Suggestions for competitions and activities

[Sledgy]

Suggestion for...

***

Month competition, where agsers create sequel for any games (even not quest) in any genre (not necessary create quests only).

There'snt topic of month comp., just one goal - creating sequels.


Agser can create: sequel / prequel / "between-quel" (e.g., 4.5 chapter) / alternative version of original chapter / crossover (crossing diffr. games) / spin-off (player is cameo character from original)


Any graphics: from original game / yours / not yours

And every month agsers create sequels to any random games. Any length, etc. Winner'll be leader of month sequelization.


e.g., War Craft 4 as jRPG, DukeNukem 4 as quest, Simon the Sorcerer 0, etc. Any games. PC/Videogames/AGS

And of course there'll be same numbers of chapters sometimes, but nevermind.


So if it's ok, let's do it?

[Ryan Timothy B]

So when is the next OROW (wags tail)? 
Everyone loves a good OROW competition.

The last one was June, 2008.

[IndieBoy]

I suggested the last one and never had time to enter... I think it might be a curse Ryan. However I'm up for another OROW soon 

[Chicky]

orowc ftw.

[Bulbapuck]

OROW! I've always wanted to enter one of those

[Ryan Timothy B]

Who's knees do we gotta bust to get this going? lol

[Bulbapuck]

Who's knees do we gotta bust to get this going? lol

Yeah, honestly! What do we do to start it up? How was it done previous times?

[cat]

I'd suggest waiting till the awards are over. Now people should use their time to play all the nominated games and vote.

[Bulbapuck]

I'd suggest waiting till the awards are over. Now people should use their time to play all the nominated games and vote.

You're right, I'll bump this afterwards.

But how will we start it up then? I wasn't around in June of 2008, so I've never experienced one.

[Questionable]

AGS Team Challenge (ATC)

ATC is a long standing AGS Tradition that has a history of rocky partnerships, missed deadlines and great games. It's been a while but I think it's time to revive it.

Summary:
ATC is a game competition that mimics the professional game creation environment. Teams consist of individuals with specific roles and milestones to fulfill and achieve. Teamwork, cooperation, pressure and enthusiasm are essential to succeed but when success happens it is a community milestone and almost always a quality product. The competition has been known to kick start relationships, creativity and passion and always be worth watching.

The proposal:
The format I am proposing is based on what information I could get on the previous competitions, opinions of former participants and some personally selected tweaks. It start; The competition begins with a recruiting process of approximately two weeks. Individuals make a post stating their ability to fulfill anyone of several specific roles:

Artist (Includes animation, background, sprite, etc-) - It is recommended to provide bodies of work
Programmer/Coder
Music/Audio (Includes voice acting) - It is recommended to provide bodies of work
Writer/Dialogue - It is recommended to provide bodies of work

During this two week period potential participants post their abilities and are able to recruit and join teams with other members. Teams must have at least 4 members and no more than 6. (I believe allowing variable team numbers increases the chance of all willing participants securing team slots.) If you are not chosen by a team but still interested in competing you may be placed in a pool and teams will be drawn at random from the pool to A.) Create new teams and B.) Fill out existing teams. Anybody not able to be placed will be kept as a reserve to substitute for missing team members.

Once teams are established the topic and deadline is announced and the teams are off! The build length would be approximately 6-8 weeks and along the way the teams would be expected meet specific milestones:

72 Hours: Team Name, Roster with each team member having an established function (the execution of this function will not be enforced,) a team leader (whom will direct team duties, communicate with competition officials, expel team members, recruit substitutes and ensure execution of duties)

1 Week: A Game Description/Synopsis

Midpoint: A Screenshot of in game work

1 Week before deadline: game as it exists so far

Deadline: The completed game, a walkthrough, a list of credits (if not included in game) and a leader assessment of team members.


In order to win the competition a game must receive the majority of votes from the public, whom will vote on certain criteria:
A. How well the game adheres to the original game topic
B. The "playability" of the game (Plot, Puzzles, Immersion, Compelling)
C. Game Design (Characters, GUI, Objects, BGs, Music)
D. X-Factor (Overall Favorite game of the reviewer)

Additionally the teams must be found to have adhered to competition rules:
1. The team did not accept help from ANY outside sources.
2. All materials are original and were created on-the-fly, for the completion, during the competition.
3. Teams may not exchange concepts, ideas, information or knowledge about the games that any other team is creating for the competition.
4. Teams competed in good spirit, had fun and never let the competition overwhelm them!!!

If no games are completed the game deemed closest to completion by the host will be considered the winners!

Ultimately this is all open to discussion! What are the thoughts of others?

[Shane 'ProgZmax' Stevens]

Ah, the ATC.  Yeah, it's full of glorious failures so I'm not so sure it's worth bringing back.  It's just so difficult finding a group of people who will really stick it out and do their part.  I'd be more interested in this if I had Ben304, VinceXII and GregJazz/Ghormak as my wingmen.  The four of us could make the most awesome game ever to be called 'awesome'.  In fact, we would BE TEAM AWESOME.

