Thoughts on a game jam

[Gimmick]

For the original context, please check posts 1 and 2 in the Flash Reg Lounge thread. While the original details are also in the same thread, I've decided to copy it over here for reference.

In short, I'm thinking of a game jam where "newbies" would be in charge.

Details:

Provisional name: "role swap" / "out of your comfort zone" jam

Team/Solitary?: Team (individual submissions not allowed, see notes)

Concept: Those who are X (artists/musicians/programmers/etc) should be in charge of Y instead.

Time frame: Obviously, nobody can be expected to learn anything worth a damn from scratch in a weekend, so I'm thinking this would be for a week, a fortnight or possibly even longer.

Notes: Collaboration would still be key here. Instead of each person doing what they're good at, though, the goal would be to get them to do what they're the worst at. This would involve - theoretically - a lot of collaboration amongst individuals in a team to effectively teach/mentor the others so that they can learn quicker than if they were left to their devices.

Roles would probably be picked on the honour system - no need to assign people roles; if someone wants to handle art/music/programming then they can do so. For those who are interested in multiple things, they could be assigned a role randomly (or based on their teammates' roles).

This would definitely be more demanding for all team members than previous game jams because of the complexity involved - it would effectively be up to those with experience to manage expectations, scope and all on behalf of those who are new to that field. Doubly so if there's any actual teaching or mentoring involved, as it would be very time consuming too.

It'd also require buy-in from the already experienced people in the art/animation/gamedev/programming forums who are interested in participating, because if the experienced users don't participate, it'll most likely be a shitshow of the blind leading the blind.

What do you think?

[Gimmick]

Crossposted as a reply from that thread so as to not hijack it...

At 9/15/21 07:00 PM, MSGhero wrote:

At 9/15/21 04:27 AM, Gimmick wrote:I'd love to hear your thoughts on this

I really like the idea of an "out of your comfort zone jam," but programming is the hard part. I can be the worst artist or composer on earth and still export a valid PNG or OGG at the end of the day, whereas I'd be a little surprised if every non-Windows person could even install Haxe correctly within one week.

I'm not familiar enough to know what a "safe" option would be, like a guaranteed non fucked up game by the end of the jam. Maybe a "template" game or a few that everyone can swap roles and make assets for, and the brave souls who want to try programming can have at it? In Flixel with JS export? Not sure if it can be any more accessible than that (no Visual Studio, game works by default, maybe NGAPI thrown in that you can fiddle with, fantastic docs).

I think Phaser might be a bit easier for people to get into? While Python is the language of choice for beginners to programming, limitations when targeting the web (barring everything being made using Ren'py) mean that only a few languages can be used, each with their own downsides.

• Phaser is a decent enough starting choice as long as people don't get too hung up on the documentation and the quirks of javascript. I can foresee the state machine design being a bit of a hurdle, but there's a lot out of the box and the syntax is kinda natural-language-enough when it comes to, say, adding physics. At least, from what I remember - dunno if they changed it recently.
• Visual scripting with e.g. GDevelop is really hit or miss. It might be easier to use for a beginner, but it may not actually teach programming as much as it would "connect this block, then that", and maybe the experienced programmer on the team may not prefer using that as it tends to be rather slow in achieving an objective and sometimes roundabout as well (for example, the way that GDevelop handles certain events makes sense when you think about it, but is rather verbose coming from a programming background.) I haven't used Scratch so I can't speak for it.
• Haxe is good for those coming from an AS3 background, but it suffers from the same problems that people who were shifting from AS1 to AS3 and those who try to learn C++ / Java do - a certain degree of boilerplate exists, and it doesn't map 1:1 WYDIWYG.*
• AS1/2 would probably be an okay alternative language because of Ruffle support. I started programming with AS1, so it does have its merits, but l'm holding off on any praise for this - because while it introduced people to coding fairly quickly, it also taught a lot of bad habits that would only hamper them down the line. I basically kneecapped myself by using AS1 and didn't use AS3 and proper OOP until I got a book on how to do so and effectively forced myself to start over from scratch. While I'm optimistic that anyone can learn programming, I'm not naive - I don't think people will willingly learn "the right way" if "their way" is good enough for them. So, I suppose AS1 is out of the question because of its poor long-term prospects.
• Godot with its GodotScript would probably be a good compromise because its syntax is supposedly like Python, which would indeed offer the best of both worlds in terms of a forgiving visual and scripting environment. C# and Godot/Unity probably would work, as well, but it has similar (albeit slightly fewer) concerns as Haxe. Perhaps someone who's used Godot more than me could chime in on this.

