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General => SFML game jam => Topic started by: Eremiell on February 17, 2016, 03:00:21 am

Title: 5th SFML Game Jam
Post by: Eremiell on February 17, 2016, 03:00:21 am
The site (https://sfmlgamejam.com/)'s prepared! Go and register now! We're looking forward for all of you!

"Failure is an option" is the theme for this jam!

The jam has officially ended! It's final judging time!

Come join us to our jam IRC channel #sfmlgamejam @ irc.boxbox.org (http://www.boxbox.org/). Open in browser via KiwiIRC (http://kiwiirc.com/client/irc.boxbox.org/#sfmlgamejam).

The Final Judging categories for this jam are:

Innovation - How innovative, unexpected and refreshing the project is.
Gameplay Mechanics - How interesting the mechanics are, how originally are they composed.

Fun - How much fun it is to play the project.
Theme - How well it captures the theme. (Please be open minded for various theme interpretations.)

Graphics - How well it looks, how original it is visually.
Audio - How well it sounds, how original it is audibly.

Mood - How much it captures you into the story and world in general, how much you feel inside the project.
Game Flow - How smoothly the project goes.

Overall - Computed from all the previous.

Terms for this SFML Game Jam are:

Theme ProposalTheme VotingTheme AnnouncementJammingDeliveryFinal JudgingWinner Announcement
29. Feb - 1. Mar2. Mar - 3. Mar4. Mar5. Mar - 20. Mar21. Mar - 22. Mar23. Mar - 3. Apr4. Apr

Rules:

Time Frame:
1. The jam starts with 48 hours for theme proposal.
2. Another 48 hours are given for theme voting.
3. The theme of the jam is announced 24 hours before the jamming officially starts.
4. Participants are given 16 days of jamming (Saturday midnight UTC to Monday midnight UTC) to work on their projects.
5. Additional 48 hours are given to participants for packaging the projects and delivery.
6. Everyone has 12 days to try the projects and cast their votes in final judging.
7. Together start to finish, the jam takes 5 weeks, all phases follow each other immediately. Most of the participant's activity is expected in the 16 days of jamming.

Theme Proposal:
8. Everyone with an account on the jam site is welcome to propose theme ideas.
9. Theme ideas must not be offensive, vague, too similar to theme of any previous SFML Game Jam or recent iterations of any major game jam and must make sense.

Theme Voting:
10. Each participant (person intending to try to make a project during the jamming phase on his own or in a team) is allowed to take place in theme voting. Non-participants are asked to abstain.
11. The theme ideas will be voted on in several rounds.
12. Each round each participant has limited amount of votes decided by organizers based on amount of received theme ideas. The number of votes as well as the number of rounds will be known to participant at the beginning of the first voting round. Number of votes will be the same in all rounds including the final round.
13. Votes can be used to cast positive or negative points on ideas in the given round.
14. Theme ideas with best scores from each round will progress to the final round. Winner of the final round will be announced as the jam theme.

Theme Announcement:
15. Participants are free to publicly or privately brainstorm project ideas and form teams. No actual work on the project should yet be started.
16. Participants can continue to do whatever they're normally doing even if that would be useful for their jam project, but they shouldn't specifically work on the project itself.

Jamming:
17. Participants can work in a team of any size, or by themselves. Any participant is allowed to work on several teams or projects (like asset creators can provide music or graphics for several projects, etc.).
18. Participants should only create any original work needed for their project during this phase.
19. Any programming language may be used, as long as SFML (or one of its bindings) is used.
20. External libraries are allowed, but not SFML's competitors, such as GLFW, SDL, Allegro, etc. The use of OpenGL is allowed, however.
21. Any additional resources are allowed as long as participants have rights to use them, but they shouldn't be presented as original content created for the jam. Previous rule is the only limitation to this.
22. Participants have to give credit to original authors of any resources they use, that are not their own, even when the license doesn't enforce that. (Mostly so it's clear what is and what isn't their work.)

