How to improve the game competition...

[SyX]

Well, it's time to open a thread where discuss about how to make better the next year competition or even if we should have a competition the next year (i hope not ).

First in name of the organization, i would like to give my most sincere thanks to everybody that gave their time, enthusiasm and feedback that  make possible this competition, nothing it would be possible without them, specially all the teams, Gryzor and TotO. And if something was bad, i'm the maximum responsible.

For me the best of the competition are the entries, without a doubt, those four games are between the best CPC games, not only in the technical side, they are really fun and there is not too much cpc games with this level of polishing. Each one of them reachs one of the goals that i dreamed for the compo.

Cyberhuhn is one of those games that it has been in progress for a time and that only needed a little boost for being finished and that was the function of the deadline, give that little boost. And now, thanks to that and the good feedback that they got, the extended version is going to be AMAZING, my friend ... Ah!!!, Well done MacDeath!!!, i love when your plot, you should draw more

Overkoban is one of the surprise entries in the compo, it was the first game that i received and when i put in the megaflash and hear the music, i known that we have a winner, for me the menu song is the best of the compo, but the most important thing is the professional look of the game and the level of detail and technical excelence (amazing graphics, 50 levels, great music, overscan, colour interlace, ...). From this moment, nobody can say that 16 KBs is too small for a well done game, because i will use the Overkoban card since now If T&J add an skin editor (as his amazing Color Lines) and a level editor, then nobody will need to make a sokoban again, simply like that.

Subtera Puzlo is the other surprise entry in the compo, and what a good surprise!!! The game that made us feel more warm and fuzzy, jejeje. This is other of the compo goals, get new teams in the cpc and we are so lucky, because we are not seen the last game of this dynamic duo... I need more levels please? pretty please? please pretty please with sugar on top?

Relentless... buffff, what could i say of Relentless is not said yet? The first moderm/indie cpc game... YES!!! I'm a shoot'em up fan and for me this is the Batman of CPC games. The level bar of quality is higher after this... and don't forget to take a look to the teaser.

Another good things, the size and time limitation, and the games are the best demostrarion of it. Bigger sizes take more time and those days is our bigger limitation, aside it can collision with your own bigger projects and then why should you release them in a compo? Instead outside where they should have more visibility. With respect to the time limitation, if somebody feels is not enough, they can start now to work for the next, but i'm sure if we would have given 2 extra months, only arnoldemu and our entry would be reached the new deadline.

One of the best things, that i didn't live, it was that the games were playable during the ReSeT party, the day before of the deadline. And i wish that everybody in the forum could be there, specially the authors, they could see how everybody enjoy their productions

The only bad thing, for me was the participation, at the beginning of the compo everybody was excited and enthusiastic about having a compo where present their projects (there was a few persons that said during the first week of january that only need to fix one bug and crunch his project, and that was all, that the compo was perfect to show projects where they have been working during years... and never more answer to my emails where i offered help to them), we had 20 participants registered and only got 2 of those 20 at the end, thanks to the surprise entries was possible to have a small but decent number of entries (i'm not talking about quality, even wiht 22 entries those four games would be between the 5 best).

I'm not saying this as a complain, at contrary (i'm the first in that wagon, our project was very delayed for a lot of personal compromises by my side and the work in our hardware project), i want to know what was bad and we can do for improving the situation and the motivation of the participants. For example, i don't know, maybe if we were encorauged more to the people to teasing, it would help to animate more to the people, after Briggsy showed the mockup of The Dungeons of Count Roland, we got an increasing in the registered participants. More prizes? I don't feel that it will make too much difference, but who knows.

But if i'm disappointed, that it should be with the public voting, more than 800 users in the forum and only 50 votes?!?!?! I can understand that a lot of those accounts are of no active people, but we gave two weeks of time for playing the games, time more than enough for 4 games. And if only the 6% of people shows interest in 4 new amazing CPC games,  well you can imagine... i don't know how to motivate to the people, maybe we should use a jury...

Important thing, i' have spoken about the light and the dark, i'm really happy and i'm going to work for having the compo again the next year.

But now it's your time, what are your ideas? We should change things or no, and why, nothing is fixed and feel free to speak.

[redbox]

I like the 16kb limit, means things get finished and people are more likely to try new projects.  Maybe don't promote it as purely a ROM competition next time (although the benefit is that they can easily be made into ROMs at this size) but keep the size limit to ensure good programming and fresh ideas...?

Having people playing and enjoying a game I coded at the Reset party really makes me smile. Wish I could have been there, hopefully next year.

Maybe the next compo could coincide with another party?  Retromadrid?  It's the CPC's 30th birthday after all

[TFM]

Great to see, that this wonderful idea continues. I already have an idea for an game, and maybe already not enough time 

[Munchausen]

Well said.


