Irrlicht Engine

I know the weekend is over. Although this isn't a chanllegne however. I've noticed that someone just picks a topic like card game or arcade game which is fine, but I think the more successful chanllenges would be a game of your own choice. Make whatever you wanna make. It's just an idea I had.

ive been finding 2 days isnt enough time to start a new project and get everything going right. and i would think we should judge and that the winner picks.

yeah 2 days isn't enough to make a proper game with planning and everything. mine had some nasty segfaults that i didn't notice until yesterday.

the problem is.. pick too long a timescale and everyone feels like they're committing too much, too short and nobody thinks they can complete a project. making minesweeper in under 5 hours was tricky, and none of us finished completely. I don't think I could have made a card game that I would have been pleased with in a weekend, too many rules to consider.

not sure how to proceed.. perhaps we should vote, find the interested parties and the amount of time they're willing to spend, then pick a theme rather than a genre.

I say we hold it in one thread, i will make it!!! i have good rules that make it very fair and better. then i will add there code to the code snippets section for reference.

I guess it would be ok if one has either the arts or the gameplay for download and just has to do one part. A simple game logic should be ok for one complete weekend. I just participated in the ICFP programming contest where we had to create several tools and also develop new strategies and solve complex riddles. We failed to finish in the three days given, but many applications where properly running.
It'd need some proper specificatios of the rules, though, because extracting all the rules from uncountable sources would be too time consuming. And yeah, a final decision for a winner would be cool.
So I'd say that if someone proposes a weekend challenge it should come with a documentation of the game logics (can be a wikipedia reference or something self-written) and provide an initial set of media files. If there's enough time to enhance the gfx it's a bonus for the programmer, but it's not necessary to do so. If someone wants to participate in the challenge as an artist it's perfectly possible due to the initial media set.
The rating should be made based on some basic comparisons, such as how much was finished, how's the source code organization, what's the overall performance (and of course the gfx which should only raise the results if something was made).
For a proper planning of the weekend, these challenges should be announced on wednesday latest, but without the actual task. The task and description should be announced on friday at some previously fixed hour (18 pm CET?).

Well, these are some suggestions based on my experiences with similar events. We might refince these rules (or make special events with different settings). But some tighter rules may help these events to become better established.

yup, i agree. early decisions are necessary. However, as much as i've tried to get early decisions, they just don't happen when you want them to. if we want this, its going to take at least a *little* dedication from a few people.

I know it take's dedication from people and the events should be told about earilear. Although I think a game of your choice would be better suited for a chanllenge. I know making an RPG isn't possible unless you were close to finishing and could get it done in the weekend, but there are many other small games, and well now that I think about it, a small RPG could be done.

well, in light of this, i've nearly completed my framework for the cardgame. the last step is to implement the game logic. If we still want to go ahead with this one, we can. I'll start drawing up all the textures tonight because i do plan to finish it.

That way, all you have to do is implement your card-game logic into the "processEvents()" and "deal()" functions, and all else is done for you.

I wonder if this thread gave any suggestions for the next chanllenge?

not yet i think. lets all meet on irc over the next 2 days and attempt to come up with a decent proposal.

Supplied media is a great idea, I don't know if I like the idea of forcing people to stick to a particular design though.
Perhaps we should provide a few media files that must be main elements of the game, plus a nice selection of media that is optional. This way we can control the theme of the game through the mandatory media, and everyone can use different parts of the optional media to be as creative as possible.

The ICFP programming contest looks hard! I can't even begin to imagine how the dna would change those images.

but coding is all about creativity! doing that would be cutting off peoples wings and we would get 5 look alikes.