Like you said, installing the tools required and getting the dev environment set up is probably a big upfront hurdle to overcome (even as a windows user, I didn't use Haxe for a long time because it never worked on my machine until a year ago or so and I wasn't in too much of a hurry to switch).

I suppose one way is to have a lead-in week where everyone who's participating gets assigned their roles and gets the things they need set up, so that it doesn't actually count towards the time spent in the jam period. It doesn't make much practical difference since it would still be a few weeks long, but I imagine psychologically it'd be good to know that no time is being wasted in setting up the environment. I'm picturing some threads dedicated to each language/engine, e.g. one for those who want to use Haxe, another for those who want to use Phaser, another who want to use Godot, another for Unity, etc. up to a predetermined limit so that people don't get stretched out too thin. Perhaps 2 or 3 at most.**

Template sort of games sound like a good idea, but one problem I can think of is that it would be harder for people to program in it because it's one thing to learn programming and it's another to learn programming and deal with understanding other people's code at the same time. Some of whom I had taught before would write code themselves and it'd probably work to some extent, but would require quite a bit of encouragement to not basically shut down when seeing pre-written code they had to modify, even if it was very well-documented. There's no panacea I can think of for this. I can't say whether pair programming would or wouldn't work, because it'd also be rather time-consuming and probably testing people's patience a bit to not have to basically "take over the reins" instead of letting them do the heavy lifting.

I remembered what I was thinking of mentioning yesterday - a main problem that most devs face (and have been asked in this forum before) is having the motivation to continue working on the game. Enthusiasm could probably get people to do a jam over the weekend, but when it takes multiple weeks it's very easy to slack off and eventually abandon it altogether, or just cobble things together at the last minute. If we're talking about people who are new to programming, though, then it's vital to have slow and steady progress, because there's no way that you can cram for this sort of stuff like an exam - it just won't work. For all there is to say of scrumification, I think one way to at least hold people accountable to themselves - so that even if they aren't motivated, they'll at least have some reason to power through if they are willing to - is to require teams to post updates of what they did or tried to do. Doesn't have to be every day, perhaps just 3 posts of 1 every weekend would be enough; those who don't post their updates would be at risk of disqualification***.

(Reaching character limit so footnotes are in the next post)

[Gimmick]

At 9/15/21 08:14 PM, Gimmick wrote:(Reaching character limit so footnotes are in the next post)

*Unlike AS2 where you could just draw whatever, make it a movieclip, and slap some code on the movieclip. While it was very sloppy coding practice, it was very easy to relate "select a movieclip, press f8, type this code" to "you just put this code for THIS movieclip". Even the most minor indirection of assigning a variable name to a movieclip/sprite and referring to it by the variable name is enough to trip people up because it's just far easier to associate the mechanical action of selecting a movieclip and typing to coding for that movieclip. (It's also why I think a lot of people abused _root back in the day - just abstracted it to "oh use _root when you want everything else to see it" without thinking about the implications, or what _root even really referred to)

**This is a major part that would require buy-in because it would effectively be the equivalent of creating a series of tutorials, guides and whatnot; I'm not sure how many would be interested based on that alone. An alternative would be to have all this sort of stuff be added in, say, the community wiki before the event is announced, so that it becomes far easier to centralize newbies to the respective engine.

***Yes, I know that standups are not supposed to be a "justify your existence" sort of update, and to prevent it turning that way, I'm leaving it rather open-ended; it doesn't matter what a team member posts as long as they do. They could post "I did fuck all this week because i've lost interest in this jam" and it wouldn't disqualify them - rather, it would be a good opportunity to have a discussion on why they're facing the difficulties they are and what can be done to help them. On the other hand, there's no way to know whether it's smooth sailing or otherwise for those who are effectively radio silent, so disqualification is really the only stick I can think of to get people to commit to it in the first place.

[MSGhero]

I think the pre-week + resources per discipline will be the most important parts. Everyone looking up "alternative to Creative Cloud" articles, installing their free trials, finding tutorial videos, etc. Might also need a brief "don't do this" section for jacking sprites or samples or using 3D perlin noise.

I don't have anything more to say about the programming side, I would just want to see others' opinions including non programmers.

[3p0ch]

Are you thinking that the people doing the programming would be completely new to programming, or more like people who know how to code some but don't do that as their main thing? (I'm not sure if such people even exist in significant numbers.)

