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Hi all,
Just wondering if anyone on here is doing Dare this year in Ireland? I’m currently on a team in the London region. Just wondering if we’ll get to meet anyone from GD.ie when we head up to to Protoplay.
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That would be great, thanks Aphra.
Its the same here we only started on Wednesday, we are based in Goldsmiths University in London.
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Geees sponsors just keep coming for dare. Bet Autodesk is very welcome seeing as those licences must cost a packet. I will have to go into the lab next week and see how the games are progressing as teams should be near finished.
Autodesk sponsors Dare to be Digital
http://www.developmag.com/news/30271/Autodesk-sponsors-Dare-to-be-Digital -
Well DARE is almost over, we are all in the last week of production. We all fly up to Scotland on Saturday. It’ll be a busy week putting the last few polishes on the game. We didnt get as much done as we would have liked but the game works, has a solid feel to it and looks quite nice too. The mechanics of the game will allow us to experiment with a number of different gameplay types but unfortunately due to time constraints we have only developed one (maybe two, we’ll see if there is time for another when we are finished polishing) for show at protoplay.
I have to say I’m very excited about the games this year. I think the standard has reached a new level and there are a number of games that I’m just itching to play.
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2 weeks into the competition one of the UK teams posted video from what appeared to be a remarkably polished version of their game running – complete with textured and well animated content – I’d be interested to know how seriously Dare take the whole 10 week thing…
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That’s a really sore point for me. When we did it, the impression we got was that it was a 10 week project. We felt a bit sneaky in that we started building our level editor in our own time 2 weeks before the competition started, but felt justified in that it was entirely our own code whereas other teams were buying in engines to use. These days you hear about students doing their 3rd year project on the basis that they can expand on it in 4th year and then bring it into Dare. For me, it breaks the ethos of the competition. I asked about it at one point and the starting point of work that you bring into the competition is taken on-board when the judging takes place, but I can’t see how a thoroughly polished game that took say 8 weeks of polish isn’t going to win against a game with 10 weeks of hard graft from scratch for example. I’m not a fan of this approach :(
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That’s a really sore point for me. When we did it, the impression we got was that it was a 10 week project. We felt a bit sneaky in that we started building our level editor in our own time 2 weeks before the competition started, but felt justified in that it was entirely our own code whereas other teams were buying in engines to use. These days you hear about students doing their 3rd year project on the basis that they can expand on it in 4th year and then bring it into Dare. For me, it breaks the ethos of the competition. I asked about it at one point and the starting point of work that you bring into the competition is taken on-board when the judging takes place, but I can’t see how a thoroughly polished game that took say 8 weeks of polish isn’t going to win against a game with 10 weeks of hard graft from scratch for example. I’m not a fan of this approach :([/quote:ce78cebbc6]
At the end of the day, its a competition. You play to win! :) If you can bend the rules significantly to give yourself and your team the advantage without breaking the rules, why not? After all within the industry and life it isnt always fair.
But hey i might just be a cheating bastard! 8)
I think the idea of 10 weeks only is too limited. Surely the competition is to find the best people not the guys who can bang something together in 10 weeks of crunch. IMO if your commited to winning the thing and you dedicated 3rd and 4th year projects to bringing it to fruition why not? I think you deserve credit for thinking that long term and more so if your idea has remained true and consistent over that time. Says alot to me, about whether you can finish a project to a specificiation.
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Well the we finally made it back to London today. Rockstar threw a bash last night with a free bar! Was very cool of them and much appreciated! Also NCsoft gave us a free lunch as did the Scottish Government, which was also much appreciated!
The competition was a lot of fun and we got to meet loads of very cool people. We didnt win but looking at the games that did win (and several that didnt like Captain Cannonball, Infection Vector, Plight of the WeeDunks to name my personal favorites) we have no hard feelings about it. Many of the games were genuinely very very good. I know its kind of the nice thing to say but this year the competition really was too close to call. It wasn’t just the build quality of the games it was the standard of the designs behind them too. A lot of them were just great fun to play.
