I don't mind the different jams having different rule sets, I think he/she who runs the jam should be able to set the rules however they want. I think that'll give us a chance to try out different ideas and variations.
So I don't think we should have a formal 'Spring is this Jam', 'Fall is this jam with these rules' declaration. Instead, just get someone to sign off on running each Jam and then let them tweak rules as they like.
I suppose that might get confusing for participants but so far it's been ok and I think it's best to keep ourselves flexible.
I like the schedule you've outlined. Only concerns are how does that match up with the Art Challenge schedule? and is that too many Jams?
Offhand, I'd say we could pair seasonal art challenges with this Game Jam schedule by running 4 week at challenges that were 3 weeks to submit, 1 week for voting. They'd run before the Game Jams, so the schedle would be:
January - Winter Game Jam
Feburary - Winter Game Jam Judging
March - Spring Art Challnge
April - Spring Game Jam
May - Spring Game Jam Judging
June - Summer Art Challnge
July - Summer Game Jam
August - Summer Game Jam Judging
September - Fall Art Challnge
October - Fall Game Jam
November - Fall Game Jam Judging
December- Winter Art Challenge
I'll admit, four Jams a year does seem ambitious, but I don't suppose there's no harm in giving it a try.
A related concern is that looking at that schedue it's 2/3rds Game Jam and 1/3rd Art Challenges. I wish there was a way to make it more equalized, but if we want to avoid overlap I don't see a way to do it.
re: prizes, I agree I am not thrilled at the idea of injecting $$ into the jams. But going with what I was saying earlier, if someone else wants to try running a jam with a cash prize, I think that's great. Like I said, I think it's good if we try different things. I'll say a physical 'Golden Sara' trophy for the winner would be top notch, but I don't know how we get one made and I shudder to think of what the shipping costs might be.
@chasersgaming:
To put my money where my mouth is, PM me and I'd be happy to contribute to a prize pool for the Summer Game Jam if that's something you'd like to do.
Friday, February 15, 2019 - 11:14
new banner looks great!
when I get a moment, I'll try and go back and add some balloon shading to the lettering just to give it some pop.
For rule #5, and I know I'm really flogging the dead horse now, but maybe swap:
You must do this via a 'Credits' menu on your title screen where you show a list.
with
You must do this via a 'Credits' menu on your title screen where you show a list AND in the game description text on itch.io.
> I was definitely thinking of making it all-OGA
cool, I agree I think it worked out quite well in the end.
> We should also think about finding an artist who can do the badges maybe?
When I get a chance, I'll do a search on OGA to see if there isn't something cool already up here that we could use as the basic framework for badges.
Friday, February 15, 2019 - 07:30
Here's a first draft of turning your pic into a banner logo for the jam.
Including the logo and speech bubble as separate items in case anyone wants to play with their coloring and/or placement.
I tried to go kind of light and fun with the logo, hope that carries through some.
I did have another thought on the sketch as I did this. You might try making the grey mountains shorter and maybe a bit brighter. The color is a tad drab and it really fills up most of the image, taking some of the energy away. Maybe use a hazey blue instead of a grey? Also, the mountains are so tall, they kind of tower over Sara and distract from her a bit. I think if you made them smaller it'll draw attention to Sara.
Friday, February 15, 2019 - 06:45
Some comments:
Is it an all OGA Jam?
Is the voting for participants only? Just for reference, I opened the last one up to anyone and I thought it worked out ok. It expands the pool of voters and allows people to participate even if they don't have time to make a game.
Any interest in moving it to April? I was hoping to run the Art Challenge in March.
I would change #5 to read:
5) You must credit the authors of every art asset you use, including yourself. This credit must be included in TWO places:
1) an in-game credits screen of some sort, which must be accessible from the very beginning of the game
2) in the game description text on itch.io
If you distribute the game as a downloadable file collection (Zip archive or Installer EXE, etc.), please also include a README or CREDITS text file that contains appropriate credits for the assets used.
Hint: You may use OGA's "collection" feature to generate a credits file.
Actually, to be honest, I would recommend just copying the credits rule from the Fall-All OGA jam and adding a blurb about listing the credits on the itch.io page. Not because I love my own pretty prose and/or dislike yours in any way, but I did get a lot of positive feedback about that rule. Especially the way it included an example of an appropriate credit. And in the end, virtually every submission included credits in the same form as the example which helped quite a bit when verifying them.
And sorry, I know I'm beating this 'require credits on itch.io page' bit to death, but I really do think it'll make things much easier for you in the end.
