GitHub's Game Off is back | Hacker News Reader

GitHub's Game Off is back

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157 pointsespadrine34 comments

This has some amazing potential this year- Unity 5 free, Unreal 4 free, Source 2 just released. I've been playing with a FTL-like prototype in Unity for the past couple weeks, it's been surprisingly easy. It's a brilliant time to be a game developer.

Also, fork me! https://github.com/JerkyTreats/SpaceshipPrototype

It's a bit weird what's qualified as a browser based game now a days. For me it's still CGI/Perl/PHP and maybe some JS. :P You barely see those kind of games any more. Now it's mainly plugins and it makes me a bit sad. Why does it Need to run in the browser? What's the point with the browser if you are gonna use plugins anyway? Why not make a "native" game instead!?

With Unity 5 [0] and Unreal Engine 4 [1], it's no longer necessary to use browser plugins.

[0] http://blog.mozilla.org/press/2015/03/unity-5-ships-and-brin...

[1] https://blog.mozilla.org/blog/2015/02/24/unreal-engine-4-7-b...

Waw, thank you, I wasn't aware of that :)

Yeh, you Only have to download and install Firefox first.

As opposed to downloading and installing a standalone game that is only a game? You still have a usable browser after you play the Firefox game.

asm.js does not require Firefox and runs just fine in browsers like Chrome.

It just performs better in Firefox at the moment due to better support.

I did try the demos in the New Opera browser witch is as close as "browsers like Chrome" you can get. But it didn't work.

There are plenty of web-based games using canvas / webGL that don't require any plugins.

The better way to think of these is "zero-install URL-specified games". If there ever gets to be a standard for "ephemeral sandboxed apps launchable from URLs" (like the latest Chrome offers for Chrome Apps) then expect to see people stop caring about the term "web games" (or "web apps", for that matter) very quickly.

> "ephemeral sandboxed apps launchable from URLs"

That's where we must eventually head in the future. Too bad we are light-years away. We probably have to re-design the PC from scratch to be able to do that.

There's a reason why browsers don't offer the same functionality that "plugins" do. And that's because of security. With "plugins", you are not any more secure then if you would download and run an executable.

Considering how the freeware market looks today, when even companies like Oracle and Adobe package their free apps with crapware ... And corporations like Google and Facebook monetizing private data ... There's more reasons then ever to be concerned about security.

It's possible to run traditionally desktop games that use OpenGL by compiling them to JavaScript.

As an example, here's a port of an old C++ game to Go which I am able to have running in the browser [1]. It's a multiplayer game too. (The port is not finished.)

  > Why not make a "native" game instead!?

It's a lot easier to judge/try games if they run in the browser. For example, try this terrain demo [2] which runs in the browser. One click, and you're experiencing it. If you had to run the native version, it'd be more hassle/work.

[1] https://github.com/shurcooL/eX0/commit/7ba48d00cfd143bca2e56...

[2] http://dmitri.shuralyov.com/projects/Terrain-Demo/index.html

The web is a deployment platform. It (theoretically) makes it easier to get one set of code to run for more types of users. That's all.

And it's not like there is limited space on the internet. One type of browser-based game isn't going to displace other types of browser-based games any more than, say, console games would.

Same thing as with any SaaS offering: The plugins are usually multipurpose, and so a lot of users, especially those who enjoy playing games, likely already have them. And I can make updates to the game without the user having to download a patch, so I can ensure that all users are playing the same version of the game.

    > It's a brilliant time to be a game developer.

From technological perspective of course, it have never been easier. On the other hand since everybody [0] can now create a game the competition between game developers is much stronger, which is arguably a good thing for gamers, but not necessarily for developers. Also from consumer point of view signal to noise ratio will probably get worse (many inexperienced designer flooding marked with their first games etc.).

So it's easier to develop but harder to get noticed.

Also: good luck with your game!

[0] this is a slight hyperbole, there is still so much to do even when you have the engine up and running.

It's sort of a double edged sword isn't it? You're right, the space is saturated with developers and games, but on the other hand, interest in indie games is at an all time high. I'm not sure it's true that it's harder to "get noticed" now than, say, 10 years ago. There were fewer games back then, but there were also fewer gamers interested in playing indies.

