Congratulations to the winners! They have made some great games with the resources, time and tools they had available. Free game development is not easy, but with the work and effort that has been put into this competition from everyone, there are much more art and many more and improved tools available, and artists and game developers have gotten experience from participating in the contest (I know I have definitely learned a lot from participating). I hope there will come a future LPC competition, and if so, I will look forward to it.
As Bart has mentioned in the "Brief (informal) announcement about judging dates", there has been many problems and issues, such as an unexpected number of game entries, difficulty building games, judges dropping out, etc.
You are right, the VM image was definitely large (and 8Gb sounds right). One possible solution to that would be to let others try and help with building the game, but that is not a very practical solution. In effect, it would probably split participants into two groups: those who can download such a VM image, and can then compete with both native as well as html5+javascript, and those who cannot download such a VM image, and thus is limited to html5+javascript. But if the games competition has two categories, native and html5+javascript, I think that solution would be ok.
I am not convinced that there would be a drastic drop in the number of participants without the monetary reward. And even if there is a substantial drop, getting even more consistent art that follows the LPC graphics style would be a win in itself. It would also benefit existing games that use LPC art. That said, I think you are right that a monetary reward is generally a good thing, but I think it would be a better idea to experiment with monetary rewards for games only when the competition is more established.
I agree that letting general people vote on projects that include monetary rewards is likely to be a bad idea or difficult to manage properly. Either way, no monetary rewards with public votes sounds to me like a good option, since it should make managing the competition much easier, and (I believe) will still attract people to make entries. I would personally still be interested in participating with a game if there is no monetary reward.
I would not like being forced to develop games in just html5+javascript. I think requiring each game entry to build perfectly on a VM image that is given well ahead of the game portion of the competition should fix the issues with building and running the games. Disqualifying games that do not build or run on such a VM image is entirely fair, because the amount of time the game developer(s) has to spend on getting it working on the VM is dwarfed by the amount of time interested players may spend on trying to get it to work. And with a whole month, there is plenty of time to get things set up properly. And points can always be given for easily running the games on other platforms.
With the judges backing out and it being just you two, I can easily see how the judging got so delayed. I still believe a new LPC can be held in the future, especially if the reasons for the last competition's delays are clearly communicated, and maybe held at a smaller scale to make it easier to manage (you could leave out the monetary prize out for games and let the prize just be winning the games competition). And given that 90% of the competition went decently or great IMO, there isn't much that needs fixing. But this can all be considered once 2014 comes around.
One upside to the delay to the next competition is that the programmers that participated will have a lot of time to create and improve game development tools, which is something that is generally lacking on Linux. The FOSS engine and IDE I used in the last competition (enigma-dev.org and lateralgm.org) have matured a lot since the competition was held, and I believe they will have matured a lot more once the next competition comes around. And with better game development tools, it should be easier to develop and deploy games for Linux.
It's really bothersome, because I think they did decently or great in arranging 90% of the competition, but the judging of the games just failed. I believe they were surprised by the large number of entries, they didn't have enough time, and I assume that their judging procedure wasn't designed to scale to such a large number of entries. I believe they naturally want to be thorough given the size of the prizes, and their procedure would probably have been fine with a low number of entries. Another thing that requires even more time is having to get entries running, which is often non-trivial.
I think most of the issues can be solved for a potential next competition, given that there is a lot of experience now, and people know what works and what doesn't. I am also considering volunteering to be a judge for the next competition instead of participating (especially if the judging procedure is improved, and I have some ideas for that), but I cannot really volunteer for being a judge in this competition given that I am participating in it.
What is the status of judgement of the games? How many games have been judged?
If it is not too bothersome, I would also like to know the procedure used for judging the games. There might be ways to speed it up, and given your limited resources, that may not be a bad idea.
I personally would be fully ok with it if you postponed the judging to much later, such as September 30th, given that you are volunteering this, there is a huge number of games and very much art to judge, and that several games are difficult to build and run. I have personally had trouble with getting many of the non-html5 games to build and run.
I also think that using a VM for running the games on is a very good idea, and that if you hold the competition again, giving out a VM file at the start of the competition and requiring that the game runs on that VM file following the exact instructions given by the game installation files would be a very good idea. That should help with the building trouble, not just for you but also for others who try to build and run the games. That does make it harder for the game developers, but I definitely think it should be the responsibility of the game developers to ensure that the game builds and runs without any issues, since it is harder for people other than the game developers to fix the issues.