About voting... I was away during those two weeks, so while I could see the activity on the forums I couldn't play the games! I tried to play some on emulators, but couldn't get all of them to work and didn't want to vote without playing them all.


Looking forward to next years compo!

[arnoldemu]

My thoughts:
- I agree with redbox, we could make this competition open for tape/disk entries.
Only problem is less ROM games and the competition was meant to increase this number.

- How to improve the number of entries? Not sure, provide more example code, or some kind of code library that others can use if they want?
The games came from people I expected to enter those who have already finished a game or a demo.

- Put news of the competition on MORE websites - I don't know how many it was announced on.

- Different prizes may help:
* Money is always a big incentive.

* Winning game is published on real media in a limited edition run. (The winner gets their game published, they get one and then the others are sold here, or on e-bay or wherever for the benefit of... cpcwiki, or the compeititon for the next year??).  A limited run could just be 10 copies for example.
CPC games don't seem to sell many physical copies so limiting it to just 10 is probably about right.

* Prize consists of other recent CPC games (e.g. Real Subhunter disk, etc)

* Prize consists of CPC hardware (e.g. MegaFlash)

Gryzor was generous with his prizes, that is true, but I would have liked to see CPC themed prizes where possible.

- voting: Could you put this onto a seperate website where you don't need to register and login?
Something where people who don't normally visit here could submit their vote - e.g. those who read retrogamer forum??? (As an example).

[HAL6128]

My thoughts:
- I agree with redbox, we could make this competition open for tape/disk entries.
Only problem is less ROM games and the competition was meant to increase this number.
- How to improve the number of entries? Not sure, provide more example code, or some kind of code library that others can use if they want?
The games came from people I expected to enter those who have already finished a game or a demo.

Good idea: Example codes / libraries would help beginners to code or finish coding.

Maybe experienced coders or the people envolved in the competition (all the authors) could to do an interview or just talk about their experiences or the way how their games had been developed and build? How they worked together?

Maybe there two deadlines for competition: One (the first) deadline will be prized with Hard-/Software like today and the second deadline (one month later) will be prized with a lot of glory and honor of all Wiki members (just a second chance for late people)?

[TFM]

About voting: I think it would be an advantage...

- if we would have an expert team, people who judge the games based on their knowledge of the CPC and its limitations. [nb]This will piss you off, but the voting about 'technical achievement' must be a bad joke for this years entries IMHO - And yes, just IMHO.[/nb]

- if entries would be voted (either public or expert team) without them knowing who actually did the game. So personal likes and dislikes will play no role.

- It would be great if we can vote (public or expert team) in a way that allows us to give certain amounts of percentages to different games. If game 1 is slightly better then 2 and 3, everybody will vote 1, but nobody will vote 2 or 3, so that's just unfair for 2 and 3.

[ralferoo]

we had 20 participants registered and only got 2 of those 20 at the end, thanks to the surprise entries was possible to have a small but decent number of entries
...
But if i'm disappointed, that it should be with the public voting, more than 800 users in the forum and only 50 votes?!?!?! ... but we gave two weeks of time for playing the games, time more than enough for 4 games.

Both of these comments hint at the same thing. I know I personally have been manically busy for the last few months. I had to actually deliberately set aside some time to try these games just so I could vote. In all honesty, I only had time to play each game for about 30 minutes and to listen to the title musics for about 10 minutes each. I might have voted differently if I'd played longer, but for me it had to be about initial impressions.

As I said originally, I'd have loved to have made an entry myself, but I knew months before the deadline that it simply wasn't going to happen for me. I'm actually fortunate that I write games for a living and I know how long it takes to polish a game if you're doing it as your full time job. If it's something done in your spare time, then obviously it'll take far longer!

I actually think we had a good showing of good games given the timescales and the number of active CPC developers (compared to the recent C64 competition, they had 3-4 times as many games, but I'd estimate at least that many more active developers).

So, in summary, I think we should be happy that the competition was a success and that we got some more great games to play! (And hopefully I'll find some time to properly play some of them without feeling like I'm just quickly judging it!)

[TFM]

Maybe you set the ladder too high. Ehm... I mean maybe there is too much pressure about "I have to provide the perfect game, or they will burn me....".

Are we really sooo snobby to critique not-as-perfect-games to death? Maybe we all should be just happy about any kind of game - and take pressure away of the programmers.

Or do we just not want to deliver imperfection? [nb]What would CLU and Flynn tell us about that?
[/nb]

[rexbeng]

Oh, TFM, don't be shy! Just say "next time don't permit Axelay and rexbeng to participate in the compo".

