SFML Game Jam

[Aster]

The jam will start midday(some time) August 2nd  and end 72 hours later on August 4th

Maybe at 17:00 UTC? Or just 12:00 UTC. Americans aren't awake at 12:00 UTC. Aussies, Eastern Asians aren't awake at 17:00 UTC.

3. Game MUST use SFML, or one of its bindings. It cannot use any other game library, but information provided in the wiki is ok.
4. Link to source code(github?) must be provided in submission.

Fir the first one, we need to specify more. I think "Not using any other game library/framework and using at least two SFML modules." is better, since some people will want to use GL, and that's perfectly normal, a lot of people like 3D.

1. Fun – How enjoyable the game is to play
2. Creativeness – How creative the ideas for the game are, and how well they are executed.
3. Theme – How much the theme is a part of the game and how well the incorporation works
4. Graphics – How nice the graphics are and/or how well they work with the concept of the game
5. Audio – How nice the music&sound is and/or how well they work with the concept of the game
6. Immersion – How easy it is to become engaged in the game
7. Mood – How well the vibe of the game is expressed

Whoa, whoa! You're grading a AAA title! No, but jam games tend to be minimalist, and although a lot of them will be good, those same games will fail miserably in a lot of these categories (such at Audio and Graphics, two things not many people are good at).

Prizes aren't normally a part of this jam, but if anyone would like to donate prizes for the top scoring submissions, they are more than welcome to!

Other than that, your prize is knowing that you had fun attempting to make a game with SFML in only 3 days. Go you!

Heheheh, prizes might be a good incentive to get people to join this small jam, not big ones, but a prize nonetheless.  Maybe there could be a donation system for the jam, where on each jam, the user is asked if they want to donate some money to cover hosting costs, and, 75% of that money will go to the winner?

Maybe including monetary stuff isn't such a good idea. It makes people greedy and competitive in a bad way.
Dunno, I think a small prize, maybe even just a little "I wrote this in 72 hours and won the SFML 08/2013 jam with this game!".png badge might be good.


Thanks for starting this idea. It's really a great project and just what the SFML community needs!

P.S: I'm sorry if I said what other people have said, I kind of read everything with my eyes nearly closed last night.

[Nexus]

Fir the first one, we need to specify more. I think "Not using any other game library/framework and using at least two SFML modules." is better, since some people will want to use GL, and that's perfectly normal, a lot of people like 3D.

I would not allow OpenGL, because then everybody has his own little engine.

We should really stick to SFML, this also demonstrates its possibilities

[Aster]

Fir the first one, we need to specify more. I think "Not using any other game library/framework and using at least two SFML modules." is better, since some people will want to use GL, and that's perfectly normal, a lot of people like 3D.

I would not allow OpenGL, because then everybody has his own little engine.

We should really stick to SFML, this also demonstrates its possibilities

I guess. I've just started learning GL a few weeks ago, and I really enjoy it, maybe I'm just caught in the moment and think everything should be made with raw GL. I did that with SFML when I started with it, and the same with C++. ( I even went so far as declaring C++ the master webdev language. I regret every single bit of that. )

Also, I think we should allow libraries that make use of SFML. (Thor's particle system and concave polygons are so, so useful for a game jam, and apparently it has better joystick support and things, which are definitely a plus, although I haven't had the chance to use that bit yet.) However, as there are a few gamedev SDKs (I think) that use SFML, we should specify: programming on that one.

[fuerchter]

hm, if it's going to be 2.-4. august i'll have to pass unfortunately :S
also the other date that was proposed here (16.-18. it was?) overlaps with the final two days of the 7dfps jam.

anyways, i would love to be able to participate though >.<

[Lo-X]

hm, if it's going to be 2.-4. august i'll have to pass unfortunately :S
also the other date that was proposed here (16.-18. it was?) overlaps with the final two days of the 7dfps jam.

anyways, i would love to be able to participate though >.<

16-18 is the week end just before Ludum Dare, It will bedificult todo two jam in two weeks :p

[Aster]

We could do it once every two months or so.

