Interested in a Mac Game Dev Contest?

Hello, first let me introduce myself. My name is Carlos camacho and I am the editor of iDevGames.com. My site is geared towards game dev on the Mac. Since last year, we started a contest for the creation of Mac games. The main goal is to increase the amount of source code for Mac developers to use, thus the whole community benefits.

Last year contest had about 20+ entries written in CodeWarrior, Project Builder, REALBasic, and METAL. We gave away many prizes included some great 3d applications and game dev tools.

We are currently working on the rules for this year's contest. We are debating whether games created in ColdStone Engine should be allowed. As I said, the idea of the contest is to increase the amount of Mac native "source code." A side benefit is that devs can get some great tools to make better games and game players get more games.

Based on what I know of CE, outside of the "scripting", there is little programming involved. So some users in iDevGames forum feel that CE games should not be allowed. I'm open to suggestions and I'm even interested in sponsoring a contest for CE-only games at some point at iDevGames. if you want to cast your vote in favor of allowing CE games, visit our forum and check out this thread...
(url="http://"http://64.246.17.165/forum/showthread.php?postid=1264#post1264")http://64.246.17.165...showthread.php? postid=1264#post1264://http://64.246.17.165/forum/showthre...d=1264#post1264://http://64.246.17.165/forum/showthre...d=1264#post1264(/url)

For a shorter link, juyst go to "http://64.246.17.165/forum/". Look inside the "content" message board and look for "uDevGame 2002 ground rules."

Thanks,

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Editor
http:// (url="http://"http://www.idevgames.com/")www.idevgames.com/(/url)

(This message has been edited by Camacho (edited 05-20-2002).)

Hrm. An interesting idea, actually. I was thinking of doing a similar contest style activity on these boards in the future, but at the moment it seems that many of the people who are involved here are only getting started......

I suppose it would be possible to knock up a 7MB or less game with CGE rather quickly, but then, since it's primarily intended as an RPG creator, a small RPG can be a bit pointless..... anyway, here's a few points, I'll put them on iDevGames as well.

  • Coldstone games would probably be not admissible as the developer never touches the source code.

  • Whilst it could be argued that the developer could instead include a copy of the Event scripts, this still might not be sufficient

  • It would be difficult to gear up the people involved with CS to release games in the competition, at least within the time frame allowed, IMO.

However, with that said, I think having a Coldstone competition sometime might be a good idea. I'll keep an eye on the thread and notify the people here what's decided. 🙂

-Andiyar

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"Any good that I may do here, let me do now, for I may not pass this way again"

Thank you for the reply here (I didn't see it over at iDevGames.com) I'm glad to get straight and honest opinions from you. I HAVE downloaded CE myself, and spent a few seconds with it. Unfortunately, I am too busy to dive into it now so my knowledge is limited. I was thinking that although many things are easy to do, to make a game that isn't just a clone of the demos, one would have to do some scripting, and these scripts would be useful to all CE users, thus my feeling that CE should be let into the contest. But if you mean to say, very little of the "raw" game or should I say project could be bundled and submitted for the benefit of CE users, then I could see that including CE wouldn't support the concept of the contest, which once again is to create more source code for Mac devs.

If CE does make it into the contest, then let us talk down the road about having something special (contest) for CE devs.

Cheers,
Carlos Camacho
Editor
iDevGames.com

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Editor
http://
www.idevgames.com/

Quote

Originally posted by Camacho:
Thank you for the reply here (I didn't see it over at iDevGames.com) I'm glad to get straight and honest opinions from you. I HAVE downloaded CE myself, and spent a few seconds with it. Unfortunately, I am too busy to dive into it now so my knowledge is limited. I was thinking that although many things are easy to do, to make a game that isn't just a clone of the demos, one would have to do some scripting, and these scripts would be useful to all CE users, thus my feeling that CE should be let into the contest. But if you mean to say, very little of the "raw" game or should I say project could be bundled and submitted for the benefit of CE users, then I could see that including CE wouldn't support the concept of the contest, which once again is to create more source code for Mac devs.

Well, yes, that's about it really. All of the Events could be included with the package (actually, instead of being properly compiled a 'built' version can be made that reads from the raw data, rather than bundling it all together) but since the focus of this competition seems to be mainly creating source code banks..... unless the end users were going to be using Coldstone, it would be quite useless.

However, if Coldstone is allowed into the competition..... whilst I was reading your post, I had an interesting idea of how to make a chess/chequers game with Coldstone...... something that isn't really the focus of the engine. Maybe I'll do it, who knows. 🙂

Quote

If CE does make it into the contest, then let us talk down the road about having something special (contest) for CE devs.

Sounds good Carlos. I'd almost definitely enter into that one. 🙂

-Andiyar

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"Any good that I may do here, let me do now, for I may not pass this way again"
Unless it involves pipeline of course. Bloody nuisance.

What Andiyar said. It's so tempting to be idle on this board, with him covering it all. 🙂

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