Sounds good, I'm sure if one is started, artist will contribute,.:)

I'm for it too. I don't remember the last ones, so have no idea how this would be set up.

If it's weekly it has to be something small and oissible but worthwhile. Monthly would be open up more possibilities.

I'm not so good at participating in jams. Especially not art jams. But I'd be sure to follow at least some of the new challenges, if they were revived. They wouldn't even have to be all the time -- just whenever we identify a need. We could even alternate the weekly and monthly kind, or hold either at different times as appropriate.

As someone who loved doing the old weekly challenges, I whole-heartedly support starting them up again. Heck, those challenges are actually what convinced me to sign up in the first place!

Dannorder has heard our plea: http://opengameart.org/forumtopic/weekly-challenge-reborn-due-jan-15th

Hello I was thinking while we are at it why not add a second category and have a competition for coders as well and have them make a game with last challenges art... or just any art on open game art. For the ones who are incapable of doing art ;}

Just an idea

Edit:

I was also thinking a week can be a little short 2 weeks or a moth might be better 

I agree with the idea of a coding challenge... it should go hand in hand with the art challenge, where a game or demo is to be made with purely OGA assets, but in particular, the entries *have* to use the entries of the art submitted for the challenge.

I'm also aware of the time required in develloping stuff... so how about a coding challenge, bi/tri-weekly, that is required to use the previous two/three weeks of art challenges (at least one used per art challenge)?

There is another side to this - artists who have submitted art could potentially miss out on having their art used. To try and avoid this, I suggest developers to "claim" it by posting that they are going to use it in the challenge, and you get bonus points for being a unique user of those assets.

One last thing... coding isn't really a focus on this site... should coding challenges be on another site that works with OGA or would the powers here be okay with the challenges being set up and run from here?

The idea of a partnership site for a coding competition makes sense, but most places I have seen either by who is there or purposefully encourage a specific toolset or language. I think that kind of goes against the idea of openess that we have here. But I admit I haven't done a lot of looking.

I'm up for anything the community wants, though. Certainly I think an all inclusive approach to the idea of making games can only help things. Coding without the language focus I guess. The logic behind it, I guess, and the specifics of how to pull that off would depend on the tool.

Why not set up a periodic Open Game Art Jam on itch.io? Many of us have a presence there already, and it's a very welcoming place.

@Foz @Dannorder I think teaming up with an other site is extremely hard especially in the rewording stage hete you have badges that's is simple enough to reword.

@Dannorder I think your totally right when saying language should not matter one should be allowed code in the language he/she is most proficient in, but on the other had what would you define a game engine as unity, unreal, game maker, construct, etc as. 

I personally think the game code/project should be open at the end going with the theme here at OGA, but if we do so a challenge we should predefined some rules to make everything clear seeing this type of challenge is a little bit more complicated than a art challenge.

i don't mind organizing the competition if the admins feel its ok for me to do so, but the form would need to agree on the rules.

Edit: @claudeb I have never heard of the site, but if you think its a good place for a competition like this it could be good to check it out.

Edit2: It seems like a really good place to host a gamejam, it has a lot of useful features. it might even work well for the art challenge :} 

anyways its all up to the admins what they decide.

@dannorder

If there's a place for Free/Libre game developement, it is FreeGameDev. But as far as I know, a code competition never happened there.

@all

Here at OGA, the Liberated Pixel Cup done something similar (a code competition with specific contest made art), but was too much work for those envolved in judgement, money raise/sponsoring, etc, and never happened again (but was a fantastic competition, even as an spectator). Those not familiar with it see here.

itch.io looks to be a perfect fit for a jams - especially as it has a place for hosting your own jams, and it allows for seemingly all platforms. The only thing I can't see is a place for sharing your code, but that could be a link which I assume you can provide if you desired.

The only thing is that I don't know how much managing you have to do manually - I don't think anyone wants to spend more time than necessary on managing these, especially as the jam will be rolling. Does anyone have a clue what's involved with jams on itch.io?

What do you guys think about time lines? Keeping in mind that we would be talking about a rolling jam to show case the previous art jams. A week, I think, is way to short for a repeating jam, however 2 or 3 weeks seems like an ideal time frame for a quick idea, along with avoiding burning yourself out. I'm also leaning towards a rolling 3 week time frame for this.

