Stonking Great Game Contest Now Live!
- Thread starter Spinwhiz
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You dont need Flash to make a Flash game. You can use the free Flex 3 SDK( http://www.adobe.com/cfusion/entitlement/index.cfm?e=flex3sdk ).tehbeard said:
But I don't know if 2 months is enough to learn Actionscript3+Flex and make the game. But if you want to give a try, well, good luck.
I made my first flash game in three weeks, when I started I didn't know any programming. It's definitely possible (though odds are the game won't be very good).
I'm very happy to see that the terms for this competition have changed for the better, you can expect a game from me now! What are the expectations on the entries? In terms om quality and gameplay time etc. Any guesses? And also, is this the only thread discussing this contest? I cant seem to find any other, but i might be missing some forum part, or is it perhaps that people are holding their cards close to their chest - it being a contest and all
Cheers
Z
EDIT; I would also very much like to know if we are allowed to use the ZP episodes or parts of them.
Cheers
Z
EDIT; I would also very much like to know if we are allowed to use the ZP episodes or parts of them.
I request a monetary reward be added to the contest.
As is, the rewards here do not invite the individual but only the design firm which may, at the least, benefit of featuring a game at The Escapist by namesake and referral. But, you must agree, this does little to entice or excite the individual and non-professional game author.
While it would be "neat" to have a game featured at The Escapist, "neat" to receive a bag full of Zero Punctuation t-shirts and coffee mugs, and especially "neat" to be reviewed by sir Yahtzee himself, it is in no wise a proper reward for the labors surrounding the creation of a passable game; Certainly not for the aspiring individual who labors without the potential for the kind of back-end marketing benefits a firm might find.
I'm sure Ben Croshaw and the editors of The Escapist will agree that without prize money this contest is an exploitation of their fans and readers who, even in winning, would yet find their efforts to have gone vastly under-rewarded; and even as The Escapist's revenues increase off of that labor.
Please add a cash prize to this contest of an amount you find reasonably defensible against allegations of unfairly exploiting the fan base for the purpose of a one-sided gain.
As is, the rewards here do not invite the individual but only the design firm which may, at the least, benefit of featuring a game at The Escapist by namesake and referral. But, you must agree, this does little to entice or excite the individual and non-professional game author.
While it would be "neat" to have a game featured at The Escapist, "neat" to receive a bag full of Zero Punctuation t-shirts and coffee mugs, and especially "neat" to be reviewed by sir Yahtzee himself, it is in no wise a proper reward for the labors surrounding the creation of a passable game; Certainly not for the aspiring individual who labors without the potential for the kind of back-end marketing benefits a firm might find.
I'm sure Ben Croshaw and the editors of The Escapist will agree that without prize money this contest is an exploitation of their fans and readers who, even in winning, would yet find their efforts to have gone vastly under-rewarded; and even as The Escapist's revenues increase off of that labor.
Please add a cash prize to this contest of an amount you find reasonably defensible against allegations of unfairly exploiting the fan base for the purpose of a one-sided gain.
Hi Peeps,
Here are a couple more questions that came up and answers to them.
1) Can we edit ZP music and videos and then use our edits in the game?
Yes. As before mentioned, the only assets that can NOT be altered, except for size, are our logos. But please be reminded that the music, videos, and other items are still The Escapist's intellectual property, and would not be considered ?Contestant Materials? under the terms of the contest. In short, all ZP assets must be removed from the game after the event is over if you intend to make use of the art, design, or source code that you created.
2) If we create parodies of ZP for our game, does that mean we can keep all of our work, including the art?
No, it does not. In the case of the Great Stonking Game Contest, whether your content is parody or not is moot. We are giving a license to use our copyrights for purposes of creating a game for this contest. If you submit a game to the contest, you agree to the contest rules, which state that you only retain ownership on art, design or source code that is not based on or derived from our intellectual property; whether that basis is serious or satirical is irrelevant. People who wish to pursue legally defensible creations of parody without official sanction could do so in other venues, of course, just not in the Great Stonking Game Contest.