Delivery:
23. Team size and members must be stated when submitting.
24. A link to source is required when submitting as well as link to assets/anything needed in addition to compiled source in ready to use form (archive with expected directory structure, directory with expected contents and subdirectories on some cloud storage service, ...). Additional libraries should be listed and providing precompiled binaries or ways to obtain or compile them is encouraged.
25. Source and any assets created for the project have to be release into Public Domain or under permissive or copyleft license if that's possible. Participants are encouraged to use permissive license for maximal reusability of the work. Recommendations for participants without prior understanding on licensing are provided here (http://en.sfml-dev.org/forums/index.php?topic=19814.0), but are not part of these rules in any way.
26. A link to a working version of the project for either Windows, Mac, or Linux is required when submitting. This must include the executable and all assets/extras needed to run the project.
27. Projects with NSFW or shocking content must be marked as such.
28. Porting to other OS's as well as fixing small bugs in the project and any issues with the packaging is allowed and encouraged.
29. Participants are allowed to continue work on their project, but they have to keep the version made during the jamming phase (with exceptions per previous rule) for final judging.

Final Judging:
30. Everyone with an account of the jam site has right to vote (even non-participants).
31. Final judging takes place in several categories, that will be known to everyone at the beginning of the jamming phase.
32. Participants can decide to not take place in judging for some categories for any reason. Participants who didn't create any original content in given category are encouraged to do so.
33. Porting to other OS's as well as fixing small bugs in the project and any issues with the packaging is still allowed and encouraged.
34. Participants are allowed to continue work on their project, but they have to keep the version made during the jamming phase (with exceptions per previous rule) until this phase is over.
35. Winner in each category as well as overall winner will be announced once the final judging is over.




This post should stay up to date and may be edited later. To discuss the rules, please use the original planning thread (http://en.sfml-dev.org/forums/index.php?topic=19642.0).
Title: Re: 5th SFML Game Jam
Post by: eXpl0it3r on February 18, 2016, 02:49:50 am
Hurrah! ;)
Title: Re: 5th SFML Game Jam
Post by: Nexus on February 18, 2016, 08:06:04 pm
Great, thanks a lot for taking care of all this and realizing the next jam! :)
Title: Re: 5th SFML Game Jam
Post by: siordache94 on February 19, 2016, 02:09:27 am
I can't seem to get where i need to "apply" for the jam  :-X
Not sure yet if I can participate but I'll keep an eye on it :)
Title: Re: 5th SFML Game Jam
Post by: Hapax on February 19, 2016, 06:02:40 am
Good to see this up and running. Hope I'll even be able to participate!

I can't seem to get where i need to "apply" for the jam  :-X
Not sure yet if I can participate but I'll keep an eye on it :)
The jam (or the pre-jam period) hasn't started yet but you could sign up at the official SFML Game Jam website (https://sfmlgamejam.com/account/register) in preparation for it :)
Title: Re: 5th SFML Game Jam
Post by: Eremiell on February 19, 2016, 11:52:50 am
There are still some finishing touches being done on the website, which is why I haven't linked it officially, but you can already register on the site (https://sfmlgamejam.com/). I'll add it to the top of the thread once it's 100% ready.
Title: Re: 5th SFML Game Jam
Post by: Hapax on February 19, 2016, 06:40:23 pm
register on the site (https://sfmlgamejam.com/)
My link above takes you directly to the registration page  :P
Title: Re: 5th SFML Game Jam
Post by: Eremiell on February 20, 2016, 04:32:32 am
Missed that one.  :)
Title: Re: 5th SFML Game Jam
Post by: Eremiell on March 05, 2016, 03:09:25 pm
Was just informed, that just editing the lead post won't bump this thread in people's unread, so yay, an update. The jam is now officially started and you're all invited. still more than 2 weeks to go.
Title: Re: 5th SFML Game Jam
Post by: Hapax on March 07, 2016, 01:49:10 pm
Totally missed the entire theme decision process.

