GMC Jam Discussion The Humble GMC Jam #2 Discussion Thread

What theme would you like for the GMC Jam #2?

  • DECONSTRUCTION

    Votes: 32 35.6%
  • YOU ARE NOT THE HERO

    Votes: 43 47.8%
  • POINT OF NO RETURN

    Votes: 15 16.7%

  • Total voters
    90
  • Poll closed .
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M

Misu

Guest
I can review anyones game. I am not like some people here who tend to only review 5 and thats it. Not even those people who accept only by request. I may have a job and I have a life to attend but that doesnt stop me from reviewing every single game. I show great effort into reviewing every single game in my list even with so many occupations in my life besides the jam. I hope to see people more active into reviewing entries in this jam. Doesnt have to be a complexovely long essay. It can be a short paragraph or 3 sentences only. Its not hard. I dont see how some of you would say they dont have the time when I (my part) have so many occupations in life and yet i manage to take that time to review everything
 

sylvain_l

Member
Anyone up for discussion with the purpose of encouraging more fair reviewing / ranking?
...
All that said, as a reviewer, it can be a challenge to mentally separate the pre-jam elements from the ones made during the jam. I had a bit of trouble doing this on Jam #1 (on top of being pressed for time). That's why I actually wish no pre-jam content was allowed, but this doesn't appear to be a popular desire, so I'll just have to suck it up and deal with it. Maybe it's not a severe issue, but I'm just saying it does make fair reviewing / ranking a bit more of a task.

Thoughts?
What's fair ?

Is it really fair to let a talented professionnal graphics designer with all is paid softwares and hardwares and thousands and thousands hours of practice and regular jams participations compete against a noob with nearly none practice, just the MS paint program, and as input just the pad of is crappy notebook participating for the first time in a jam? (yeh I like picturing it to the extreme :D)

to be honest, every jammers is going to reuse a lot of pre-made. (even if not as a final game sprite, but all the other stuff, knowledge, practice, hardware, software, even brushes, or effects, etc... with scripting and procedural generation, you can get so much.)

and that's just for graphic, I'm not event talking about sound or game mechanic.

objectively; no way to get something perfectly fair. It's something very subjective.

About pre-made, or externally made; choosing the right asset instead of place holders or crappy homemade (as long as it use is legal) for me earn already some reward. IMHO wise decisions that are made to make the game better and the player experience more entertaining must be rewarded. I don't see the point of always overboosting the gamemakers ego with an elitist DIY mindset. Where is fairness when the most skilled graphic pairing with the best dev want only to compete against less skilled ?





Not final, but I think my review protocol, it's going to be something like that:

the most important factor is "entertainment factor", how it feels. (?/100 pts)
yep, I'm going to use arbitrary, subjective and full personnal preference judgement.;)

plus: a bunch of optional "pros" categories
?/10/category : graphics and music being the most often appearing, story or humor are some examples; but for each game they appear only when I feel it worth mentionning it. Like PROS categories for that specific game.
two special categories specific to the GMjam: devlog and use of theme

minus: the CONS (-1/category)


just need to know how (and if I do) handle the presentation, concept and story award
 

Alice

Darts addict
Forum Staff
Moderator
Actually, it's less of a voting system discussion (I consider "voting system" to be the format of votes, e.g. whether it's ranking, score etc., and the tallying method) and more of a voting methods discussion. As in, people discuss their preferences as of what to take into account when voting, rather than how the votes should be provided and/or tallied. ^^'

Also, I've got an impression there wasn't really much of a voting debate back in the previous Jam...
 
G

GVmG

Guest
>opening the forums after months


(yes I'll try to join but idk if I will because I'm joining an osu! tournament soon and it takes multiple days. Hopefully I won't have to compete in the tournament at weird times and/or during jam days.)
 

Alice

Darts addict
Forum Staff
Moderator
Well, how about something as spOOky as that?