Here are a couple more questions that came up and answers to them.
1) Can we edit ZP music and videos and then use our edits in the game?
Yes. As before mentioned, the only assets that can NOT be altered, except for size, are our logos. But please be reminded that the music, videos, and other items are still The Escapist's intellectual property, and would not be considered ?Contestant Materials? under the terms of the contest. In short, all ZP assets must be removed from the game after the event is over if you intend to make use of the art, design, or source code that you created.
2) If we create parodies of ZP for our game, does that mean we can keep all of our work, including the art?
No, it does not. In the case of the Great Stonking Game Contest, whether your content is parody or not is moot. We are giving a license to use our copyrights for purposes of creating a game for this contest. If you submit a game to the contest, you agree to the contest rules, which state that you only retain ownership on art, design or source code that is not based on or derived from our intellectual property; whether that basis is serious or satirical is irrelevant. People who wish to pursue legally defensible creations of parody without official sanction could do so in other venues, of course, just not in the Great Stonking Game Contest.
Long time ZP viewer, first time poster...
...everybody better just step off, because this contest is as good as mine! As an experienced Flash developer, I fully intend to bring my extensive industry experience to bear on this contest. My submission will make the rest of your entries appear paltry and weak. Abandon hope, ye who enter...
Seriously though. I am pleased with the slight revisions they made to the rules of the game. Knowing that I get to retain ownership of the code that I develop myself is reassuring, as I do like to recycle that sort of thing in my Flash projects. (I've written a few of my own pre-designed classes that I was planning on using) If anyone is worried about acquiring Flash for this contest, then just listen to the other posters who have already mentioned this.
You can download the FlexSDK from Adobe, and develop full-featured flash games using it.
You can download FlashDevelop, a comprehensive programming IDE for Actionscript 3.0, and use it to develop flash games. (in conjunction with the FlexSDK)
Both of these downloads are free, and 100% legitimate. I would mention a few other shortcuts I know, but I don't want to give anyone else too much of a leg up on me.
...everybody better just step off, because this contest is as good as mine! As an experienced Flash developer, I fully intend to bring my extensive industry experience to bear on this contest. My submission will make the rest of your entries appear paltry and weak. Abandon hope, ye who enter...
Seriously though. I am pleased with the slight revisions they made to the rules of the game. Knowing that I get to retain ownership of the code that I develop myself is reassuring, as I do like to recycle that sort of thing in my Flash projects. (I've written a few of my own pre-designed classes that I was planning on using) If anyone is worried about acquiring Flash for this contest, then just listen to the other posters who have already mentioned this.
You can download the FlexSDK from Adobe, and develop full-featured flash games using it.
You can download FlashDevelop, a comprehensive programming IDE for Actionscript 3.0, and use it to develop flash games. (in conjunction with the FlexSDK)
Both of these downloads are free, and 100% legitimate. I would mention a few other shortcuts I know, but I don't want to give anyone else too much of a leg up on me.
=( flash only. Very well, off to learn Actionscript. I'm probably not going to win (I don't know how to use actionscipt), but what the hell, not knowing the language didn't stop me in Java, and I'll be damned if it's gonna stop me in Flash.
Well, technically, no. According to the revised rules for the contest, the Escapist would not own artwork that you had reverse engineered. However, it stands to reason that any artwork you made for a game based on Zero Punctuation would not be usable in any other context. (since the various characters used in ZP are the intellectual property of the Escapist, or possibly Yahtzee, the point is they certainly aren't yours)Vanguard1219 said:
So the high-res vector rendering you make of Yahtzee's character would technically belong to you. But the actual character it portrays does not. So using that file to make your own ZP T-shirts, for example, would be illegal and land your ass in some serious hot water. This is always a danger for someone developing fan-art. You do technically own your work. But you cannot lay any claim to the subject matter being portrayed.
For my entry, I will be creating some unique source files for the art, and I don't intend to pass them along to the Escapist. Largely because the rules of the contest don't require it. They want the submission of source code, but source art files are not required. It makes sense, .PSD files can take up a lot of room. If you are creating all of your art in Flash, they will have access to it when you submit the FLA file.
