js13kGames 2015

[end3r]

The next, fourth edition of the js13kgames competition starts in more than a month, so it's time to create a thread and start talking about it.



For those who don't know: it's a JavaScript coding competition for HTML5 game developers. You have a month (from August 13th till September 13th) to create a game on the given theme (announced at the start of the compo) that should fit into the 13 kilobytes limit with all the resources when zipped. It is a challenge, but the one that spawns creativity.

Check out rules and previous entries, forum topic from 2014, follow compo on Twitter and Facebook for updates. I've started announcing the judges and prizes, here's the info so far:

Judges: me and Richard Davey.

Prizes:
- 2 × Phaser Box2D premium plugin
- 8 × Isogenic game engine premium license
- 1 × Construct 2 game engine business license
- 5 × Making Money with HTML5 ebook
- 10 × PlayCanvas Pro-5 account
- 5 × ImpactJS game engine
- 5 × Complete Mobile Game Development Course

There are more judges and prizes to be announced soon. So, who's gonna participate this time?

[Tricsi]

Hi end3r,

 

What about server category?

[end3r]

What about server category?

 

I took it down as there was a lot of issues with it in 2014 and only 5 entries. It still might be back, but for now the chances are small.

[end3r]

A quick update on new judges and prizes.

New judges:
- Christer Kaitila
- Will Eastcott
- Jason Weathersby

New prizes:
- 1 × Proto.io Startup account
- 7 × WebStorm personal license

Who would you like to see judging your entries? What would you like to win?

[remvst]

Glad to see JS13k is still going  

 

I'll try to get an entry, but I will have to find an idea (hardest part).

 

Are you planning to make any changes for the judging style? Last year the rankings between desktop and mobile were shared

[end3r]

I'll try to get an entry, but I will have to find an idea (hardest part).

Just wait till the theme will be announced, it should be a good source of inspiration ^^

 

Are you planning to make any changes for the judging style? Last year the rankings between desktop and mobile were shared

I was thinking about it for the past year, but the thing is I'm limited with the backend I have, people who wanted to help but didn't, the limited time to do anything myself and the thing that I'm not even a backend developer. I'm always open for feedback and improvements though, so sooner or later requested features will be implemented.

In a perfect world I would have multiple categories and ratings like The Best Graphics / Gameplay / Fun, Community Awards, voting on specific aspects of the games and detailed feedback from the judges. It is something I want to end up with eventually, but I failed to deliver that this time and have to live with it. I keep telling myself that it's better to run it as it is than to stop doing it at all

[Iftah]

hi end3r

 

I had lots of fun last two times, I hope to enter this year as well!   just need to survive a month without sleep...

 

Few points:

 

1. the link to the forum at the bottom of http://js13kgames.com/  sends to the 2014 forum post.

 

2. Regarding the server category -

You can allow using a certain cloud service - I suggest Google Play Games services (because its free, well documented, and generally good for indie game developers) 

If you allow loading the service library from CDN, and allow only client side code then the the deployment is simple (only client side) and the 13kb limit is possible to maintain.

 

The Google Games service is simple enough that there is no need for backend knowledge so it may open the Multiplayer category to more developers.

see https://developers.google.com/games/services/web/api/turnBasedMatches#methods

Unfortunately Google do not provide an option for realtime games on HTML5,  but they allow turn based games which is enough for many types of multiplayer games.

 

As a bonus - you may be able to contact some Google technology evangelist and they may be able to provide a prize !

 

There are many many other (less game oriented) alternatives, (for example) pubnub, firebase etc... (there would allow real time games)

 

Another bonus - if (for example) you choose a "game using X-service" category,  then X may provide a prize AND may help advertise the contest (ie. write about it in their website)

 

3. Regarding the judges feedback feature -  

I reallllly would love to read the judges feedback.  If you don't have time to implement it, how about opening a Google spreadsheet for each entry?

You can create a Google form from a spreadsheet  (see bottom of https://support.google.com/docs/answer/87809?hl=en)  so that as each judge fills the form it will be inserted to the spreadsheet.

Then all you have to do is send a spreadsheet link to the entry author.

[end3r]

I had lots of fun last two times, I hope to enter this year as well!

It would be great to have you again

 

1. the link to the forum at the bottom of http://js13kgames.com/ sends to the 2014 forum post.

Fixed, thanks!

 

2. Regarding the server category - You can allow using a certain cloud service - I suggest Google Play Games services (because its free, well documented, and generally good for indie game developers)

It's as good as any other service. I was testing a few and not a single one was perfect. And I'm totally not a multiplayer games guy, so I couldn't even evaluate the service correctly.

 

As a bonus - you may be able to contact some Google technology evangelist and they may be able to provide a prize!

I tried that, but unfortunately with no result.

 

Another bonus - if (for example) you choose a "game using X-service" category, then X may provide a prize AND may help advertise the contest (ie. write about it in their website)

Tried that too with a few companies, two of them were mocking me for a couple of months and then went totally quiet and cut all communication. It's suprisingly hard to make that work, compared to "just" acquiring a prize.

 

I reallllly would love to read the judges feedback. If you don't have time to implement it, how about opening a Google spreadsheet for each entry?

