SyntaxBomb - Indie Coders

Or each user could vote for their own 1st, 2nd and 3rd?

While I prefer option 2, it would need to be weighted as Playability is more important than Graphics and Sound more important than Music IMO.  It's likely different for everyone.

Probably simpler to just go with option 1. 

I really enjoyed this Comp Qube, made me think of some other games I'd like to make with the low-res look - definately makes creating the assets alot quicker.

Quote from: col on January 21, 2018, 13:13:48
Or each user could vote for their own 1st, 2nd and 3rd?

^^^ What he said 

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Still going to be difficult to decide who gets my vote though. The games are all so good!

Very true, some very good entries this time.

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Or each user could vote for their own 1st, 2nd and 3rd?

That's a good idea.

low-res look is limiting myself too much. Asset creation in a 3D program is far easier today than it was years before - so I spend more time when doing pixel stuff than when doing some 3D (render) stuff.
Also adjustments are done quicker in 3D (adjust + re-render)

I understand that for a few years now all these "indie games" have the low-poly look or "retro style" but is not "tres chic" it is just trying to sell your own limitations (finance -> no graphic artists) as something "cool". I accept low-res if it is a remake, clone ... of an existing game - or if it is a compo entry / something "puristic". But normal games should have something pleasing for the eyes too. Think you all prefer watching an HD/4K-movie rather than some VHS-era recordings (except for family videos...).


@ voting
I prefer the 1st, 2nd, 3rd option too as it allows for an indivdual weighting of what is relevant or not.

Another option is to have 3 votes to give - and for all you are able to give each up to 100 points. This would allow to have "close winners" (100, 95, 93) but also you are able to say you had only one good game and all others were not of your choice ("90, 55, 30").

At the end you have to sum up all the "up to 100 points" for each entry. Means a game which got 10 votes as "second place" with 90 points average (and no 1st place at all) can still win against a game which got 5 votes as 1st place with 95 points but 3 votes with 85 as 3rd place.

You could even calculate an "average score" if you want to lower the influence of "many votes" for a game - but I think that lowers chances to win for a game which gets mentioned often (eg. voted to 3rd place by nearly all voters). A "one time 100 point"-vote would result in an avg of 100 - oops, we found a winner ;-)

In short: "total score" would allow to include the amount of "voted for 1st to 3rd place" - which is already good. "average score" allows to remove spikes but ignores the fact that we already had to limit our votes to 1st-3rd place.


If you want to complicate things even a bit more:
- calculate average score
- calculate total score
- weight them (0.x*AvgScore + 0.y*TotalScore) - 0.x should be fairly low as "avg" is really hefty affected by vote count.
- give little bonuses for times placed on spot 1 (eg. +0.5)
- give little bonuses for each mention (1st - 3rd place) (+0.1 or so)
This would allow to give each "possibilty" a slight influence on the total ranking - and it is a nice chance to need a tool calculating the whole stuff :p

You could even give each voter a "honorable mention"-vote for a (potential) 4th game which did something remarkable but failed in too many other things so it misses 1-3rd place. So if one did a VR-experience in 320x200*16 but has up to no gameplay/sound/borked input ... it might still get this "honorable mention"-vote. This little vote can give a slight score bonus too.



But... as I did not take part in the competition this time, I am also ready to just do a 1st,2nd,3rd thing :p




PS: Votes should be somehow made "hidden" - eg. in a topic in which we normal users cannot read replies or so. Why? It might influence you when reading who voted for what and who was leader yet. After the vote end, Qube could just modify the threads ACL/move to a forum allowing reading for normal users - so all could read replies there.


bye
Ron

Quote from: Derron on January 21, 2018, 13:36:53
low-res look is limiting myself too much. Asset creation in a 3D program is far easier today than it was years before - so I spend more time when doing pixel stuff than when doing some 3D (render) stuff.
Also adjustments are done quicker in 3D (adjust + re-render)

I understand that for a few years now all these "indie games" have the low-poly look or "retro style" but is not "tres chic" it is just trying to sell your own limitations (finance -> no graphic artists) as something "cool". I accept low-res if it is a remake, clone ... of an existing game - or if it is a compo entry / something "puristic". But normal games should have something pleasing for the eyes too. Think you all prefer watching an HD/4K-movie rather than some VHS-era recordings (except for family videos...).


@ voting
I prefer the 1st, 2nd, 3rd option too as it allows for an indivdual weighting of what is relevant or not.