Still, if I can think of something for the theme, I may still give it a go :-\
Title: Re: 5th SFML Game Jam
Post by: Nexus on March 07, 2016, 02:58:40 pm
Totally missed the entire theme decision process.
Me too, and I'm sure we're not the only ones. Too bad...
Title: Re: 5th SFML Game Jam
Post by: Ztormi on March 07, 2016, 03:03:07 pm
Managed to get my votes in to the final round  ;D
Yeah...
Title: Re: 5th SFML Game Jam
Post by: ka0s420 on March 09, 2016, 07:21:08 pm
this is either a) a very clever, philosophical theme that will require some actual thought, or b) the complete opposite.

at what point does failure being an option make it no longer a failure? at what point does failure stop being an option and becoming a pre-requisite for winning.

The only ideas i've had so far (of my own) are a generic platformer where falling down holes doesn't kill you, but helps you somehow (again making it perhaps teh better option, i.e not a failure at all). And the other idea was business tycoon-type game where you buy out rival businesses and try to run them, but if all else fails, you can make it go bankrupt and its still a win(strategy game for a game jam seems ambitious at least).

So yeah, ima gonna have to keep thinking on this. dw, I'm not fishing for ideas.
Title: Re: 5th SFML Game Jam
Post by: SpeCter on March 09, 2016, 07:50:42 pm
One example would be Rogue Legacy. You can play through it in one go, but if your character dies, it stays dead and one of its ancestors keeps going on etc.
Title: Re: 5th SFML Game Jam
Post by: select_this on March 09, 2016, 08:29:04 pm
this is either a) a very clever, philosophical theme that will require some actual thought, or b) the complete opposite.

I'll either be flattered or offended depending on which you end up plumping for  :P

The idea popped into my head when I was thinking about idioms that might make for a good theme. It was the one theme I suggested that I didn't already have an idea for - but that's how it goes!
Title: Re: 5th SFML Game Jam
Post by: ka0s420 on March 09, 2016, 08:42:04 pm
well, I think i'm currently plumping for 'a', it definitely has the potential to go so far as challenging the very foundations of what games actually are. Anyways, I have some more ideas now, though they appear to be getting darker as I go along, heh.
Title: Re: 5th SFML Game Jam
Post by: Hapax on March 09, 2016, 08:50:31 pm
a very clever, philosophical theme that will require some actual thought
I would think that it would have to have some major storyline to explain this.
Just having "failure" to complete some task is actually failing. If it progresses, it's not failure.
Failure would be something happening that you didn't try to make happen so "failing" on purpose is not failure; it's succeeding.

Technically, a game that allows you to quit and stop playing complies with this theme. :P

One example would be Rogue Legacy. You can play through it in one go, but if your character dies, it stays dead and one of its ancestors keeps going on etc.
"Perma-death" is only relevant if there is investment in building the character that would be lost, otherwise it's pretty much just "lives".

theme I suggested
You! >:(
Title: Re: 5th SFML Game Jam
Post by: select_this on March 09, 2016, 08:56:02 pm
8)

Personally I'm trying not to overthink it and am just going for 'success gets rewarded, failure also gets rewarded but in a different way'. I'm thinking failures on a small scale rather than an overall failure - for me it's easier to meet the brief that  way.
Title: Re: 5th SFML Game Jam
Post by: TestZombie on March 10, 2016, 01:48:47 am
How does this stuff pop without me noticing it? Been wondering about the next one for 6 months now, then it starts 4 days ago? wow I'm oblivious. O.o
Title: AW: 5th SFML Game Jam
Post by: eXpl0it3r on March 10, 2016, 01:13:20 pm
Just add a field called "Failure" to the game options -> Failure is an option ;)

Optionally you can also make it, so you can't lose if the option is disabled. :P
Title: Re: 5th SFML Game Jam
Post by: SpeCter on March 10, 2016, 02:18:10 pm
One example would be Rogue Legacy. You can play through it in one go, but if your character dies, it stays dead and one of its ancestors keeps going on etc.
"Perma-death" is only relevant if there is investment in building the character that would be lost, otherwise it's pretty much just "lives".

