Thank you all for suggestions.

Website:

I agree most of the discussion should take place in these forums, if GDNet does not forbid it. The website, however, will host contest information and submission/judging system as that is better than by coding than by using forums.
ne0_kamen and I will work on the submission system and the site so that it is ready by the beginning of the contest (October 30th).

Judging:

The judging period, as TheFlyingDutchman suggested, will be one month. Each entry must get at least two complete feedback forms filled before judging period ends.

GDNet participation:

Yes, that would be great. I would also like to invite some of those who judged the previous contest as judgepanel members for this one, if they accept.
Superpig has not yet replied to me.

Rules:

The element has to have a significant presence. That means a player should notice the element. However, if the contestant is able to explain the presence of the element in a way like "The element was Rain. And you see, this Rain of Meteors kills player if he steps on the wrong spot. I implemented Rain as Rain of Meteors." This could be accepted. There could be a "Element Significance" judging category and moreover, a game with no elements implemented will be disqualified. By who, I'm not sure yet. I hope it won't come to that.

Prizes:

Sure, it would be great to get some. And if we actually manage to get prizes (I will try certainly), then I won't compete for them. I mean, I can still do an entry and have it judged but even if I score 1st, I will simply be skipped over. It's only logical to do that - superpig was eliminated from the competition too and since I now have the right to choose the elements, I would be at an advantage.

Elements:

Here's an idea: If I pick up some set(s) of elements, it would perhaps be good to send it one of you to verify it. Better one than all (not to spoil the surprise), but better one than zero (so that I don't produce an absolute nonsense).
And thank you all for the "good element" definitions and ideas.

I've been experimenting with this random generator.The results are acceptable,but it would require an effort to create the relations for very large pools of elements.
Here is my 50 lines version of it

An example elements.txt

And rules.txt

I'm not forcing anyone to use it,I just wanted to see if this idea could work.
You are free to experiment with it and tell me what did you get.

Whether random or not, if you are unsure about which elements are the best, I would suggest posting and discussing the various groups of elements you decide between first. There will still be a surprise as to which one it will be (you can do a random selection after there seems to be agreement on 5 or so groups that all seem good).

Count me in too. Even without the elements set it sounds like it'll be an interesting contest!

I didn't get if there's already an agreement on minimum specs and target platforms, so:


A faster CPU than 2.0Ghz would be nice and more realistic. It's rare to see a pc gamer (or even more so a contender; game programmer) that doesn't have at least a dual core 2.0Ghz or single core 3 Ghz CPU.

As graphics is something I focus a lot on, I'd also like to know the minimum graphics card spec (DX9 and DX10). Also, if you target a DX10 system, it'd be odd to go for 2Ghz and the min spec DX10 graphics card, as you'd be able to get much more out of an XP variant.

A min spec sound card would also be nice. If sound makes an important part of your game, it's nice to have an idea of what level sound card you can expect (is it worth the time implementing some nice eax effects, can I play (more than) 16 streams at the same time, etc.).

As for memory, I don't think many people will fill up 512MB, but it feels a bit low these days. I mean, my graphics card has twice that, and Vista pretty much fills 512MB up by itself.. Maybe this can be increased if there really is no judging pc with that spec, or maybe bonus points could be added if you make it on such a pc.


As for being/feeling outdated, most AAA titles have a minimum system spec that is considerably higher than the one mentioned. Their minimum spec is also far from target spec, which means minimum spec systems will run the game at barely playable performance.
While AAA is not the goal of the competition, a lot of the techniques that could be used to increase fun or quality (such as more than basic physics usage, maybe some new interesting innovative techniques?) would become very difficult to implement within the 4 months (or even 6 months).

Some *min* specs for recent games ripped from Steam:
Batman: 3Ghz, 1GB, NV6600(PCIe)/ATIx1300
Wolfenstein: 3.2Ghz, 1GB, NV6800GT/ATIx800
Operation Flashpoint DR: 2.4Ghz DualCore, 1GB, NV7600GT 256MB / ATI X1800XL 256mb
Mini Ninjas: 3.2Ghz, 512MB(1GB Vista), NV6600/ATIx1300
Need for Speed Shift: 1.6Ghz Core2, 1GB(XP)/1.5GB(Vista/7), 256 MB Video Card, with support for Pixel Shader 3.0*

Seeing as how even AAA games have lost interest (which generally try to appeal a relatively broad audience), it just feels unnecessarily limiting.


Anyway, thanks Lesan and others for kicking some life back into 4E :D.

Quote: I would replace trains for two reasons - first it excludes all games where trains are not yet invented or unavailable for some reason. Fitting them in such games would be hard / out of place.

