uDevGames 2004 Macintosh Game Development Contest

Chris Burkhardt writes "iDevGames officially announced the start of the uDevGames Game Development Contest yesterday. The contest challenges participants to create a Mac OS X game in three months time, which will then be subjected to public vote, peer vote, and a panel of judges, with the best in a variety of categories receiving prizes. iDevGames has issued a press release." Previous winners of the competition include the rather smart Argonaut 2149.

Comments

These contests fill a void

[Fulkkari]

I find the absence of comments rather odd on this article. Some people would say don't need these small games, but bigger titles. I disagree. Mac OS X has already quite many bigger titles. But small, simple and free games are a part of a gaming experience as well. When you install Windows (or Linux) you get some simple games to play with. This is not the case in Mac OS X. When you buy a new Mac you may get some game like Tony Hawk Pro Skater to play with, but I don't think this compensates the lack of small games.

Why do I then think these little games are so important? Because they can be played by everyone. Just think about Windows Solitaire. It is being played by members of both sexes in all ages. Can you say the same about Unreal Tournament? No. You can't.

These games fill a void.

Re:These contests fill a void

[Anonymous Coward]

I tried to reply and got told there was server maintence going on and to try later.

Sorry for the AC post but not going to waste my karma explaining something

Agree

[Lisandro]

Macs (and Linux PCs) are in this strange position; they're potentially great gaming machines, but they don't attract developers because the userbase is small. And the userbase doesn't increase, because developers don't make games for it (face it - games sell new computers like nothing else). Chicken and egg dillema.

Some major players have been taking baby steps to fix this (notably, iD and Epic), but the rest are yet to follow. In the meantime, whatever boosts these new plataforms aceptance as gaming machines is great in my book. Anything, even contest ones.

Re:Agree

[Fulkkari]

Major players are indeed very cautious moving onto Mac and Linux. There is the fear that the revenues from the new supported platforms will not compensate the money used in new investments like hardware and training. Especially when the competition in the market becomes harder and harder, a misstep can be fatal for smaller companies. It will most likely require a big success by one company before the others will follow.

But there is one player that still waits for its big success; open source games. There are lots of great projects out there that still needs to be finished. A success here could wake up companies as well. The reason why a open source game could trigger investments on new platforms rather than commercial games is that open source developers doesn't maybe care about the current userbase as much. A great deal of the open source projects don't have any userbase at all, to be honest, but still people work on it. But there will always be some breakthroughs. Maybe not in this contest, but still.

Re:Agree

[Lisandro]

But there is one player that still waits for its big success; open source games. There are lots of great projects out there that still needs to be finished.

Open source excels in one single area; the code, the software itself. There's a gazillon high quality 3d rendering engines, phisics engines, developement tools, audio codecs and assorted goodies that would make into a great game foundation. Still, the code is nowadays a fraction of all the work involved in a game; sadly we're far away from the days you could code an amazing game by yourself in a basement. Musicians, 3D modelers and artists are the major part.

Oh the other hand, there ARE a lot of very very talented unknown artists (http://www.deviantart.com/ , for example). It can be done, and i would *LOVE* to see someone coordinating an effort into a top notch game. Who knows... there's always room for surprise.

Re:Agree

[Lisandro]

Oh, and i forgot about the mod scene. Some of them have delivered some amazing content aswell.

Re:Agree

[Fulkkari]

Still, the code is nowadays a fraction of all the work involved in a game

You do make a good point here. Games are not as simple as they used to be. Maybe you could do a couple of things yourself like programming and graphics, but doing everything is quite impossible. You have a great lack of time, and most likely lack at least some of the required skills. But there are very talented people in all the areas that could do amazing stuff if they worked together. Just think about those people making high quality mods for commercial games . There is definately potential.

Re:Agree

[ageitgey]

The parent post is correct in that modern games are much, much harder to create than old side-scrollers from the 80s. And you are correct that despite that fact, it would be possible to find everyone with the correct skills to form a team and still produce a quality product even today.

But there is another piece to the puzzle. Most games are played through only once or twice by a player. iD software put 4 years into Doom 3 and many people went on to finish the game in a single day.

The artists at iD probably put hours and hours of work into each and every room, pipe, box, etc in Doom 3. The art/level development process probably goes something like this:

1. Design a level on paper
2. Get the rough rooms modeled
3. Start texturing the rooms
4. Start adding decorations, crates, etc.
5. Populate it with monsters, supplies, etc.
6. Revise many times.

Now, just like testing software, they would have to test each level to make sure textures line up, actions trigger, difficulty is appropriate, and so on. It works just like testing versions of software, from development, to debugging, and then release.

Unfortunately, "content-based" games are pretty much a one time experience. You can't experience a game on an emotional level if you are playing through the same level hundreds of times to see minor improvements and new features. That works for spreadsheets and word processors, not games.

In other words, the open-source development process pretty much does not work for "content-based" games. In an application, a user will send you a patch to add a feature they really needed and took the time to create. And if the program really helps them do a job, they might keep working on it to make it better. In the case of a game, a game player is going to say "this game sucks", not send you a patch to relocate decorations in a level in order to increase the moody atmosphere. Or atleast they won't keep sending patches over any period of time. They will quickly lose interest, because they have completed the game experience.

Open source/Free/etc software makes sense because it allows the very intense, but globally tiny work of a few people to benefit all indefinately. If you create a really useful spreadsheet, businesses can benefit for years to come. The benefit of the work is ((users * useful_lifespan) - work_to_create). That model just doesn't make sense for most game development because the useful life span is very short.

