Actually I think this is a bit tricky. While I think Dark is correct that some newer developers would need more time, I also think that some of the other developers would only need the month. If you give people too much time it can cause just as many problems as when they are too short on time.
I'll use myself as an example since I don't plan to participate anyway. If I were given 3 months to work on a game, I would likely feel "finished" after only a few weeks. Basically my plans for the game would have all been implemented and I would feel that I'd ironed out the bugs. The extra time would either be wasted or I would attempt to tack-on additional things to the game. If I had stopped super early I will likely lose to someone who used every bit of their available time. If I had slowly added more, there would be a very real risk that the features wouldn't seem well balanced or would be very buggy since none of them were in the original plan for the game. If you just finished the last sentence in a novel and someone tells you to quickly throw in a new main character, something just won't feel right in the end since everything will have to be changed around to even make the addition possible. If we had built a space invaders game and suddenly had to add an enemy that sounds like "pew pew" to the existing group that goes "pow pow" it isn't really an issue. I'm referring to game features that are a little bigger than this, hehe! I think the other issue will be the length of time that programmers can plan out. I for one, am not very good at this. If I was given 1 month to work on a game, I would have to plan out a design that would use up as much of that month as possible without going over. This would end up with the least amount of wasted time and the most complex game at the end. Making that kind of judgment while just planning out a game's idea is tricky, but the longer the span of time, the harder it becomes. If I had 2 or 3 weeks I think I could pretty accurately judge the time. If I had a month I'd likely just stick with a 2 or 3 week plan. If you gave me 3 months I wouldn't have the slightest idea what I could or could not add to get me close to that deadline. So the contest would come down to who was better at making that guess, and thus, had time to finish their game. Yes I used myself for the example, but the idea is that every programmer has their own comfort zone for creating a game and for being able to plan features within that deadline. I can't say whether a month is good or bad for most of the developers who will be involved, but I just can't imagine trying to plan out 3 months of work and even being close to correct at the end. Haha, perhaps I'm just projecting my own shortcomings on to other developers. :D And also, I might be over thinking this whole thing. :) > Hi Philip. > > My only thought is that a month is a bit of a short time, > and so any first time developers wouldn't have time to do > something more impressive than a simple game, while those > who are developing more complex game probably either already > have the ful license or are thinking of buying it. > > Change this to a quarterly competition ie, every three > months to give people more time, and I think your probably > onto something. > > Beware the grue! > > Dark. --- Gamers mailing list __ Gamers@audyssey.org If you want to leave the list, send E-mail to gamers-unsubscr...@audyssey.org. You can make changes or update your subscription via the web, at http://mail.audyssey.org/mailman/listinfo/gamers_audyssey.org. All messages are archived and can be searched and read at http://www.mail-archive.com/gamers@audyssey.org. If you have any questions or concerns regarding the management of the list, please send E-mail to gamers-ow...@audyssey.org.
