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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."
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.
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DRM is like antifreeze, to the MPAA/RIAA it's sweet, to the consumers it's poison.
The uDevGame license was created because truly open-source or free software is a concept some Mac developers haven't learned to embrace yet. In a nutshell the license tries to ensure that code is used for educational purposes (figure out how they did it) rather than just used. This also makes possible commercial development of the game more of a possibility, an issue that was important to some potential entrants. However we also give most of the traditional licenses (GPL, etc) as options, and they are being used. Griggs Webmaster of iDevGames.com
This is a contest, not an attempt to hire cheap labor!
We have considered running it without prizes, but there is no reason why we can't help good developers along by giving them tools they may need.
It's not necessary to work full-time on a game. Indeed Mac game programming is a hobby rather than a profession for most iDevGames users.
The contest is fun and somewhat challenging for developers, mostly for the fun of it, but we do have some good prizes too.
The Mac community gets some cool new games to play, source code to learn from, and probably more skilled developers.
BTW, for uDevGame 2001 we had only $4200 in prizes, but we still had 24 entries. Now, thanks to the generous support of various companies we have more than doubled our prize pool.
Right....
So WC3, RTCW, Unreal, UT, Q3, Civilization, Max Payne, Deus Ex, Jedi Outcast, those aren't games. No those are decoration. The real games are on PC, you know, like WC3, RTCW, Unreal, UT, Q3, Civilization, Max Payne, Deus Ex, Jedi Outcast. Oh wait a minute, those are the same games... whoops
T Money
World Domination with a plastic spoon since 1984