Another option is to have 3 votes to give - and for all you are able to give each up to 100 points. This would allow to have "close winners" (100, 95, 93) but also you are able to say you had only one good game and all others were not of your choice ("90, 55, 30").

At the end you have to sum up all the "up to 100 points" for each entry. Means a game which got 10 votes as "second place" with 90 points average (and no 1st place at all) can still win against a game which got 5 votes as 1st place with 95 points but 3 votes with 85 as 3rd place.

You could even calculate an "average score" if you want to lower the influence of "many votes" for a game - but I think that lowers chances to win for a game which gets mentioned often (eg. voted to 3rd place by nearly all voters). A "one time 100 point"-vote would result in an avg of 100 - oops, we found a winner ;-)

In short: "total score" would allow to include the amount of "voted for 1st to 3rd place" - which is already good. "average score" allows to remove spikes but ignores the fact that we already had to limit our votes to 1st-3rd place.


If you want to complicate things even a bit more:
- calculate average score
- calculate total score
- weight them (0.x*AvgScore + 0.y*TotalScore) - 0.x should be fairly low as "avg" is really hefty affected by vote count.
- give little bonuses for times placed on spot 1 (eg. +0.5)
- give little bonuses for each mention (1st - 3rd place) (+0.1 or so)
This would allow to give each "possibilty" a slight influence on the total ranking - and it is a nice chance to need a tool calculating the whole stuff :p

You could even give each voter a "honorable mention"-vote for a (potential) 4th game which did something remarkable but failed in too many other things so it misses 1-3rd place. So if one did a VR-experience in 320x200*16 but has up to no gameplay/sound/borked input ... it might still get this "honorable mention"-vote. This little vote can give a slight score bonus too.



But... as I did not take part in the competition this time, I am also ready to just do a 1st,2nd,3rd thing :p




PS: Votes should be somehow made "hidden" - eg. in a topic in which we normal users cannot read replies or so. Why? It might influence you when reading who voted for what and who was leader yet. After the vote end, Qube could just modify the threads ACL/move to a forum allowing reading for normal users - so all could read replies there.


bye
Ron

1st, 2nd & 3rd is best.  The most 1st places wins, if it's a tie for 1st, the most 2nd places for those games win etc...  Worst case is joint 1st, sharing (1st and 2nd prize).  Simple. 

Imo what is better is 1 or 2 or 3 votes per member, and the participants with the most votes have the 1st 2nd 3rd places...

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low-res look is limiting myself too much. Asset creation in a 3D program is far easier today than it was years before - so I spend more time when doing pixel stuff than when doing some 3D (render) stuff.

@Derron>>
No need to do per pixel/texel tweaks, just draw your shapes with several wanted colors, and then use a procedure to convert/remove unwanted colors from an image. Easy, quick...
Also "flat" shapes (meshes) are easier to UVmap than 3d shapes (meshes)

I posted a code example to do that. It seems to work well... However, you have to choose colors which are different enough (i used colors separated by at least a 030 value (example : 125,125,125 for mediumgrey, 095,095,095 for darkgrey)

I was not talking about the problems showing some 3D stuff in the 16-colors-low-res-stuff. But the limitation of what to show. It is like someone is saying: draw a beautiful mountain-landscape - but you only got the black pen (not a pencil!) and this stamp-sized sheet of paper. To make the mountain recognizeable you will only draw the outline, maybe some lines for the "shape" and at the bottom some stylized fir-trees.

Without that limitations you will add shades, a bit of snow covered tops, different trees, maybe a river flowing through (Hey Bob Ross fans ;-)).

So with 3D I can add details how I like - and if I render them low res, then they might hide. I could do that in 2D too - but as said 3D allows for easier rotation, re-alignment/structuring of things.


In short: resolution/color limitations limit my options in a way I do not really like it. Even in TVTower I fixed resolution to 800x600 more than a decade ago (and people wanted me to stop doing render stuff in high res...). Now I always have trouble to put all the needed information (text + numbers) on the screen the same time. I already replaced texts with icons (20x20 vs 80x20 px), added tooltips and so on. Now on 320x200 these icons would be even smaller - imagine explaining "market share" in 8x8 pixels, or "audience". Some things just do not work in low res - and this limits potential gameplay.

