Quote: Original post by BeastX
For future contests, I'd recommend the following:
-Extend the contest to a full year, or 6 months, and have them back to back.
-Announce new elements the day the previous contest ends.
-Announce and commit to submission dates up front.
-Announce and commit to judging dates up front.
-Announce base prizes up front.
-Set a higher bar for minimum game requirements to balance entries.

I think the once a year, and not the full year is better than continuous competition with one running into the next. Announce the 4e7 say a fortnight before hand (I'm not actually sure when it was announced this time) and the release the elements. The 6 month running time works well - work on the competition half the year, then relax, and work on other things the rest of the time. A full year competition, or even 2 six month competitions wouldn't be popular. Just think of the Olympics restarting the day after the closing ceremony!

Announce the element release, submission and judging dates up front, all at once, but allow in The Rules for the judges to modify the dates, as long as they give a 2 weeks notice (and can only move the deadlines back).

Yes the prizes were disappointing this year, and corporate support would be nice up front - makes more people interested in participating.

As for minimum game requirements: I think that low end computer specs is important - prevents the shinny-est game from beating the most fun. But its fine to leave it judging open for even poor, or incomplete games. They might not win, but they get feedback, and aren't discouraged from submitting their project.

Quote: Original post by GMuser
The elements do matter and the elements this time around were just lame. It is clear by the lack of enthusiasm this time around, that the elements matter.

I personally felt that the OPs slack interpretation of "pony" was against the spirit of the competition. If it is allowed in future competitions, anyone can completely ignore any elements by naming things by the elements..

What do you mean by lame? Please expand on that?

I think that Crystal and Explosion was slightly below par. They were easy too implement, and quite difficult to make unique. I liked accountants and ponies - it made a good dipole. How do ponies and accountants relate? I think that 4e5's Emotion was very good - it made developers think about how to incorporate it into a game. 4e1-3 were Earth, Fire, Wind, and Water, which lead to a very graphics intensive games. 4e4's Pirates, Robots, Ninjas and something else :p was different, but made games about 4 sides. 4e5's E's were interesting. They made the developer think about how to incorporate these elements into the game. And 4e6 - well, 2 were good, and made you think. The other 2 were bad, and allowed you to just take the 'obvious' solution. Huzzah to those who took an alternative view, rather than collection crystals and blowing up stuff.

As for the OP's ponies - they weren't traditional galloping ponies, but they he did find a way to make them a part of the SPACE game. How can you have ponies in space? I think that using the space ship design was a interesting idea, and I did laugh when I saw his screen shots. Besides, only 3 of the 4 elements need to be addressed, a point many posters forgot when they critiqued his concept.

Also, I think that the lack of enthusiasm may be partial to the lack of prizes. Not to be materialistic, but when there are prizes out there, sponsored by multiple corporations, the competition seems more genuine, and people want to be part of it. Instead of it being a small time competition by a hobbyist group. The prizes of 4e5 were great, and so was the competition.


The logo. I appreciated that superpig spent time creating the original, but it was below par, and that simply gave the entire competition a unpolished feel. Same with the lack of prizes. Sorry superpig, but it did. I appreciate everything you have done for this contest, but next time, get someone else to do the graphics :)


Something I learn't from this contest was get something that is very basic BUT works from the start, then build on to that. I started late (around February) and instead of getting something off the ground, I tried to make the entire program in one shot (well not quite that bad, but close). If I instead concentrated on getting sprites on screen and interacting, rather than making the game 'engine' I may of been able to submit something at the end!


For me, 4 elements should be about developers being given ideas to work with, which force them to think about how to make their game unique. How to try new things in game design, rather than following the same standard procedures, and making a cookie cutter game, using the elements as sprites. The elements should challenge the developer into thinking about new ways of game design. Not making a pretty game. But making a new, exciting, interesting, and above all, fun game.

Quote: Original post by BeastX
No, the elements really don't matter. People just don't think beyond the Halos, GTAs, and Quakes. They could have just as easily been any of the following:

-platforms, penguins, physics, potatoes
-evolution, egos, Egypt, and estrogen
-food, fate, feeling, fraggles
-rocks, paper, scissors, tuna
-kittens, boogers, lips, religion

I disagree. I strongly feel that the elements matter IF they make the designer think about new ideas.

