Suggestions for competitions and activities

PixelPerfect · Mon 10/03/2008 20:22:58

When is the next AGS chain story comp gonna start?

Jack Sheehan · Tue 25/03/2008 15:31:03

Since there's been so much enthusiasm for the chain story or 'grandiose writing project', why don't we have an individual writing competition?

Every fortnight we set a topic like say, 'the sea' or 'road trip' and everyone writes their own short story. Everyone votes on their favorite and the winner gets to chose the next topic. It's a chance for people to improve their writing skills.

I reckon this would be wildly popular, opinions on a postcard please.

Tuomas · Tue 25/03/2008 18:17:06

There was the writing compo yes. It died. I tried to revive it several times... hmm... I'm completely with you if we should bring the monthly writing contest back as a running activity.

Stupot · Tue 25/03/2008 19:29:52

Yeh this seems to be something that everyone is up for but it never happens because it died ages ago...
Thing is, there's loads more new people, and I'm sure all the veterans would be reinvigorated if it started back up again.

Sure, there's always the probability that it might die another death on a few months time, but what's wrong with trying?

No point requesting it here though, I'm still waiting for a yes or no answer on pretty much all of my previous requests.

Rui 'Trovatore' Pires · Tue 25/03/2008 19:54:18

Look, last time I re-started the writing comp because I thought "it would be fun to do", I PMed a mod, got permission, and went ahead and did it.

Someone PM a mod, ask, say it's BEEN suggested, it's even survived the comp prune, and get permission and get it rolling.

Akatosh · Mon 31/03/2008 14:23:11

And while you're at it, ask them to bring back the Coding Competition, too.

Nagania · Mon 07/04/2008 00:29:57

heres something i was brewing in the general discussion forum:

BMAGS

What is BMAGS? How does it differ from MAGS?
BMAGS is a bi-monthly competition for beginner users of AGS. (bi-monthly meaning it occurs every two months) By beginner, we mean you have less than four months, or no experience in AGS. Therefore you can only enter twice, before we think you are ready to take on MAGS, and possibly even going solo into the world of game development. We have to trust you in saying you are a beginner, because if your not you are only cheating yourself.

What are the rules?
The rules are that you must follow the competitions guidelines, chosen by the previous winner, and the game must be submitted by the deadline.
It's all for fun, and LEARNING.

The winner will be chosen according to a number of things:
-   The creativity they have used in there game. i.e. how well they have used the guidelines to create an interesting storyline
-   The concept of the graphics. You don't have to be a great artist, because we are going to judge you on whether you've had a good crack at it and thought about your graphics.
-   Whether they have followed the guidelines. The guidelines are only there to help spark your imagination. But you must follow them.

But it's not all for winning. In fact winning's got little to do with it. Indeed, it's good to win, but you want to LEARN from this experience.

We'll try to give everyone a comment and tip, so learning can be achieved!

Anybody caught cheating or attempting to enter when they aren't a beginner will be disqualified and perhaps the mods could help me out a little bit...

rock_chick · Mon 07/04/2008 01:31:45

I ask that if Nagania's application is denied that she at least be allowed to let people know about his competition that would be run in the Adventure-related talk and chat forum, that he may be permitted to post a thread in this forum advertising his competition, this is because his idea is for beginner's and let's not kid herself, beginner's hardly ever both with the Adventure-related talk and chat forum, I know I didn't when I was new here and I suspect neither did many of our long time members when they began to use this forum. No other forum will allow him to do so in their rules and I doubt it'll largely detract from beginner's interest in our official completions and actives here. If he is willing to take such a big risk and put a lot of time and effort into it, then shouldn't he be granted just one post here about it?

BOYD1981 · Mon 07/04/2008 01:46:56

the whole idea of a competition exclusively for beginners is, in my opinion, really stupid.
not all beginners are of the same level and there's absolutely no way to enforce any rule excluding people who you deem to not be beginners from entering, and you can't even go on how long somebody has been a member either. i've been a member of the forums for 5 years now and i still consider myself a beginner due to my scripting ability being rather terrible, but perhaps it's better than that of somebody who has only been around for 6 months or so, or less than somebody who has been here for 2 months but has a better grasp of scripting... you see where i'm going with this? and it doesn't just apply to scripting either.
the current MAGS is non-exclusive so that anyone can enter, the only possible reason beginners may want their own competition is so that their "terrible" games stand a chance of winning, and that's a really petty reason. PLUS nobody is stopping anyone from following the MAGS rules and NOT entering it, in fact i think taking the MAGS rules and trying to make a game is a good thing for beginners to do as it means they don't have to come up with an overly original idea of their own.

rock_chick · Mon 07/04/2008 02:08:44

Quote from: BOYD1981 on Mon 07/04/2008 01:46:56
the whole idea of a competition exclusively for beginners is, in my opinion, really stupid.
not all beginners are of the same level and there's absolutely no way to enforce any rule excluding people who you deem to not be beginners from entering, and you can't even go on how long somebody has been a member either. i've been a member of the forums for 5 years now and i still consider myself a beginner due to my scripting ability being rather terrible, but perhaps it's better than that of somebody who has only been around for 6 months or so, or less than somebody who has been here for 2 months but has a better grasp of scripting... you see where i'm going with this? and it doesn't just apply to scripting either.
the current MAGS is non-exclusive so that anyone can enter, the only possible reason beginners may want their own competition is so that their "terrible" games stand a chance of winning, and that's a really petty reason. PLUS nobody is stopping anyone from following the MAGS rules and NOT entering it, in fact i think taking the MAGS rules and trying to make a game is a good thing for beginners to do as it means they don't have to come up with an overly original idea of their own.