[fuerchter]

16-18 is the week end just before Ludum Dare, It will bedificult todo two jam in two weeks :p

yes, that too. I could rather imagine doing the jam in september although something might pop up out of nowhere there too xD

[Jebbs]

Hey guys,

I'm crazy busy with homework today, but I wanted to mention take care of a couple of things before I dive head first into Calculus for the next 12 hours. First off, everything I posted in my rough draft is not set in stone. I felt ok opening up the theme thread because even if we decide we should change the date or something, we can still close the thread after a week and have the list of themes we need to vote on ready to go. We'll just open the voting a week before the set date.

Time:
The jam will start midday(some time) August 2nd  and end 72 hours later on August 4th

Where's the time?

I'm not really sure yet. I'm in UTC-8, but I know a lot of people on the forums aren't even close to that. Maybe we should just pick some arbitrary start time ?

Scoring:
Scoring will be based on several categories with an over all score being the average between them and a possible total of 70 points.

Who are the judges?

That's a good point. As much as I would want to, I probably won't be able to participate. If I'm not in school, I'm at work. However, I would totally be up for judging. If anyone else on the forums won't be able to participate, but would be interested in judging, they should let me know.

ALSO, I think we should find a way to force Laurent to either participate or judge.

1. Fun – How enjoyable the game is to play
[...]
4. Graphics – How nice the graphics are and/or how well they work with the concept of the game
5. Audio – How nice the music&sound is and/or how well they work with the concept of the game
6. Immersion – How easy it is to become engaged in the game
7. Mood – How well the vibe of the game is expressed

Some of the criteria overlap, especially immersion and mood. For the others it's probably fine, since it's rather difficult to find completely orthogonal criteria.

"Fun" should be reworded to "gameplay" or similar. Depending on the theme, games may convey a sad/thoughtful/horrific/... atmosphere, which shouldn't be scored negatively.

Ideas for other criteria, some of which can be incorporated to existing ones:

• Combination of different media (graphics, sound, text, ...) --> immersion
  
• Story --> creativity
  
• Simplicity, controls, camera --> gameplay? own category "function"?
  
• Correctness, stability, bugs --> function?
  

Now is a great time to discuss what the exact criteria for scoring should be. Here's a question for everyone: if you participated in a game jam, what categories would you want to have your game judged in?

Whoa, whoa! You're grading a AAA title! No, but jam games tend to be minimalist, and although a lot of them will be good, those same games will fail miserably in a lot of these categories (such at Audio and Graphics, two things not many people are good at).

It's pretty similar to Ludum Dare's scoring. It's mostly based on theirs actually.

All participants that submit a game are allowed to judge. Games are given 1-5 star ratings in each category, or N/A where not applicable. The categories include:

• Innovation – The unexpected. Things in a unique combination, or something so different it’s notable.
• Fun – How much you enjoyed playing a game. Did you look up at the clock, and found it was 5 hours later?
• Theme – How well an entry suits the theme. Do they perhaps do something creative or unexpected with the theme?
• Graphics – How good the game looks, or how effective the visual style is. Nice artwork, excellent generated or geometric graphics, charming programmer art, etc.
• Audio – How good the game sounds, or how effective the sound design is. A catchy soundtrack, suitable sound effects given the look, voice overs, etc.
• Humor – How amusing a game is. Humorous dialog, funny sounds, or is it so bad it’s good?
• Mood – Storytelling, emotion, and the vibe you get while playing.
• Overall – Your overall opinion of the game, in every aspect important to you.
• Community – Journals, photos, timelapse video. Everything you do above and beyond just making the game.

Obviously the score is going to be based on how well they did within the 72 hour time frame. I won't expect a professional quality game to be made by one person in 72 hours. :P


I know there were a few questions about what should and shouldn't be allowed, and right now I'm thinking that what is truly important is that people have fun and that we spread awareness of SFML to a larger crowd. If Nexus wants to use Thor on top of SFML, why not? If Aster wants to use OpenGL, why not? So as long as they use SFML as their windowing system I think I'll be happy. They should still use the Audio module and Networking module is they want to use those capabilities though(or at least something built on tip of them).