[SomeSickSelf]

I like the idea of a team competition, but it seems like it may be too ambitious.  A competition like that would be very hard to organize.  Teams would become unbalanced very easily.  Plus you'd need eight people to sign up just to have an actual competition (which is a lot if you look at how many people enter any given MAGS or Hourgame).

Back when Ben304 and Calin released 'Hope' I had an idea for a competition very much like this, only with teams of just two people.  Basically it would work exactly as Questionable suggested, only during recruitment, instead of applying for one specific job you list your strengths and weaknesses as a designer and get paired with someone who complements your abilities.

Of course, the balance issue stated above still stands, but at least this way there's a better chance of having enough participants and it's less likely you'd get screwed over by one of your teammates bailing out mid-competition.

[Questionable]

It's worked in the past! It always seems to draw out the most people...

I did consider the fact that in order to have a decent competition you would need at LEAST 12 people...

It is a proposal so feel free to suggest amendments that would make it feasible!

Personally I would rather work in a 2-3 person team but I was basing the rules off what existed in the past and that was one of the things that changed the least. I also don't think that the teams would get unbalanced. I think a 3 man team could easily beat a 6 man team. They all have different dynamics and different issues to contend with.

MAKE SUGGESTIONS GUYS! Lets mold it until it makes sense...

[Wonkyth]

Due to my near-total devotion to my studies at the moment, it is unlikely that I will have time to participate in the next year or so, but still:

Two people sounds like the perfect number, as I'm sure that statistics will say that most of the budding and flowered AGSers will probably have 2 of the 4 skills needed for a full game;

I personally would be ten times more confident that I could complete a game in a team, and would therefore be more likely to enter;

With two people making the game, it could be turned into a highly AGS educational exercise with the addition of noobs being allowed to tag along with the teams;

SSS's suggestion makes the most sense to me.


I personally think many people would join these sorts of things if they weren't left so much to their own devices when it came to signing up...

[ThreeOhFour]

I'd be more interested in this if I had Ben304, VinceXII and GregJazz/Ghormak as my wingmen.  The four of us could make the most awesome game ever to be called 'awesome'.  In fact, we would BE TEAM AWESOME.

I'd join your cool team!

Artist (Includes animation, background, sprite, etc-) - It is recommended to provide bodies of work

I have to say though, if this were gonna take place I'd recommend considering splitting up artists into background artist/animator in order to reduce the workload. Doing one or another is enough work as it is, doing both can be a total overload. I've done a couple of "work with programmer partner to make short game totally quickly" situations (Trance-Pacific, IWWWHIWHIWHIWHIWHIWHIWHIWWHHIIHWHWIWHIHIWLOLMONKEYISLAND, and Hope) and it gets pretty hard to juggle your time between both backgrounds and animations.

Putting animations with backgrounds is basically akin to putting writer with programmer, as far as I am concerned.

Maybe I'm just a wuss though

[Jasmine]

Teams sound like a really interesting idea.  One potential issue I see with getting people to enter is that, for example, while I'm passable at some parts of making a game, I'm not great at anything.  I don't know if there are other newbies like me who feel that they aren't good enough yet to contribute much to a team (and who don’t have any previous examples of their work to show).  Maybe random team assignment to prevent all the really good people from joining up as well as to make sure everyone who is interested is able to participate?  Or maybe a designated person matches up the teams based on people's strengths?  Of course, neither of those suggestions help ProgZmax’s point that you need to have partner(s) who will get things done, as you have no control over who you will be with.

I'd also second the idea of separating background and character artists; I'm OK at backgrounds but I suck at characters!

[Jbass]

i'd get in a team competition
as for newbies feeling like they're not good enough to participate, surely the whole point of competitions like this isn't just for WINNING, but for improving?
what better way is there to improve?

plus i think what would be a cool thing to do is for people to form there own teams and they can accept/reject people based on the teams desicions.
that way you can have like an allegiance to your team and then all sorts of fun stuff like banners to be worn in sigs etc can come around

just my thoughts...
anyways there seems to be lots of interest so go for it??

EDIT:
I read my post and i don't appear to making a whole lot of sense...
what i mean is, don't like say ALRIGHT GO GO GO.  let each team form as they will and work it out, then when the team is ready, they ask another team to do battle, and someone chooses a topic and they get cracking.
if you still don't understand what i mean, check out the way teams and battles run over at Gimptalk.
http://www.gimptalk.com/forum/general-discussion-f12.html
The New Nation, Team FTW, etc are teams.  they run their teams and battles in a similar way over there that i think would be cool here.

[Wonkyth]

With a mind like yours I know who I'd like to team with!
Unfortunately, I say again, I'd be unable to contribute other than with my humble opinion.
But I like your idea.

[Jbass]

shucks, thanks
hopefully this gets enough interest because i think this would be very cool

[Bulbapuck]

I'm going to bump 2 ideas that people seemed to be into (me included) but never really happened.

• OROW
  
• 24 hour - game
  

I hope these will start someday, I know that I would join