It is harder getting noticed, unless you do something other people are not doing, or developing some new kind of game - which has never been easier.

> From technological perspective of course, it have never been easier. On the other hand since everybody [0] can now create a game the competition between game developers is much stronger, which is arguably a good thing for gamers, but not necessarily for developers. Also from consumer point of view signal to noise ratio will probably get worse (many inexperienced designer flooding marked with their first games etc.).

This isn't the first time the games industry has seen a flood of games and it won't be the last. I suspect the bar to attract consumer interest will rise, and things will return to how they once were - with the ease of development being supplanted by the difficulties of the new quality bars. As curation catches up to the rest of the industry (or we see another crash and the flood abates) the S/N ratio will improve back towards old levels - if you follow the right channels.

The size of large game studios, to the best of my knowledge, has never been bigger than now. The size of the market, when everyone has a smartphone in their pocket, has never been bigger than now. Entirely new markets (first mobile, now VR) are opening up. Devs are doing OK at least.

I'd say the sheer enormity required to develop AAA titles might make it hard for e.g. the next John Carmack to make their millions on their own, but Minecraft selling for $2.5B pokes... at least a few holes in that theory.

We just released an open-source sync database for Unity, so you can write multi-device games without writing network code: http://developer.couchbase.com/mobile/unity/

It might be a quick win for adding a social aspect to existing Unity projects.

[Edit] oops I jumped straight to one of the game lists and didn't see the web-only restriction. In that case, PouchDB. :)

I always love the concept, but it I rarely hear about the winners, plus there is no way to browse the entrants.

Update: Oh cool, this year they finally made a list of everyone who one in the past. https://github.com/showcases/game-off-winners

I wish they put together a blog post on why they won.

Also for GGO 2012 you can view entrants here: http://pkukielka.github.io/ggo12-viewer/ (disclaimer: viewer was done by me). If I remember correctly someone forked my code and did the same for 2013 edition.

I like the deadline time, smart!

  > ...13:37pm PDT.

So, is it required that you start with an existing project? It seems to me that the only requirement explicitly listed is that it needs to be playable in a browser.

> The Challenge

> Take an existing game or game jam entry on GitHub, fork it and do something awesome with it.

> Take a look at the following resources to see if there's one you'd be intersted in forking....

> Once you've found a game repository, fork it...

> Make sure your code is pushed to the default branch of your forked repository...

And, on the submission form, talking about your Readme file:

> Mention the Game Off, what changes you made, who was on your team, what technologies you used, throw in a screenshot, etc.

I dunno, all that seems pretty explicit to me.

I would call that very suggestive, not explicit.

  > Take an existing game or game jam entry on GitHub, fork it and do something awesome with it.

Consider the edge cases:

What if you can't fork it because you've already forked it 5 months ago (but made 0 commits on your fork)? This is probably okay, right? If not, you could delete your existing fork and fork again.

What if you can't fork it because you have an unrelated repo with the exact same name already? This is also okay, right?

What if you can't fork it because it's your own repo and you don't need to fork it? This is not okay? Or is it okay? No clear answer.

There are times where it helps to have explicit rules/conditions.

Dude, it's not like there is major prize money involved.

This is just a "just for fun, do something cool by forking something that already exists and we'll show off the best."

Relax, have fun, make a cool game.

Yeah, I'm unsure about this point too. Is it mandatory to be a fork of someone else's repo?

If you really don't want to fork someone else's existing repo, want to participate, but can't violate rules, you could always start a project on your account, do a ton of work on it, then start an organization, and have that organization fork your own repo. But honestly, I'm pretty sure github cares more that you wind up with an interesting and fun game at the end of the day rather than you following to the letter about what to fork and not fork.

Is there a prize?

Good question. I find it strange they didn't mention a prize this year. Last year or possibly the year before they gave away 5 Macbook Airs.

Anyone else thinks its weird that there is no prize? (nothing mentioned in the blog post at least)

That's a pretty bad title. Could mean anything. How about taking the first phrase in the article "GitHub's Game Off is Back". Maybe add an exclamation point.

It's a cool thing to build games for the browser and I'd like to see it get more HN attention.

Ok, sure. But not the exclamation point!

> The only restriction is that the game should be web-based

That's one hell of a restriction.

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