Remember that developing your game before it starts it not allowed, you could always say that you do not have the time to build up the same quality in assets as someone who just get’s them from the marketplace but it is up to the judges to decide which has more value for the jam. The rules indicate that you have to indicate whether your assets are yours or not, it’s also easy to tell the difference for an asset that has been done in a couple of hours and one that has been worked on for a week.
The same applies , a game that has been tweaked to a given theme is not hard to identify, the gameplay will never adhere as much to the theme and will not be as unique and experimental as a real jam idea might be. I doubt that a game that has been worked long before the jam starts is going to win .
The most important thing in a jam, at least for me, is noT winning it but experimenting with an idea during the jam, many great games came out of jams and none of those where games that where in development before the jam itself.
Does this mean that I can make assets, say that they are not for the game jam, and then add them to my game jam project anyway, because they are similar in quality to marketplace assets? Does using marketplace assets make you less of a candidate for winning?
Just wondering… how does one draw the line ?
Edit: Ahh, sorry; after looking at a few other threads, I sort of understand how this is being handled now. Listing marketplace assets in credits means that the project takes longer than one week… right?
The line is very thin, which means that judging is very hard. What I wanted to say is that you can identify assets that took longer to make than what could be possible for a jam. Everyone has to decide whether they want to create something for it and take the challenge of the jam or are just up to win some prizes at any cost.
Sounds tough… you’d have to account for how much free time has too, right? I mean, I live with my dad and am unemployed…that means I can spend 18 hour days for a week straight on game jams; so you can expect about 126 hours of game dev from me I guess.
Well, I won’t use any pre-made assets then, including the ones I made up to now; I’m not really in it for the prize. I’ll just spend more time making my workflows more efficient, and learn more about HUD and AI.
yea people that have been a long time allready have a garage full of cool stuff, a car ready to and a gun ready to fire.
Not only that but they have more skill too use them.
beginners need a lucky shot too beat a pro, thats allways the case
I say let every1 just use their whole arsenal because this wil give new people a better because they can build up their own stuff and show it when they think its fun enough.
CoD doesnt get build from scratch every new release either.
I just don’t have the time to participate in a Jam … I want to … but I have a day job and would not be able to commit the time for myself on a Jam or for a team. But if I could … I would want to be able to use assets that I have acquired before hand. This however does a pose a dilemma for those that don’t have the resources to do this and seeing as though people are competing for a prize … a firm decision will need to be made.
This is going to be a something that will have to be decided upon going forward … or you will have people stating that they are being disadvantaged.
No matter what people say about judges being able to spot assets that were acquired versus assets made for the Jam, they are human and would never get it right 100% of the time or be able to remain impartial. I polished product will always appeal more than something with placeholder assets or basic assets.
For those who are busy competing … I salute you. 8-}
Yeah, there are a lot of pros out there with established workflows, training, modular stuff, external drives and servers dedicated to libraries of textures, code, models, etc x)
Not to mention, a large part of learning how to be an indie dev is knowing how and where to cut corners, and reduce workload.
That’s why I was thinking there could be tiers of Game Jam contests; perhaps something to think about in the future.
I dont believe this is the case at all, some of the best content on the market is Epics and alot of that is free… Making your own content is your own choice and workflow is part of game development it showcases a teams strength to work together in an integral manner which is important when you are judging how well teams perform.
Im sure instead of working on the game you could be planning on how to improve your workflow by limiting polygon counts, texture resolutions, I know people who avoid UV mapping or model smoothing to save time. There are a whole host of things a developer could draw from and balance in a way that suits the amount of time given, we have 7 days so its already alot more time than other jams.
I dont see why people reusing assets in interesting and creative ways should be punished because they didnt create the thing entirely from scratch. I would hope the GameJam would promote thinking outside the box whilst adhering to the theme, I think philosophy is a good alternative category and in the end we all want to have fun whether we are building or playing the games right? Why ruin peoples fun.
Lets say i made a car in 2 weeks… it works nice, breaks ,spinning tires ,rearview mirror and all that good stuff.
I got stuck on a few problems while making it and learned a lot. If i create the same car from scratch again it would take me 1 week.
if i open up my blueprints and take a peek every time i got lost a little bit it would take me 1 day.
copy paste 1 min.
You bring up a good point; a lot of really excellent blueprints, assets, and more is free on the marketplace and the ‘learn’ section. You can build anything to your heart’s desire using and learning from them, and I use them all the time; they’re .
I agree that people using marketplace assets shouldn’t be punished (that’s for the incompetent slaves I keep shackled in my tower of doom); but there’s a reason why infinity blade’s assets were $3 million; it takes a lot of experience and time to make AAA assets. Reusing these assets would be similar to reusing entire blueprint functions or entire sections of code from highly experienced programmers, even if you did reuse them in interesting and different ways. it takes months of work and years of experience to make fully animated, PBR assets.
