I think i'll give a try to the Four Elements contest. That will give me a clear goal and justify to my family (essentially mom) the energy i'm putting in learning opengl as fast as i can.

Thanks for your answer Vincoof. Hadn't seen it yet when I posted. So now the question is how do we get an admin or moderator to move the thread ? I don't want to bother them if it's useless.

Thought about a thing. If we're gonna have the winner project sold on Nehe cd we can't use copyrighted material without paying royalties or risking lawsuits. So we have to take care of that if we want to remake an old game.

Another question : does someone has ever used a cvs ? I know what it is but i've never used one and I wonder if it is a good thing for a team to use this kind of system in this contest to coordinate every member's work.

[edited by - trexmaster on May 2, 2002 4:48:41 AM]

NeHe is a moderator, so we could ask him what he thinks about moving the thread, and he will surely answer (i)if he can move it and (ii)if he agrees to move it. But first of all, we could ask him what he thinks about the concept of the team-based game contest

About cvs, needless to say it''s a necessity. I think that most teams who tried both methods (method 1 == ''manual'' management ; method 2 == cvs or equivalent) would agree with me. Perhaps it won''t be cvs itself, it can be another system. But as cvs is the most used and the most popular over the web, chances are low that we shall use another system. At least over the Internet.

Hey i know
Why dont we join together, and (try to) win the four elements contest, and donate the prize to nehe (for his own comp) that would be kind of funny - and we would test to see if the team idea works (and benefit NeHe who without him alot of us would no basically nothing about openGL)

He, that''s a cool idea

I''m in :D Working together would be really cool.. and we could test the idea..

Let''s do it :D

Yeah that'd be great !

As I stated above I already planed on joining this contest and Siti's idea just great ! And as we can enter more than once we can still work in a team and alone if we want to have our own work judged, which is the reason for which I planned on entering the contest. I was already planning to offer the card to a friend if (very big if) I had won so let's Nehe be that friend !

We should start a new thread to discuss about the team demo.

[edited by - trexmaster on May 2, 2002 7:32:42 AM]

quote:

---

Original post by vincoof
About cvs, needless to say it''s a necessity. I think that most teams who tried both methods (method 1 == ''manual'' management ; method 2 == cvs or equivalent) would agree with me.

---

I know what you mean. We''ve tried the manual one to manage our end of year project (which was a game) with my fellows at the university and it was a disaster. It was very difficult to get everyone''s latest work, even while we saw each other everyday. So maybe we should try to impose cvs to the teams, but that will be possible if in each team there is someone who knows how to use it or if we provide a little step-by-step manual so it''s really easy to use. Because I believe a lot of people will want to concentrate on coding their game and not on learning how to use cvs and that''s easy to understand.

I love the concept of joining our work for the four elements contest !
It would help experimenting the team idea, and it would make NeHe really happy I think. Not only because he would receive a gift, but because he would be very proud of us I think.
Yeah yeah I know... first win the contest, then we shall use sweet words. Now it''s time to work !


CVS is not that hard to use. We need at least one cvs admin, and everybody else would use minimal features of cvs which are simple.
So we need :
- a web server to host our work online (sourceforge? I don''t like them alot but it''s a solution nonetheless)
- an experienced cvs user/admin
- a bit of patience to learn using cvs efficiently (as the database will be shared, we should at least prevent from errors that would reset the database!)

So there are a few questions left before we have a contest almost ready to run :
1) Shall we impose the use of cvs to the teams since it would be easier to manage the team work with that and is there someone among us that has some experience with CVS and who's willing to be a CVS admin for the contest ?
2) Is the contest about making entirely new games, remaking old ones or leaving this question to the teams ?
3) Should we allow entries to use copyrighted material ?
4) Does NeHe agrees to place the winners' game on his cd ?
5) Where would we like the contest to be hosted (Nehe or gamedev) ?
6) How long does the contest run ?

Once we have answers to these questions we will be quite close to having every rule needed for the contest (well ... every rule I think we need). But we have some time since it seems some of us want to apply to the 4Elems contest, both as individuals as well as as a team. So that mean we only need to have the contest ready to run for the beginning of July.

Now my (not definitive, I can be convinced there are better) answers to the questions above :
1)It seems both Vince and me agree, from our experiences, that a system like cvs is a necessity.
2)I don't mind, both would be cool.
3)I think not if we're about to have the best one published on nehe's cd.
4)Only Nehe can answer this one.
5)I'd prefer Gamedev since the audience will be greater.
6)I vote for 3 months since it gives us enough time to have people moving in and out of the teams if needed.

Wow ! Another long post. Sorry, my brain's working more than ever. Don't know why.

"I have questions. Questions that need answering !" - Gandalf the gray, The fellowship of the ring

[edited by - trexmaster on May 2, 2002 9:47:29 AM]

My answers :
1) agree. cvs or equivalent is a must-have.
2) depend on copyright permisssions. anyway I''d prefer either choosing one category (remaking old games) or the other (creating new games) but not allow both styles. It would be almost impossible to set a winner, then.
3) copyrighted stuff is not what NeHe likes the most
4) NeHe''s the guy who has the answer, anyway I think it depends on the contest host. If NeHe hosts the contest, maybe all entries will be on his CD. If NeHe does NOT host the contest, I''m not sure that competitors would grant their work to NeHe''s CD.
5) GameDev looks better. But if NeHe insists I think he can host the contest.
6) less than 2 months would be too short for a team work, and more than 6 months would be too boring. So I''d say 3-4 months.

btw, congrats for the quote. It fits your post so well

We have to use another entry submission procedure for the next contest.

It''s too hard for one person to deal with such an amount of emails.

We have to use a server side script to generate a web page where the time left for the contest is clearly given without regard of time zones. On this page we also put a send button used to send files to the server using the http POST method.

We should be able to overwrite an entry until the contest is over and NeHe should be able to keep trace of all the transfers to ensure he has our latest work.