Love the theme! And chasersgaming's right, if you're running the Jam, you defiinitley get to pick the theme! It's the lone reward for all your efforts. :)
I also find demakes a fascinating topic. On the one hand, it's just plain fun to imagine what all these games might have looked like if they'd have come out years ago. On the other, perhaps the even more interesting question is 'what can you add by de-making a game?' If you are taking away all those layers of technology what can you put back to actually improve upon the game?
What kind of schedule do folks think is reasonable for Art Challenges?
I was thinking one every other month.
How long should the challenges run for? I was thinking 4 weeks for the challenge, 2 weeks for judging, 2 weeks off.
Does that sound reasonable, or should it all be done in one month, 2 weeks for challenge, 2 weeks for judging?
If we targeted one challenge every other month, and assuming a Game Jam in June, that would give us a schedule like so:
January Art Challenge
March Art Challenge
May Art Challenge
July Art Challenge
September Art Challenge
November Art Challenge
Once concern with this, is it gives us a challenge in July which is also the judging period for the Summer game jam. So an alt approach would be to skip Jul and pick up again in August, this yeilds:
January Art Challenge
March Art Challenge
May Art Challenge
June Game Jam
August Art Challenge
October Art Challenge
December Art Challenge
I actually like this because it keeps October and IMHO we could run a 'halloween' themed challenge every year and it would never get old ;)
Or we could go for 'seasonal' challenges, so:
Winter Art Challenge (Dec, Jan, or Feb)
Spring Art Challenge (Mar, April, or May)
Summer Art Challenge (Jun, Jul, or Aug)
Fall Art Challenge (Sep, Oct, or Nov)
We've been on the 'no art challenges' schedule for a while, so maybe it would be better to shoot for just a seasonal challenge for now and ramp up more if that works out. We can always add a 2nd challenge to any given season if we want (so Fall Art Challenge #2, etc).
Well what do folks think? If we can agree on a schedule, then I'll start a thread asking for volunteers to run each jam. volunteer gets to pick the theme, so there's some fun in running the challenges.
Final thought, it would be extra super great if there was some way to highlight the challenge entries on the main page. Currently, we get 'popular this week', 'latest art', 'latest art by friends' and 'featured art'.
It would be super-de-duper cool if 'Featured Art' could 'feature' entries from the current art challenge. Could be done for the duration of the challenge, or just through the voting period. Either way, this would be an added incentive for folks to participate (more visibility for their works) and help level the playing field a bit since presently there's a bit of a 'favorites beget favorites' economy going on. By that I mean, favorites get an entry onto the 'popular this week' tab, which brings more eyeballs and more favorites. Whereas, if an entry gets pushed off the 'latest art' tab before getting enough favorites to make 'popular this week' (which can happen simply because you submitted at an inopportune time, ie just before a sudden deluge of submissions) it'll effectively disappear and be unlikely to compete.
@Spring: I found hosting to be pretty straight forward. itch makes setting the jam really simple. I honestly just copied the description from chasersgaming's last jam and then tweaked it a bit, so for the most part, all the text kind of writes itself. The only real extra work is double checking all the entries to make sure their assets and credit pages are all in good order. Personally, next time I host I am going to add a requirement that the asset credits appear in the game descrption on itch.io. This will make them much easier to check over (since you'll be able to just click the urls on the itch page instead of trying to transcribe them from a credits page). It will also (hopefully) bring more attention to the assets and their creators.
Other than that, I didn't find it too much trouble to host at all. You'll want some banner art, but once you settle on a name I know someone who'd love to help putting that together (hint, hint, he looks alot like me ;)
I don't know about an official prize pool. I agree it might attract the wrong kind of attention, we seem to get quite a few bogus entries every jam as it is (games that clearly don't meet the criteria and are most likely just re-submissions of games created). Also adding money to the mix might create more sour feelings when the results come in.
What I'd love to see is some kind of template for badges that could be given out to the overall winner and the category winners for each jam. Possibly first, second and third place badges for the overall winners. This would be something folks could display proudly and use in promotional materials (banners, etc) for their games.
I tried to make something for the Fall All-OGA Jam and while I think the result came out alright, I'm certain a proper artist could do much better. Also, I got a bit carried up in the 'fall' theming for that badge so it wasn't particularly re-usable. Something with OGA and Sara would probably be more useful.
re: art challenge
I was going to try and run a 'Re-design OGA Home Page' contest but I'm not sure if that would dovetail well with a Spring game jam. Could just do a 'regular' themed art challenge if you wanted.
Monday, February 11, 2019 - 08:11
Great set! Very cute sprites of an often overlooked animal!
I am up for running the Fall jam again.
