Wanna another? (early 2016 edition)

[Eremiell]

OK, some time has past, let's more further. Here's my proposal of rules:


Time Frame:
1. Participants are given 16 days (Saturday midnight UTC to Monday midnight UTC) to work on their game.
2. The theme of the jam is released 24 hours before the jam officially starts, and everyone is encouraged to use this time for brainstorming ideas.
3. Additional 48 hours are given to participants for packaging the game. No major development should be done in this time.

Submission Info:
4. A link to source is required when submitting. Source and any assets created for the game has to be release into Public Domain or under permissive license unless they're a derivative work of someone else's work, which can't be released so.
5. A link to a playable version of the game for either Windows, Mac, or Linux is required when submitting. This must include the executable and all assets/extras needed to run the game.
6. Games with NSFW or shocking content must be marked as such.
7. You are allowed to submit as early as you want, but there is no reward for doing so.

Rules:
8. You can work on a team of any size, or by yourself. Team size and members must be stated when submitting.
9. You only have 16 days to create any original code and audio/graphic assets needed for your project. Any resources are allowed as long as you have rights to use them, but you shouldn't work on creating or obtaining any resources meant specifically for the jam between theme announcement and jam beginning.
10. Game should be based on the theme, but how the theme is interpreted is up to you!
11. Any programming language may be used, as long as SFML (or one of its bindings) is used.
12. External libraries are allowed, but not SFML's competitors, such as GLFW, SDL, Allegro, etc. The use of OpenGL is allowed, however.
13. You have to give credit to original authors of any resources you use, that are not your own, even when the license doesn't enforce that. (Mostly so it's clear what is and what isn't your work.)
14. Porting to other OS's after the 16 days mark, as well as fixing small bugs in your game and any issues with your packaging is allowed and encouraged!
15. You're allowed to continue work on your game, but you have to keep the version made during the jam (with exceptions per rule 14) for voting.

Themes:
16. Theme voting takes place before theme announcement. Each participant is allowed to vote.
17. Initially participants are allowed to submit theme ideas.
18. 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.
19. Themes will be hand approved by SFML Game Jam organizers. Organizers can also slightly rephrase the idea. Approval or disapproval of any idea and any rephrasing is final.
20. The approved themes will be voted on in several rounds.
21. Each round each participant has limited amount of votes decided by organizers based on amount of approved 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.
22. Votes can be used to cast positive or negative points on ideas in the given round.
23. 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.

Voting:
24. Once delivery phase is over, voting takes place. Everyone with an account of the jam site has right to vote (even non-participants).
25. Voting takes place is several categories, that will be known to voters on the beginning of the voting phase.
26. Participants can decide to not take place in voting for some categories for any reason.
27. Winner in each category as well as overall winner will be announced once the voting is over.



It's just a proposal, feel free to comment and propose changes to it.

Now for something completely different, as we're already past GGJ and LD is closer every day, let's talk terms.

As I see it, this is what's on the menu:

	Theme proposal	Theme voting	Theme announcement	Jamming	Delivery	Voting	Winner announcement
1)	15. Feb - 16. Feb	17. Feb - 18. Feb	19. Feb	20. Feb - 6. Mar	7. Mar - 8. Mar	9. Mar - 20. Mar	21. Mar
2)	22. Feb - 23. Feb	24. Feb - 25. Feb	26. Feb	27. Feb - 13. Mar	14. Mar - 15. Mar	16. Mar - 27. Mar	28. Mar
3)	29. Feb - 1. Mar	2. Mar - 3. Mar	4. Mar	5. Mar - 20. Mar	21. Mar - 22. Mar	23. Mar - 3. Apr	4. Apr
4)	7. Mar - 8. Mar	9. Mar - 10. Mar	11. Mar	12. Mar - 27. Mar	28. Mar - 29. Mar	30. Mar - 10. Apr	11. Apr

As next LD is going to happen on 15 Apr - 18 Apr with their theme voting happening some time before that, I'm inclined to prefer option 2) giving us all a bit more time to prepare (and relax after GGJ) and keeping reasonable time delay between the end of SFML Game Jam and beginning of next LD.


tl;dr; rule proposal in line with my previous posts modified as requested by giving everyone 2 weeks + extra weekend to work on their game. 1 extra brainstorming day, 2 extra packaging days. I propose for the next SFML Game Jam to take place from 27. February to 13. March with other activities taking place right before and after those days, as listed in item 2) of table just a bit up. Comments welcome.

[Jonny]

21. Each round each participant has limited amount of votes decided by organizers based on amount of approved 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.

What's the aim of this rule? What if I vote for X themes that I like, but then see another theme I like more than the others? surely one vote per theme per participant makes more sense? Especially as you're having up/down votes?

Other than that, I like the change to 16 days, as others have said this might actually mean I can get involved!

[Eremiell]

Ask zsbzsb about that one. I would do it just like you say, but this is how it's implemented right now and zsbzsb seems to prefer that way because "you have to focus on what you really care about".

EDIT: On a side note, it's possible to set some insanely high number, so you have enough votes for everything.

[Hapax]

[...]new rules[...]

Sounds good. It's pretty inspiring to have such enthusiasm and effort going into the organisation.