The only case where it does work well is in multiplayer games. In those cases, the games can be fun for months or years. And that is exactly were projects like this have succeeded wildly (Counterstrike!).

Indeed...

[Anonymous Coward]

Slashdot is teh br0k3.

Brilliant Idea

[HaRR0]

This is an outstanding idea, all game/software developing companys should start doing this maybe it would give "script kiddies" and virus writers a chance to prove themselves in a far better way, and end up showing there skills in a way that would and could end up being a possible career :) also would be good if they let everyone download the contest entry games for free , hey cant beat free games even if they are crap!

Mac gaming?!

[Mr804]

is Super breakout 3 coming?!

it had to be said.

You know, I play a lot of NES games on my ibook. works great for that.

Where is the code?

[mzs]

I read that one of the aspects of this contest is that the source code for all of the entries will be made available on the uDevGames site. I cannot find it anywhere for past entries. I did not try too hard, but I did poke around for a little bit. I did look in about a year ago also and came-up empty. Also I could not find the binaries to the entries then either. This was a real issue because some of the entries were not available anywhere else on the net. The excuse I heard was that the uDevGames site was broken into and that the source and binaries would reappear after the mess was cleaned-up, but it is now more than a year later and I still cannot find the files. Where do I find the binaries and source code?

Re:Where is the code?

[MonaXier]

Check out this thread for links to developers' pages. Hopefully, they'll have the download section on the site soon.

ot: other indy game contest

[m05]

there was another indy game contest where some people developed incredible games with doom and quake engines. i cannot remember the name and i am searching half a year to find it again. there was a choplifter clone. and an incredible massive battleground simulation with thousands of quake zombies. does anyone remember the event? all the games were downloadable.

Thank you for posting this & some answers to t

[Anonymous Coward]

Hello, I am editor of iDevGames, the site behind uDevGames.

>I find the absence of comments rather odd on this >article.
Perhaps being on the front page would have helped. I recall making the front page in 2001, just when we announced the first contest. How do I pull some strings? ;)

>Some people would say don't need these small >games, but bigger titles.
This raises some good points, and many good replies on the subject.

I will take a different track. My feelings is that too many small developers try to make the "next big thing", and every so often (not often), they succeed, like Myst. But for the most part, they get no where. Having a contest that makes them focus, stay on track, and COMPLETE a game is vital for their education, building their source code library, and for getting their name out. All this leads to them working towards better games -- big and small.

>maybe it would give "script kiddies" and virus >writers a chance to prove themselves
Like giving a gallery to a graffiti artist? ;)
This reminded me of back in the 80's when "some" pirates or demo makers (not to bunch the two together, though often pirates used demo intros) on the Amiga and ST moved into making their own games. Anyhow, I agree, as a site that was attacked by these script kiddies. Such a waste of time, when they could be making "fun stuff."

>Super breakout 3 coming?!
This comment leads me to think that perhaps someone hasn't seen the level of the games in 2002, and 2003 of the contest. Sure, you are bound to get a Pong game or two -- and very likely to get Tetris, but to WIN, you need to show a polished game, something that would easily do well in the shareware market. I ask you to check out the winning games of uDevGames -- I am sure you will be impressed. The contest isn't about making a ton of breakouts. Hopefully when things settle down a bit, we can work on adding more detail to past entries on the site.

>read that one of the aspects of this contest is >that the source code for all of the entries will >be made available on the uDevGames site.
Yes this is true. It is the core concept of uDevGames and what sets it apart from those "other contests." We have posted source code up to 2002. However, as the reply mentioned, thanks to script kiddies, we had a really rough time in 2003. Two attacks which made the site resort to using virtual hosting. :( (We were on a dedicated server.) To make a long story short, we just don't have the bandwidth to handle our large download section at the moment (we also offered lots of free game assets). Once some sugar daddy decides to step in, I win the lottery, or our donations increase, then we can move to a better home.

Again, you can find most of the code by asking in our forum, which is a great community, if I may say so.

Last point I wanted to bring up, which seems not to have been covered in the Slashdot posting.

In the past we allowed any type of license, including one of our own, which restricted the use of the code to only "educational purposes." This year, I decided to make it mandatory to use any of the OSI approved licenses. I thought that in the long run, the community would be better off. I also thought that it would be a great "shot heard across the Linux world" and open source communities -- as we aren't just dreaming of making a difference, we are DOING, but sadly it seems, with the exception of Slashdot, most of the Open source community is silent on uDevGames, which is a shame, because many Linux game devs could be working on entries, via cross-platform APIs, like SDL.

Cheers,

Carlos

uDG entran's comment

[Joseph Duchesne]

As an entrant (and previous entrant) to the uDG I would like to share many of the benefits of this contest. 1. it gets you off your rear, I mean most people don't do much on their summer vacation. 2. It gives you a spotlight and more feedback then you generally see. 3. Your work is voted on and for example if you look at this example score: Graphics: 4.3 Gameplay: 4.5 Sound/Music: 2.1 Origionality: 3.5 Polish: 4.0 Then I would have made a fairly good game, based on something else, improving on the game but failing in the audio department. I would know where to work on for next year. Just seeing what games get what score really helps me as a developer. I can see what the gamers like, and then I can see the code that made that happen. The uDG is about improvement of the general game programming community more than anything else. 4. It gives programmers valuable experiance in a limited time development period. Too many indie devs have no clue how to pull that off (especially when there is no outside pressure). Also I would like to point out that all big game developers were once small game developers. Look at pangea software for a recent example. They have become fairly large for a company that started out with an arachnid clone.