Rogue legacy kinda gets easier every time you die because your ancestors are better versions of your former self, which itself makes failure a viable option to progress.
Title: Re: AW: 5th SFML Game Jam
Post by: Nexus on March 10, 2016, 03:24:23 pm
a very clever, philosophical theme that will require some actual thought
It would be cool to see at least a few people spending some thought on it and not just go with the plain "you can't fail". Possibly by delving deeper into what "failure" or "option" may mean. Changing a single mechanic to swap success/failure is easy, but adding some depth is what needs creativity ;) And I hope that those who have good ideas in that regard keep them to themselves, so that we end up have potentially different variations :)

Just add a field called "Failure" to the game options -> Failure is an option ;)
Nice one 8)
Title: Re: 5th SFML Game Jam
Post by: Hapax on March 10, 2016, 07:29:32 pm
"Perma-death" is only relevant if there is investment in building the character that would be lost, otherwise it's pretty much just "lives".
Rogue legacy kinda gets easier every time you die because your ancestors are better versions of your former self, which itself makes failure a viable option to progress.
Therein lies the problem; dying is no longer a failure. It sounds like dying is a viable goal. It becomes an upgrade.

Just add a field called "Failure" to the game options -> Failure is an option ;)
I thought of this too and seriously considered actually doing it but it just didn't inspire anything else  :(
Title: Re: 5th SFML Game Jam
Post by: Arcade on March 10, 2016, 08:37:52 pm
I'm going to put my post in spoiler tags because I think part of the fun of a game jam is for people to use their own interpretation of the theme and I don't want to necessarily influence others. However, if you are struggling with ideas then read on.

(click to show/hide)
Title: Re: 5th SFML Game Jam
Post by: Ztormi on March 11, 2016, 12:03:36 am
I really like this little discussion and brainstorming going on. I believe it's the thing these jams need with such a small active community to get more entries.
Not sure if it's really part of any game jams but why the heck not?
Title: Re: 5th SFML Game Jam
Post by: bitano on March 21, 2016, 04:02:23 pm
I'd have gone for a game where you can get penalized for certain actions.

When you're game over, the game wouldn't just have a HIGH score with a top 10 in which you can register your new highscore, but underneath it there would also be a LOW score with a bottom 10.

You could go for as many penalties as possible to try and get the lowest score on the list, earning you the title of Master Loser /flex.

--------------

Sadly i noticed the event too late and therefore didn't have enough time to compete :D.
But i still get to vote, right? RIGHT ?!
Title: Re: 5th SFML Game Jam
Post by: Kojay on March 23, 2016, 02:33:25 pm
Is it just me who's disappointed by the turnout?

This was supposed to be a long jam precisely for all those of us who understandably don't have the time for a weekend jam. I was looking forward to the submissions of several dev team members and other community regulars who had indicated they would participate.

Personally, I was almost not going to complete my entry, because the bulk of the work got pushed on the last day and was sure it would pale in comparison to a 2-week work. But in the end, I think all who submitted did the exact same thing. So I understand that others might have refrained for that reason, but also disappointed that they could not jam something together.
Title: Re: 5th SFML Game Jam
Post by: bitano on March 23, 2016, 02:57:29 pm
Is it just me who's disappointed by the turnout?
I get why you'd say this.

There could be several reasons (or a combination thereof) for this outcome. Possibly related to:
- The size of the truly active core of community (participants)
- The communication / marketing of the game jam event
- The frequency of the event (currently once a year?)
- the background and therefore perhaps the popularity of the event

I'm quite new here so i can't really discuss any of the above possibilities.I like the idea of a game jam though. A means to demonstrate your skills and/or creativity in a fun way.
But was is the SFML drive behind the Jam?

And what would you suggest to improve the results of a possible future game jam? I am just that curious :D

[UPDATE]
Reading through other threads, SFML's drive would be to share the source code of those game jam creations with the community, which makes sense obviously :D
Title: Re: 5th SFML Game Jam
Post by: select_this on March 23, 2016, 08:47:24 pm
Mine was a complete non-starter for life reasons - dealing with my personal information being stolen and used for serious fraud, getting sick with norovirus which I still haven't shaken off fully etc.

It's unfortunate, especially since I was so visibly keen to be involved right up until the first day of the jam, which was the same day I discovered my details had been stolen. I'm hoping to somewhat make up for this by turning what would have been my entry into a fully open source game with all the trimmings.
Title: Re: 5th SFML Game Jam
Post by: Jonny on March 24, 2016, 12:59:23 pm
blah...