If they have programming experience but normally don't do game programming, then maybe it would be doable. Thinking back on my own experience, I learned Unity and had my first game pretty much done after about 3 months of doing stuff on and off in my free time, then the Phaser and HaxeFlixel jams came and I picked up those languages completely from scratch (not knowing any JavaScript before starting with Phaser) and finished games in a month but it was pretty hard even though I already knew how to program in a few other languages and had made a game in Unity.

If they're new to programming entirely, then my first thought was "This will be a symphony of train wrecks as a dozen teams simultaneously try to climb a 500 foot cliff face with their hands covered in grease". Then I read that you were thinking Phaser, and thought ok in that case it would actually be much, much worse than I originally thought. Even if the goal of the jam isn't necessarily to have any extraordinary games come out of it and just to get people to learn something new for them, I'd worry that the odds of having a non-functional game at the end would be pretty high.

Do you think you would be able to achieve your goal if you were to have the teams be in their non-comfort roles at the beginning and see how far they get, and then have a planned swap of the folks who normally do that role going in and tidying things up while giving feedback about what they would do differently when they approach it and why, before publishing?

[Gimmick]

At 9/15/21 11:26 PM, MSGhero wrote:I think the pre-week + resources per discipline will be the most important parts. Everyone looking up "alternative to Creative Cloud" articles, installing their free trials, finding tutorial videos, etc. Might also need a brief "don't do this" section for jacking sprites or samples or using 3D perlin noise.

Yeah. Also, a good way to ensure that people have actually got their dev env set up would be to run a medal unlock or other ng api call that would indicate that they have completed their setup. It could be something like opening a prebuilt project source code for that editor, and having them compile and run it to prove that everything is working as expected on that side (although I'm not sure about the part where they'd prove that their account unlocked it. Perhaps by getting them to create an (unpublished) project, create a set of medals and have them test whether the medals can be unlocked when they test the project?

At 9/16/21 12:02 AM, 3p0ch wrote:Are you thinking that the people doing the programming would be completely new to programming, or more like people who know how to code some but don't do that as their main thing? (I'm not sure if such people even exist in significant numbers.)

I'm mainly thinking of the former, but people of any skill level should be allowed to participate. There's technically nothing preventing experienced people from taking up the roles they're good at and utterly crushing everyone else in the competition, save for probably becoming a pariah if they did.

If they have programming experience but normally don't do game programming, then maybe it would be doable. Thinking back on my own experience, I learned Unity and had my first game pretty much done after about 3 months of doing stuff on and off in my free time, then the Phaser and HaxeFlixel jams came and I picked up those languages completely from scratch (not knowing any JavaScript before starting with Phaser) and finished games in a month but it was pretty hard even though I already knew how to program in a few other languages and had made a game in Unity.

Yeah those who are already exposed to it would be better equipped to handle it and it would definitely show in the final results. It's why I'm thinking the judging would probably not JUST be based on the quality of the produced game, but also based on the progress that was made by the participants based on when they started and when they finished. That's definitely way more subjective to decide, but one thing that could help was the aforementioned weekly/periodic progress tracking threads. In theory, at least. Fact of the matter is, when it's all online there's plenty of ways to game the system.

If they're new to programming entirely, then my first thought was "This will be a symphony of train wrecks as a dozen teams simultaneously try to climb a 500 foot cliff face with their hands covered in grease". Then I read that you were thinking Phaser, and thought ok in that case it would actually be much, much worse than I originally thought. Even if the goal of the jam isn't necessarily to have any extraordinary games come out of it and just to get people to learn something new for them, I'd worry that the odds of having a non-functional game at the end would be pretty high.

Well I tossed out Phaser based on my limited experience with it, and I did say that it resulted in problems. I suppose there's still some lingering issues with the way things are handled in it even now, or perhaps I give too much credit to newcomers to Phaser.

In any case, it's not going to be a "Phaser Jam 2"; other engines and languages are also welcomed especially if they make it easier to get started with. Perhaps Godot and GDScript would be next in line for the candidate "default" engine and language of choice. This is probably something that would have to be researched more to determine which is best. (I'm not entirely convinced that visual scripting would be the way to go...that is my bias showing though, and I said as much earlier)

Do you think you would be able to achieve your goal if you were to have the teams be in their non-comfort roles at the beginning and see how far they get, and then have a planned swap of the folks who normally do that role going in and tidying things up while giving feedback about what they would do differently when they approach it and why, before publishing?

