I think participating in the Ludum Dare compos is a perfect way to promote Gosu. As the LD48 challenge is timed, Gosu's advantages (i.e. minimal necessary code to initialize a basic game setup) become more apparent than when working on a long-time project.
Personally I dont think a Gosu (ruby or otherwise) would promote Gosu very well, as its an internal comp, as the majority of the people that would see it would already know how good it is, so no new audience then. LD is better as you are showing it off in front of people who dont know about (or have not tried it) yet, It also is a good example of how it stacks up against other tools.
Not to say it wouldn't be fun :), it could also provide more of a showcase. I'd certainly be interested, cos was I was gutted that LD landed in the middle of my exams.
I wouldn't know how to organise such a thing, but a community game might be fun (valuable?), or perhaps an unworkable bit of software ;)
Byjlnr (dev)
Date 2009-05-22 19:19
Edited 2009-05-23 01:42
Yeah, Ludum Dare competitions are pretty short... but I think for larger projects, competitions just won't do it. We'd need a much larger community for *long* internal competitions. I like the idea of a cooperative game much better :)
Yeah, I mean long contest. Or ones that are popular and are usually promoted in indie gaming websites. In case we can't have a Gosu contest/competition, we can show off Gosu power through other competition and hopefully get their attention to Gosu :D
I think python or pygame has a competition of some sort too, know? HSP ( Hot Soup Programming Language ) also hold a contest every now and then in Japan. So Gosu contest/competition sounds fine to me! Doesn't have to have a prize or anything it can just be for fun. At least I'll have some motivation hehe.
Shinobi, you're very enthusiastic, and that's nice but I think it is better to relax and think calmy before jumping to do lots of things. We have to take into account that Gosu community is small because the project it's young (although the lib is very usable, let's not forget that it still hasn't reached version 1.0).
Are we, as a community, ready to support a long-term competition? I don't think so. There are a lot of short games, but long games are rare. This is because developing (and not abandoning!) a game for 6 months or more requires dedication and that doesn't happen so often. I mean, let's suppose we have 10 development teams creating a game for 6 months each. From those 10 teams, the odds are that only 1 or 2 will reach their goal (finishing the game).
On the other hand, short compos usually have more entries. This is because it is easier to spend just one week (or weekend) to a project, than spending 6 months or a whole year. For a small community, short competitions are better IMHO.
But the thing is that there is one short competition, the Ludum Dare. If we decide to create another competition, we must think the reasons we want a new one instead of just joining Ludum Dare.
In my case, I've been wanting to participate in one Ludum Dare but for one reason or another, I've been busy on those weekends. I'll try to participate in the Ludum which is goint to be held in August, though.
So the questions might be:
- What things we don't like about Ludum Dare? - What thins we can do better? - Is it worth it?
The time. The whole weekend isn't a good time for me.. at all. I always have lots of homework to make.. Making comp's run a whole week will allow, atleast me, to work on it much more. Then again, I don't have that much free time anyway XD
What is the point of asking the same question in two threads? Please decide on one thread. This one seems to be more about the rules rather than the actual entries, so I'd suggest you discuss it here.
And I think you should finish one round without prizes. The way I see the current rules, the GGCC is a loose deadline for everyone who is working on a project to finish it until Christmas, and I like it as that.