Out of those sets of elements, I think these elements would make an interesting contest:
- evolution, egos, estrogen
- fate, feeling, religion
- Emotion

IF the elements are just objects or locations, the the sprites and models can just be replaced, and the elements won't matter. Like this set:
- penguins, potatoes
- Egypt, food, fraggles
- Earth, Fire, Wind, Water
- kittens, boogers, lips
- rocks, paper, scissors, tuna
- Europe, Ponies Accountants Crystals
- Robots, Pirates, Ninjas, Zombies

These elements simply don't challenge the designer:
- physics, platforms, Emblem, Economics Explosions


Whats my point with the above? Before I said that Ponies and Accountants were good together??? They are. TOGETHER. They contrast. An office worker and a pony? The first set are HARD elements. And they are the best in making innovative gameplay. They are concepts. Group 2 are objects, so the designer knows what is needed. Its a constraint, not an idea.

The contest is called FOUR ELEMENTS. Not 3+ elements. I hope that next year, the contest will force you to use all 4, and thus not be able to skip the hard ones. Or perhaps, have a "hard" element (like from the first set), that is compulsory. And of the other 3, you need 2+. Don't use the 3rd set.



Okay so I've rambled off a bit there...
Take what you will from what I've written.

And what did you learn from 4e6? What suggestions do you have for 4e7? Superpig, I do hope that you run it again. You've done a marvelous job!

I still say elements don't matter. If the contest had remained earth, fire, wind, and water would you just make a game with those elements as terrain or would you shoot for something like Avatar or Captain Planet?

You decided what elements were good or bad based on your basic interpretation that tangible elements would simply be props. I say that you limited yourself by not making your potatoes be sentient, cannabilistic creatures, your platforms not red, ruby elevator shoes, your physics be the subject that an antogonizing, OCD professor studied, and so on.

Thanks for the feedback, guys. Judging is underway, and I'll try and get it wrapped up ASAP, but I've got to hand in my dissertation in 2 weeks and then my final exams start in 4. You can imagine I'm on a pretty tight schedule [smile] I've roped in other people to help with the judging and I believe some entries have already been fully processed. Keep your thoughts and the discussion coming; it's all useful for next time around.

Re: the length of the contest. I think I'm leaning towards agreeing with the people who say that 6 months is too long. Certainly there were a lot of people I heard saying, "2 months left... I'd better get started!" and for the people who got stuck in at the beginning, keeping yourself motived for 6 months is a tough job.

I think the next one will be a bit shorter - maybe 4 months - though I'm contemplating the alternative, which is to have multiple submission deadlines throughout the contest; the first one would be to produce the best project pitch, the next to produce the best playable alpha, and so on. People would be able to jump in and enter at any point but for people who stick with it throughout and hit all the 'milestones' there could be extra prizes.

To a large extent whether this happens will depend on what I cook up in terms of contest software during the summer. 4E6 reuses most of the code from 4E5, but, as people have seen, that didn't make it foolproof by any means.

Re: prizes. Yeah, this got screwed up. I'm going to arrange for prizes this time around that I hope people will find to be fair rewards. I agree that the lack of a prize pool most likely hurt the contest.

Re: sys req. The sys req is up this year from last year, but I'm trying to keep them roughly in line with the sys req faced by most indie professionals at the moment - part of the aim here is to drive people to get the skills they need to be releasing indie stuff professionally. Hell, maybe your contest entry is commercially viable...

Re: submission. I should have had this up like a month earlier than I did, most certainly, if not from the very beginning of the contest. I'm still hoping that by the next contest, the whole thing will be more extensive, such that entries will get project journals, places for WIP shots, etc etc. We'll see.

Re: elements. Heh, that'll teach me to listen to my girlfriend [grin] Last year taught me that intangible elements tend to cause people problems with their game designs, while this year I can see why some people felt that 'crystals' and 'explosions' were too simple. It's a balance that I'm going to have to get right for next time. Not sure yet whether it'll be all 4 elements on the next run; it really depends on the elements.

Re: logo. Yeah, it was stupid that I got this nice logo from everyone in HW and then didn't put it up for ages. The logo that's up now was very deliberately requested to be independent of the year, though, so we should just be able to use it for all further 4E contests without a problem. (The lack of a year-specific logo is maybe a little sad, but it's one less thing for me to have to do, one less thing for me to have to do well, and it makes it easier to establish the contest as a brand).

I was going to wait until after the contest was fully complete (i.e. judging complete) to give feedback, but I'm happy to jump in now the topic is still hot. I may need a bit more time to fully collect my thoughts on what I think would improve the contest, however. The Four Elements contest is one of my favourite aspects of the site, so I want to see it shine as much as possible.

