js13kGames competition 2014

[Sebi]

I spy the upload form

[end3r]

The submit form is finally online - sorry for the trouble and a huge delay, I'm totally exhaused with the situation. I thought it will be great to have someone help me with the backend, but it ended up being more trouble than I expected. After all the form is almost the same as a year ago, so no GitHub integration. Maybe next year if I'll still have the strength to run it.

Anyway, you can submit your entries if you have them ready - the earlier you do it the bigger is the chance to win some Social Special prizes.

You can also visit Reddit and Hacker News threads and upvote them so more people would know about the compo.

 

By popular demand I've also added the Donation options - if you want to help me cover the costs of preparing and sending special t-shirts and 3,5 diskettes with the entries to all of the participants just donate a few dollars, thanks.

[end3r]

Talking about the t-shirts... how do you like the design?

 

 

What do you think about preparing 3.5" diskettes with the compo entries on them?

[d13]

 

What do you think about preparing 3.5" diskettes with the compo entries on them?

You can actually just leave them blank, no one will know the difference

But really, It's a incredibly cool way of paying tribute to our history.

[end3r]

You can actually just leave them blank, no one will know the difference

 

Yeah, but it would be awesome to see somebody actually checking that out and playing the games

[remvst]

In case you do the compo again next year, I think it'd be nice if the zip file was taken from Github. The problem currently is that once you submit it, you can't change anything anymore, which is sad since people have to use Github anyway.

 

Looking forward to see the other entries

[Imanol]

In case you do the compo again next year, I think it'd be nice if the zip file was taken from Github. The problem currently is that once you submit it, you can't change anything anymore, which is sad since people have to use Github anyway.

 

Looking forward to see the other entries

I think the code in GitHub is supposed to be the uncompressed and commented version of the game, which doesn't have to be less than 13kb, and the ZIP file you submit the actual minified less-than-13kb file. Or at least that's what I submitted.

[Sebi]

I think the code in GitHub is supposed to be the uncompressed and commented version of the game, which doesn't have to be less than 13kb, and the ZIP file you submit the actual minified less-than-13kb file. Or at least that's what I submitted.

 

I believe he meant a zip file hosted on github.

But either way that would be too much work for the judges. The judges can't go through the code everytime there has been a push on GitHub.

 

@remvst

Just don't ever submit something that is not finished yet. I know, that sounds like an really lame advice, but its the only way for the judges to check all the games in a short timeframe.

[remvst]

 I believe he meant a zip file hosted on github.

But either way that would be too much work for the judges. The judges can't go through the code everytime there has been a push on GitHub.

Well, you just have to download all the zips on the day the compo is over. Like a feature lock. It's not more work for the judges, it's just a little more integration.

 

About submitting only when done, there's always the possibility that you find a last minute bug that ruins the game but could be easily fixed.

 

In a way, Got game compos are easier to deal with because you can update the game as much as you want. The only downside is the lack of "feature-lock" once the compo is over.

 

Basically, I think submissions should be all WIPs, until the compo is over, at which point you can't update anything anymore.

[end3r]

In case you do the compo again next year, I think it'd be nice if the zip file was taken from Github. The problem currently is that once you submit it, you can't change anything anymore, which is sad since people have to use Github anyway.

It was the plan to have it this year from the beginning - integration with GitHub, taking the zip from the repo, logging in via GitHub (and Twitter) to your account and being able to edit the entries, submit new version, etc. It was supposed to be implemented just after the last year compo was finished, but I ended up waiting eleven months before the start and two weeks after the compo started just to have the submit form from the last year working, because somebody wanted to help me and took this on him. Next time I will have to do it myself instead of trying to get help from others if I can't guarantee it.

 

But either way that would be too much work for the judges. The judges can't go through the code everytime there has been a push on GitHub.

The judges can play the games when they are posted and when people can still submit it, but the actual judging will be held for a week after the compo ends, from September 13th. The judging will be based on the final versions of the games.

In a way, Got game compos are easier to deal with because you can update the game as much as you want. The only downside is the lack of "feature-lock" once the compo is over.

It's a matter of how much time I can spend on implementing the features I would like to have when I'm doing everything around the compo on my own and also try to earn money for a living full-time.

 

About submitting only when done, there's always the possibility that you find a last minute bug that ruins the game but could be easily fixed.