That's a wonderful idea that I considered. Reminds me a lot of the chess elo swap series on youtube, and it could be a great way to ensure at least something could be salvaged at the end for every team. Some problems that I think might occur, though, are:

1. The beginners slack off entirely and leave it to the experienced users to pick up the slack when it comes time to switch, completely negating the point of the jam,
2. The beginners don't put in as much effort as they would have if they didn't know the roles were going to be swapped, and so wouldn't push themselves to really learn anything OR approach it with the mindset of cramming for an exam (and forgetting everything shortly after the event),
3. or worse, something is made and then when it comes time to swap it's all unmaintainable and it's easier to start from scratch than it is to try and salvage the remains.

#1 and #2 are a bit concerning but ultimately are personal issues, insofar as they both depend on the willingness of the individual to learn - ultimately you can't make a horse drink no matter how much water you bring to it.

#3 on the other hand is more problematic as it's highly likely that experienced users (regardless of the skill) would be able to do the same thing that a beginner would in a fraction of the time, and so cleanly wipe out their effort if it means they'll get a better chance at winning. I think one way of preventing this would be having indications of who did what, and if possible make the submission open-source so that if required, any (random) audits can be undertaken to determine who contributed to what part of the game.

There's probably quite a few more details I'm missing but so far I'm liking the ideas being discussed here. As you suggested, perhaps having 1 day to "salvage" everything would be a good way to wrap up the jam - so that unlike a regular game jam which lasts a weekend, this one would last a few weeks for the beginners and would last a day at most for those more experienced to take over (effectively being the same amount of time when considering the skill differential involved).

[Gimmick]

One possible way of preventing both beginners slacking off and more advanced users being burned out would be to remove the "team" aspect of it until the salvage period. That is, no team is truly finalized until the last day, and until then each beginner is effectively learning to do what they can on their own, but they can have access to a "pool" of more experienced users.

For example, if A,B,C are new to programming and E,F,G are more experienced with it but are new to art, then A-C can either be assigned a temporary teammate E/F/G for a limited period of time (e.g. E in one week, F in another, G in another), with the forums used for troubleshooting and such as usual. Then, when it comes time for the salvage op, any one of E-G are assigned as teammates to A-C's project.

The downside of this is that it breaks the "team" aspect of it and would also result in some teams getting luckier than others. It may also reduce motivation a bit because if they feel like they're going at it alone, there's far less accountability even if it becomes team-based at a point. There's most likely other downsides I haven't considered, but I thought I might as well throw this out here for consideration.

[3p0ch]

Hm that's a good point. With things like art it would be pretty clear whether a pro is taking a picture that a rookie drew and polishing it versus tossing it out and making something new, and same for music if it's a matter of doing some post-processing or adding a new instrument track to an existing song to fatten things up versus just making a new song. But with programming it would be trickier.

And IDK if one day would be enough for me to take a rookie's spaghetti code, figure out what they're trying to do and why, and get it into decent shape as opposed to just doing a complete rewrite.

[MSGhero]

The other thing to consider is whether this should be a game jam versus an animation jam/collab piece. We’re not excluding too many people by not including programming. The downside is that animation becomes the dominant factor, which is harder than making things move in code. And the free OpenToonz is a pain to get started in from what I’ve heard, versus Flash CC which I’m out of free trial for.

The template idea I had does give people a healthy starting point, but we don’t need a dozen platformers with the exact same mechanics. Maybe we have a coding jam to make the template games lol

[BobbyBurt]

Okay, there's a big discussion here and lots to go over. I'm gonna jump around and comment on a few things. Sorry if I'm mostly elaborating on established problems instead of offering solutions.

First, this is a neat idea with great intentions. More developers is great for this community. There's gotta be so many people who want to make games but are too intimidated to take the plunge. I spent years in that state and really wish I had the help to overcome that and start sooner. This has the potential to be great for a lot of people and this community at large, so for that reason it's worth considering and trying.

But yeah, this is very likely to end up being a train wreck if it even starts off well. The details of the jam and execution are gonna have to be perfect.

To frame my thoughts, I believe this should be focused on people who have never made a game before and have little to no programming experience. I doubt there's many potential participants who have programming experience, have interest in making games yet for some reason haven't made a game before. Programming is the barrier to entry, and the one we're trying to help people overcome, assuming I haven't misinterpreted your intentions with this game jam.