I don't mind the different jams having different rule sets, I think he/she who runs the jam should be able to set the rules however they want. I think that'll give us a chance to try out different ideas and variations.
So I don't think we should have a formal 'Spring is this Jam', 'Fall is this jam with these rules' declaration. Instead, just get someone to sign off on running each Jam and then let them tweak rules as they like.
I suppose that might get confusing for participants but so far it's been ok and I think it's best to keep ourselves flexible.
I like the schedule you've outlined. Only concerns are how does that match up with the Art Challenge schedule? and is that too many Jams?
Offhand, I'd say we could pair seasonal art challenges with this Game Jam schedule by running 4 week at challenges that were 3 weeks to submit, 1 week for voting. They'd run before the Game Jams, so the schedle would be:
January - Winter Game Jam
Feburary - Winter Game Jam Judging
March - Spring Art Challnge
April - Spring Game Jam
May - Spring Game Jam Judging
June - Summer Art Challnge
July - Summer Game Jam
August - Summer Game Jam Judging
September - Fall Art Challnge
October - Fall Game Jam
November - Fall Game Jam Judging
December- Winter Art Challenge
I'll admit, four Jams a year does seem ambitious, but I don't suppose there's no harm in giving it a try.
A related concern is that looking at that schedue it's 2/3rds Game Jam and 1/3rd Art Challenges. I wish there was a way to make it more equalized, but if we want to avoid overlap I don't see a way to do it.
re: prizes, I agree I am not thrilled at the idea of injecting $$ into the jams. But going with what I was saying earlier, if someone else wants to try running a jam with a cash prize, I think that's great. Like I said, I think it's good if we try different things. I'll say a physical 'Golden Sara' trophy for the winner would be top notch, but I don't know how we get one made and I shudder to think of what the shipping costs might be.
@chasersgaming:
To put my money where my mouth is, PM me and I'd be happy to contribute to a prize pool for the Summer Game Jam if that's something you'd like to do.
new banner looks great!
when I get a moment, I'll try and go back and add some balloon shading to the lettering just to give it some pop.
For rule #5, and I know I'm really flogging the dead horse now, but maybe swap:
You must do this via a 'Credits' menu on your title screen where you show a list.
with
You must do this via a 'Credits' menu on your title screen where you show a list AND in the game description text on itch.io.
> I was definitely thinking of making it all-OGA
cool, I agree I think it worked out quite well in the end.
> We should also think about finding an artist who can do the badges maybe?
When I get a chance, I'll do a search on OGA to see if there isn't something cool already up here that we could use as the basic framework for badges.
Here's a first draft of turning your pic into a banner logo for the jam.
Including the logo and speech bubble as separate items in case anyone wants to play with their coloring and/or placement.
I tried to go kind of light and fun with the logo, hope that carries through some.
I did have another thought on the sketch as I did this. You might try making the grey mountains shorter and maybe a bit brighter. The color is a tad drab and it really fills up most of the image, taking some of the energy away. Maybe use a hazey blue instead of a grey? Also, the mountains are so tall, they kind of tower over Sara and distract from her a bit. I think if you made them smaller it'll draw attention to Sara.
Some comments:
Is it an all OGA Jam?
Is the voting for participants only? Just for reference, I opened the last one up to anyone and I thought it worked out ok. It expands the pool of voters and allows people to participate even if they don't have time to make a game.
Any interest in moving it to April? I was hoping to run the Art Challenge in March.
I would change #5 to read:
5) You must credit the authors of every art asset you use, including yourself. This credit must be included in TWO places:
1) an in-game credits screen of some sort, which must be accessible from the very beginning of the game
2) in the game description text on itch.io
If you distribute the game as a downloadable file collection (Zip archive or Installer EXE, etc.), please also include a README or CREDITS text file that contains appropriate credits for the assets used.
Hint: You may use OGA's "collection" feature to generate a credits file.
Actually, to be honest, I would recommend just copying the credits rule from the Fall-All OGA jam and adding a blurb about listing the credits on the itch.io page. Not because I love my own pretty prose and/or dislike yours in any way, but I did get a lot of positive feedback about that rule. Especially the way it included an example of an appropriate credit. And in the end, virtually every submission included credits in the same form as the example which helped quite a bit when verifying them.
And sorry, I know I'm beating this 'require credits on itch.io page' bit to death, but I really do think it'll make things much easier for you in the end.
Love the theme! And chasersgaming's right, if you're running the Jam, you defiinitley get to pick the theme! It's the lone reward for all your efforts. :)
That link shows one submission which is licensed under cc0.
All the songs there are licensed under cc0.
itch won't show me the preview :(
I don't know if you have to make the page public or if there's a way to give access to a list of accounts.
