine the rules of the contest. I would ask as many things as I could think of (but make it multiple choice so there's a clear 1st choice). What should the duration be? When should it be held? Can you have teams? If so, are teams and individuals judged together? Can you use pre-existing non-library code? Can you use existing artwork? Should there be a technical restriction (like libraries you have to use)? Should there be a creative restriction (like a theme)?

It might make for an interesting combination of rules. And a poll will get people interested in the contest ahead of time. Just an idea!