If you find a critical bug you can just contact me with the fixed version and I will update it. I didn't post this in the Rules as I don't want people to abuse it by sending a WIP and then updating it countless times by hand. It was suppose to be a part of the GitHub integration I mentioned earlier, but it will have to wait at least till the next edition of the compo.

[end3r]

I had to switch to the old server with the 2013 backend on it, but it looks like finally everything is starting to work fine. The submit form is available and the entries are being accepted.

 

Remember about submitting early and promoting your game - you can win bonus prizes from the Social Specials section.

[Sebi]

Regarding Tweets, FB likes, etc.

I have noticed that a huge amount of all tweets about Virtual War were made by the creator of that game including all his other twitter accounts.

 

So I'm curious if you guys look up who voted for those entries or not.

If it's that simple then I will just create a bunch of twitter accounts myself which can't be the purpose of that whole thing.

[end3r]

I don't think most of the tweets were done by him, I saw a lot of different people tweeting it. I'm monitoring the social sharing and don't see much of a problem.

 

If you'd create 100 new bot accounts and tweet using them, then I would disqualify your entry, but using own accounts and convincing others to tweet is the thing I would do myself. That's the whole point - promoting your entry. As long as you don't abuse it, you can do whatever you want.

[remvst]

Regarding Tweets, FB likes, etc.

I have noticed that a huge amount of all tweets about Virtual War were made by the creator of that game including all his other twitter accounts.

 

So I'm curious if you guys look up who voted for those entries or not.

If it's that simple then I will just create a bunch of twitter accounts myself which can't be the purpose of that whole thing

I only have one account. The support that I get from other people or from friends isn't fake at all. I might have tweeted about it once or twice, but Andrzej is free to take them off the final count. Trust me, I am not a real Twitter gamer

[Sebi]

I only have one account. The support that I get from other people or from friends isn't fake at all. I might have tweeted about it once or twice, but Andrzej is free to take them off the final count. Trust me, I am not a real Twitter gamer

 

Sorry about that then. I must have mistook you for the other guy who keeps tweeting your game on multiple twitter accounts. It just doesn't feel natural when 1 person is tweeting a game on 8 different accounts. 

 

@end3r

 

Ah nice. I was just curious because of the huge amount of tweets coming from Dominick Gentile and his army of twitter accounts. (8/20 tweets from that one person, also I'm not really used to twitter. Is there a way to see all tweets for a game?)

 

Didn't mean to say that all tweets are from 1 person, just a huge amount (40% of all tweets - thats what I can view on twitter) and that made me curious

[lanceewing]

Will I get marked down in any way if I submit a game that uses predominantly DOM sprites (where their background sprite image is rendered by a canvas)? It feels a bit old school to me.

 

I tried to make a full canvas game work for me from the start, but ran into a number of rendering issues, even though I was following the usual advice about using requestAnimationFrame, etc. After pulling my hair out for a while, I decided to continue by prototyping with DOM sprites instead since it was performing a lot better. Then halfway through the compo, I realised that my browser wasn't using hardware acceleration for the canvas. So I spent a few days switching it back to canvas, then tried forcing the browser to use hardware acceleration, and ironically it performed significantly worse than when the canvas wasn't using hardware acceleration. I even resorted to buying a new graphics card but DOM sprites still seemed to be performing better. I think it's something to do with Chrome on Linux and the acceleration support for the canvas. So to stop burning up time, I ended up switching it back again and continued with the DOM sprite approach and can't really back out of it at this late stage. It actually made some features a lot easier to implement, but might look a little jerky on slower PCs (runs fine on mine, which is an i7 4771).

 

Any thoughts on this approach in relation to the competition? I'll try to sort out my PC setup before next year's compo, but for this year it will have to be what I've built. It's been a great learning experience though.

 

Lance

[end3r]

There are no limitations of the way you render your game, so using DOM sprites is perfectly fine.

 

Just submit what you have and we'll see how it goes.

[end3r]

That's it, the submit form is closed. There are 129 entries this year which is awesomely amazing. There was 61 in 2012 and 70 in 2013 and I didn't expect so many of them this time. I was struggling with the tech problems so I couldn't spend more time on marketing, but it looks like the compo is good enough to promote itself.

Now the judges jump in and will vote for the entries - winners will be announced on September 20th. You have the time till September 20th, 13:00 CEST to promote your js13k entries to win some bonus prizes in the Social Specials category.

See all the submitted entries for 2014 - you can find some seriously impressive gamedev diamonds out there.