I'm not sure about the time-frame though as you can't focus every hour of every day for over 2 weeks. It can be possible for 2 or 3 days. This might very well lead to some people spending approximately the same time they would spend on the 3 day jam spread out over the 2 weeks, possibly less focus and motivation.
Please don't misunderstand me; I do think this time-frame is worth trying. It's not about creating the most awesome games ever invented but it is about lots of people being able to participate. I think this time frame will help a lot for that.

surely one vote per theme per participant makes more sense? Especially as you're having up/down votes?

Only having up/down votes is a good reason to not vote all of the themes. Consider it a vote of three states, not two: negative, neutral, positive.

What if I vote for X themes that I like, but then see another theme I like more than the others?

This, however, is possible. You can change which themes you have voted for to the ones you are more passionate about.
e.g. You found a theme you like more, "un-vote" one that you care less about and then vote for the newly found favourite.

[Jonny]

stuff about voting

Ah, I see your point - I was under the impression votes were committed once selected. If you can modify your votes afterwards then I don't see a problem with that

Regarding the timescales, I guess people who prefer doing the whole "Work solidly for 72 hours" method there's nothing stopping them, but it also allows those of us who can't do that to participate. I certainly wouldn't be able to participate without the longer timescale. But i guess it all depends on the results of the jam - the proof is in the pudding...

[Hapax]

I may be mistaken about the voting. I seem to remember the ability to remove a vote but I may have dreamed that.

The only thing to 'worry' about is the people who decide to work on theirs solidly for the entire 16 days. Poor souls.

[zsbzsb]

I may be mistaken about the voting. I seem to remember the ability to remove a vote but I may have dreamed that.

Nope, nothing is permanent until that state/round is over. You can edit your theme suggestions until suggestions close and you can change your vote until the round is over (and the results are shown)

[Kojay]

Firstly, I would also be up for a new jam and will participate, subject to it not conflicting with anything else on.

Secondly, I am also in favour of everyone publishing their code, to serve as practical examples of game development with SFML. On the other hand, don't let this become another license debate; don't try to tell me whether I should copyleft it or not.

[TCVM]

Make sure when this happens to advertise it on other platforms (I.E /r/gamedev)

[willm127]

Over a weekend, over two weeks, either way count me in! How do I get notified of new posts to this thread? I guess this reply will do.  Can't wait!

[Hapax]

Firstly, I would also be up for a new jam and will participate, subject to it not conflicting with anything else on.

Unless you're away for two weeks, that shouldn't be a problem! 

Secondly, I am also in favour of everyone publishing their code, to serve as practical examples of game development with SFML. On the other hand, don't let this become another license debate; don't try to tell me whether I should copyleft it or not.

Submission Info:
4. A link to source is required when submitting. Source and any assets created for the game has to be release into Public Domain or under permissive license unless they're a derivative work of someone else's work, which can't be released so.

As far as I'm aware, this has always been in the rules.

Over a weekend, over two weeks, either way count me in!

It's actually 16 days, which is three weekends! 

[Eremiell]

The previous wording was:

A link to source is required when submitting. (open source is good for the soul, man.)

I took the liberty to clarify it a bit while ensuring maximal usefulness, as code that's just posted somewhere without any license is as good as none, as no one can reuse it for anything (no rights given).

If people have problem with permissiveness and would prefer copyleft, we can probably allow that even though that would disallow quite some uses including using snippets as examples in future books or indie games trying to sell a few copies, unless all sources of such books and games would be released under given copyleft license. (If I'm wrong, just correct me someone, but this is how I understand copyleft.)

We can probably go with some compromise allowing copyleft while recommending permissive for anyone without a reason to go copyleft, or we can even recommend one specific license for people that doesn't want to dig in the legalese at all. (Probably CC0, as it can be used for both code and assets, or some combo like zlib & CC-BY, even though it makes things more complicated for everyone.) Downside it, people still couldn't re-license any third party stuff, so they would still need to at least list it with authors and licenses.

EDIT: Should anyone have opposite problem (wouldn't like to provide sources at all), well, this jam is organized by SFML community and the community wants to get something back. The open source rule has been there before and is about to stay, unless there're some very good arguments against it. Open sourcing is also quite common practice in jam world (though not all jams set it by rules).

You have quite limited time to create your jam entry (even though I'd prefer to limit it much more), so don't expect to create gems. Should you create something really good you'd like to develop into commercial game, you're free to do so and you can completely close any development past the jam deadline (or past any early point you decide to deliver). There has been such games before. In that case your jam entry provides you with free publicity and serves as free demo/alpha. The game most probably still needs quite some polishing and the final version should have quite some added value (better graphics and sounds, more levels, more options, etc.)

[Kojay]

The previous wording was:

A link to source is required when submitting. (open source is good for the soul, man.)

I took the liberty to clarify it a bit while ensuring maximal usefulness, as code that's just posted somewhere without any license is as good as none, as no one can reuse it for anything (no rights given).

If people have problem with permissiveness and would prefer copyleft, we can probably allow that even though that would disallow quite some uses including using snippets as examples in future books or indie games trying to sell a few copies, unless all sources of such books and games would be released under given copyleft license. (If I'm wrong, just correct me someone, but this is how I understand copyleft.)

This is more or less correct. You can of course get in touch with the author, and they can license it appropriately for you.
(The same applies to code with no license; you can always communicate. Being able to study the code is already quite a useful thing too.)

[Eremiell]

As I don't gather from your last post, do you (or anyone) has any serious objection about the current license ruling? Or can we proceed?

Any comments on the proposed term?

[select_this]

No objections from me.