When I say provide assets, I do not mean to imply that you would
have to use those graphics. It just seems to me that what's preventing more people from entering the contest is that the barrier for entry is too high. You have to be an artist, a good programmer, and have a lot of time to burn. Which limits the contestant pool to a few dozen people maybe.
I'm assuming that we don't want an elitist contest. There should be enough given up front for someone who knows how to program to produce a game with a little bit of effort. Most programmers are not artists, so for them to produce a game they have to either find an artist (and then rely on the artist to actually finish), look online for free assets (which is dubious at best), or make assets themselves and have them not only be of poor quality, but take time away from programming the game in general. Or worse, a combination of all three, and have the graphics be wildly hit or miss on quality.
If you want to make your own assets, and go for a 3D game, then I guess you should go for it. But you're not going to finish, not unless you
really know what you're doing. For us mere mortals, the only way we can finish a game is if we don't have to draw the graphics ourselves.
Which all leads me back to one of my original points: it would be nice if there was a parallel project just for artists to produce game assets for the programming competition.
Quote:
you'll end up with very similar looking games
And that's a problem...? Have you looked through the entries? How many would you say have "good" graphics? Maybe unifying people's crappy graphics in to less crappy graphics that everyone uses would be an improvement.
Even if they all look similar, they'll still play wildly different, come from different genres, etc. If anything, it would heighten emphasis on game design.
[Edited by - Numsgil on May 12, 2008 5:10:56 PM]