- - - N - - O - - - O - - E - - - -
 
M

Miner7365

Guest
- - - N - - O - - - O - - E - - - -
Noon Rot Noone Saw

.... idk
 
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Z

zircher

Guest
Code:
- - - N - - O - - - O - - E - - - -
D A M N   T O M A T O   D E M O N S
If that's not the theme, can we change it to this? :)
 
F

fxokz

Guest
I can review anyones game. I am not like some people here who tend to only review 5 and thats it. Not even those people who accept only by request. I may have a job and I have a life to attend but that doesnt stop me from reviewing every single game. I show great effort into reviewing every single game in my list even with so many occupations in my life besides the jam. I hope to see people more active into reviewing entries in this jam. Doesnt have to be a complexovely long essay. It can be a short paragraph or 3 sentences only. Its not hard. I dont see how some of you would say they dont have the time when I (my part) have so many occupations in life and yet i manage to take that time to review everything
Im also going to review every entry now after reading this xd
 

Micah_DS

Member
What's fair ?

Is it really fair to let a talented professionnal graphics designer with all is paid softwares and hardwares and thousands and thousands hours of practice and regular jams participations compete against a noob with nearly none practice, just the MS paint program, and as input just the pad of is crappy notebook participating for the first time in a jam? (yeh I like picturing it to the extreme :D)
Where is fairness when the most skilled graphic pairing with the best dev want only to compete against less skilled ?
You know, I was going to reply yesterday, but I thought way too deeply on this and withheld speaking until now to simply say, forget it, just rank according to what you think is worthy of reward, because games and game jams can mean different things to different people, and some people want different things from games than others do, so perhaps the fair ranking in this case is in fact a very subjective ranking.

But whatever the case, deepest apologies for bringing this up, guys. Let's just forget it and focus on having fun.
 
I'm a pretty busy guy most days, but I found it pretty easy to spend an hour or two, every day or two, just playing through as many of the games as I felt like leaving comments as I go. My only issue were some were so good I had trouble putting them down so I could move on to the next one.
 
Z

zircher

Guest
I think the 'fairness' of game jam competitors is missing the point. It's not really about the ranking. It's about community, challenging yourself, being creative, learning new things or from past mistakes, creating solutions on a deadline, and perhaps even a little networking and teamwork. It's about the doing. Everyone comes to the jams with their own expectations and you have to set your own goals as to what is fun (even if it is stressful fun.)
 

Yal

🐧 *penguin noises*
GMC Elder
Spot-on... the main reason the jam started was to let people take a break from their years-long projects and actually finish games for once. I've realized I actually have a dire need for that extra kick in the derrière to get stuff done, and I'm sure many others has as well.
 
M

Miner7365

Guest
Actully, quick question, the rules for this jam are the same as the ones for the last one, right?
 
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M

McWolke

Guest
i got a question about the revealed letters.. if a letter is revealed, are all the positions of the letter revealed or only one? for example: spooky if o is revealed: --o-- or --oo-- ?
 

Mr Magnus

Viking King
i got a question about the revealed letters.. if a letter is revealed, are all the positions of the letter revealed or only one? for example: spooky if o is revealed: --o-- or --oo-- ?
Depends on how mean the host is being. Usually it is just a single character, but rules are subject to whoever is in control.
 
G

GVmG

Guest
Oh boi just got news that I'm gonna have to play in an osu!tournament on the 30th, but it shouldn't take more than two or three hours if we really really take it slow, and let's say, 5 with the warmups pre-match, so it shouldn't interfere with the jam :D

upload_2016-10-23_0-32-45.png
ROOT FOR DR. REMMY'S SUB CLUB GUYS!

For anyone who might be interested in the tournament for some random reason that I don't really know, it will be streamed at http://twitch.tv/ztournament at around that time (17:00 utc) maybe idk I don't organize it I just play. I'll be playing as Heavy Rain with some friends, but don't expect anything professional from the streamers or the players, we're just a bunch of random people :p

Other than that I don't really have any other theme guesses.

Other than maybe DECOMPLEXIFIC8... that's a stretch huh? It would be pretty meta though, since it's an overcomplicated way to write "simplification".
 
T

Tango

Guest
Oh boi it's that time of year again. I think I'll participate for real this time. I didn't learnt too much since the last jam, but I have the perfect idea right now, heheh...
 
Damn, my Friday, Sunday and Monday is filled with plans... Guess I will be able to make a small game Saturday.. Just gotta keep it simple :)

As for reviewing: It is important to remember, that game jams are not only for the programmers and graphics and audio designers, etc., but also (which should be obvious) for the game designers, which is why I believe it is okay to pre-make/find resources (legally), but important to note if such is done. You can suck at both programming, graphics- and audio-making, but still be great to orchestrate it all/mix it together to make a good, fun game, which should be reviewed as fairly as when someone is only good at programming, because it is a pretty valid and important skill. But yeah, the endless debate of "when is something fair" is a hard one.. :p

Anyway, looking forward to it!
 