As for the amount of work that some teams had done prior to the competition, it would be a lie if I said there weren’t a few raised eyebrows in week 2. Having said that there was large variety in the amount of prep work each team had done. Some teams had based it off their end of year projects. As far as I know some teams used open source art assets. There was a huge difference between the engines used, some of the engines used were Xna, Darkbasic, Blender, Dxstudio, Torque X pro, Flash, Ogre, Source and a few wrote their own. Those of us coming into the competition and going from a "cold start" knew that would be the situation. I think its a very difficult thing for judges to define where to draw a line with regard to prior work. I do know that a team from Ballyfermot was rejected last year for having too much done so I think it’s something that is considered carefully.
Next on the agenda for the team is finishing off our thesis’s which are due on the 21st of September! (We have had a lot of fun trying to manage that and do DARE at the same time!) and are looking for jobs. We will also be investigating taking the game further as we are pretty close to a completed product, and there are opportunities for getting it out there with Xna.
Its been a blast and I’d do it again in a heartbeat. It really reminded me why I want to make games. I’m quite bummed out today that its actually over. -
It really reminded me why I want to make games. I’m quite bummed out today that its actually over.[/quote:a40727342b]
With an attitude like that I’ve got no doubt you’ll get a job when you finish up.. Great to see. Congrats on making it through the 10 weeks.
(on a side note who’d ya meet from NC Soft? Jay Scott or Rusalka Clarke?)
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With an attitude like that I’ve got no doubt you’ll get a job when you finish up.. Great to see. Congrats on making it through the 10 weeks.
(on a side note who’d ya meet from NC Soft? Jay Scott or Rusalka Clarke?)[/quote:5a6a49d85e]
Thanks I really hope so! After Dare doing I can’t imagine doing anything else that could be as rewarding or fun.
The judge from NC soft was Lance Stites. Very nice guy who gave us plenty of very specific positive feedback and was one of the people who said we should seriously think about taking it further
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Thanks I really hope so! After Dare doing I can’t imagine doing anything else that could be as rewarding or fun.
[/quote:3b51832c09]Yep its a great industry.. Defo look into possibilities at NCSoft after you finish, i’ve got a few mates there, mean to be a good spot and great development team.
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Personally I think the 10 week time limit should be enforced, to keep the test bed equal, although I’m sure this could be difficult to enforce. I do know that the mentors have to submit a report stating that they are confident that the team completed the work within the ten weeks, and this goes to the judges for consideration also. Many of the participants are juggling exams, repeat exams, dissertations etc. and don’t have a whole lot of extra time to devote, much as they’d like to.
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Flipside is would EA, Rockstar North etc be interested in seeing a product made in 10 weeks? I dont think the quality or design would be as good. Theres only so much you can concentrate on in 10 weeks.
I think the problem is Dare has this momentum going for it right now, in terms of quality and support from the industry, that if they rigidly enforce this rule I would expect the level of quality to decrease dramatically and consequently interest from developers, because they would think the level of competency and expertise has drop within the competition.
IMO its a double edge sword: on one side you want to be fair and stick to the 10 week rules but on the other side you want the support and interest from developers who are (lets be frank primarily there to find new blood to fill their roles). This side I think is probably the one which fuels and influence Dare alot more. But maybe I’m wrong.
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Personally I think the 10 week time limit should be enforced, to keep the test bed equal, although I’m sure this could be difficult to enforce. [/quote:3ab46dd17e]
Agreed.
Flipside is would EA, Rockstar North etc be interested in seeing a product made in 10 weeks? [/quote:3ab46dd17e]
Then either increase the length of the competition or get used to it.I totally see what you’re saying, but surely EA and Rockstar would want to see what the talent can do in ten weeks in fair and equal conditions. Otherwise you could have a situation where a semi-talented team produce a better game over a few months than a much more talented team do over ten weeks. Perhaps the second team were much busier or got together closer to the deadline, while the first team had feck all to do but work on their game.
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Flipside is would EA, Rockstar North etc be interested in seeing a product made in 10 weeks? I dont think the quality or design would be as good. Theres only so much you can concentrate on in 10 weeks. [/quote:bae14939c9]
I think you’re being very naive as to how the competition runs, you do all your design before the competition, the design is the documentation and presentation you present to the judge to try enter the competition. The competition is the actual development work. And its 10 weeks by 5 people, so its basically 1 man-year of work. The results you get from that are good. Any company worth their salt you crave to view that. What you normally get from a grad is a few weeks work, maybe their final year project, maybe with a bit extra work on it. Having something to show that combines art and code is immense.Added to that, I think you’re whole arguement about EA / Rockstar is completely flawed on the basis that EA have hired so many of the recent competitors in the competition, they’re completely happy with the output from the competition.