Jokes aside, I sincerely believe that voting and judging the games should remain on the gamers themselves. It's not like the CPC games are competing against C64 games or Amiga games. This isn't the "Revision Oldschool Democompo". Limitations are the same for all and in the end it should be about which game PLAYS the best out of the lot. Same goes for "anonymous developers". I find it silly that someone wouldn't vote my game despite that he likes it better just because he doesn't like my nickname for example.

Then, the voting categories should be decided and made public at the begining of the compo so that the developers themselves know what they are competing for. Else, just have one single category for "best game" and that's it. 

Other than that, I generally agree with what arnoldemu had to say. A seperate "special" website (regardless the compo being hold under the cpcwiki "umbrella") that doesn't require a wiki accound is essential for posting announcements and for voting.

And ofcourse there's the "advertizing". Perhaps the CPC-wiki community alone isn't actually that large to support such events. You need people from the general retro scene to get interested in what you do. Talk about it in forums, RGCD, retrogamer, demoscene sites.

But prior to that you need a web-place for better presenting the compo.

rb

[TFM]

Oh, TFM, don't be shy! Just say "next time don't permit Axelay and rexbeng to participate in the compo".

Who are they? No competition for me anyway    No seriously, you got some good points. But if you would know all that crap happening in the German CPC "scene", you would understand my doubts a bit more.

However it would be interesting to see a voting of the "people" and the "experts".

[redbox]

I see what you're saying TFM, but I agree with Rexbeng - it isn't a demo competition, it's a game competition and hence it's more about if the game plays well to me.

But of course there is room alongside for technical achievement, but this should remain a sub category rather than the main reason for entering.

Not sure if a seperate website is required for the compo, but making access easier for non CPC users is a very good idea (alongside promotion etc) because it will then hopefully interest the whole retro gaming community and might well get more people involved with the CPC at the same time.

[AMSDOS]

I don't know how to improve the ROM game competition, though I guess everyone's first question would be:-

* Does it work on my Real CPC?

The short answer for me is no, because I haven't got ROM boards or ROMs or the means to get the games from the files onto that media, if it was sold as commercial then well that's different 
However Programmers these days have to ask themselves this question because Emulators haven't been perfected to the same degree. So it's nice that something is on a ROM, though perhaps an extra hurdle I'm guessing to make sure it works on the Real Deal, which means having all the stuff to make that ROM work? Tape or Disc/Disk obviously hasn't got that extra complexity. 

I had other thoughts too, but I've mentioned them before and it's more wishful thinking on my part anyway, which people get tired hearing about. 

[arnoldemu]

About voting: I think it would be an advantage...

- if we would have an expert team, people who judge the games based on their knowledge of the CPC and its limitations. [nb]This will piss you off, but the voting about 'technical achievement' must be a bad joke for this years entries IMHO - And yes, just IMHO.[/nb]

- if entries would be voted (either public or expert team) without them knowing who actually did the game. So personal likes and dislikes will play no role.

- It would be great if we can vote (public or expert team) in a way that allows us to give certain amounts of percentages to different games. If game 1 is slightly better then 2 and 3, everybody will vote 1, but nobody will vote 2 or 3, so that's just unfair for 2 and 3.

The competition is about games and how fun they are. I think we should allow anyone to vote especially those outside the scene. This does mean many will be limited to playing on an emulator and this may mean they don't get to appreciate the true game. Yes we should highly recommend that the games be played on a real machine but accept not always. People outside our scene may not have the knowledge to gauge any technical achievements so a lot of the time this will not be recognised. True it may bring smoother gameplay or better look or sound so then it is not directly reflected in the vote.

I don't know the best way to vote for this.

I think the competition was a great success. I am already thinking of an idea I can finish in time.

[TomEtJerry]

Hello,

Interesting topic ! I agree with RexBeng, a dedicaced website would be helpful to promote the next challenge.

About voting, we talk about games, so everybody should vote for them, not only sceners or experts (if you see this year results, the best technicalgames are top 1 & 2).

Looking at the event rules, I was a little bit troubled by the choice of ROM format. Many people don't have an idea how to use these files :-(. But finally, that's not a big problem, as the games can be played on romboard or file/tape storage. That would be a little bit annoying if the next competitors would be playable only with rambox.

Last comment of the day, about publishing the winner game. That's a common habit on the C64 scene, so it might be a nice idea. I am sure a disk compilation of all games would be a million seller :-). (not on tape : although programmers do many games compatible with cassette format, nobody seem to buy them (look at Sub hunter, 20 disks selled in two weeks, 16 tapes in two years :-( ).

T&J/GPA

ps : a new release of Overkoban has been spreaded (fix level 50 and do a less ugly transion between the main menu and the game).
You can download on La maison de retraite du GPA ?.