I'm mainly judging this from my own opinions and from the feeling I got from the GDNet+ Journals, but I think the biggest killer for this contest was the initial delay. The community was abuzz awaiting for the contest to begin in June, but the excitement died down over the next few months. I understand they were good reasons for the delay, but my impression was it did the greatest harm this time round. For me, it was the killer since I only had time in the middle of last year to start a large project; for the last few months I've been too busy (although this is obviously just me).

Incidentally, does this mean that 4E7 will also start later in this year, or will we head back to June/July again?

I also wasn't that thrilled with the elements, although for different reasons already given in this thread. I felt that "ponies" and (especially) "accountants" was trying a little too hard to be different, and each of these had difficulty issues to fully integrate into the design. "Ponies" is difficult as horses are devilishly hard to animate well. To properly include "accountants" you needed some form of economics, which ramped up the scale of the most designs. And I personally wasn't that thrilled with "explosions" because I wanted to aim for something non-violent (again, possibly just me here!). "Crystals" was the only one I thought was helping me brainstorm, as there's a lot of different ways to take that element (plus they look pretty and are really easy to draw and model).

The problem is that I think the Four Elements contest isn't really well suited for brainstorming up highly complex yet innovative game ideas. It's too long for a throwaway prototype, but too short for anything more than a well-designed small game. Consequently when there's a bunch of really tricky elements I tend to see all the submitted entries only really nail one or two elements as central to the design, with the remainder just shoehorned in as window dressing: i.e., ideas like a Mario Bros. clone, except instead of a plumber who collects coins fighting turtles, you're an accountant who collects crystals fighting ponies. Who explode for no apparent reason (admittedly, that idea doesn't really hit any of the elements very well; you could replace any of them without harming the game).

Admittedly, the games who win do tend to be exceptions to that rules; Mop of Destiny was the only 4E5 game I played that I felt really included all four elements to a significant degree. But it's really challenging to hit on an idea that is completable within the time frame, and more so if you've got other personal game development objectives you also wish to meet with the contest. Of course, it can be argued that that's the whole point of the contest, but this tends to be the point where I drop out of the contest. I can usually think of scores of good game ideas that strongly incorporate three of the four, but rarely the complete set.

As for the prizes, I don't know of anyone who is seriously motivated by them. Most people seem to be motivated by joining in with the whole community and/or competing for the kudos of winning. However the prizes do add a level of respectability to the whole thing.

Keep up the good work with the judging, and I hope you're not too burned out to organise 4E7.

The elements were what really turned me off this year. At first I had some good ideas for projects, but in the end what it came down to was me not wanting to spend six months on a project involving a pony or an accountant. Just not my style. The lack of prizes didn't help either.

Hi,
Regarding contest durations...we just increased our game programming challenges from 4 weeks to 6 weeks over at www.gameinstitute.com. It did allow for a 'bigger' game. However, the timing coincided with college spring finals...so many had to bail.

I believe my personal limit is about 90 days. With 4E6 I was able to organize a team of an artist and software engineer....however, they could only participate for about 2 months because of other obligations. So, facing this prospect we had to shut down "Jed, Ted, and Fred"...a mining Tycoon game...at about 3 months.

One of the cool things about 'four elements' is that it forces us to get really creative and to think outside the box. For many of us, this may include a genre that we don't like. I'm a bit more optimistic. I believe portfolios may benefit from a variety of different game demos. I personally enjoy 'solving game programming problems'. I still prefer to make games then to play them. I suppose this is a bit messed up...but that's who I am. :D

Good job to everyone who was able to complete an entry this time. That showed a lot of determination.

My son just finished his BS in Comp. Sci. and my two youngest are going to study graphics and 3D modeling over the summer. I'm hoping to put together a family effort. :D That's a dad's dream.

Regards,
Chuck

My view:

Ponies and Accountants:
If you chose to include ponies and/or accountants as significant, then the plot actually had to revolve around them. It's not enough just to have an accountant you see once, riding a pony. If you made the pony as a simple means of transport that everyone used- I call that insignificant as well. Why are they riding ponies instead of horses or camels? In my opinion, for an element to be significant, it should not be so easy to replace them as a simple resource change or ctrl+f word replacement in the dialog.

Ponies for me were a bad idea because ponies themselves don't have particularly amazing and unique features you can draw from to make a cool character with. This really makes it hard to come up with a character and to try to convince yourself and everyone else that it is indeed a pony, and not a horse.

