Open Source Mac Game Programming Competition

Geert Poels writes "The uDevGame Mac Game Programming Contest was established by iDevGames in 2001 to energize game development on the Apple Macintosh platform. With the 2002 edition launched only two weeks ago, already 42 games have entered the competition. Most notable about this competition isn't the impressive collection of prizes worth $11,000 but rather the obligation for all participants to submit all source code. This kind of competition is groundbreaking for the Mac community in every way."

Comments

Re:Games in general these days

[Powercntrl]

Devs used to care about a good storyline, exciting game play etc. Now it's all about who gets the best framerates, what game has the prettiest textures. I don't care what the game looks like anymore, thats all window dressing.

Should I post this as anon to avoid burning karma? Nah.

The reason developers now make games that are all about framerates and pretty textures? It sells. The gamers that open their wallets and fork over the green decide where game development is heading.

Maybe it was cheaper to develop a game back in the hayday of "adventure games that actually had a plot", maybe all these "give me a good plot not fancy graphics" whiners aren't putting their money where their mouth is, maybe there's just a much better return on FPS/eyecandy games. Whatever the reason, every once in awhile you still see a game comes out that tries to revitalize the adventure game genre and it experiences lackluster sales.

Usually the most common excuse I've seen is that the new adventure game doesn't live up to the legacy of the older games everyone remembers from when the genre was still alive and kicking. The reason is there was a lot more competion to make a good game back then... Now, adventure games are almost a lost art and it will probably take a few tries before some competion builds back up. It means people will have to fork over some money for some lousy games in order to convince more developers that adventure is still a viable genre.

Course, open source changes the rules a bit. Seems though that most open source games are limited to emulators, software versions of board/card games and Tux racer. If the open source community picks up the adventure game genre, it would sure be an interesting thing to see.