M

Miner7365

Guest
Going out of earth....

Game about traveling between planets, anyone?
 

Yal

🐧 *penguin noises*
GMC Elder
Or just digging yourself out of a cave. Or breaking free of a coffin after being buried alive...
 

ghandpivot

Member
So far none of my jam entries have had less than 50+ hours of work put into them. Since I don't do anything else with the games other than putting them up for the jam, and since according to the play-counters I've put into the last entries there's not been all that many people playing them, I think I'll have to change my way of jamming as it doesn't feel rewarding.

I might enter this one, if so it'll be a way smaller, arcade-style game that can be done in 24 hours (of actual working time split over the weekend) or less, focusing on trying to make it fun to play and nothing else.
 
M

Matthew Brown

Guest
So what does being the Humble GMC mean exactly? Is that like also a theme to follow along with the one we choose later this week, or what? xD
 
So far none of my jam entries have had less than 50+ hours of work put into them. Since I don't do anything else with the games other than putting them up for the jam, and since according to the play-counters I've put into the last entries there's not been all that many people playing them, I think I'll have to change my way of jamming as it doesn't feel rewarding.

I might enter this one, if so it'll be a way smaller, arcade-style game that can be done in 24 hours (of actual working time split over the weekend) or less, focusing on trying to make it fun to play and nothing else.
I feel you there. Every time I finish one of these jams I'm completely exhausted and the overall product isn't something I'm too proud of, or willing to continue working on without starting it all over with the intent of having cleaner code or something like that. Now, some may argue that putting all that effort into your game is a good thing, but in my case, it just wears me out for a few weeks :p This time around, I'm gonna focus more on the planning phase, and make sure I know most of what I'm doing before starting. This way I can hopefully take less time messing around coding, and wasting a lot of productive time. But I'm still aiming for high quality! Just not as much time/energy sacrificed on my end.
 

Micah_DS

Member
Yeah, I guess it doesn't matter too much if there aren't a lot of prizes anyway. Whether there are or not, as a few people have stated recently (in response to 'fairness'), it's not really about the ranking or winning, but it's all about the game...jam. The heart of a game jam puts the ranking and prizes second to the overall challenge and experience.

So ranking and prizes are more like a delicious frosting on a cake. The cake is the substance, but the frosting makes it all the more delicious (provided you like cake in the first place).

With that in mind, I know there's no way I'll even place in the top 3, but I'm not entering to win. I'm just hooked on the overall jamming experience and the challenge, to test my skill, etc. In a future jam, I'd also like to try making a game on a team, but first I'd like to ensure I can pull my own weight, which is why I haven't asked to work with anyone just yet.
 
I wish I had something to offer up as a prize. Best I can do is a high five or maybe buy someone a beer if they're close enough to collect on them. Doesn't have to be beer, I don't even drink.

With that in mind, I know there's no way I'll even place in the top 3, but I'm not entering to win. I'm just hooked on the overall jamming experience and the challenge, to test my skill, etc. In a future jam, I'd also like to try making a game on a team, but first I'd like to ensure I can pull my own weight, which is why I haven't asked to work with anyone just yet.
I feel the same way about the team thing, I just don't want to let other people down.
 
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Yal

🐧 *penguin noises*
GMC Elder
Gonna throw in my standard community prize again for tradition's sake and because it's the easiest way to get inspiration for stuff to draw~
  • Best (=highest ranked) non-platformer game wins a copy of my tileset compilation!
  • Everyone that has a valid entry at the end of the jam wins a custom tileset or sprite sheet! (Tailored for 16x16 grid size, approximately 24 images depending on how complicated stuff you want depicted)
 

dadio

Potato Overlord
GMC Elder
Prizes:
I`m running low on YoYo goods (& can`t actually remember what I have left) so this time I`ll keep it real simple:
1st Place: A genuine (retro era) YoYo yoyo
1st, 2nd & 3rd Place: Commercial Use Licenses for all 70 of my current fonts (view/download from dafont) & early access to my (soon to be hyped to Hell) Kickstarter game
 
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