Accountants were a good idea. The reason they were good was because they aren't a specific thing, you could have made your pony an accountant really- or any character you wanted to imagine. "Accountant" doesn't suggest what their personality will be like- only that they are smart and they are trained in managing resources. The player could have been the accountant, following certain rules, trying to be a good accountant- or the enemy could have been an accountant, using his training to plan his attacks, or your side kick could have been an accountant, giving you advice and such, etc.

Ok, now you have an idea for your ponies and/or accountants, now you have to choose 1 or 2 more elements.

Explosions:
This really cuts off the ability to have a happy game- a game anyone could enjoy, from young to old. Ponies+explosions is really a forced idea. Explosions for me just didn't have a role as a significant element. It's hard to even pinpoint a reason why they weren't a good element, so that you can avoid them in the future- but if I was to guess it's because they put a limit to the target audience and gameplay.

Crystals:
Could have been good, but very easy at the same time to not make them a significant element. Just having crystals as the main resource isn't significant. Anything could have been the main resource, so why did you choose crystals? Oh that's right, simply because you had to. That is fine for your own games, but I don't think that should fly in this competition.



I think to improve the competition, a few things should be done:
-All 4 elements required.
-Elements should be considered more carefully. They should inspire a variety of ideas and not limit the target audience and gameplay.
-Define "Significant presence" and enforce it. I like the idea of having to submit your plan before the game. That way, a game can be rejected from the design stage if the elements are not significant. (I know that the proposal that I am referring to was probably meant in a different way)

Quote: Original post by GMuser
If you chose to include ponies and/or accountants as significant, then the plot actually had to revolve around them. It's not enough just to have an accountant you see once, riding a pony. If you made the pony as a simple means of transport that everyone used- I call that insignificant as well. Why are they riding ponies instead of horses or camels? In my opinion, for an element to be significant, it should not be so easy to replace them as a simple resource change or ctrl+f word replacement in the dialog.

That was how I approached brainstorming ideas as well, for both 4E5 and 4E6. My basic criteria for an acceptable game idea was that each element had to satisfy the following:

1. The inclusion of the game element had to make sense independent from the competition. That is, if someone who had never heard of Four Elements played the game, they wouldn't be thinking "Why is there an accountant in this?!"
   
2. Each game element had to be a significant part of the core game. That is, if you removed one of the elements it would be to a significant detriment to the game

Unfortunately, I never really hit on a game idea that met those criteria and was suitable for me to complete in the time limit. The second requirement was a real killer for most ideas, especially with 4E5 and the "Emblem" element (gah, I hated that pesky emblem!). My problem was that my philosophy towards game design is to be able to summarise the fundamental core of what makes the game great in about two dozen words, and it's a bit hard to do that when four of those words have to be pony, accountant, crystals and explosions [smile].

But it's possible I've got the wrong idea of what the Four Elements contest is meant to be all about. After all, the cohesion of the four elements in the game is worth a measly one fifteenth of the final score.

Although this might be a bit too radical a change, it might be interesting to consider for 4E7 having a pool of possible elements to choose from. I wouldn't mind a lot of tricky elements if there were, say, seven of them (to tie in with 4E7), and you had to fully incorporate four in your design.

Of course, mad idiots such as myself would waste time try to figure out a way to incorporate all seven [wink].

I didn't mind this last set of elements at all, and had an idea that used, to some degree, all four (although not, I don't think, to the degree that you suggest, Trapper Zoid).

(Unfortunately, due to some delays I never got around to starting work on the game. I still like the idea, however, and might get around to making it some day... If I do, I doubt that I'll change much - perhaps anything - in the design, including the places of the manifestations of the elements.

Hopefully I'll manage to enter the next competition. ^_^)

I do like the idea of having more than four elements from which to choose, however, although I have some concerns: for one thing, I wonder whether it wouldn't dilute the concept a little, and for another, I wonder whether having more than four elements from which to choose might not result in some entrants losing time vacillating over which elements to use...

Quote: Originally posted by Trapper Zoid
Of course, mad idiots such as myself would waste time try to figure out a way to incorporate all seven :D.

Heheh, I can easily see myself doing that. I actually came up with an idea some time ago (around the time of Four Elements V, I think) that used as its base all of pirates, ninjas, robots and zombies, and could be made to fit all (I think) of Europe, Emblem Emotion, Economy, Earth, Air, Fire and Water, as I recall (probably not very well, admittedly)!

