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OLPC Game Jam for an XO Laptop
An anonymous reader writes "The OLPC project has announced a three-day game development jam session is scheduled to begin June 8 on the campus of Olin College, an engineering school in Needham, Massachusetts. 'The game jam is an opportunity for developers to create new types of games that rely on features of the XO's design such as mesh networking between nearby users, an integrated still or video camera, and a tablet mode for mobile gaming. Beyond creating games that teach specific tasks like counting or reading, OLPC hopes the contest will produce templates that allow kids to build their own games, according to OLPC's development guidelines.' The grand prize is a free OLPC laptop. All games created at the weekend-long event will be licensed under the GNU General Public License, and posted on the SourceForge site."
....F0or someone to port Quake III Team Arena!
How likely does the grand prize winner(s) need an OLPC laptop?
Wii Sports with the foot-operated power generator, anyone?
A few comments,
One, making sure that all the games developed are released under the GPL is a far cry from similar development contests by commercial companies that stipulate that all entries become the property of the sponsoring company, this should encourage people to enter.
Two, while the prize is (as far as I can tell) only for the "best" game developed, I'm sure a number of people will enter just for the fun of it, and because their work will still be available to them (see first thought) they won't be worried about it being appropriated for no compensation.
Three, while I can't really think of any "innovative" games using the specific aspects of the XO mentioned (Mesh Networking, Camera and Tablet Mode), I'm sure other folk are more imaginative then I am. (Perhaps something along the lines of hide and seek, using the laptops?)
Four, the idea of a development environment for the children to develop their own games is very important in my opinion. As has been seen with various commercial games, user content often makes or breaks a game, and is often far more fun then the content that came with the game.
I wank in the shower.
Please don't be fucking stupid. The whole think of the children shit is bullshit. Don't fear monger. The following is from a post I made at another forum (RevLeft.com) http://www.revleft.com/index.php?showtopic=66768&v iew=findpost&p=1292321122 .
b 1154text.asp)
s exual.shtml)
If nothing else, as I said earlier, most sexual abuse on children is by relatives and close family friends. It isn't by "paedophiles", but is rather simply opportunistic. The people we should be worried about are those who actually are abusive, not just those who have thoughts that maybe abusive (or maybe about consensual sex for all we know).
QUOTE (http://www.nncc.org/Abuse/sex.abuse.html)
Eighty-five percent of sexual assaults on children are committed by someone the child knows and usually trusts - an immediate family member, a relative, a neighbor, or a friend of the family.
QUOTE (http://www.ocfs.state.ny.us/main/publications/Pu
In many cases reported in New York State and nationwide, children are sexually abused by people they know and trust - relatives (even parents or siblings), friends of the family, and authority figures (teachers, youth group leaders, clergy, etc.). Sexual abuse usually occurs in places where children feel comfortable or safe - at home or in the home of a family friend.
QUOTE (http://www.bbc.co.uk/parenting/your_kids/safety_
Sexual abuse is far more likely to be carried out by someone a child knows, such as a relative or friend of the family, than by a stranger. And sometimes older children abuse younger children.
I wank in the shower.
The biggest problem right now is that you simply can't buy an XO laptop, its not even clear if you ever will be able to. That is kind of discouraging to me as a developer.
Most of the developers will be students, which means that they can probably get some kind of assistance from their department, from a professor's grant, a travel grant from their university (public service and whatnot) or even a collection like those people running marathons or building houses.
Worst come to worst, they can give up their Spring Break plans and pay for the trip themselves. Which would YOU chose, a hazy week of drunken stupor and puke-filled orgies on the beach or three days with your developer buddies, eh?
Obama likes poor people so much, he wants to make more of them.
Here's a better idea: release some kind of unified API that will allow folks with regular hardware to build games for the OLPC.
Isn't the purpose of a headline to give one a rough idea of that article without having to read it, to pique the interest. As Lisa Simpson would say, "I recognise those words, but that sentence makes no sense" (until you have read the article.)
/. headlines.
That definite goes in the top 10 worst
Love many, trust a few, do harm to none.
It looks like there's also a $100 registration fee, but that includes food and lodging for the event. Seems to me like they're actually working pretty hard to keep it inexpensive. There's also a scholarship to reduce the costs for students. I'm sure they'd be happy to do more, given the money--see their donation page if you know anyone that could chip in.
how about it? except for the lack of a secondary screen, its kinda like a large DS.
;)
so any party game concepts that work on the DS should work on the XO i guess
comment first, facts later. http://chem.tufts.edu/AnswersInScience/RelativityofWrong.htm
Or some economic emulation clone along the same sort of lines. Y'know teach em from the start how an economy works and what it takes to be successful.
Deleted
That is exactly what children in impoverished parts of the world need- a game machine.
http://twitter.com/OLDTELEGRAM
The killer game for the OLPC would be an open-sourced "The Incredible Machine" clone, i think. Whatever happened to that franchise, anyhow?One of the greatest non-violent games ever created, IMHO.
Something along the SimCity games would be cool, too, i guess.
Maybe the owners of those franchises (Dynamix [?] and Maxis) could even help out a bit, for PR reasons?
Aww crap. I accidentally modded this "troll" instead of "interesting." Goodbye sweet mod points!
Remember Jeff from Coupling? The one obsessed with breasts? Well, Jeff was harmless.
A soccer ball is cheaper and the game is multiplayer and 'mobile'. What about the OLPC you ask. It can be used as one of the goal posts.
Is it just me, or would the mesh networking and some of the built in software not be perfect for an MMORPG. The game topology can represent the actual locations of people, one can "Warp" into the internet play area by using an access point.
http://wiki.millenniumcampaign.org/olpc/concepts Share your game concept for the XO machine - there are some fairly interesting ones up already.
augment your senses: http://sensebridge.net/
..but the aerodynamics of these laptops may be suboptimal, as well as the danger of imflicting impact wounds (beat's minefield hopscotch, though, I suppose).
Maybe dodgeball^h^h^h^hsquare?
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
"... OLPC hopes the contest will produce templates that allow kids to build their own games..." You know, this is basically a Python machine on a Linux OS called Sugar. It has eToys installed, which already does this. Kids can build games, animations, etc. But it uses Squeak Smalltalk, and by gosh, those people at the OLPC, even though they've installed it as a default application, don't seem to want to tell anybody that.
GPS Quake !
More seriously, even if the mesh doesn't provide GPS-grade precision, the mesh may have some interesting localisation-like possibility, like counting how much "mesh-hops" apart are the children. This could enable some guesstimation about position.
Maybe not enough for live-action Quake.
But definitely something to consider for making a kind of Radar-Assisted game of Hide'n'Seek.
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
Which is a Good Thing(TM).