@Foz I would go as far as to say every month we do a 3 week jam 1 week break and if the art jam keeps going a library of 4 weeks work of art to give plenty of art choice. 

As for keeping it open like i mentioned before i am all for it but does that really mater? I mean, your still encouraging people to participate and use free art. you could say the game needs to be free as a rule, just something to conciser more closely

I usually find in a week I have a bare bones of an idea, needing another week to flesh it out.

The reason I suggested three weeks is so that if needed, you could spend that week for a break, or you could work on it, it's more of an "open" week.

The downside to having more weeks involved is that the art showcased then gets diluted - and really, the reason why I'd like to do these jams is to show off the OGA assets produced for them - show love to the artists by using them. And usually, the more assets that are used, reduces the visibility of them.

Also, I am open to whether source code is provided or not.

Some people who might do these jams may decide to crack on with an idea into the commercial realm, in which case, I cannot blame them for withholding source code as it's their bread and butter.

Others might be embarassed about their code - this is a jam after all, and throwing code together haphazardly is natural as the aim is a working product rather than neatness.

Of course, opening your code up does allow for other to learn, or maybe even port at a later date.

Either way, I would just prefer the option being available to people if they want to share their code.

You can host your own game jam as and when you want,you can set your own rules or preferences as part of the jam, using the OGA themed artwork as part of your jam theme or whatever the hoster wants to do, and those that want to release the project code openly can do so aswell. It's up to them.(they just load a zip file as well)

i would say hosting one every 3 weeks is probly it bit over kill, maybe give it more time for more artwork to appear on the selected theme, least you can have a choice of themes when you set the jam up, and their would be more of a library. I think looking at the artwork and planning the game around the artwork itself sounds good, as normally its create a game then find the artwork, I like this opposite approach. :)

@chasersgaming the issue for me here is... Does the admins "Bart" ar you one... i have no idea who else is an admin here, mind if i use OGA name and host a game jam. and if so are they willing to award the winner(badge). I don't want it to be a separate entity I want it to be part of the actives here at OGA. If thats ok i dont mind ogrenizing it, it seems like it could be lots of fun.

I'm not an admin, sorry, I don't think Bart would mind, as its in the interests of the community here and creates more awareness of OGA, but I can see your point, however most artist upload their artwork with the intention of it being used, so there's no reason why you can't have that as a preference in your rules for the jam, to use "artwork from OGA only" as an example and link them here. And OGA doesn't seem to have a game hosting/player amongst it's artillary, but it wouldn't, it's not setup for game uploads as such but you can link your projects using the forums as we do everyday to whom is hosting your game jam, set up a forum topic just like this thread has, and have participants post here aswell. There are a few admins, medicinestorm is mostly on here and he is commenting on the threads, so maybe he might say something once he sees it, he may be able to arrange medal stuff, but I don't think prizes are necessary, it's the taking part that counts! :)

I can certainly award medals in accordance with whatever game jam rules you come up with. I doubt there would be an issue with OGA being a "co-host" either, though it would be helpful to see the whole plan before giving an enthusiastic "yes, lets do this!" 

By whole plan, I mean what are the rules for winning? what art can be used? Is the code required to be open source? how do contestants submit their game? How are the submissions judged and by whom? The discussion is already going in the right direction, but the answers still need to be ironed out. I don't think the answer to any of those questions would prevent me personally from being on board with this. It's more about making sure nothing is being promised on behalf of OGA that can't really be delivered... like prizes.

I think farrer's mention of the LPC is a good model to imitate here, but I'm not familiar with the pitfalls that may have run into. I wasn't around when all that was going down. "...was too much work for those envolved in judgement, money raise/sponsoring, etc..." tell me more about that.

@MedicineStorm I spoke most of memory, so I'll try now to dig up and point things out.

First off, I believe that LPC was by far the most ambitious and - although with some rough edges - a very successful contest. If we take in count that LPC's art style is still used (and that most of the greatest art posted on OGA follow that style!), even so many years after the contest... it's amazing!

At LPC I was just an spectator (did not created any art - I'm no artist after all) and didn't entered it as a coder (2d games aren't my preference for development). I mostly read the forum posts, followed the submissions and followed the developement of some games that I though 'hey, that looks cool' (compiled them from time to time - note: I'm not sure if all of them, but some of the games created a public repository and showed progress at a thread before the submission, and, for me, that was great, for examples, see [1], [2] and [3]... - searched here, the 'progress thread' wasn't mandatory[4]).

