Quote: Original post by ne0_kamen
Also what do you think of judging the entries by voting?Only participants in the contest will be able to vote, and they won't be able to vote for themselves.

Could work, but it's possible that people taking part will be biased based on their own entry, or how they perceive an entry relative to how they themselves have interpreted the elements etc. Depending on how much people want to win, tactically voting down the competition might become a problem too.. =)

Quote: Original post by Erik Rufelt
Could work, but it's possible that people taking part will be biased based on their own entry, or how they perceive an entry relative to how they themselves have interpreted the elements etc. Depending on how much people want to win, tactically voting down the competition might become a problem too.. =)

That is true of course,but there will be no awards in this contest besides respect. And if your entry is crappy what respect will you get for winning?I don't see any point in cheating.

Quote: Original post by swiftcoder
I would still prefer qualified judges though

Yes,but I prefer 'instant,unqualified and biased' opinion than a 'when its done,quilified and biased' one.

[EDIT - Lesan I just saw your last post so I will add all I can say here ]

Quote: One of them is the "cheating" (voting down all the others). One may say nobody will do this but somebody could give simple "one point less" to others to inconspiciously give himself an advantage

You won't be able to vote down,you will be able to "just vote" for the best entry (like in election).The entry with most votes is the winner.

Quote: Plus, feedback is important and judges would give better feedback than "I played your game, I liked it."

Absolutely,but look at Image of the Day or Your announcements posts here. I think ,as a participant, that I will have nothing against checking the competition,and definately will leave my feedback to any entry that catched my eye.

Quote: What competitor will take the time to play all other entries for an hour each at least and then judge it? What competitor will test stability? Performance? When the game starts with a "Missing library" error, what competitor will go find it on the internet to fix it? Qualified, or at least, committed judges would be far better, in my opinion.

Its the author's responsibility to make the game playable as is,otherwise no one is guilty that his entry didn't get much attention.

Quote: Dark Adept (provided that the judging is fast)
Trapper Zoid (provided that the community is active and that the elements are interesting)
The Flying Dutchman (provided that the community is active and that Linux is allowed)
Moe (unsure whether he will join)

Count me in,too.

Quote:
What time period do you prefer?
Are you interested in participating (as contestants)?
Should the organiser (me) and the judges be allowed to participate if only the other judges judge their entries?

1.From 30th Octomber to Pasch for example.
2.Yes.
3.If we vote oursleves its irrelevant.Otherwise no.

[Edited by - ne0_kamen on October 11, 2009 11:39:49 AM]

I definitely think contestants could also judge, if they are committed to it, but as you said they might not be willing to take the time, time that they would rather spend on improving their own game. A 'community rating' where participants rate other entries from 1-10 based on enjoyment could be one category in the total score.
I might be interested in participating, though I would probably work on it off and on, if the contest runs many months. But I see what you're saying about a longer time, and 4 months minimum is probably a good idea.

Hey, you've got things rolling. Great! [smile]

Quote: Original post by Lesan
The name: Ok, you're probably right. However, I'd still like to use the Four Elements name if only to attract people. I know this is the heart of the issue but that brand is really useful :D Do you think a simple An Unofficial 4E would be good enough? Or should we come up with something absolutely original?

I'd check with the staff here to see if they object. I wouldn't go with 4E7, as there's bound to be an official one someday. Unofficial Four Elements is alright if it's okay to use "Four Elements", although it's a bit formal sounding.

Quote: The time period: 4 months? 5 months? 6 months? I don't care but I don't like anything under 4 months. The Four Elements were always a long-run and I participated for exactly that reason. Endurance was part of what the participant must have had.

I'm happy with whatever, but if I complete I'm almost certainly not going to put more than one months worth of hobby time into it regardless. That's partly because I'm aiming for a few other 4-6 month projects of my own, but it's also due to the different dynamics of long projects. To me, one week contest is a quick, fun diversion; a one month contest involves more planning and some commitment; but a six month contest is a serious project and will be treated as such.

That said, it's traditional for a 4E contest to be long, so I see no problem with the tradition unless there's a strong push for something shorter. However, I'd note that it does seem like a long time for a small community competition. You're competing for time from all the other big name contests too, ones with prizes and more attention. You'll need a strong community to keep the thing alive.

Quote: The voting: I'm strongly against community voting.

Hmm, I'm not sure. Since there aren't any prizes, I see the main point of the contest being the community spirit helping people work towards their goal of making a game. The voting at the end is really just icing. There's strengths and weaknesses with either approach, and it also depends a bit on how many entries you get.

Quote: Trapper Zoid (provided that the community is active and that the elements are interesting)

And that I find the time to compete. [wink]

(At the moment I'm working through a few game prototypes myself, with an eye to finding something I can develop into a fully-fledged indie game. If the contest looks like it would complement that goal nicely, then I'll aim for two birds with one stone. There's a great chance I'd make a crappy one week prototype, but polishing it up for several months afterwards might be hard to justify. I might be able to find a compromise, but if not: hey, there's still a crappy prototype I can enter, right? [wink])

Quote: Should the organiser (me) and the judges be allowed to participate if only the other judges judge their entries?

If there's no prizes, everyone should be allowed to enter. If there's an issue, then you can set up different voting blocks - "Best Competitor's Game" alongside "Best Overall" and so on.

Quote: Original post by swiftcoder

Quote: By the way, swiftcoder, judging by your rating (1700) you should be at least a bit qualified.

Sure, but that rating is largely due to domain specific programming knowledge, and it would be nice to get a few judges with published titles under their belts [smile]

I got my first hundred rating points by posting a doctored Magic the Gathering card image, and the second hundred by posting images to a "Guess what game this crappy hand-drawn image is meant to represent" game thread. I'm not sure what that says about my judging qualifications. [grin]

Quote: Original post by Lesan

Judging: What about this:
The "judge panel" consists of
(1) All the contestants who wish to judge.
(2) Non-competing persons who wish to judge.
Every member of the "judge panel" is required to judge all the entries. He is required to score them in all categories (there may be less categories than in the original contest) and also write as detailed a feedback as possible. If a contest does not want to take the time to score all others, he does not have to judge. (Some contestants perhaps only want to make the game. Judging all the other entries would take them time and they would perhaps not take it seriously or perhaps they wouldn't even enter to avoid judging.) No contestant can judge his or her own game. The overall score for a game would be an average of all categories and those would in turn be average of scorings of all judges.

All right,this seems like a nice compromise,but I prefer contestants to be allowed to judge individual entries.This will allow anyone to spend as much time as he wants in judging and ease the burden,not to mention that if Linux is allowed some people won't be able to test every game,but could still test most games.

Anyway,we could even add small bonuses to the scoring of a competitor's game if he reviewed all other projects,encouraging more feedback.

Quote: I would consider a good element Distress Signal. Distress signal can be represented in a variety of ways, in action games, strategy games, arcades ... It will be represented in the gameplay somehow and it would increase the originality, perhaps. I would certainly like to know what ideas would people come with for implementing Distress Signal.

Very good element,indeed.
My idea about the generator was of course not to blindly take what the computer generated,but instead someone,like you for example,to roll them like in D&D games,until something interesting comes out.
Also I didn't want a single person to place them all,because it would be very biased and would make the challenge not very interesting to that person.

By the way,I offer you my assistance with the programming of the website / the CMS system. I'm decent with PHP / MySQL,but poor at creating the templates,so we will use what you already have or someone else could do it (provided you accept my help,after all).

Also Trapper Zoid,please rename this thread because its a little confusing right now,or let someone create a new one.