The first problem is how difficult it is to make a functional game, or even wrap your mind around programming, or even set up the programming environment. @Gimmick's experience with setting up Haxe was exactly the same as mine. There's the monetary barrier too; If Construct 3 wasn't a paid service, it could be a great way to overcome that hurdle.

I think @Gimmick's bias is showing in regards to visual programming. I'm not the right person to evaluate it with my limited experience, but I think you're discrediting the programming method that would work for a lot of people and possibly save this whole jam. Visual programming is much easier and quicker to figure out, which really helps with the biggest obstacle to the jam's success. I doubt it hinders the learning of a programmer. The most important thing is to figure out the general logic of programming and practice problem solving. If they have keep learning programming then there will be plenty of time to learn traditional languages and concepts. If they're forced to learn a complicated language from the start, what are the chances they'll have a good experience and want to continue?

Also there's no way that Phaser is the best choice for starters. Maybe this is just me, but after years of using C# I still found it pretty unapproachable and just went with Haxeflixel instead. I wouldn't ask anyone who hasn't programmed before to start with JS and learn Phaser with lacking documentation and a small community for support. That could very well be my bias showing.

Another problem that results from the first is the time it takes to figure out programming and gamedev. Based on what I keep hearing, most people's first game takes at least a month, potentially several. That is very long for a traditional game jam, yet plenty of time for momentum to die down and struggling beginners to give up.

It's hard to say if pairing beginners up with experienced coders would alleviate these problems enough. It would really be up to the the veterans to be involved and helpful, even mentoring. There aren't a huge number of experienced programmers in this community, how many of them are willing to take on another role and guide someone through the basics of programming and gamedev? That's gonna limit the amount of teams. Maybe it would it be better to have a few volunteer veterans for each engine / framework who are available to answer questions and guide new programmers. That's a serious deviation from your original idea and I don't know how it'd work beyond that, but do you think there's potential there?

I don't think we should toss the idea of working from a template / example / tutorial to the side. If it's well made and documented, then it's a great way to learn. That's how I started and is still the best way for me to learn new concepts. My first game was made following a tutorial and then heavily modifying it to be my own thing, I doubt you'd be able to tell. If the jam is based on a the source code and thorough documentation of a simple demo, that helps with the problems we've discussed. Submissions can be judged by how much they deviate and become their own thing.

We also gotta keep in mind how simple people's first games tend to be and should be, as is the advice we keep giving everyone. This is a jam that's gonna be filled with Snake and Pong clones. That's not a bad thing, we just gotta remember that the focus is on individual learning rather than a competition resulting in an influx of neat games.

I hope this jam happens and goes as well as possible.

Also, off topic: I think it's safe to call @Gimmick @3p0ch and @MSGhero the gods of the gamedev forum

[OmarShehata]

I think this is a pretty cool idea for a jam! I think this could work well if (1) there are NO prizes and (2) you rely on people's teammates helping each other learn the new skill, instead of trying to take on that burden as the jam organizer.

It's why I'm thinking the judging would probably not JUST be based on the quality of the produced game, but also based on the progress that was made by the participants based on when they started and when they finished

This goes for point (1), it's just not going to be possible to judge this. I think a better way to frame it is that this a community event where everyone is learning something new, and you win if you actually produced something with a new skill, that's your prize!

Also there's no way that Phaser is the best choice for starters.

Responding to @BobbyBurt here, I have the opposite opinion, I've actually had a lot of success teaching people who have never written any code before how to create something functional in Phaser for 48 hour hackathons. My other tool of choice here would be PlayCanvas (also JS).

But this goes to point (2) for me, I think the best resource is going to be whatever your teammate is comfortable with who's willing to help out. This works especially if you go with the "role swap" theme because that assumes there is someone on the team somewhat skilled in programming who can be there to answer questions.

So this jam would attract people who are interested in mentoring/helping out.

[3p0ch]

A community event of "Learn to GameDev Month" instead of a game jam format (but still with a deadline)? With a discord and channels for each of the engines/frameworks where people can ask questions for experienced programmers (and have other channels for the usual discord bullshitting that's not asking questions so we don't have to wade through pages of crap to find them)?

[Gimmick]

Lots of great ideas raised in this thread! Unfortunately I can't address them all in as much detail as I've sort of injured my hand, but I'm taking all your replies into consideration!

At 9/16/21 07:43 PM, BobbyBurt wrote:Visual programming is much easier and quicker to figure out, which really helps with the biggest obstacle to the jam's success. If they're forced to learn a complicated language from the start, what are the chances they'll have a good experience and want to continue?

