Game Submissions now open

[Nexus]

Contest SDK and browser sound like really great ideas

For me, already a 7z archive containing all the games would be much nicer than having to download every single one from different sites. And yes, using something like CMake would definitely make cross-platform build easier. An option would also be providing templates, where developers would only have to fill in a few parts (or none at all), so that no deep CMake knowledge is required to participate.

[select_this]

Yeah, I'd rather not learn CMake just for the sake of it (I use other tools for my builds), so a template would be ideal for someone such as myself.

[zsbzsb]

You guys gotta remember that the SFML Game Jam is not limited to C++, any language is allowed as long as there exists a SFML binding for it.

[dwarfman78]

Come on guys just build for ms windows and be done with it. It represents 90% of the targeted systems. Other people are just a bunch of hippies (including myself) that will know how to build on their own systems or at least start a vm.

[Nexus]

You guys gotta remember that the SFML Game Jam is not limited to C++, any language is allowed as long as there exists a SFML binding for it.

The most popular binding is probably C#. You know this binding quite well, do you see any portability challenges? How well does Mono work on other platforms?

Concerning other bindings, it depends how many people are actually interested in them, before making a huge effort for nobody. I'd say people that use a binding should announce it beforehand so that it's possible to think of a way to run the game on as many systems as possible.

Come on guys just build for ms windows and be done with it.

Have you considered the possibility that not everyone might own a Windows operating system?

Also, since SFML is a portable library, I don't see why we should exclude other platforms. Let's rather find a solution to ease the cross-platform build process.

[Tank]

This might sound light a bunch of work, but providing templates for the bindings as well can work, what do think? It's at best something you have to update every release, otherwise you create those once.

The CMake file can be made really generic, so that you don't have to change one single setting before you can start working on your game.

[zsbzsb]

The most popular binding is probably C#. You know this binding quite well, do you see any portability challenges? How well does Mono work on other platforms?

My experience with Mono is really only on Windows / Linux. That said, SFML.NET has no problems at all running on Linux with Mono. The hardest part is properly installing SFML/CSFML and setting up the config files to remap the native binary names (config files that are required to setup SFML.NET on Linux are not specific to projects). I was even very easily able to embed SFML.NET within windows forms that mono provides, in fact it was no different than code on windows.

The only thing you would need to watch out for is if the user picks and other libraries to use with their code. Mono has implemented 90% of the CLI (MS implemented it as the CLR aka .NET framework) so most libraries will have no issues running with Mono instead of .NET. What Mono has not implemented is the Windows specific namespaces that would have nothing to do on Linux (System.Management, System.EnterpriseServices, WPF (does not apply to SFML), and some ASP.NET stuff (again does not apply to SFML.NET)). If you want to check it out, Mono has a compatibility page here.

[dwarfman78]

Let's rather find a solution to ease the cross-platform build process.

I won't be building anything because my dad nor my girlfriend would. I'm a final customer here using a standard you will or will not acknowledge.

[Tank]

Which standard?

[dwarfman78]

I'm talking about the os.

[Nexus]

I won't be building anything because my dad nor my girlfriend would. I'm a final customer here using a standard you will or will not acknowledge.

If you have read the discussion, you will have noticed that we're investigating solutions that do not require the end-user to build anything and instead move this work to the developer and community.

[zsbzsb]

I won't be building anything because my dad nor my girlfriend would. I'm a final customer here using a standard you will or will not acknowledge.

To counter your point, a game jam is something ran by programmers, participated in by programmers, and games that are intended to be reviewed by fellow programmers. If you are participating you should be capable of building projects... 

If you want your friends/family to play programmers games then consider building it yourself then.

[Tank]

Imagine there are like 20 contributions. Do you really want to build all 20 of them in order to try them out?

[dwarfman78]

If you have read the discussion, you will have noticed that we're investigating solutions that do not require the end-user to build anything and instead move this work to the developer and community.

Good I thought you were asking people to systematically build each game they wanted to try. I guess I wasn't the only one thinking that and I'm happy this is now clear.

To counter your point, a game jam is something ran by programmers, participated in by programmers, and games that are intended to be reviewed by fellow programmers. If you are participating you should be capable of building projects... 
If you want your friends/family to play programmers games then consider building it yourself then.

you mean my granma can't vote ? Is this the official point of view because such communautarism breaks my heart.

[Nexus]

To counter your point, a game jam is something ran by programmers, participated in by programmers, and games that are intended to be reviewed by fellow programmers. If you are participating you should be capable of building projects... 

It's not about participating, but playing.

I have mentioned here why requiring all end-users to build games is a bad idea. Instead of having the build/configuration effort once, you require every user to do it. Only few people will be motivated to invest a lot of time and configuration just to try a game, even more if it's a jam game that people may play only a few minutes.

The idea of this discussion is to make the game jam more popular and accessible. Enforcing end-user builds is counter-productive.