One question: What font does Yahtzee use?
I'm trying to create a true Zero Punctuation experience here.
I'm trying to create a true Zero Punctuation experience here.
Really? That's the main reason I'm making a game for this contest, I think it would be hilarious to have him tear my game to pieces, and if anyone is expecting their game to be treated any better, I don't think they've been watching ZP for long enough!Mr Companion said:
People are apprehensive about making a game here because the winner of the game is going to get diddly squat, not even a portion of advertising revenue, nope, all that goes to the escapist.
Every flash site in existence shares ad revenue with developers. Escapist shares ad revenue with video developers (unskippable, writers, so forth) but apparently this flash game is beneath them.
The funny thing is, because yahtzee will review it, it will be played by over a million players in no time at all, earning Escapist a nice 10,000+ $$ and all they had to do was write a contest for it.
But hey, we get a swag bag right? Well in the words of Yahtzee - you!
Every flash site in existence shares ad revenue with developers. Escapist shares ad revenue with video developers (unskippable, writers, so forth) but apparently this flash game is beneath them.
The funny thing is, because yahtzee will review it, it will be played by over a million players in no time at all, earning Escapist a nice 10,000+ $$ and all they had to do was write a contest for it.
But hey, we get a swag bag right? Well in the words of Yahtzee - you!
Did you also know that the majority of flash gaming sites don't let the game producers splash their own branding on the game? In fact, they avoid crediting them whenever possible. Those flash gaming portals want to promote their own branding, and regularly marginalize the efforts of the developers.BaneAustralia said:
Flash gaming sites also don't share very much revenue with the original developers. This is largely because there is such a glut of flash games on line. How much money do you think you would get when they flash game portal you are using has a selection of thousands of games?
Flash game portals are not a good way to make money. The only reason any of you are getting up in arms about this is because you know that the Escapist already has a built-in audience for Zero Punctuation, so the winning entry is insured a certain degree of traffic.
This is a prestige piece. It is a way for an indie flash developer to get their game in front of a crap-ton of people, with their name on it, loud and proud. Contests are usually not considered commisioned work. They are a competition between the participants, and rarely ever insure a return on investment. Most contests have prizes that are not necessarily worth the efforts put into them. If you are not interested in the intangibles being offered here, by all means, don't submit an entry. One less effort for me to compete against.
Has it occured to you that most games based on an intellectual property require the developer to pay a liscencing fee to the liscence-holder? If this weren't a contest, you would be required to pay The Escapist to make a Zero Punctuation game.
Actually I'm more concerned about not winning. If I win then I get loads of people playing my game which is awesome but if I don't win (which is incredibly likely) then I have nothing to show for all the time I put into making the game. I really hope The Escapist makes all the games playable at least for a short while so we can see all the non-winners' hard work.
Yeah, you SHOULD be! As I so arogantly boasted before, I'm bringing the heat on this one. If you aren't coding and producing art assets RIGHT NOW, then you are already behind. I'm actually working on producing my own iPhone app right now as well. So if you devote all of your free time to this, you might stand a sliver of a chance of overtaking me.Hamster at Dawn said:
Also, I too hope that the runners-up also get posted in some capacity. Even if they are only posted in the message boards, I would still like to see the competition's efforts. I find perusing fan games to be very interesting, and you never know when you will run across an interesting idea in someone else's work.
But you're still all going down...
Good luck to you. I actually overheard Yahtzee saying something about "Quick Time Events". I'm not sure what that means but if you put a lot of them in your game then you're sure to win.Richard Kain said:
Okay, I actually have a question. (as opposed to just ranting and raving) Are we allowed to post screenshots from our game? I know that we aren't supposed to be displaying our game on-line in an un-secure, playable fashion. But are static .JPG screenshots kosher for the purpose of this contest? I would like to be able to show off my in-progress game, and I figure screenshots would probably be the most reasonable way to do that.