From the code judgement side, the proccess was much more longer than the initially expected, and that for various reasons, I believe. The ammount of projects submited - 48! - [5] didn't help at all (compiling 48 different projects, with different - and sometimes incompatible - dependencies *is* a nightmare!). There's some threads and posts on that for those interested[6][7][8] (and many more).

From the sponsoring, I did not found anything, but raising 11.5k (the initial target) isn't an easy task after all (and as some organizations were sponsoring LPC, entering in contact with them, explain the contest and elsewhere isn't a trivial task and means some reputation to be able to do with success).

Maybe LPC is too big for what is proposed now (a periodically jam), but I believe the idea's orgins are somewhat similar (for example, see[9]). I like a lot the LPC idea and it's a bit sad that it never happened again.

[1]http://opengameart.org/forumtopic/murderous-manor-progress-thread

[2]http://opengameart.org/forumtopic/lpc-entry-tales-of-gydia-progress-thread

[3]http://opengameart.org/forumtopic/laurelias-polymorphable-citizen

[4]http://opengameart.org/forumtopic/are-progress-threads-mandatory

[5]http://opengameart.org/forumtopic/important-game-build-results-2948

[6]http://lpc.opengameart.org/content/lpc-code-judging-near-wrapup-help-wra...

[7]http://lpc.opengameart.org/content/judging-update-sep-12

[8]http://opengameart.org/forumtopic/brief-informal-announcement-about-judg...

[9]http://opengameart.org/content/looking-opinions-oga-game-making-contest

@farrer thanks for looking and finding those threads.

suggestions:

What are the rules for winning?

on itch.io you can set up a "ranked" system based on votes., who ever is ranked #1 by the end of the chosen voting end date is the winner.

what artwork can be used?

Only artwork from OGA can be used, and must include at least "3" of the art competition theme. Remember to pay careful attention to the attribution/authors license, and you must include a credit and link to the authors OGA page used in the project, even if it's CCO.

Is the code required to be open source?

this is developers choice, but it is encouraged, or yes, you can upload the file, or include a link to where the file can be downloaded.(post to forum topic on OGA for programming?)

How do Contestants submit there game?

you can join the jam, then submit via the button before the end time.

how are the submissions judged and by whom?

maybe the ranking system can help with that, and that host can set that up either by submitters only, or the open public.

Prizes

Now, the artist wins a medal on OGA, I have no idea how you would reward the developer, I'm not that bothered about a prize, not sure about others?

My timeline estimate:

first month (4 weeks) create art theme and art itself. Vote, determine winner.

second month (4 weeks) create jam and develop game, vote,determine winner.

:)

Just to be clear, my view on these challenges is to show off artists work here on OGA - so much gets posted here and I rarely hear of it being used.

Therefore, in conjunction with the art challenges, I would like to see a coding challenge based on the art submitted for the challenges.

Obviously the challenges won't provide content for *everything* - so the extension to this is that all other assets have to be sourced from OGA only.

I'm on board with a 4 week cycle - what do you think - 3 weeks coding, 1 week rest/voting?

Also, if we do 4 weeks, that should require the last two elements of what has been done for the challenges (as it looks like there will be an art challenge every other week).

This could potentially lead to an interesting conflict of design (imagine one week where the challenge is "red backgrounds" and the next is "red characters"!) but it is through restrictions that we can be inventive!

I don't want contributing artists to feel left out by people not using their assets, therefore I propose a unique asset bonus scheme, so for each submission that is the unique user of a challenge asset, that submission will get a bump of 10 points each. For two unique uses (one for each week - maximum), that's a 20 point offset.

This will require all developers to snag a submission for their own, so if a developer decides to use an asset, they should "claim" it by commenting on the submission that they are going to use it. if they do not and other devs use it, then you lose out on the unique bonus.

Finally, I'm not fussed about badges and stuff - for me, it's just the taking part and showing the artists here how much we value their efforts. Oh, and having fun in the process ^_^

I love this idea and agree it'd be great to have some platform for showcasing all the great works that come into OGA.

With the forwarning that I am hopelessly over committed in my own projects right now, and probably unlikely to participate in the near future, so certainly nothing should be catered to my tastes, here's my two cents on the idea...