[steve]

I don't think a dedicated site is necessary or desirable, I am not a coder so I would probably forget that other site even existed and would miss anything posted on it, but realistically what would be on that new site that would not be put in the relevant thread on this forum?

I do think that next year we need a special prize for TFM

[Trebmint]

Personally I think there should be a catchy name like 'Retro'... and it needs to be given every year. What would be really cool is if the CPC, C64, Speccy, MSX, BBC shared a retro competition. So several platform specific catagories, but a main award across platforms too.

[steve]

But my CPC even with 128k will not run software for the c64, msx, bbc etc.

[Trebmint]

Haha I didnt that as Im sure you know. I meant an annual awards with catagories like Best CPC Game or Best Speecy demo, with there being a Best overall game award too.
Always thought it was a shame that we're all individual communities rather than having a larger 8bit online community. Would make stuff more vibrant imho

[TotO]

I am sure a disk compilation of all games would be a million seller :-)

They sold a MILLION #4 ?

[Bryce]

Haha I didnt that as Im sure you know. I meant an annual awards with catagories like Best CPC Game or Best Speecy demo, with there being a Best overall game award too.
Always thought it was a shame that we're all individual communities rather than having a larger 8bit online community. Would make stuff more vibrant imho

I think what he means is that if you only own a CPC, then you won't be able to judge an MSX/C64 game for yourself, making it difficult to vote. And an overall prize will most likely be won by the community with the most members, not necessarily the best game.

Back in the day, I always wondered why they didn't come up with some kind of game engine. So that the engine read the generic game data and played it for that particular system. Other than showing my complete lack of software knowledge, it seemed like a good idea at the time

Bryce.

[steve]

@Bryce,  No, I was just trolling.

[ralferoo]

Just re-read this:

About voting: I think it would be an advantage...

- if we would have an expert team, people who judge the games based on their knowledge of the CPC and its limitations. [nb]This will piss you off, but the voting about 'technical achievement' must be a bad joke for this years entries IMHO - And yes, just IMHO.[/nb]

- if entries would be voted (either public or expert team) without them knowing who actually did the game. So personal likes and dislikes will play no role.

- It would be great if we can vote (public or expert team) in a way that allows us to give certain amounts of percentages to different games. If game 1 is slightly better then 2 and 3, everybody will vote 1, but nobody will vote 2 or 3, so that's just unfair for 2 and 3.

in the context of this:

Who are they? No competition for me anyway    No seriously, you got some good points. But if you would know all that crap happening in the German CPC "scene", you would understand my doubts a bit more.

However it would be interesting to see a voting of the "people" and the "experts".

I'm confused by what you're trying to say here. Because it sounds like you're saying that you think you deserved more votes and that somehow people voted against you not because of the game but because of your name.

In particular, the comment about technical achievement seems very much tinged with sour grapes. Personally, I didn't think Cyberhuhn was such a great technical achievement. The collision detection between the shots and targets was a bit hit and miss and for me this detracted from the gameplay, no matter how many sprites it was managing to display. Compared to Relentless which offered smooth 50Hz play, I don't think it's at all surprising that it won the technical achievement. Also, the front page was really nicely done for a mode 1 screen.

I think the most likely cause is that the last point made in your first point. In each of the categories, we voted for what we thought was the best. So while Cyberhuhn was a good game, it wasn't the absolute best in any of the categories. That doesn't make it a bad game, but equally voting on the game without knowing who wrote it isn't going to suddenly make it score better.

We also had a special mention category which seemed to me like a cross between "2nd place" and "best overall game". You also scored pretty well in that too, so again you shouldn't feel disappointed.

The thing to take away from this is that a lot of people liked your game and we also now have 4 more CPC games, each of which is clearly well liked for different reasons. There are only winners here.

[ralferoo]

Looking at the event rules, I was a little bit troubled by the choice of ROM format. Many people don't have an idea how to use these files :-(. But finally, that's not a big problem, as the games can be played on romboard or file/tape storage. That would be a little bit annoying if the next competitors would be playable only with rambox.

Yeah, I would definitely have preferred it if the submissions were also in cdt or dsk format as then I could have played them on a real machine. As it was, it was a good test of my emulator (they all worked fine btw!) but I'd rather have had it playing on a real CPC for the authenticity.

[arnoldemu]

Perhaps it's best just to take away the "best technical achievement" category 1) because it's about games 2) to keep the voting simple.

Keep it simple?
- best graphics
- best sound

Next we want them to rate which they enjoyed the most, and this may not necessarily be the one with the best graphics/sound. Perhaps:

- game you enjoyed the most

We could also consider CPC+ games for next time, so it's cpc/cpc+? This may open it up to other coders?
Or keep the + games seperate?