I'm also a little disappointed there weren't more submissions, but that's very easy to say when you're one of the few, and I was very close to not having anything to submit. I also know that I definitely wouldn't have been able to submit anything at all if it wasn't for the longer timescale, so that was hugely beneficial.

It's worth bearing in mind that it's the first one organised by Eremiell too, and I'm sure a load of things have been learnt that will benefit future jams. For example the official forum post only went up less than a week before the thing started.

I also think planning for the next one should start as soon as possible after this finishes, so dates can be set and interest doesn't fade away. I think if we can carry this momentum straight into planning the next one for a few months time, then things can only get better, right?

...Right?!?!
Title: Re: 5th SFML Game Jam
Post by: bitano on March 24, 2016, 01:55:59 pm
It's worth bearing in mind that it's the first one organised by Eremiell too, and I'm sure a load of things have been learnt that will benefit future jams.
Exactly how i feel about it!
Title: Re: 5th SFML Game Jam
Post by: Kojay on March 24, 2016, 02:58:09 pm
Certainly. In no part of my post was I critical of the organisation - any comments I had on that I made directly on irc.

My disappointment and my hope for future jams is for more forum and irc regulars to participate in the jam.

Title: Re: 5th SFML Game Jam
Post by: Eremiell on March 26, 2016, 01:01:52 am
Ay, we got a bit delayed on the final judging because of some unexpected troubles. Sorry for not communicating it earlier, but we really hoped to get it all on tracks asap and I wanted to bring the good news rather than the bad ones. So here they are, the judging is on.

To respond to some other topics opened in last few posts:

The turnout is certainly lower than what we all hoped. There are certainly several factors involved including quite fast and somewhat hectic planning and certainly suboptimal promotion. Quite some people got unexpectedly caught in their lifes and so on.

I'd like to start drafting the next one pretty much once this one is over (after some short pause for thinking and relaxation). I'd want it in roughly half a year and start having them more or less periodically, so people can count with them and prepare for them.

I'm more than welcome now or later to hear any ideas about how to promote the jam better (especially if you'd like to volunteer to do that, but not a condition), what do you think might bring more and any ideas for possible sponsors. We don't have much to offer at the moment, but it's a chicken and egg problem and it needs to be cut somewhere.

Overally (I'll try to write some proper postmortem once the jam is really completely over), it could have been better but still we did something. There were games submitted and subjectively not bad ones. We need to build upon what we've got and become better each time.

Eremiell out, we'll hear each other soon.
Title: Re: 5th SFML Game Jam
Post by: JoelHoover on April 01, 2016, 08:46:17 pm
Hey all,

I also unfortunately didn't have time during the Jam to actually make a game (started a bit, but got nothing useful done). However, as before, I managed to port all of the posted submissions to OS X! I tried to modify as little as possible, and hopefully I didn't break them building on Linux/Windows. Anyways, here are the links to the releases on GitHub: Copcop (https://github.com/joelhoover/sfmlgamejam05/releases/tag/osx), Tracks (https://github.com/joelhoover/Tracks/releases/tag/osx), Orange Guy (https://github.com/joelhoover/SFMLGameJam2016/releases/tag/osx), and Dying is an Option (https://github.com/joelhoover/Dying-is-an-option/releases/tag/osx). If there are any issues with them, please let me know!

Also, here's my review on each of the games:

Anyways, it was really fun play all of your guys's games; good job to everyone, and great thanks to Eremiell and zsbzsb (and anyone else who helped) for setting up and running the Jam!
Title: Re: 5th SFML Game Jam
Post by: Kojay on April 02, 2016, 08:06:37 pm
Thank you for doing this! I linked it to a friend with a Mac and Tracks at least is working great  :)
Title: Re: 5th SFML Game Jam
Post by: Sandburg on November 27, 2016, 01:03:30 pm
Warn https://sfmlgamejam.com/ has an expired certificate.
SEC_ERROR_EXPIRED_CERTIFICATE
The certificate expired on 27/06/2016 17:08
Sorry for disturbing.