True! It's just that visual programming, way I see it, carries barriers of its own - people may not be able to "carry forward" the knowledge of programming from visual to textual programming. Also, experienced devs don't often use visual programming - so this means that they may not be able to contribute as much as they could, as they might be able to reason about and explain concepts easier in the language they're accustomed to, or one that's similar to it.

Another is ecosystem locking - how many people would stick to Scratch because it's all they know (instead of jumping to e.g. GDevelop) as opposed to those who use a programming language? Languages are mostly* engine agnostic but the same can't always be said for visual programming - as it tends to be highly specific to the engine at hand.

*some like AS1 are not as transferable as other languages, which is why I don't recommend using those.

That is very long for a traditional game jam, yet plenty of time for momentum to die down and struggling beginners to give up.

True, there should be some system to determine if people are making progress, struggling or have given up. I'm not sure how that would work without potentially leaving a bad taste in people's mouths though.

Maybe it would it be better to have a few volunteer veterans for each engine / framework who are available to answer questions and guide new programmers. That's a serious deviation from your original idea and I don't know how it'd work beyond that, but do you think there's potential there?

Definitely! If the number of experienced programmers, or even the number of programmers who have released at least one game is the limiting factor, then it could be converted to a smaller pool of programmers for an engine(s). Perhaps this could be done regardless, before the event itself starts.

If the jam is based on a the source code and thorough documentation of a simple demo, that helps with the problems we've discussed. Submissions can be judged by how much they deviate and become their own thing.

That's quite a good way to determine the uniqueness and effort put into a submission! The only problem I can foresee, though, is that it requires users to modify others' code which can be rather intimidating - I've seen quite a few people who just shut down because they don't want to "break" the code, even though there's no consequences to a build failing...

At 9/16/21 09:24 PM, OmarShehata wrote:I think this is a pretty cool idea for a jam! I think this could work well if (1) there are NO prizes and (2) you rely on people's teammates helping each other learn the new skill, instead of trying to take on that burden as the jam organizer.

Yeah, (1) and (2) are the ideal scenarios - this jam would necessitate more collaboration with teammates than other jams where they could do their own thing and coordinate once in a while. It would be far easier to run were this like an in-person hackathon, but since it's all online I'm not sure if it'd be too lofty a goal or not.

And as for prizes, I'm not sure whether having no prizes would incentivize people enough to participate, follow through and finish. Ideally there'd be no prizes so that no teams game the system, but I can't really think of too many alternatives.

Perhaps something like a month's supporter for everyone who submits a game at the end of it all? Idk.

I think a better way to frame it is that this a community event where everyone is learning something new, and you win if you actually produced something with a new skill, that's your prize!

Exactly! That said, I doubt that would attract too many people - because "good enough" just is for most, so if they can get by without learning something new then they probably would. (Granted, this is a very pessimistic view so it's likely there'll be a lot of people interested, but it's better to plan for the worst)

Responding to @BobbyBurt here, I have the opposite opinion, I've actually had a lot of success teaching people who have never written any code before how to create something functional in Phaser for 48 hour hackathons. My other tool of choice here would be PlayCanvas (also JS).

That's great to hear!

I saw mention of Defold the other day and that it uses Lua - apparently originally designed for non-programmers. That sounds like a viable game engine for beginners (even if it's evolved a bit since its inception).

Right now, the choice of game engine isn't set in stone; I'll probably have some sort of poll to decide later. What do you and @BobbyBurt think of Godot/GDScript and Defold/Lua? In theory, their python-like syntax should make it easier to grasp (although in practice, that can mean anything that's more "scripting language" and less "enterprise OOP"...)

But this goes to point (2) for me, I think the best resource is going to be whatever your teammate is comfortable with who's willing to help out. This works especially if you go with the "role swap" theme because that assumes there is someone on the team somewhat skilled in programming who can be there to answer questions.

Exactly, if an experienced teammate is comfortable with using Godot then it's best if the others use it as well, because that'd maximize knowledge sharing - as opposed to using an engine or a language that is new to the both of them which would ultimately hinder progress.

So this jam would attract people who are interested in mentoring/helping out.

Hit the nail on the head! It's a great way to develop that experience and experience it from a distance rather than the gung-ho "just dive into it" that some people (like myself) normally do in a jam. As a result, I think this would also help people become better at planning things out which would help in future events as well.