Yeah, I have to figure something out, because it's pretty important for many devs. I'm not exactly sure if I'll be able to implement it in the actual backend, but there are other options like the one you mentioned. In your case I'd have to manually create a document for every single entry though and link it from the entry page for the judges. The solution have to be smart, so me or judges won't have too much extra work to do. There's a potential problem of having 100+ entries to vote for for a single judge, so adding comment for every single one can be a huge challenge. Maybe they should rate and comment only on some part of the whole submitted games, but then there are other problems like different judges having different vote rates and applying them only to a cetrain amount of games. It gets a bit complicated

[Tricsi]

Hi end3r!

I really want to make a multiplayer game. Without the server part my only hope is WebRTC P2P connection. But this technology requires some help from servers (STUNT).
Can I use these kind of services? Does it break the rules?

 

[end3r]

I really want to make a multiplayer game. Without the server part my only hope is WebRTC P2P connection. But this technology requires some help from servers (STUNT).

Can I use these kind of services? Does it break the rules?

That would break the rule of using external services.

I can always try to bring back the mechanisms that were working a year ago with help from Aurélio and Florent, the js-game-server.

[remvst]

I think having multiplayer games would be pretty awesome, but given how it went last year, I think it's better to keep the category closed and focus on the regular categories.

 

I'm a bit disappointed the judging style hasn't changed, it felt really weird last year that the game that won the mobile category was barely working (couldn't get it to work on an S3). It feels like the mobile category is just a sub-category that doesn't get the attention it deserves.

 

Anyway, regardless of that, I'll participate for sure, as it's always a really fun challenge, and managed quite well overall

[end3r]

Well, you can consider it's not the whole separate category per se, just a note that the game also works on mobile. I know it should have it's own separate rules and voting process, but it delivers a lot more work to the judges. I already had them voting for far less games than I assumed. They are all busy people and instead of voting for 129 games they voted for 20 and I can't expect them to put even more time for extra rules. Maybe I should just remove the Desktop/Mobile categories and have all games equal. The Mobile category was created to put extra focus on that as mobile HTML5 games are important part of the market.

It was suppose to be fun in the first place, but I still hear this game was lower than that game but it's better. In a perfect world I would just remove the voting, leaderboard and prizes, but it would be boring.

[end3r]

After positive response from Aurélio the Server category is back. Now please, create multiplayer games because only 5 games submitted last time (with one being a demo to showcase the server) was rather poor after so many people were asking to have the category

[Tricsi]

\o/

[Siorki]

After positive response from Aurélio the Server category is back.

 

Yesss ! Thank you Andrzej, you really made my day with that decision

I was about to suggest that everyone willing to compete in the server category post here to assess the forces in presence. Well, you can still do it, at least that will give a rough idea of how many multiplayer games we shall have this year (way more than 5 I hope).

 

Currently doing some prototyping to validate a few ideas, but I won't go much further until the theme is announced.

Now, excuse me while I'll go back to learning node.js ..

[Iftah]

Sorry the talks with cloud tech companies failed.

I really thought its a win-win for everyone and they would love to join and give "free 3 months" prizes. oh well.

[end3r]

Unfortunately it's not that easy and you can spend months mailing forth and back with no actual result. But others respond quickly and offer prizes instantly, so it's not that bad after all ;]

[end3r]

Another quick status update.

New judge:
- Robert Podgórski

New prizes:
- 10 × From null to full HTML5 game minibook
- 3 × Kendo UI Professional
- 3 × CodePen Pro account

Still more to come.

[Gods]

I will enter using the phaser framework  

also sorry if this was answered on the website but do winners chose their prize? 

[Mickawesomesque]

I will enter using the phaser framework  

also sorry if this was answered on the website but do winners chose their prize? 

 

Phaser is way too big for this. To quote end3r, the finished game should fit into the 13 kilobytes limit with all the resources when zipped.

As for the prizes, you don't get to choose. Here's how they were attributed last year: http://2014.js13kgames.com/#places

 

Also, I'll be probably participating, but I'm definitely not in for the goodies! 

(Well, maybe for a t-shirt.)

[end3r]

Also, I'll be probably participating, but I'm definitely not in for the goodies! 

(Well, maybe for a t-shirt.)

Good luck! The compo was created for fun, to challenge yourself and train your skills, the prizes are just an extra thing ;]

[d13]

I will enter using the phaser framework

Unfortunately you won't be able to use Phaser - your game will never compress to a small enough size.

[Gods]

Unfortunately you won't be able to use Phaser - your game will never compress to a small enough size.

you sure? phaser 2.3 is split into multiple parts so might be small enough now  

[end3r]

you sure? phaser 2.3 is split into multiple parts so might be small enough now 

I don't think it might be THAT small to be used in the compo ;]

If you really want to use some helpers I would rather suggest using something from the MicroJS collection.

[ArkahnX]

I've posted games the last three years, but I didn't use the server category last year since it wasn't available in time for me to start planning. Now that I'm testing it, just trying to get the basic examples to run has not been successful for me.

 

after running "npm install", it passes all the tests, but "npm start" throws an error for each of the example games, reaching them at localhost:3001/2 doesnt resolve.

 

solved via https://github.com/ooflorent/sandboxer/pull/1. typical OS filesystem specificity issues. I have that patch merged locally, so I can only hope you guys manage to get that into https://github.com/aurium/js-game-server before the start of the competition, so others dont encounter the same issue! I think all it requires is uploading to npm? Ive never managed something on npm, so Im not sure if it pulls from github, or its manual.