Game.Dev

It's officially time for Game.Dev Comp 15 to get underway! We can't wait to see the ideas that people come up with and help them become reality, because at the end of it all we get to hand out R10 000 to the best games - which just never gets old!

Here at Game.Dev, we believe that games are more than just entertainment or a silly fad, games can (and will) change the world and make a difference. Mindset Learn are keen on doing just that, making a difference. So they’re challenging us – and you – to produce the next generation of entertaining and meaningful games. That challenge takes the form of:

• R5000 for first place,
• R2500 for second place,
• R1500 for third place and
• R1000 for the best new entrant.

Click through or head over to the Competition thread in the forum to read the rules and enter the competition. We'll keep the forum up to date with tutorials, example games and more as the competition continues...

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So all you have to do now to get a shot at that prize money is put together a game that’s fun and focuses on a concept you enjoyed or found challenging at school. You don’t need to produce a fully fledged “educational” experience, in fact we’re looking for quite the opposite: Fun games that are enjoyable because they’re well designed and entertaining, you just happen to be playing within rules or a setting that match something you’ve learnt; Think “guerrilla learning” and you’re on the right track.

Because of the size of the prizes up for grabs and the expected influx of new developers (Hi, yeah we’re talking to you. Come join in!) we’re giving you more time than the standard month-long development period. Plus that gives the Game.Dev regulars more time to help everyone with their problems.

Rules:

• Competition starts on June 1st, 01-06-2007.
• Deadline for entries is July 31st, 31-07-2007.
• The use of copyrighted material will not be tolerated. Do not steal!
• Entries can be by individuals or teams of up to three people working together.
• Use whichever language, tool or development system you are comfortable in. Downloading and using Game Maker is recommended for beginners. (Game Maker is available at http://www.gamemaker.nl)
• Ask for help when you get stuck.
• Games must focus on a concept or system with some relevance outside of the game itself.
• Your game must contain all files needed for it to run and should not require other bulky systems to be downloaded or installed, exceptions are browser plugins like Flash and self-contained dlls distributed with the game).
• Your final entry must include a readme.txt that EXPLAINS THE CONTROLS, RULES and any other information you want to get across to your users.
• Competition is open to entry for South African citizens, current residents of South Africa and South African passport holders.
• The judges' decision is final and no negotiation will be entered into. All risk or liability in case of copyright infringement or other legal issue resides with the entrant. Game.Dev, NAG and Mindset take no responsibility for entered games.
• Mindset reserves the right to distribute entries sent in. The entries remain the intellectual property of their creators. Mindset may contact developers to improve or expand on their games, at which point a contract will be entered into.

Entering:

To enter the competition, start a thread titled "15: NameOfYourGame” and use it to chronicle your idea, design and development. Start your thread with the basic idea of your game and the concept you’re basing it on, then move on to the problems you’re going to solve and finally the development of the game itself. As you release files, [i]edit your first post[/i] to point to the most recent versions available. (For local file hosting, feel free to use http://www.gamedev.za.net/filecloset/)

Other people WILL reply to your post with their feedback and ideas. Even if you don’t have any ideas on how to make your game contain learning, post your thoughts and we’ll help you out. Please report any offensive comments for moderation. Releasing source code is up to you, we do recommend it though (especially if you’re using Game Maker) as it will help us deal with your problems and questions much faster.

Advice:

Guerrilla learning is NOT edutainment. We’re after fun and enjoyable games here, sticking a quiz onto a platformer isn’t going to work…

The design technique that will be most useful to you is something called mirroring. Mirroring is all about finding a system or series of interactions in the real world and mirroring those in your game. It doesn’t have to be a 1 to 1 mirror, in fact you could mirror the way our real-world banking system works with an in-game system around maintaining experience in an RPG (monthly charges, the idea of income vs expenditure, it’s just that instead of using money you’d be using experience points and buying skills, etc).

Another design trick that will come in handy is the idea of conceptual illustration, which is what we call it when a game makes something that’s only an idea into a concrete, visible object or effect. Using particles to illustrate magnetism, for instance. Or setting your game in an abstract environment like inside a computer program.

If you’re short on ideas for your game, here are a couple of ones for free:

• Physics games, like a detective story where you have to “rewind” a scene using Newton’s laws of motion on elements of the crime to uncover what really happened.
• Geographical games, like a game in which you can move the earth’s tectonic plates with your mouse and cause/avoid earthquakes, volcanoes and tidal waves. Or a game in which you control the weather by creating high or low pressure zones to affect winds, rain, etc.
• Optical games, where you might have to construct elaborate devices out of lenses, mirrors, candles and eventually film to first uncover and then navigate a maze.
• Biological games, imagine a game where you create different environments (maybe within a computer or even some other abstract setting) and then see what evolves and how.
• … The list is practically endless, we spend a good 45 minutes just coming up with idea after idea, after idea. The trick is to make one or two elements of your game match reality, the rest can be exactly what you need to make the gameplay fun.

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