Why don't we have a SNES Game Jam?

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olddb
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Re: Why don't we have a SNES Game Jam?

Post by olddb »

Participants so far:

drludos
Nikku4211
olddb
calima
hibber22
none
Yoshimaster96
...
secondsun
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Re: Why don't we have a SNES Game Jam?

Post by secondsun »

I'll make an attempt as well.
calima
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Re: Why don't we have a SNES Game Jam?

Post by calima »

Organizers so far:


(... crickets ...)

As long as nobody takes responsibility, stuff doesn't happen.
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Nikku4211
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Re: Why don't we have a SNES Game Jam?

Post by Nikku4211 »

calima wrote: Wed Feb 10, 2021 12:55 am Organizers so far:


(... crickets ...)

As long as nobody takes responsibility, stuff doesn't happen.
I was willing to organise, but I'd have to think really hard about it.

After all, I'm still very new when it comes to SNESDev, and I didn't even get a working demo running yet on PVSNESLib.
I have an ASD, so empathy is not natural for me. If I hurt you, I apologise.
secondsun
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Re: Why don't we have a SNES Game Jam?

Post by secondsun »

Before we have a jam we should decide some things :
Will there be money involved? This includes prizes, hosting the jam site, etc
Will entries be ranked/judged / will there be prizes?
What are the rules of the jam?
What will the name of the jam be? Do we have rights for that name?
Will the deadline be enforced? Is there a sign up deadline or just a submission deadline?

Each of these of course has follow up questions, and I cribbed most of my thoughts from itch's Hosting a game jam document : https://itch.io/docs/creators/game-jams#how-it-works
DashEightMate
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Re: Why don't we have a SNES Game Jam?

Post by DashEightMate »

calima wrote: Wed Feb 10, 2021 12:55 am Organizers so far:


(... crickets ...)

As long as nobody takes responsibility, stuff doesn't happen.
(Again, sorry for leaving the thread for a bit. I don't check this forum as much as I should...)

I don't have any experience organizing a game jam, but I do have general experience with organizing events and community control. I guess as the OP of the thread, I'm obligated to help out in some capacity. I'm pretty free for the coming months anyways.

I think the september submission date works best - if we start at the beginning of June, and formally announce the jam soon, that gives people both a lot of time to learn the tooling without pressure, and a good 4 months to develop a fully fledged game for the snes (which I think is a good game jam timeframe for such dated hardware, haha.)

I don't have the capacity to contribute to any prize pool. We can put one together if others are willing to chip in, although it's definitely not necessary for a game jam. Lmk if you want to contribute to a (possible) prize pool, depending on the responses that is definitely an option.

I'm not sure about how I feel about the "minigame" idea, I'm thinking a normal game jam would be better so that people don't feel like they need to be up to a certain "quality standard" or something like that. Maybe afterwards we can put together a combo cart. That's just my 2 cents though.

Rules: standard fare, get your game in my the deadline, can't start until the theme is announced, no controversial topics, no sexual themes, no bigotry. Stuff like that. I'm also thinking we should require the games to be open sourced (very common in game jams) so that we create a good resource for others looking to create a snes game in the future. Judging will probably be a simple "everyone who participated can rate other games".

Think I covered everything in the thread. Let me know if there's anything still unclear. Also tell me the best spots to advertise this, I'd like to get the ball rolling and start hyping this up early so the word can get around.
Erockbrox
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Re: Why don't we have a SNES Game Jam?

Post by Erockbrox »

Here is something I think is a good idea.

Make the deadline, but then also give 1 week past the deadline to accept submissions (but don't anyone this until the deadline actually happens).

Many people wait until the last minute to work on their projects and wish they had some more time when the deadline comes. So make a deadline but also still accept submissions up to an extra week.

I have a snes super mario world rom hack that I can donate as a prize. Or can buy something like an SD card or USB stick that I can also donate.
secondsun
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Re: Why don't we have a SNES Game Jam?