Did you miss this part from his explanation of a beginner. Here's the quote from his post that defines it, "By beginner, we mean you have less than four months, or no experience in AGS." So if you've been a member for more than 4 months chances are you have been using it for longer than that but even so let's say more like a forum member for at least a year. Give me a reasonable example of why someone would be a member of these forums for at least a year and not have been using AGS for at least just over a month?

Also who said their MAGS game would even be hosted on this site?They can probably show their trophy in the forums and announce publicly to others they made it and it won, even distribute through various sites using that but anybody who knows it was a beginner's MAGS contest will probably not be expecting a stellar game anyway.

Ubel · Mon 07/04/2008 03:21:46

Quote from: rock_chick on Mon 07/04/2008 02:08:44
Give me a reasonable example of why someone would be a member of these forums for at least a year and not have been using AGS for at least just over a month?

Just off the top of my head, this hypothetical person loves adventure games, by which I mean loves playing them. Only this person has ran out of commercial adventure games to play so they have come here to play some good amateur games. They have no interest in creating them. We have lots of these people here.

Why do you care so much anyway? Hell, you've been registered for a longer time than I have so that would cut you out of the beginner-category, would it not? And why are people debating this so much instead of doing it since they so much want to see it happen?

rock_chick · Mon 07/04/2008 04:58:20

I now think this whole idea is pointless and am not involved anymore, however I still hope things work out if they could.

zabnat · Mon 07/04/2008 12:21:52

Nice. If we ignore the rule about being a forum member less than a year then it looks like I would qualify for the beginners competition.

Roughly counting I have two months experience with AGS (one month when I failed to finish a MAGS entry and another month when I did finish one).

Rui 'Trovatore' Pires · Mon 07/04/2008 12:25:16

Isn't MAGS a competition that already serves to give people motivation, get people to work on something, etc? Isn't that the perfect way to get beginners to join in?

But anyway, I second Pablo. If people want to see it happen, let it happen. And we'll see the turn-out it has.

brokenbutterfly · Mon 07/04/2008 17:17:34

Quote from: Pablo on Mon 07/04/2008 03:21:46
They have no interest in creating them. We have lots of these people here.

I agree. I've known AGS since 2003 or something, and even though I've played games, I've never used AGS itself to create games. Some people love coding and programming, and others like me who enjoy writing stories which can be used as scenarios, or drawing, translating, etc

Nagania · Tue 08/04/2008 02:01:43

so... do i have the go ahead or not?

?

Gilbert · Tue 08/04/2008 02:24:21

Since there're A LOT of text about BMAGS (both here and that other thread in AGS gen), I don't have time (and I don't wanna) to read them all, but from what I guess (correct me if I am wrong), it's just MAGS for "beginners", with more time and possibly lower expected standard for the games.

If that's the case I'm not convinced to let this proceed.

Like people had mentioned, we don't really need one extra competition that's so similar to MAGS. Furthermore, whether there will be a reasonable number of competitors is questionable. Afterall, MAGS is open to everyone, so there's no restriction on whether beginners can enter or not. Even if a "beginner" submits a subpar entry to it which won't win, no one is losing anything, as all activities here are mainly for fun and practice, if you win you don't get concrete rewards like money or prizes, if you lose you lose nothing.

In my opinion, if this is solely for beginners, it shouldn't even be a competition (in case, 1. games may not be of good enough quality to be ranked, or 2. some of the "beginner" participaters make amazing entries which makes the other entries immposible to compete). However, in that case, I think "beginners" can also hijack the hour games thread a bit (I think most people won't care much about whether you use an hour or a year to make a short game) and post their games there.

Just my opinion, unless someone can kindly summarise what you want to do in three lines of words I don't think I'll look deeper into this idea.

Nagania · Tue 08/04/2008 04:26:53

ok, thats cool ill forget about it

rock_chick · Tue 08/04/2008 19:09:35

I just found out about an old competition that I thought was really cool, it was "Photoshop Biweekly: Using your favourite editing program, modify a picture to fit the theme of the week".
Referring to this thread http://www.adventuregamestudio.co.uk/yabb/index.php?topic=5477.0
it doesn't have a line through it, meaning it should still be active but it doesn't seem to have been running for almost 2 years.
With all the competitions that already exist and that involve graphic only work I think maybe bringing it back as run once a month or if that seems too long, once a fortnight. Of course this has nothing to do with how long each competition would run for, the same time as before seemed fine, it would just mean there'd be more time between each competition. What does anyone else think?

rock_chick · Tue 08/04/2008 19:20:09

Quote from: Jack Sheehan on Tue 25/03/2008 15:31:03
Since there's been so much enthusiasm for the chain story or 'grandiose writing project', why don't we have an individual writing competition?

Every fortnight we set a topic like say, 'the sea' or 'road trip' and everyone writes their own short story. Everyone votes on their favorite and the winner gets to chose the next topic. It's a chance for people to improve their writing skills.

I reckon this would be wildly popular, opinions on a postcard please.

As a writer of sorts myself I love this idea, what's the status on it, did it get rejected or has no one pmed a mod about it yet?