12 hours ago, trjh2k2 said:

I could see maybe bundling those up into a simpler rule of just "make it easy to build on a windows machine".  Outside of that, just my 2c, but I'd avoid adding rules that don't directly play into the theme or goal of the particular challenge/competition.  If the goal is, for example, to examine certain gameplay mechanics, then it shouldn't matter what tools are used to get there.  If the goal is maybe to teach how to make an ECS-like system, or to teach how rendering works, then yeah, you'd want to restrict the toolset in that case, since the rule then supports the end-goal. 

This is keeping in mind again that if we're targeting beginners, limiting the workflow might again reduce the participants by those who aren't familiar or comfortable with certain tools or workflow yet.  You could argue that it's part of the point, but it depends on what the stated goals of the particular challenge are.

I agree. It should depend on the particular game/challenge. So how do i start such a project? Is there a sub-forum for that?

On 9/22/2017 at 11:43 PM, Finalspace said:

So how do i start such a project? Is there a sub-forum for that?

Thinking about how best to implement this. Creating a forum for it is an option, but is anything else needed to support the effort?

46 minutes ago, khawk said:

Thinking about how best to implement this. Creating a forum for it is an option, but is anything else needed to support the effort?

@Finalspace should answer that, though I want to point out some things:

In competitions like settings other forum often split the thing in 2 topics, one is the main thread where everyone show progress and help each other, the second is a pool where user vote the winner (at the end), but this I think makes no sense for programming because is not something as immediate you can judge as compared to a pretty picture,

Therefore shouldn't be considered a competition at all, just a friendly activity, and everyone can join.

Though I bet that getting something like "a badge of participation" for the users that present a running app by the end of the deadline (meeting the goals of the challenge), would encourage even more people to participate. The power of achievments!  

Given the popularity of Unity, another approach could be having an "Assignment" be equal to "Unity project + sample video".

The provided project could have had 1 script with its contents deleted (potentially with public functions declared). The participant's task is then to reimplement the correct behavior, as shown in the sample video.

For example, Pong with the "Ball" script deleted. All it contains is a Move function, with the parameters it needs. The participant must then use that to add back in the correct behavior.

In such a setup, there's a huge scope when it comes to complexity and difficulty of the tasks, and participants could choose Assignments according to their own preferred skill level.

To start i would like a sub-forum for friendly competitions in general.

Friendly competitions are not judged by experience or skill, but you get awards for reaching the actual goal - does not matter if its bad or good.

Each competition gets two threads: One sticky for introducing it and one for people posting their contributions only. In addition there may be multiple normal threads pointing to that competition, so people can discuss, help each other, ask questions etc.

Competetions are locked down to one fixed goal with some optional goals. There should be room for improvements, but not that much - otherwise it starts to overwhelm beginners i think.

The competitions has fixed date ranges when they start and end, but everyone can contribute to it later as well. This way dead competitions can be revived and people which cannot make it in time can contribute as well.

There will be a wiki or some kind of list categorized by each competetion, listing everyones contribution with a short description, optional screenshot + link to the executable and source. Source and executable links ideally to a github repository.

To motivate experienced peoples there may be optional goals like i already suggested: Limited by hardware/platform constraints, limited by software contraints: make it run on a toaster, make it really fast, make it slow like the web, expand it make that awesome thing, use SDL only, max 32 mb of ram... etc.

Ok. So in the past we hosted workshops with some similar goals: https://www.gamedev.net/forums/forum/36-workshops/.

I think we can get the basics setup pretty quickly - the forum for instance. I think ultimately more page support is needed (i.e. wiki) but the forums can get things started.

On 26.9.2017 at 10:11 PM, khawk said:

Ok. So in the past we hosted workshops with some similar goals: https://www.gamedev.net/forums/forum/36-workshops/.

I think we can get the basics setup pretty quickly - the forum for instance. I think ultimately more page support is needed (i.e. wiki) but the forums can get things started.

Great, than please create one ;-) I will create an introduction and add the first friendly competition.

Well, I think the ability to subscribe to the entire section would be needed, so users can opt to receive an email when a new challenge is started. Otherwise many people that would be interested (me included) would end up missing the thing or not noticing it in time 

On 30.9.2017 at 8:12 AM, MarcusAseth said:

Well, I think the ability to subscribe to the entire section would be needed, so users can opt to receive an email when a new challenge is started. Otherwise many people that would be interested (me included) would end up missing the thing or not noticing it in time 

 

Well, you push the "Follow" button above the thread you can choose from a set of subscription options...