[remvst]

I've tried a couple and indeed there is some seriously good games this year. I'm looking forward to seeing the winners next week

[end3r]

The winners of the js13kGames 2014 were announced, you can find the list here: http://js13kgames.com/#winners

It was very hard to pick the best ones, the top5 is insane and every single one of them could win. The quality of submitted games was very high - there are so many great entries, I have some of my favourites around top40-50.

Congratulation to the winners and thank you all for participating!

[remvst]

Congrats to the winners, some really nice games

I'm curious about the judging system though, how do judges rate games? Are they free or are there any rules?

[end3r]

The judges were voting 1-100% for every entry and the places were assigned based on the average voting score. Different judges had different approaches and was paying attention to different things. It's obvious a designer will like the nice looking games better while the golf freak will check how well the entries was compressed.

I can show you my personal list of things, from the most important to the least ones:

- overall experience: does this game look impressive for only 13 kilobytes?
- is the gameplay good and addictive?
- is it complete, have features, bonuses?
- how does the graphic design look?
- is this game original?
- does the game incorporate (optional) theme?
- does it have sounds effects and/or music?
- what's the browser support, does it work in Chrome/Firefox only, or more?
- how does the unminified code on GitHub look?

As I said, it's only my personal list. As for the voting, every judge had his own scale. For example I was giving 30% for the worst game, some started from 1%, some others from 50%, for example:

50% for junk/broken/horrible: boo
60% for a functional game: meh
70% for a "good game": cool
80% if it is awesome fun: wow!
90% if it blew my mind: omgwtfbbq

It also depends on the judges. I wanted to give them some freedom, because saying "you have to vote between 40% and 100%, and when judging the game you have to check if the game incorporate the theme and give it 50% of the points if doing so" would be limiting their abilities to enjoy playing and judging games on their own. We had 7 different judges and I really liked the outcome even though sometimes my voting was way different that some of the other judges. One game I would personally give top5 was around top50, because other judges didn't like it so much.

[remvst]

Okay, thanks for answering so quickly (I imagine you had a busy day).

I was also wondering about how categories were taken into account (like, if a game was in both mobile and desktop category, would it get tested twice?)

Obviously, I'm asking because of my own entry. I was interested in the mobile category mostly, and it is frustrating that the first spot does not even run on mobile for me (I've tried Mobile Safari, Opera, Firefox, and Chrome).

I'm sorry if it sounds too much like a complaint since you're doing the contest on your free time and you're doing a great job, but I was really frustrated when I saw that. I don't even care about the prizes (except for the phone and the t-shirt if you're still doing it )

[end3r]

Thanks for the feedback. Right now the game is judged based on the overall experience, so if it was submitted to the Desktop and Mobile categories it was just on those lists. Maybe it should be judged separately for the Desktop and separately for the Mobile, and the Mobile support should have bigger impact? Now the only requirement was that it had to work on mobile, and it worked for me when I was testing it if I remember it correctly. I'm sorry if you feel your game works a lot better on mobile than the winning game, I'll try to improve that the next time and make it more fair.

The compo is evolving with every edition and I really appreciate any feedback and support that can help improve it. I won't say it's perfect and that I don't make any mistakes. There was so many nights when I thought it will all crash and burn and I don't want to do it anymore that it's crazy.

I have a long list of features I'd like to add like feedback comments from judges, voting from participants and a ton of other things. Improving the judging is also on the list. The problem is that I'd have to spend time on that and don't make new games or other things which will bring me money. I'll have to think about monetisation because for now I'm paying more than I receive from the sponsors. The community around js13k is awesome and I hope it will continue to grow. Managing the compo is exhausting, but so rewarding at the same time.

[Sebi]

So uploading a single player game to the server category nets you the 2nd place? Really now?

Next time I will check that box too lol.

 

Also you guys didn't seem to care if people followed the theme or not. 

That removes the whole purpose of a challenge theme.

 

Same goes with the server and mobile category. It doesn't look like you tested those games on mobile devices or looked up if those server games are actual server games.

 

How can a game like Button Football beat a game like The Amazing Mole? But I guess that is still better than the Mandala Horse.

 

Well, what I have learned is that you are better off to ignore the challenge theme and that means you can start coding your 13kb game for 2015 now. Also always upload your game to all categories even if it doesn't work on mobile or has no server side code. Also actively create twitter accounts and tweet about your own game as many times as possible. lol.

 

Other than that, there really have been some great games this year and participating was fun.