Quote: Originally posted by GMuser
Explosions:
This really cuts off the ability to have a happy game

Not necessarily - if I recall correctly, the specifications allowed the entrants to decide for themselves on what sort of explosions would be used. A non-violent game might use explosions of pollen with which to pollinate flowers, for example, or perhaps clear explosions in the population of some species or another (perhaps used to affect terrain, or use up or produce resources, through numbers). The latter case could be made to be clearly an explosion by having creatures visibly breed rapidly from an origin point outwards, at a reproduction rate that decreases as distance from the origin point increases.

I too was going to wait until the winners were announced but there are a lot of good points being made right now I'd like to comment on.

Quote: Original post by BeastX
Fewer programmers will enter, leaving pretty, complete, but low-tech submissions.

I think the lack of "low-tech" submissions is due to the fact that to have hi-tech submissions, one needs quality art work. I don't remember any 4E5 or 4E6 having any advance graphics techniques such as normal mapping, gloss mapping, reflections/refractions, or even light mapping because it takes a competent artist to pull that off. Of course, we all know that pretty graphics doesn't equal fun. The last two year's winners were side scrolling platformers.

Quote: Original post by d000hg
Amazing games have been written before SM1.0 came around (like Quake 3, StarCraft, blah blah etc) and everything after that is just pretty effects.

Yes, that is true. But for the indie developer, the programmable shader model makes things a lot easier. Trying to support both the fixed pipeline and SM x.x is always a pain. The fixed pipeline requires too many tricks, separate code paths, and weird workarounds to do anything beyond simply rendering single textured triangles.

Quote: Original post by dmoonfire
Forgot to mention, running the contest over the end of the year holiday season (October through December) is probably good for those people who get days off (students) but rather hard on those who have family obligations but no 1-2 weeks off for the holiday (wage slaves).

I think you should rethink what you are saying. See my point below about high school and college students. I'd rather compete against someone that has 1-2 weeks off verses 8 to 12 weeks off. Then again, the amount of time makes less of a difference if you are organized.

Quote: Original post by BeastX
Aside from schedules, people are choking in this contest because their taking bites bigger than they can swallow.

Yes, I was quite disappointed and a bit puzzled why some of the participants who didn't submit an entry had what looked like a working prototype in their development thread but decided not to submit a partially completed entry. Some of them looked more complete than some of the entries that were submitted.

Quote: Original post by Zeophlite
Leave it judging open for even poor, or incomplete games. They might not win, but they get feedback, and aren't discouraged from submitting their project.

One of the complaints last year from some of the participants was the lack of feedback from the judges. Some entries had a single brief comment from a judge, some had two, some had none. Hell, last year's winner (Mop of Destiny) didn't have any comments from the judges. A score means nothing without any feedback. I'm also disappointed in the lack of feedback from the community compared to last year's entries.

Quote: Original post by superpig
I'm going to arrange for prizes this time around that I hope people will find to be fair rewards. I agree that the lack of a prize pool most likely hurt the contest.

Seeing that Dave Astle (one of the site's executives) works for ATI, maybe you can get one of their high end cards in the prize pool. I'm sure they have plenty lying around. Last year, NVidia donated two higher end cards for the 4E5 prize pool.

Quote: Original post by Trapper Zoid
I think the biggest killer for this contest was the initial delay.

I second this observation. A great number of gamedev's demographics are high school and college students, which usually have an 8 to 12 week break in the summer. Yet despite the delay there were 19 entries for 4E6 compared to the 24 entries in 4E5.

Quote: Original post by think_different
The elements were what really turned me off this year.

Yes, I remember when the elements were first announced, even some of the moderators denounced the elements as being lame (e.g. Dwarfsoft, Sneftel). I don't think the elements were too hard or too restrictive. I, myself, came up with at least 5 or 6 ideas before committing to building what I submitted. I'm sure others had several ideas that they had to choose from too.

Quote: Original post by GMuser
Define "Significant presence" and enforce it. I like the idea of having to submit your plan before the game.

I agree. I think Trapper Zoid's definition is adequate, or at the very least, a good place to start.

For more presence regarding the submitted entries, I also recommend that the IOTD (Image of the day) sidebar feature each submitted entry. There were 19 entries, and it's been over 30 days since the contest's end, so I don't see any reason the IOTD moderator can't feature one entry per day during the waiting period. Plus many of the IOTD's are repeats from months, even years ago. Maybe it would be worth wild to do this in code on the front page, picking a random 4E entry to display in the sidebar on each page request.

If superpig can get the judges' results and the final prizes announced before May 19th, give or take a day, he would have beat 4E5's judging period. (Submissions were due on November 30, 2006. The results were announced January 17, 2007).