As has been said, with a time frame of only three months, hobbyist developers and a niche platform I think the quality (and quantity) of the games is actually above my expectations.
Another thing to note is that uDevGame 2002 was only our second time running the contest, but we saw roughly twice as many entries, prizes worth three times as much, more community interest and involvement, and (in my opinion) a higher level of overall quality.
A time-frame of three months doesn't allow for Quake 3-beater graphics, frankly I think the community would be suspicious of such an entry, instead we tend to get some unique concepts or a new spin on the classics.
On the technology front we had a cross-platform, Rendesvous (zeroconf) enabled game, an entry using C++ and Python using SWIG and a number of OpenGL entries. Using mainly C/C++, but also Basic and even MetaCard. And all the source is available.
This story is a bit old, the source code has been available for some time now. Nevertheless, its a truly amazing resource to have the complete source for 41 games.
You can also see all the uDevGame 2002 source code here, and read postmortems by the winning developers.
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.
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
Slashdot Mirror
As has been said, with a time frame of only three months, hobbyist developers and a niche platform I think the quality (and quantity) of the games is actually above my expectations. Another thing to note is that uDevGame 2002 was only our second time running the contest, but we saw roughly twice as many entries, prizes worth three times as much, more community interest and involvement, and (in my opinion) a higher level of overall quality. A time-frame of three months doesn't allow for Quake 3-beater graphics, frankly I think the community would be suspicious of such an entry, instead we tend to get some unique concepts or a new spin on the classics. On the technology front we had a cross-platform, Rendesvous (zeroconf) enabled game, an entry using C++ and Python using SWIG and a number of OpenGL entries. Using mainly C/C++, but also Basic and even MetaCard. And all the source is available.
This story is a bit old, the source code has been available for some time now. Nevertheless, its a truly amazing resource to have the complete source for 41 games. You can also see all the uDevGame 2002 source code here, and read postmortems by the winning developers.
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.
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