Don't be so literal! And this applies to ANY element choice. Okay, the element is 'trains'. Does this mean locomotives? Steam engines? Rail road tracks? No, of course not! It could, but that is the least creative interpretation. A train is anything in a line that moves. It could be a train of ants. Or a conga line. Or a bridal gown. Or a verb. So if you take elements too literally they will all sound constrictive, and you'll end up with a set so general everyone qualifies. At that point you might as well go back to the beginning and just use fire, earth, water, and air. (That's, actually, not a bad idea.) Or, you can let them be a little more specific, and see what people come up with.

Minimum Specs : Erring too high for a judge's machine benefits contestants - less of us have to worry about meeting them.

In my opinion the minimum specs can be low, those from last year seem OK. If you want to implement a very expensive technique, make it optional in the game settings.
I can understand wanting to use D3D10/11 as the API if one is used to that, but seeing how many people still use XP in http://www.gamedev.net/community/forums/activeusers.asp makes it seem not too good an idea. If the judges have it then I definitely don't mind if it's allowed, I personally write most of my project using it, but it does exclude a lot of people from being able to play it.

Quote: Original post by Tree Penguin
A faster CPU than 2.0Ghz would be nice and more realistic. It's rare to see a pc gamer (or even more so a contender; game programmer) that doesn't have at least a dual core 2.0Ghz or single core 3 Ghz CPU.

A single-core 2.0 GHz CPU is a decent enough spec for laptops, so it really depends what are expected targets are.

Quote: As graphics is something I focus a lot on, I'd also like to know the minimum graphics card spec (DX9 and DX10). Also, if you target a DX10 system, it'd be odd to go for 2Ghz and the min spec DX10 graphics card, as you'd be able to get much more out of an XP variant.

DX10 is an unreasonable technology to require as minimum target in a judged competition, because it requires judges to all be running Vista. SInce we aren't judged, having a minimum spec at all may be a mistake - the point is more how you use available resources than how much resources you have.

Quote: A min spec sound card would also be nice. If sound makes an important part of your game, it's nice to have an idea of what level sound card you can expect (is it worth the time implementing some nice eax effects, can I play (more than) 16 streams at the same time, etc.).

I doubt most of us even *have* dedicated sound cards - certainly none of the laptops do. That means a reasonable target would be on the level of onboard realtek sound.

Quote: Seeing as how even AAA games have lost interest (which generally try to appeal a relatively broad audience), it just feels unnecessarily limiting.

Two points:

• It is highly unlikely that anyone is going to develop an AAA quality game in 4 months for this competition
• AAA games almost exclusively focus on graphics - which is pretty, but not necessarily what we want here. Consider that limiting graphics power may force people to explore gameplay instead.

However, keep in mind that these are minimum specs - most judges are likely to have considerably better specs. For instance, I will be doing any judging on a dual-core 2.8 GHz AMD, with 4 GB of memory and a 516 MB HD 4870.

A community run 4e contest sounds interesting, consider me signed-up if this goes anywhere.

Quote: Original post by Deyja
Don't be so literal! And this applies to ANY element choice. Okay, the element is 'trains'. Does this mean locomotives? Steam engines? Rail road tracks? No, of course not! It could, but that is the least creative interpretation. A train is anything in a line that moves. It could be a train of ants. Or a conga line. Or a bridal gown. Or a verb. So if you take elements too literally they will all sound constrictive, and you'll end up with a set so general everyone qualifies. At that point you might as well go back to the beginning and just use fire, earth, water, and air. (That's, actually, not a bad idea.) Or, you can let them be a little more specific, and see what people come up with.

Generally the 4E contests had a descriptor for each element outlining exactly what it meant and what the limits were. I support that, because if you allow people to get too "creative" in what the elements mean then you can get them to fit anything. I don't think it would be acceptable given the classic elements for me to make a game about someone on Earth firing water-pistols, written in Adobe AIR. [wink]

For minimum specs, it depends a lot on who you want to judge. I develop on an iMac and my secondary Windows PC is five years old, so if the specs are too high then I won't be able to play or judge some of the entries.

Quote: Original post by Trapper ZoidI don't think it would be acceptable given the classic elements for me to make a game about someone on Earth firing water-pistols, written in Adobe AIR. [wink]

Good one :D

Minimum specifications:
My machine is powerful. 3 GHz dual-core with 8GB memory, DirectX10, Vista and pretty good speakers. However, in this contest, there are many judges and still contestants can judge too, I do not know in advance what will be the worst judging machine. However, there should be some minimum specifications to forbid those with poor machines to judge.
Imagine the following scenario:

Most judges have 2.0GHz dual-core machine. They rate many of the games and notice no poor performance.
Now, a judge with 1.4 GHz single-core machine judges a single game (he doesn't have to judge all, according to the rules), gives it Performace 1/10 and that game is disavantaged compare to the others.

So the minimal requirements will state what machine must the judge have if he wants to judge.

Lots of joiners:
That's great. It seems it will be quite a good contest, then.