Another thing I wanted to mention was prizes. I am still liking the idea of having prizes only if they are donated, but we need to have some kind of enforcement for rule following if they are involved. Until then, I'm going to go with a no prize policy.

We could do it once every two months or so.

I want to make it a regular thing, but I wasn't sure how often it should be. Anyone have any problems with this? My only worry is that if we make it too often, it won't be such a huge deal.

Thanks for all your feedback everyone! This has been much better experience so far than I expected!

[Laurent]

ALSO, I think we should find a way to force Laurent to either participate or judge.

This won't be easy

[G.]

Or it could start at the start/end of a day, and end at the end of another, regardless of where people live.
Who cares if someone wants to sacrifice his sleep for a few LOW productivity hours? :p

[eXpl0it3r]

We could do it once every two months or so.

I want to make it a regular thing, but I wasn't sure how often it should be. Anyone have any problems with this? My only worry is that if we make it too often, it won't be such a huge deal.

To be honest 2 month apart is quite close. I mean if you always get enough people go for it, but it's not so easy to find enough people that are will to spend a whole week end on some fun programming ever other month.

[Klaim]

In my opinion, a Jam isn't a Jam if:

 1. the theme is not optional and open to interpretation;
 2. there is prizes;
 3. only a select group of people can judge.

See for example how Ludum Dare works.

The first point is about the liberty of just doing something in the time, risking to be under evaluated if you go too far from the theme. The evaluation should take into account how the theme have been used, but not ban games that don't use it, just give them less "points".

The second point is well known to immediately kill the fun. Search for reports from organizers of game jams, this one is an instant killer. Global Game Jam began like that but abandonned quickly.

The third point is first because not everybody have the time to test tons of games in a limited time, even if it's onlyu 30seconds per game. Second because the point is to make games in the time limit, good if possible, and just let people play it. A jam is never about  being better at convincing judge, it's being better at convincing a maximum of players. So anyone should be able to give a vote (or several). Maybe only people registered or something like that, to filter a bit, but don't make a group of judges.

[Nexus]

I know there were a few questions about what should and shouldn't be allowed, and right now I'm thinking that what is truly important is that people have fun and that we spread awareness of SFML to a larger crowd.

The problem I see is that the fun may be decreased because this becomes then a general game contest, not a jam on top of SFML. When allowing OpenGL and what-not, it will be more difficult for people not familiar with it to compete. The focus will then lie on "who knows low-level rendering techniques best" and not "who can use SFML to create amazing games". And we are then very similar to other contests, I think it would be good to have a little uniqueness by pushing SFML

I think at least for the first jam we should probably limit the libraries to SFML -- it will also be nice to show the games to others by saying "this was built only with SFML". This is far more impressive than using SFML only for a tiny part like windowing, because it demonstrates the power of SFML. I'm not even sure if Thor & Co. are a good idea, for two reasons: Again, people knowing it have a massive advantage; and it is not available for other languages than C++ (there is a Python binding, but I don't know how stable and up-to-date it is).

[Klaim]

Advantages are not to be taken into account for a Jam because it's not a competition with prize (or more exactly, it shouldn't be if you want to keep the fun).

I would suggest this formula:

 - to be listed in the official list of jammers, use SFML and jam alone;
 - have a separate list of jammers who worked in team or with SFML-based higher lilbraries;
 - no other restriction at all;
 - maybe a random theme which is optional, just to help people who don't have tons of ideas;

[lolz123]

When allowing OpenGL and what-not, it will be more difficult for people not familiar with it to compete.

I don't think it is possible to eliminate the experience advantage, especially not by restricting how you can use SFML. OpenGL integration is a feature of SFML, and I think it should be permitted (I always use OpenGL directly, just because I am used to it  ). Besides, OpenGL users would likely produce similar graphics in the end if they stick to 2D. The SFML abstraction of OpenGL is supposed to make it easier to use, not limit it (again, when in the realm of 2D).

I would suggest SFML be required, but without any further restrictions.