FBGD Numbers Competition (June 2014–August 2014), 250$ prize

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St_W
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Re: FBGD Numbers Competition (June 2014–August 2014), 250$ p

Post by St_W »

I tried all the submitted games now and alltogether they exceeded my expectations. There are really great games among them. Unfortunately the voting has already closed and an additional account on games.freebasic.com is needed. Maybe that explains why there are just 5 (!) votes.
Lachie Dazdarian
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Re: FBGD Numbers Competition (June 2014–August 2014), 250$ p

Post by Lachie Dazdarian »

Finally got around to score the games. Sorry for the delay guys.

The results as follows:

Numbezzled (65/87) - 1st place - 250 $ award
Dominionoes (52/87) - 2nd place - 50 $ award

Nomera (48/87) - 3rd place
BTN Slots (38/87) - 4th place
Numeria (31/87) - 5th place

For downloads and in-depth reviews/comments go here: http://games.freebasic.net/forum/index.php?topic=606.0
BasicCoder2
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Re: FBGD Numbers Competition (June 2014–August 2014), 250$ p

Post by BasicCoder2 »

As registration at the FreeBASIC Games Directory Forum is disabled I will respond here.

Numbezzled and Dominionoes have the essential ingrediants of being really easy to learn to play and control and yet challenging to improve your score so clear winners on that score.

Although Landeel wrote that the number theme in NUMERIA "appears more to be forcefully injected than inspired with the setting" I would say it is kind of required if you wanted to write a game but couldn't come up with a numbers theme which is the only reason I didn't enter the competition. I suspect many struggled with the theme. Also unlike Numbezzled and Dominionoes the more story like games must take up a lot more time working on story lines and graphics than the actual coding.

In the case of Numbezzled the idea of using a variable number of a given tile symbol is simple but clever if it was original. These games I think are easy to code once you have the idea, particularly if you have a library of similiar game solutions at hand, and I immediately started writing a clone of Numbezzled to see just how hard the coding part of the idea was.
anonymous1337
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Re: FBGD Numbers Competition (June 2014–August 2014), 250$ p

Post by anonymous1337 »

I think the most disappointing aspect of the competitions - for those who didn't follow the theme - is that the theme isn't always supposed to present you something that's easy for you to make, or even come up with an idea of how to make.

If you are entering these competitions, always trying to make a shooting platformer, and the theme for this competition is "Flipping Cards", you may not be getting the full benefits of the competition. The monetary prize is only a weak incentive intended to foster creation. Creativity and inspiration belong to the theme and the contestants!

In my opinion, it is more important to follow the theme than all other aspects! While creating a fun game is the goal of game development, pushing people to create interesting, unique experiences and pushing creativity further is what contests like this are "really" about.

Of course, if you just want to make a game in time for the contest, go for it. Once again, I simply think you are missing out if that is the case!

EDIT: From my point of view. Not Lachie's. I haven't been involved with FBGD in quite some time :)
BasicCoder2
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Re: FBGD Numbers Competition (June 2014–August 2014), 250$ p

Post by BasicCoder2 »

anonymous1337 wrote:I think the most disappointing aspect of the competitions - for those who didn't follow the theme - is that the theme isn't always supposed to present you something that's easy for you to make, or even come up with an idea of how to make.
If it is purely creativity with regards to a particular theme than the game genre is not relevant only how creative you are with the theme and I fully understood that and was unable to deliver on the creativity part. Even in the two best entries numbers weren't really the main theme. All games use numbers in some way. Dominionoes simply matched symbols that could have been pictures. Bedazzled required a certain number of the same symbol but that isn't exactly heavy duty math. The main ingredient in these two games was strategy and quick thinking in placing the pieces. When searching for game examples that had numbers as the main essential theme most of them were for children to drill them in multiplication, addition, subtraction and division. Numeria came closest to that with its arithmetic problem to solve to kill an enemy even though it was a shooter game.

Coming up with a theme is itself difficult. I would also add that the monetary gain of $250 is probably not why people who were able to compete did so. Competition is rewarding in itself.
vdecampo
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Re: FBGD Numbers Competition (June 2014–August 2014), 250$ p

Post by vdecampo »

BasicCoder2 wrote:. I would also add that the monetary gain of $250 is probably not why people who were able to compete did so. Competition is rewarding in itself.
Quite right. I competed because I had the time and I love FreeBASIC. Also I like contributing source code that I hope helps others who want to learn, program better.

Of course, $250 doesn't hurt! :)

-Vince
Lachie Dazdarian
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Re: FBGD Numbers Competition (June 2014–August 2014), 250$ p

Post by Lachie Dazdarian »

Don't like to tap myself on the back, but I really think the themes for these last 6 years were always quite interesting and stimulative. I understand FreeBASIC really not fostering a strong game dev community, so the amount of entries and their quality is what it is. I think the work submitted overall is very solid and sometimes excellent, if not brilliant (Witchcraft Adventure, YAGAC, Odysseasons , Slime Quest, ...to name the few) and I'm happy with the outputs so far. I enjoyed playing and reviewing them every single time.

Also, I think the awards were always respectable, far from symbolic (except for the first year), and especially for the last 3 years. Definitely not an exclusive reason to participate, but a noteworthy bonus.

If I keep getting ad revenues and there is at least two valid entries per competition, I'll keep running these.

BasicCoder2, if you want to join my forum, just please email me. I had to disable registering because of spam registrations I couldn't stop in any way.

Cheers!
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