Post by secondsun »

What if instead of "You have to start after the start date" we do instead "You can't have had entered your game in a jam before". A lot of people on this board have done great work over the years and it might be nice to have a celebration of that work.
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Svambo
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Re: Why don't we have a SNES Game Jam?

Post by Svambo »

Well, isn't the idea of a jam to create something new? Of course it's ok to recycle routines, effects, maybe some gfx ... but I would prefer fresh games.

I really like the idea of a combo-card with the (best) games. Would be a nice price for the jam participants / winners and - if you sell some - can help to raise funds for a second round next year.

If you collect money for prices I will add 100$ for the pot.
calima
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Re: Why don't we have a SNES Game Jam?

Post by calima »

An open source requirement may reduce applicants.
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Nikku4211
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Re: Why don't we have a SNES Game Jam?

Post by Nikku4211 »

DashEightMate wrote: Thu Feb 11, 2021 8:57 am I think the september submission date works best - if we start at the beginning of June, and formally announce the jam soon, that gives people both a lot of time to learn the tooling without pressure, and a good 4 months to develop a fully fledged game for the snes (which I think is a good game jam timeframe for such dated hardware, haha.)
The sooner we are able to get fully prepared, the better.
DashEightMate wrote: Thu Feb 11, 2021 8:57 am I don't have the capacity to contribute to any prize pool. We can put one together if others are willing to chip in, although it's definitely not necessary for a game jam. Lmk if you want to contribute to a (possible) prize pool, depending on the responses that is definitely an option.
Okay, $19 Fortnite card. Who wants it? And yes, I'm giving it away. Remember, dev, dev, dev! And trolls, don't get blocked!

Jk lol I don't play Fortnite.
DashEightMate wrote: Thu Feb 11, 2021 8:57 am I'm not sure about how I feel about the "minigame" idea, I'm thinking a normal game jam would be better so that people don't feel like they need to be up to a certain "quality standard" or something like that. Maybe afterwards we can put together a combo cart. That's just my 2 cents though.
Yeah, I want to see more games because of how my curiosity works, no matter the quality.

I don't know how we are going to make a multicart with no ROM limits for each game, though.

Maybe we gotta ask the bois who still be livin' in 2020 for this.

UPDATE: They live in 2021 now. How come they're always late?
DashEightMate wrote: Thu Feb 11, 2021 8:57 am I'm also thinking we should require the games to be open sourced (very common in game jams) so that we create a good resource for others looking to create a snes game in the future.
calima wrote: Thu Feb 11, 2021 11:11 am An open source requirement may reduce applicants.
Requiring the games to be open-source will reduce the amount of people who join, considering how a lot of people feel very personally connected to their hard coding work, and want to keep the code private because it's like a kitten to them. Also, it will drive away people who don't feel like their coding is good, clean, or stable enough to be worth sharing the source to.

But whatever. As long as you don't require every game to be GPL-licenced. I'm thinking of naming my vacuum cleaner Copyleft, d'you wanna know why?
DashEightMate wrote: Thu Feb 11, 2021 8:57 am Judging will probably be a simple "everyone who participated can rate other games".
As long as everyone doesn't have giant expectations for all the entries on this few-month homebrew game jam where every entrant is probably working by themself. I don't want people to downvote my game just because they expect it to look like another Square Enix JRPG, not caring about the limited time both I and them had.

Inb4 people instantly upvote/downvote a game for being a huge meme.
lol dis is so funny i dont care that the gameplay is buggy
bro stop with the memes plz its not fin funny its just stupid and annoying 0/10 >:[[[[[[[
DashEightMate wrote: Thu Feb 11, 2021 8:57 am Think I covered everything in the thread. Let me know if there's anything still unclear. Also tell me the best spots to advertise this, I'd like to get the ball rolling and start hyping this up early so the word can get around.
I think the best spots to advertise would be any other server with people interested in SNES development and retro game development in general.