There’s ways to get around this MonsOlympus, like you mentioned; low poly art or not UV mapping. But what if I want to make a game with PBR graphics? If two games were made exactly the same, except one of them had infinity blade assets, and the other just had cubes that chased after you, which one do you think would be the better game? This is keeping in mind that the game mechanics are exactly the same (because it’s definitely possible to make an amazing game just with cubes).
This isn’t just from a competition perspective; if I were to market a game like that to the public; people would almost certainly choose the one with cooler looking assets, because more work (therefore more time) has been ‘put’ into the game, and people will think, “Oh wow, these screenshots look amazing. They probably know what they’re doing, compared to this guy who just has greyish blocks”.
It is not necessarily which is the better game but more which would be seen as a better release. There are some very good points made and I am on the fence … I am thankful that I don’t have to make the final decisions and that I can’t really get involved in Jams.
Good luck to the organisers and good luck to the participants. 8-}
If you are capable of making a PBR game in 7 days there is nothing stopping you, Epics tools are a great place to start, I certainly wouldnt tell people to dream small I believe scope is important though. Honestly though if youre going to go that way why not go all the way and find AAA backing rather than competing in a GameJam, Im sure there will be professionals about but I really dont think Blizzard are going to send a team over or anything, you know what I mean?
Its basically like when someone tells you they want to make the next GTA game, the first question that comes to mind is you and what army? It’s actually why I was originally against the idea of the Jam, I didn’t believe the limited scope could really let people flesh out a game design decently, that the games produced were more tokens, representations of games rather than a full complete product. I’m not so sure that’s a bad thing and I’m certainly more prepared for this Jam.
Selfishly, I wish for one Unreal Jam where asset creation was taken out of the picture entirely. For example, a constraint that absolutely has to use basic shapes, textures, and the mannequin that comes with the engine, and nothing else – or absolutely has to use Infinite Blade assets and nothing else. But normally, the jams are basically just for fun, and it doesn’t matter much if someone wants to ‘cheat’. They’re mostly just cheating themselves out of a proper game jam experience.
You would be surprised by how many AAA devs actually participate and I think AAA devs are more likely to participate to game jams than indies and that’s for a very simple reason : when you work on a game for 6 years with 200+ people, you are very likely to lose your spark, the game is a lot bigger than you and your contribution is small compared to the game you are working on. A gamejam is the opposite of that, you do everything in very little time, it’s a fun and quick way to get the spark back. At least that’s why I do it
Yeah, landing a job at Blizzard, Bethesda, Bioware, or similar would be pretty mindblowing, but my portfolio isn’t quite at that level yet. Hence game jams and indie game dev.
In seven days, I can make a character, several enemies with blendspace animations and cloth simulations, a few environment assets, particle systems, GUI, music, sound , and blueprint gameplay mechanics. I’ve spent quite a lot of time planning this and optimizing my workflow(s), and feel I’m fairly well prepared; unless the challenge is something really strange.
Partially agree, would make sense for programmers only jam, but artists are also in the picture.
On the last note, people are so eager to “win” that forgets what really matters. If you’re that competitive, and you’re “ready” why don’t you compete in the biggest competition already? (free markert, where AAA devs compete all year long). Anyways it’s sad to see people lose their spirit. Just have fun imho, we’re learning .
I want to add my two cents. You can agree or disagree, i don’t care.
THE PRIMARY REASON TO DO A GAME JAM IS TO HAVE FUN AND TO LEARN ABOUT GAME DEVELOPMENT AND YOURSELVES.
Those of you who work on a game for the jam before the jam, you’re cheating yourself. the whole point to a game jam is to simulate the pressure of a deadline and to encourage creativity by constraints, by making a game and applying the theme to it, you’re not challenging yourself, you’re not pushing yourself creatively. you’re not even on the same level as those who create everything from scratch in the time limit. In fact i’m going to be extreme and say that you’re ruining the spirit of game jams. People who are doing this are not game jamming, the whole meaning of a game jam is similar to how musicians jam. Jamming in music means producing music with no preparation at all. the word game jam comes from game and jam session. The whole point of these game jams are for you as a game developer be pushed to your limits and to see what you can come up with in just the allotted time. If you wrote a song before a jam session and then tried to play that song will know you are not jamming. Without any pressure to “crunch” before the deadline, you’re not even participating. It’s like taking steroids in a physical sport, you didn’t show up to play, you showed up to cheat yourself.
For me (11 years in industry) game jam is great trigger to just sit down and create a game without *any *restrictions, just team creativity.
And YES I will buy assets because I have a mission and I love to create levels. They invested a lot of time and effort to create assets and almost is downloading them from torrents (the same way as games btw) I want to promote assets. That’s why I’m working by myself and will invest some money.
Remember - even if you have ready to go assets still you need to be creative to create level from them and art style need to be consistent with the theme. It’s easier but still it’s CREATIVE job.
Last thing - this is Epic - they will see if someone just copied a pack or did it creative way. I think we can trust them.
btw: 113 Teams - this will be ! Can’t wait to see what kind of games we will create!