I like the idea of a bonus for using some of the challenge art assets, but not so sure about the 'unique' stuff, why try and restrict who can use what?   I'm not sure it serves anyone to have folks compete to 'claim' assets, in some ways it works against the entire idea of OGA (ie open assets).

Any ground rules on what submissions should/must entail?   Platform, code, license restrictions/requirements?

Another thought, I like the 3 weeks on, 1 week off concept.  Seems like a decent amount of time.  But an alternate approach would be to try an sync it closer with the art contests so that the themes could match up.

For example, forgetting the difficulty of coding anything in a week, imagine if the art theme was 'Rebirth' one week, and the next week, the programming challenge ran with the same theme.

So first, the art assets for the theme come in, and then the games/demos or whatnot for the theme come in.

I don't know if I'm explaining that correctly, but the idea would be to have the programming themes match the art themes, and in this way you'd (hopefully) get a natural cross over of the two (ie. art assets from the challenges being used in coding challenges).

Maybe a better example would be this:  Imagine monthly contests, one for art and one for code.  They can run at the same time, the art gets a new theme every month, and the code challenge gets the theme from the previous month's art challenge.

I will add that doing much of anything without making some custom art, either tweaks to existing stuff, or small stuff (UI, particles, etc), is quite difficult, perhaps not a strict requirement that everything be taken from OGA.  Maybe an ask that anything new be submitted to OGA under one of the licenses?

oops, looks like I'm guilty of jumping into late into this conversation without reading all the way up.

So yeah, I think I was basically suggesting what chasersgaming already said:

first month (4 weeks) create art theme and art itself. Vote, determine winner.

second month (4 weeks) create jam and develop game, vote,determine winner.

I like the idea of a bonus for using some of the challenge art assets, but not so sure about the 'unique' stuff, why try and restrict who can use what?   I'm not sure it serves anyone to have folks compete to 'claim' assets, in some ways it works against the entire idea of OGA (ie open assets).

The idea behind it is so that all the art that was submitted in the art challenges, or at least, as much as possible is used. 

There are a total of 8 submissions for "Reborn". However if all the developers decided to just use the same single submission, it doesn't show any love to the the other submissions. And I would love coding challenges to hopefully give more artists an incentive to join in, as they will have something that they can point to see their work in action.

The "unique use" isn't to force people into using other works, but rather to give incentive to use something unique.

Although there wasn't any sound submitted with the reborn challenge, if there was a single entry, and everyone used it - that's fine - everyone is at the same level as no bonus point are given.

Do you have a really good idea for a game but someone else has claimed the art you wanted to use? Use it anyway - a really good game will be getting lots of votes anyway.

Maybe a better example would be this:  Imagine monthly contests, one for art and one for code.  They can run at the same time, the art gets a new theme every month, and the code challenge gets the theme from the previous month's art challenge.

Yes, pretty much this. The art challenges looks like it will be a biweekly challenge (one week for an idea to form, one week to produce the art), so a coding challenge every 4 weeks which takes the previous two art challenges, with 3 weeks for dev and 1 week for playing/voting/rest/thinking about the next challenge.

I think to run the comp every 2 weeks is to much, once a month would be good, I'm all up for a comp but I think we need to consider other artists loading there work here and us saturating the "latest feed' with artwork for the comp would give people the arsehole.

poss added the featured art section? Maybe a comp art section? ;)

im not feeling the "claim" the artwork either, if developers use the same artwork and create 2 different games then that's great!, I do agree with extra kudos for using more than one comp asset for the project, that's a great idea.

:)

poss added the featured art section? Maybe a comp art section? ;)

It's a good idea, I don't know how hard it would be to implement though... perhaps as long as everyone used the tag "challenge" it could show the latest challenge entries and the latest art excludes challenges?

im not feeling the "claim" the artwork either, if developers use the same artwork and create 2 different games then that's great!

That is exactly what I'm saying - there is no penalty for using the same artwork, however... I'd like to give incentive to art that might be left unused.

All I'm saying that is that if devs just state which assets they are using before the challenge is finished, then other devs can use that knowledge to use different assets if they so wish.

I do agree with extra kudos for using more than one comp asset for the project, that's a great idea.