Congratulations to the winners! They have made some great games with the resources, time and tools they had available. Free game development is not easy, but with the work and effort that has been put into this competition from everyone, there are much more art and many more and improved tools available, and artists and game developers have gotten experience from participating in the contest (I know I have definitely learned a lot from participating). I hope there will come a future LPC competition, and if so, I will look forward to it.
Thanks to those who played and reviewed my game!
Np, happy to help :).
I am also using Ubuntu 12.04, and I got it working using the following commands:
gunzip lpc_daneeklu.tar_.gz
tar -xf lpc_daneeklu.tar_
cd submission_daneeklu/
As Bart has mentioned in the "Brief (informal) announcement about judging dates", there has been many problems and issues, such as an unexpected number of game entries, difficulty building games, judges dropping out, etc.
You are right, the VM image was definitely large (and 8Gb sounds right). One possible solution to that would be to let others try and help with building the game, but that is not a very practical solution. In effect, it would probably split participants into two groups: those who can download such a VM image, and can then compete with both native as well as html5+javascript, and those who cannot download such a VM image, and thus is limited to html5+javascript. But if the games competition has two categories, native and html5+javascript, I think that solution would be ok.
I am not convinced that there would be a drastic drop in the number of participants without the monetary reward. And even if there is a substantial drop, getting even more consistent art that follows the LPC graphics style would be a win in itself. It would also benefit existing games that use LPC art. That said, I think you are right that a monetary reward is generally a good thing, but I think it would be a better idea to experiment with monetary rewards for games only when the competition is more established.
I agree that letting general people vote on projects that include monetary rewards is likely to be a bad idea or difficult to manage properly. Either way, no monetary rewards with public votes sounds to me like a good option, since it should make managing the competition much easier, and (I believe) will still attract people to make entries. I would personally still be interested in participating with a game if there is no monetary reward.
I would not like being forced to develop games in just html5+javascript. I think requiring each game entry to build perfectly on a VM image that is given well ahead of the game portion of the competition should fix the issues with building and running the games. Disqualifying games that do not build or run on such a VM image is entirely fair, because the amount of time the game developer(s) has to spend on getting it working on the VM is dwarfed by the amount of time interested players may spend on trying to get it to work. And with a whole month, there is plenty of time to get things set up properly. And points can always be given for easily running the games on other platforms.
With the judges backing out and it being just you two, I can easily see how the judging got so delayed. I still believe a new LPC can be held in the future, especially if the reasons for the last competition's delays are clearly communicated, and maybe held at a smaller scale to make it easier to manage (you could leave out the monetary prize out for games and let the prize just be winning the games competition). And given that 90% of the competition went decently or great IMO, there isn't much that needs fixing. But this can all be considered once 2014 comes around.
One upside to the delay to the next competition is that the programmers that participated will have a lot of time to create and improve game development tools, which is something that is generally lacking on Linux. The FOSS engine and IDE I used in the last competition (enigma-dev.org and lateralgm.org) have matured a lot since the competition was held, and I believe they will have matured a lot more once the next competition comes around. And with better game development tools, it should be easier to develop and deploy games for Linux.
It's really bothersome, because I think they did decently or great in arranging 90% of the competition, but the judging of the games just failed. I believe they were surprised by the large number of entries, they didn't have enough time, and I assume that their judging procedure wasn't designed to scale to such a large number of entries. I believe they naturally want to be thorough given the size of the prizes, and their procedure would probably have been fine with a low number of entries. Another thing that requires even more time is having to get entries running, which is often non-trivial.
I think most of the issues can be solved for a potential next competition, given that there is a lot of experience now, and people know what works and what doesn't. I am also considering volunteering to be a judge for the next competition instead of participating (especially if the judging procedure is improved, and I have some ideas for that), but I cannot really volunteer for being a judge in this competition given that I am participating in it.
What is the status of judgement of the games? How many games have been judged?
If it is not too bothersome, I would also like to know the procedure used for judging the games. There might be ways to speed it up, and given your limited resources, that may not be a bad idea.
A status update would be very nice.
I personally would be fully ok with it if you postponed the judging to much later, such as September 30th, given that you are volunteering this, there is a huge number of games and very much art to judge, and that several games are difficult to build and run. I have personally had trouble with getting many of the non-html5 games to build and run.
I also think that using a VM for running the games on is a very good idea, and that if you hold the competition again, giving out a VM file at the start of the competition and requiring that the game runs on that VM file following the exact instructions given by the game installation files would be a very good idea. That should help with the building trouble, not just for you but also for others who try to build and run the games. That does make it harder for the game developers, but I definitely think it should be the responsibility of the game developers to ensure that the game builds and runs without any issues, since it is harder for people other than the game developers to fix the issues.
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