Maybe perhaps places where people are interested in game jams in general, too, though that can bring people with unfair expectations who either aren't aware of or don't care about the SNES' limitations.
lawl if teh snes is so limited why you makin a game for it when teh ps5 juss cam out?? xDDDD 0/10
secondsun wrote: Thu Feb 11, 2021 10:23 am What if instead of "You have to start after the start date" we do instead "You can't have had entered your game in a jam before". A lot of people on this board have done great work over the years and it might be nice to have a celebration of that work.
That can reduce applicants too. There's very little people in SNESDev to begin with, and with this rule in place, barely anyone's going to join if there's already been a SNESDev game jam a long time ago.

I'd love to see some SNES homebrew games from people no matter what generation they belong to or what experience they have making games.
Svambo wrote: Thu Feb 11, 2021 10:46 am Well, isn't the idea of a jam to create something new? Of course it's ok to recycle routines, effects, maybe some gfx ... but I would prefer fresh games.
That's a good idea. I don't want to see someone try to top EA in the 'Most Repetitive Game Developer' category. I want to see more than just another NFL, NBA 2K(unless it's NBA 2kiB) or FIFA.
Svambo wrote: Thu Feb 11, 2021 10:46 am I really like the idea of a combo-card with the (best) games. Would be a nice price for the jam participants / winners and - if you sell some - can help to raise funds for a second round next year.
Best game multicart? With participant voting? Interesting idea.

It'd be amazing to sell some cartridges. Let's hope that people will actually buy them instead of just buying an FXPak Pro instead and downloading our games.
Svambo wrote: Thu Feb 11, 2021 10:46 am If you collect money for prices I will add 100$ for the pot.
Awesome.
Last edited by Nikku4211 on Fri Feb 12, 2021 6:11 am, edited 1 time in total.
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DashEightMate
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Re: Why don't we have a SNES Game Jam?

Post by DashEightMate »

I don't think that requiring submissions to be open sourced would reduce applicants. But whatever - I will encourage it at the very least.

Everything else sounds great. Could you send over specific spots I should post on?
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Benny
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Re: Why don't we have a SNES Game Jam?

Post by Benny »

I really like the idea of the SNES game jam :D Depending on some rules I'd like join the game jam as well.

Just to leave my personal thoughts, because it's currently topic:

For me personally, I would not participate if the game requires to be open source. I'm really a big fan of open source projects actually, but as I already took a lot of time into learning everything and writing my own code and build tools for everything, I didn't decide yet whether my project should be open source or commercial someday.

But that's only for me personally. On the other side I'd actually like the idea of open source games, because, as you already stated, it would help other people to get into SNES development :)

In any case, I really like the idea! Thank you for organizing this :D
My personal SNES dev log: https://twitter.com/bennysnesdev
secondsun
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Re: Why don't we have a SNES Game Jam?

Post by secondsun »

I believe the idea behind the open source requirement is to grow the technical knowledge base of the community. Thinking more I don't believe open sourcing should be a requirement because there are many ways a game can contribute the the community's technical base. Because I think that this contribution is important and should be encouraged perhaps "technical contribution" could be a scoring criteria?
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Re: Why don't we have a SNES Game Jam?

Post by Nikku4211 »

secondsun wrote: Fri Feb 12, 2021 1:31 pm I believe the idea behind the open source requirement is to grow the technical knowledge base of the community. Thinking more I don't believe open sourcing should be a requirement because there are many ways a game can contribute the the community's technical base. Because I think that this contribution is important and should be encouraged perhaps "technical contribution" could be a scoring criteria?
Yeah, though what's the chance that we'll have any game entry get a good score on 'technical contribution'?

I've never seen SNES homebrew games try to be anything more than what they are. SNES homebrew developers aren't demoscene coders, after all, they don't aim to impress.
I have an ASD, so empathy is not natural for me. If I hurt you, I apologise.
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