[Mandrake]

I was thinking, for the next 48-hour contest (not this one...the next one will most likely be around October - December-ish), will be a pure coding contest. To see who can code the coolest RPG-Maker in 48 hours...there will be no restirctions other than you can not use an RPGMaker to make it (duh).

Anyway, what do you guys think?

[DarkDread]

I said nay... why? ...because I don't think it would be possible to come up with anything usable, as an RPGMaker in 48 hours.

I truly think that, this would have to be a longer contest... otherwise, the results would most certainly be less than satisfactory.

Change it to, say, a week long contest, and you've got a 'yay' vote from me too. :D
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[Mandrake]

hmmm, i think your right...this should be a week-long contest. I like that idea. It would give more a chance to add other stuff too, like a graphics lib for it, and etc.

also, i didn't mean everyone should program a great flexible RPGMaker that god himself would love, just a simple one. With a battle engine, limited scripting capibilities, and a map editor of some sort.

[DarkDread]

...of course, simple is a good idea with the time constraints. My main point was that, it's gonna be hard getting a decent-ish miniRPG done in 48 hours... and with an RPGMaker, it's at least twice as much work... so, we'd all be scrambling like crazy, and I do think the end product would suffer.

...but yes, definetly, there would have to be some very strict guidelines as to what can be put in the 'maker... I figure, create one that can only create the simplest of simple RPGs... so one doesn't have to spend lots of time coding a lot of features.
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[Bjorn]

I agree with DD, you cannot make anything like a nice engine in one weekend. But still, if it was a week I don't think an engine contest would be really interesting. My idea would be to have much less rules to forge a low workload (low-end systems rulez are mostly fine), but have the theme of the game fixed and only tell which setting it should be right before the weekend. This can also guarantee that the game is really done in that weekend.

[X-G]

What? Are you completely cooked? Of course you can make something in 48 hours! Have you never heard of Speedhack?
Shame on you ... you can code a kickass game in 48 hours. :P
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[white_door]

I think a RPG maker with in 48 hours would be doable.. it would be pretty close and most people would end up either not finishing or with something that was pretty much the same as everyone elses.

What about splitting it to several weekends? Tile engine contest, Scripting contest, battle contest... then one last one where the whole RPG maker is put together? and for people that miss a weekend: they could use any libraries or existing code they want for each sub part of the RPG maker provided.. the maker itself is original.

this would keep the contests short and tight.. but still give enough time for a real maker.

[Mandrake]

heh, i really like that idea white_door, problem being, getting everyone to meet on the same series of consecutive weekendds...

[God_Cells]

Hey, White door pretty good idea! Why not making a battle engine contest instead of a complete game contest!!! It could be great and this is doable whitin 48 hours!!

What do you think?

Evry game programmers know about Speedhack ^_^... This is well known!
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[white_door]

well yeah... we could have a series of completely seperate 'engine contests'. (maybe require all engines are open source)

Then have a final contest later on: do a 'rpg maker' based on your favorite pick of the engines. You see having a cool set of engines is different to having a good rpg maker. The best all round rpg maker would be about style, ease of use, how well the engines fitted together, and documentation. And the seperate engine contests would be a chance to show off coding style, originality and engine effects.

And this means people can turn up to whichever of the contests that they want. Since I think people will find different parts interesting.

[DrunkenCoder]

Hehe, if done right we could have a fully modular engine at the end where you just pick the battle engine you like best and drop it into the same framework as your fav script and tile engine and voila a pretty unique engine is built from free components =)
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[DarkDread]

Hmm... I'm not too sure about the 'picking the best engines' part... since everyone will likely pick different code, from different people, it'd likely turn into one, very unwieldy frankenstein job.

I still like the idea of a week long (well, just consecutvie weekends), where everyone works towards putting together a really simple RPGMaker.

The idea of doing a different engine each weekend is good... the only real problem I see with it, is major dropout. So, we might start with 30 people participating, but be down to just 3 or 4, by the last weekend.

Of course, the other cool part we could do is, after the rpgmakers are done... have the next competition be: "Create an RPG with one of the rpgmakers created in the last contest" Remember, it doesn't always have to about coding.
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[Mandrake]

heh like i said before this is not for the current up and coming 48hour contest those rules are the same. The RPGMaker one...let's slate if for September first...and then we could have a series of 48 hour contest marathons, with graphics one weekend, scriipting another, battles the third, the editor the fourth, and finally the last weekend will be creting a short demo game and all the documentation.

Another idea would be to set this up like relay race, everyone splits into teams of four, each weekend will be done by a diffrent person in the team...good idea/bad idea?

Anyway, the Sept-Oct contest will be "Creata an RPG MAker with a Halloween theme in one month...heh....)

could be fun :)

[DarkDread]

Oh, I'm aware that it's for the next one... I was simply saying, if there will be one after that, then we can use the RPGMakers created in that one, to make RPGs. :D ...'tis all.
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"Goth is a way for ugly people to be interesting."

[Mandrake]

heh, yeah DarkDread, i know what you're saying....some people though that have posted made i t sound like they wanted it for THIS upcoming challenge. Actually, I really like the idea of having a 48hour contest after that one that uses the winning RPGmaker...would be cool