You can create a pac man in 4K - so Pac-Man receives pores, acne, pimples, ghosts might look like pudding / semi-transparent, ...
you can create Pong in 4K (not talking about binary size ;-)) ...

But can you create a good looking economical simulation in 320x160 - and I am not talking about "20 subscreens" to allow selecting all the stuff. Convenience is what you loose there.
How to simulat "far" and "more fare" in low-res? If 1km distance or 500m distance results in 1*1px objects, you might not be able to distinguish if it is 500 or 1km. You need to work around that limitations - you need to limit what you planned in your mind. This is not what I really like to do the whole day.

I want to enjoy coding - want to bring to life what I think of. And not "how could I display that" (I know, this happens in normal game development too - but I assume you get what I want to express).




@ 1-2-3 votes
That would be OK too. So my first place receives 3 points, the 2nd 2 points and 3rd receives 1 point. That is very similar to my "total point" approach. It is less fine-grained. Might be good - or bad. Just think of whether the second place you voted is really twice as good as 3rd - if both are nearly equal in your opinion, you are not able to express that. Which is why I proposed "0 to 100 points". Ranking is then a matter of ordering numbers ;-)

bye
Ron

@Derron>>i agree with some of your points, too low resolution is not good for a 3d game and to have enough space to draw infos/hud on the screen...
If you modify the config.ini file in my game, to scale it 2x (320x200 -> 640x400) it is playable but ugly, but if you scale it 3x (320x200 -> 960x600), it is playable but really ugly and it is flickering everywhere...

However, on the positive side, graphics limitations allow us to actually finish a game... because if you want to create realistic high details meshes, materials, textures, animations, good luck and see you in a few years lol

Quote from: col on January 21, 2018, 13:13:48
Or each user could vote for their own 1st, 2nd and 3rd?

That is what I was thinking would be better than 1 vote, but weighting is the issue.

1) 50 points
2) 30 points
3) 20 points

Would be the same as the base idea for the prize split, so the same principle should work for this too.

100 total points per voter, to be distributed to their picks as shown above.

Quote from: Conjured Entertainment on January 21, 2018, 16:00:16

Quote from: col on January 21, 2018, 13:13:48
Or each user could vote for their own 1st, 2nd and 3rd?

That is what I was thinking would be better than 1 vote, but weighting is the issue.

1) 50 points
2) 30 points
3) 20 points

Would be the same as the base idea for the prize split, so the same principle should work for this too.

100 total points per voter, to be distributed to their picks as shown above.

Good plan!

@Derron:  Retro is just a style.  It isn't done to hide artistic abilities, as a matter of fact, it is very difficult do do right.  As for your Mountain example, there are mosaics in which art is created with tiny colored objects.  Here is a bunch of art made from Jelly Bellies. https://www.jellybelly.com/ArtGallery 

As for size, here is someone that actually does postage stamp sized paintings https://www.boredpanda.com/tiny-paintings-karen-libecap/


As far as using limited colors, well: http://www.wetcanvas.com/Community/images/17-Nov-2004/38155-santa_caterina.jpg

And then there are these guys http://www.cracked.com/article_19681_8-amazing-works-art-you-need-microscope-to-appreciate.html


Some people like the challenge of creating things with limitations.

Quote from: freeman69 on January 20, 2018, 11:40:17
New to the forum and couldn't resist entering the competition, especially as the retro conditions and mention of 3D struck a chord (I seem to be stuck in the 1980's)...

Alien Drop Pods is a 3D game that...

QuoteWell, my submission is as finished as she's going to be -

Will you be creating a thread in the showcase, so we can comment about it?

@TomToad>>the guy who manages to draw/paint such detailed things with a so tiny size is very good !


There others aspects of graphics limitations, like making/using only low polys shapes (meshes), or using only fullbright colors with baked lighting/shading (like i did in my game), or using a specific uniform texel size which is big enough to be noticed as a texel (like you can see in old school games)

I don't think that these limitations are necessarily mediocre, they can be considered as a graphics style. And can look good, even nowadays, depending on your tastes... (i have seen several games with such caracteristics on the steam store...)

One of my favorite graphics style, "Vagrant Story" a ps1 game :

The shapes are low polys (and i mean very low tris less than 1000k for a character), and the texel size is big enough to be noticed, but the result is beautiful and coherent imo.

@RemiD - Thanks for the PayPal donation, cool beans

@Qube>>Thanks for this competition, this revived my "coding flame"