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I think you’re being very naive as to how the competition runs, you do all your design before the competition, the design is the documentation and presentation you present to the judge to try enter the competition.
[/quote:a2bc1f8f70]I’m not naive on the way the compeition works, i’m extremely familiar with it. Just because you present a design and documentation to the judges on entry doesnt mean you dont have the game already 60-70% complete, you just dont show or mention it. In fact if you wanted to win you would already have started on it.
Added to that, I think you’re whole arguement about EA / Rockstar is completely flawed on the basis that EA have hired so many of the recent competitors in the competition, they’re completely happy with the output from the competition.[/quote:a2bc1f8f70]
I never said they werent happy with the output at present.. Please read the entire post fully before going off on one ;)
What i said was they wouldnt be so happy in the coming years to see work, if the competition limited ppl to just doing work from scratch in the 10 week period. This would result in lower quality.
Dont be under any illusion that developers dont know work done entirely in 10 weeks and work done prior to a 10 weeks run up. I could even tell the difference from the blog video on this years dare site from week 2/3 (as someone else pointed out). We’ve all worked in development and know what can be achieve in time periods. Its naive to think preparation of code and assets starts on day 1 of Dare. When developers show up I would imagine they dont care about the time period, they care about the skills on show (can i hire this girl/guy) and buckets of enthusiam. Something the competition does well in finding.
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Do people do the concept art before the competition starts too? Or is this regarded as production?
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We had some of our concept art done before the competition but not a lot, just enough to communicate the look, feel and play style of the game. our 2d artist spent the first 3 days just bashing out concepts for the 3d models. We didnt come into the competition with much in the way of assets or code, but we were prepared to hit the ground running. Well on most fronts anyway. We did as much research on the engine we were going to use as possible with out buying the license, and banked on getting at least basic documentation with it when the competition started. Unfortunately there was almost nothing in the way of support or documentation with or without the license. That cost us about 2 weeks. We had planned for something like that happening but we did underestimate how much it would set us back. It bit nastily into our testing time.
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I have entered Dare before myself in the past and the whole early preparation issue seemed to be a bit of a Grey area even among judges, as I got varying opinions.
The general feeling I got after entering was that you could prepare your game before the ten weeks of the competition as much as you liked but you didn’t really get to use that material in the presentation anyway so it didn’t or wasn’t meant to handicap people at that stage, except maybe for still screens of your models illustrating gameplay. It would and does still bias here in my opinion though.
I was informed that when the ten weeks of the actual competition started the mentors or judges made a note of how far along you were at that stage and judged you relative to that point at the end of the ten weeks.
Personally I think the nature of Dare means you have to leave the regulations loose and not overly defined as some people use engines, some don’t, some people use open source art assets, some don’t etcetera etcetera. But I believe Dare should state upfront on the entry form what the regulations are, loose or defined that they may be, as it at least points out the importance of the issue.
I know back when I was entering the vague nature of the issue made me leave out renders that would of helped me as I didn’t want to advertise the amount of work we had done already for fear of scuppering ourselves. If I was doing it again now I would use as much as possible without showing an actual playable game, such as 3d renders or even early game stills.
I also vaguely remember there being an issue whereby one area of judging got double points almost, though this wasn’t pointed out clearly enough beforehand.
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Peter, I think if a team of people spent several months putting a demo together, then their committment to the job is going to be pretty high, so they’d be worth interviewing, and a group doing dare for 10 weeks should make something that may not be polished, should be enough to get the interview. The quality of the demo isn’t the main thing taken into consideration when offering a job, so my point still stands… :)
I agree with Barry, if this loose-ness of time-frames should continue to exist there should be a lot more clarity as to know it works.
Yeah, we heard about the double points in the judging last minute too, sucked.
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I think if any team can show innovation in a 10 week period they are worth talking to, regardless of the polish on their game.
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