Sketch is good, could maybe use a blue sky and some sun for 'spring' but otherwise it looks great. Fun to see Sara in regular people clothes :)
I also find demakes a fascinating topic. On the one hand, it's just plain fun to imagine what all these games might have looked like if they'd have come out years ago. On the other, perhaps the even more interesting question is 'what can you add by de-making a game?' If you are taking away all those layers of technology what can you put back to actually improve upon the game?
What kind of schedule do folks think is reasonable for Art Challenges?
I was thinking one every other month.
How long should the challenges run for? I was thinking 4 weeks for the challenge, 2 weeks for judging, 2 weeks off.
Does that sound reasonable, or should it all be done in one month, 2 weeks for challenge, 2 weeks for judging?
If we targeted one challenge every other month, and assuming a Game Jam in June, that would give us a schedule like so:
January Art Challenge
March Art Challenge
May Art Challenge
July Art Challenge
September Art Challenge
November Art Challenge
Once concern with this, is it gives us a challenge in July which is also the judging period for the Summer game jam. So an alt approach would be to skip Jul and pick up again in August, this yeilds:
January Art Challenge
March Art Challenge
May Art Challenge
June Game Jam
August Art Challenge
October Art Challenge
December Art Challenge
I actually like this because it keeps October and IMHO we could run a 'halloween' themed challenge every year and it would never get old ;)
Or we could go for 'seasonal' challenges, so:
Winter Art Challenge (Dec, Jan, or Feb)
Spring Art Challenge (Mar, April, or May)
Summer Art Challenge (Jun, Jul, or Aug)
Fall Art Challenge (Sep, Oct, or Nov)
We've been on the 'no art challenges' schedule for a while, so maybe it would be better to shoot for just a seasonal challenge for now and ramp up more if that works out. We can always add a 2nd challenge to any given season if we want (so Fall Art Challenge #2, etc).
Well what do folks think? If we can agree on a schedule, then I'll start a thread asking for volunteers to run each jam. volunteer gets to pick the theme, so there's some fun in running the challenges.
Final thought, it would be extra super great if there was some way to highlight the challenge entries on the main page. Currently, we get 'popular this week', 'latest art', 'latest art by friends' and 'featured art'.
It would be super-de-duper cool if 'Featured Art' could 'feature' entries from the current art challenge. Could be done for the duration of the challenge, or just through the voting period. Either way, this would be an added incentive for folks to participate (more visibility for their works) and help level the playing field a bit since presently there's a bit of a 'favorites beget favorites' economy going on. By that I mean, favorites get an entry onto the 'popular this week' tab, which brings more eyeballs and more favorites. Whereas, if an entry gets pushed off the 'latest art' tab before getting enough favorites to make 'popular this week' (which can happen simply because you submitted at an inopportune time, ie just before a sudden deluge of submissions) it'll effectively disappear and be unlikely to compete.
@Spring: I found hosting to be pretty straight forward. itch makes setting the jam really simple. I honestly just copied the description from chasersgaming's last jam and then tweaked it a bit, so for the most part, all the text kind of writes itself. The only real extra work is double checking all the entries to make sure their assets and credit pages are all in good order. Personally, next time I host I am going to add a requirement that the asset credits appear in the game descrption on itch.io. This will make them much easier to check over (since you'll be able to just click the urls on the itch page instead of trying to transcribe them from a credits page). It will also (hopefully) bring more attention to the assets and their creators.
Other than that, I didn't find it too much trouble to host at all. You'll want some banner art, but once you settle on a name I know someone who'd love to help putting that together (hint, hint, he looks alot like me ;)
I don't know about an official prize pool. I agree it might attract the wrong kind of attention, we seem to get quite a few bogus entries every jam as it is (games that clearly don't meet the criteria and are most likely just re-submissions of games created). Also adding money to the mix might create more sour feelings when the results come in.
What I'd love to see is some kind of template for badges that could be given out to the overall winner and the category winners for each jam. Possibly first, second and third place badges for the overall winners. This would be something folks could display proudly and use in promotional materials (banners, etc) for their games.
I tried to make something for the Fall All-OGA Jam and while I think the result came out alright, I'm certain a proper artist could do much better. Also, I got a bit carried up in the 'fall' theming for that badge so it wasn't particularly re-usable. Something with OGA and Sara would probably be more useful.
re: art challenge
I was going to try and run a 'Re-design OGA Home Page' contest but I'm not sure if that would dovetail well with a Spring game jam. Could just do a 'regular' themed art challenge if you wanted.
Great set! Very cute sprites of an often overlooked animal!
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