At 9/16/21 11:55 PM, 3p0ch wrote:A community event of "Learn to GameDev Month" instead of a game jam format (but still with a deadline)? With a discord and channels for each of the engines/frameworks where people can ask questions for experienced programmers (and have other channels for the usual discord bullshitting that's not asking questions so we don't have to wade through pages of crap to find them)?

This would probably be a great way to gauge interest in the community! Managing a discord server would be a considerable task in itself, though, so an alternative could be to leec- er, latch onto existing NG discord servers - both to gain access to the existing audience therein, and to have moderation shared by existing members of the community.

At 9/16/21 11:14 AM, MSGhero wrote:The template idea I had does give people a healthy starting point, but we don’t need a dozen platformers with the exact same mechanics. Maybe we have a coding jam to make the template games lolAt 9/16/21 07:43 PM, BobbyBurt wrote:
We also gotta keep in mind how simple people's first games tend to be and should be, as is the advice we keep giving everyone. This is a jam that's gonna be filled with Snake and Pong clones. That's not a bad thing, we just gotta remember that the focus is on individual learning rather than a competition resulting in an influx of neat games.

Good idea - it could be like the Endless Dance Party collab where there's only one submission at the end, but it's a collection of minigames rather than full-fledged games. Teams could be assigned genres, themes or actual minigame concepts to implement if they so choose.

Also, off topic: I think it's safe to call @Gimmick @3p0ch and @MSGhero the gods of the gamedev forum

Aw shucks, that's very flattering of you :3 That said, I'm just a guy who posts on this forum above average, and I think others would feel the same way too.

[MSGhero]

At 9/18/21 05:05 PM, Gimmick wrote:

Also, off topic: I think it's safe to call @Gimmick @3p0ch and @MSGhero the gods of the gamedev forum

Aw shucks, that's very flattering of you :3 That said, I'm just a guy who posts on this forum above average, and I think others would feel the same way too.

I think of myself as a god.

Probably my last idea, but instead of 3p0ch's "Learn to gamedev month," I'm thinking it's a sitewide "Learn something new months." The difference I'm suggesting is that Art/Anim forums could do something one month, where people learn skills and maybe upload to Art Portal or have something worth continuing for an animation submission or even an animation for a game. Then Audio and Voice Acting have a month, for an Audio Portal submission or again more game content. Writing too I guess, maybe aligning with an existing writing month like NaNoWriMo. Then finally Gamedev/Programming forums for getting better at coding or to put it all together into a game.

The details can be up to each forum or whoever, like how long each "month" takes or how mentoring works. And then progress and outputs after each session are up to the individual.

After FnF modders flooded the Haxe discord, I got the feeling that even besides these people, there are probably a lot of new users and even some of us who want to make (different) things or at least learn how (different) things are made to some degree. I'm sure that I'll never open FL Studio or whatever to make a song unless someone handed me a guide and was able to answer dumb questions. And it would be pretty cool to make a song and put it into a game. Or learning what Audacity can do besides change the bitrate to 44100 Hz or convert file types.

[3p0ch]

At 9/18/21 10:27 PM, MSGhero wrote:

At 9/18/21 05:05 PM, Gimmick wrote:

Also, off topic: I think it's safe to call @Gimmick @3p0ch and @MSGhero the gods of the gamedev forum

Aw shucks, that's very flattering of you :3 That said, I'm just a guy who posts on this forum above average, and I think others would feel the same way too.

I think of myself as a god.

I am most definitely a cat. Although it might not be obvious because my art skills kind of suck, so yeah I could use a "Learn to art" month. Especially for 3D modeling if I plan to make more 3D games.

As far as actually mentoring people new to programming -- I imagine that it would require some way of being able to get their project files and look over everything because bugs can lurk anywhere. Would the best approach be to ask them to put it on GitHub and post links for us on Discord? GitHub itself might be intimidating for some newbies, but I wouldn't be too opposed to saying that if you can't set up a GitHub repository then you probably aren't ready to code a game.

Also since I have no idea how many newbies will participate and how many old farts will mentor, I have no idea whether this would actually be doable... but I guess there's only one way to find out. I might also recommend that once a newbie gets tied to a mentor then they stick with that mentor, both to avoid multiple people having to download and make sense of the same newbie's style, and to avoid the potentially embarrassing situation of experienced people calling each others' coding style crap after assuming it was the work of a newbie. But if any farts need to drop out then they should let the rest know to take over their newbies.