Someone could put together a terrible entry with the sole purpose of using all the assets just for the kudos :-/

This gives me an idea though - how about extra points for each "well used challenge art asset"? (via voting)

So for part of the voting scheme, we have "well used" entries for each art asset to be voted for - and "well used" is in the eye of the beholder.

This gives incentive to not only use as many art assets as possible, but to use them in such a way that is meaningful to the entry.

I agree every 2 weeks may be to a bit too frequent. However, I don't think art challenges saturating the Latest Art section is much of a concern. I'm guessing it will be saturated by several submitters, not just one, so it is still showcasing new art by various artists and, furthermore, draws attention to the art challenges which I think is a good thing. Also, the saturation will probably only occur near the end of a challenge deadline and won't dominate the site for weeks on end.

I understand the benefits of asset claiming; It encourages the use of multiple submissions instead of 5 people all using the same asset to the exclusion of 4 others. However, it would be difficult for programmers to take advantage of. For example, I may say "I am using this asset", and focus my game on that one asset. Another (already claimed) asset may have worked better for me, but I use the one asset instead just so I can get the bonus points. Then chasersgaming comes along and says "oh I'm using this same asset, too" which eliminates my bonus. WTF, chasersgaming?!

Just kidding, but the point is I don't know if a claim comes with enough of a guarantee for programmers to invest time in an asset. The underlying concept is good, and I like the "well used" idea, though.

If 2 weeks could be a bit much, what do artists here think about a monthly art challenge, with 21 days for creation and the remainder of the month for voting?

The coding challenge could then be in step (one month behind) with the same restrictions, and it would just be the single art challenge to incorporate.

edit: how about we try the two single week challenges this month (as one challenge is done), and then next month try a longer month challenge? We can compare what people think of at the end of it.

Let me toss out another random thought:  what about a bonus for submitting any alterations, derivatives or auxiliary works that a dev creates to use in their code project?

ex. I make 'Mama Vampira' in which Mama must save all the poor baby vampires from the wicked mortals who are out to stake them through the heart.  To do it, I take ElizaWy's LPC babies and add teeth and a cutesy crying animation as well as a death animation where a a stake goes through their little baby hearts and they turn to dust.  I also add a stroller for Mama to push the baby vamps around in.  Why not award some bonus points if I take the time to bubdle these changes up and submit them as a derivative work?

@medicinestorm WTF? that means "Worm Toe Farmer" don't it?, thats lible! ;) hahaha

i looked up the jam some more, and you can set "Criteria" for voting on, which is a 5 star rating system.

1 being low, 5 being high score.

we just need to work out what those criteria's are.

i.e Playability, artwork, fun, best use of artwork, etc.

@capbros i like the idea of derivative works being rewarded, but if that is set as a vote, you will Have to make a deriative to score more points as supposed to someone choosing not to make a deriative and lose a vote because of it, if you had an "overall" criteria then maybe the voter can base the score on it, if they mention that it is a deriative. :)

Ok, i have read all your comments and there are many good ones. i am currently making a good write up of the rules making sure it all works and incorporates your ideas.

As for last mentioned voting i was thinking of doing 2 rating systems. one by judges that work from the rule system and a community vote so there can be 2 winners . but as i mentioned still working it all out. i will show you it before i start the jam of course and you can give comments and we can change whats not good. give me an other day or so :}

I don't want to pester, but as the second art challenge will be finishing soon, how are you doing with the rules?

Sorry about that Foz, life cot in the middle of it :} i will be starting a new thead soon(Tonight or tomorrow). 

Nobody know how to get these challenges to appear on the front page?  I think that would be great for two reasons:

1) encourage participation in the challenges

2) demonstrate to casual browsers that the OGA community is active and alive

Draft a post and I'll see about putting it in the blog section. Not sure how yet, but I bet I can figure it out. 

I was thinking a link to the challenge post itself.

If you want a shorter blurb maybe:

Weekly Challenges Are Back!

This week's theme 'Science', see 

http://opengameart.org/forumtopic/weekly-challenge-science-due-jan-29th

for details!

Only downside is you'd have to update the post with every new challenge, but a direct link does seem like the best way to get people to notice the challenges.

Why not a sidebar/widget that has a link to the new chalange.

although this would requre bart to make it specialy for us :} so its probebly not the best of ideas.

I might need p0ss's help for a sidebar widget. They seem pretty... delicate to me. In the meantime, I don't mind updating the front-page post each time for a while.