[Gimmick]

At 9/18/21 10:27 PM, MSGhero wrote:Probably my last idea, but instead of 3p0ch's "Learn to gamedev month," I'm thinking it's a sitewide "Learn something new months." [...] Then finally Gamedev/Programming forums for getting better at coding or to put it all together into a game.
The details can be up to each forum or whoever, like how long each "month" takes or how mentoring works. And then progress and outputs after each session are up to the individual.

That's also an avenue that can be explored! That would have to be planned out and scheduled appropriately, though, so that people don't get fatigued - even if one doesn't participate, seeing such events happening too frequently (even if it's in different disciplines) can paradoxically reduce one's motivation to attend as it "can always be done later".

After FnF modders flooded the Haxe discord, I got the feeling that even besides these people, there are probably a lot of new users and even some of us who want to make (different) things or at least learn how (different) things are made to some degree. I'm sure that I'll never open FL Studio or whatever to make a song unless someone handed me a guide and was able to answer dumb questions. And it would be pretty cool to make a song and put it into a game. Or learning what Audacity can do besides change the bitrate to 44100 Hz or convert file types.

Agreed!

At 9/18/21 11:34 PM, 3p0ch wrote:As far as actually mentoring people new to programming -- I imagine that it would require some way of being able to get their project files and look over everything because bugs can lurk anywhere. Would the best approach be to ask them to put it on GitHub and post links for us on Discord? GitHub itself might be intimidating for some newbies, but I wouldn't be too opposed to saying that if you can't set up a GitHub repository then you probably aren't ready to code a game.

Sounds like a good idea. While the intention's to get as many people on board, well you can't help everyone...and I understand being intimidated by Git but GitHub's web upload is very accessible for newbies so those who can't/won't set up a repository, even with guidance, might not be the intended/target audience for this event.

to avoid the potentially embarrassing situation of experienced people calling each others' coding style crap after assuming it was the work of a newbie. But if any farts need to drop out then they should let the rest know to take over their newbies.

I completely forgot to consider that point lol. Yeah having a many:many experienced:beginner relation might not be such a good idea when you put it that way!

On the point of code reviews and such - how often would this have to be done? Should this be left to the team to decide?

[Gimmick]

I've collated a quick summary of the posts thus far as @Luis suggested earlier. There's a lot of things I haven't included, so I've included links to the corresponding posts as well. It's in rough chronological order, so you can continue reading the posts following a link to arrive at the rest for the most part.

---

+ Have a lead-in week with resources / easy to follow guides for getting set up (installation, verifying compilation works, etc.) ahead of the event

• Tips, pitfalls, no-gos included (although people may ignore them regardless)

+ Try to make people hold themselves accountable, e.g. with regular updates

+ Choice of language / engine in order of preference:

• GDevelop / Construct / Scratch / other visual scripting language (+)
• Phaser (tenative +, + with alternative e.g. PlayCanvas, -, another -)
• Godot + GDScript
• Haxe
• Flash + AS2

This might need a follow-up based on an actual poll. Would the number of games submitted using a particular tool + the account age of those using said tool be indicative of how easy it would be for beginners to use?

+ Make teams follow a template when creating their games / make minigames so that coding is easier (although this must be balanced with expectations of having beginners get used to working with other people's code)

+ Add short (1 or 2 day) "salvage" period where experienced users can take over the parts they're good at (might require maintaining a version history on e.g. Github to ensure that code isn't wiped wholesale and started from scratch; requiring e.g. Github could also help filter out people who aren't part of, or interested in becoming a part of, the expected audience)

+ Convert to an alternative event, e.g. for animation

+ Keep it short - having a long event can make people give up midway (and this isn't limited to beginners either)

+ Have contributors designated per engine so that people aren't spread too thin

+ If template games used, award extra points for creativity / deviation from the template

+ Encourage team cohesion/self-organization and collaboration rather than <use X resource in Y page of Z site>, so that people can get a chance to mentor as well

+ Spinoff events, e.g. learn to gamedev with a deadline

• More general: learn to X from the respective part of the community

+ Limit to one developer per team rather than pooling multiple, to avoid possible confusion

+ Inspections / keeping track of progress - how often should this be done?

---

Apologies if I left anything out, let me know and I'll include it later!

[3p0ch]

Now you have the unenviable task of taking all that and turning it into an actual implementable jam / event / whatev.

"A camel is a horse designed by committee."

- a wise guy

[Gimmick]

At 10/1/21 10:41 PM, 3p0ch wrote:Now you have the unenviable task of taking all that and turning it into an actual implementable jam / event / whatev.

"A camel is a horse designed by committee."
- a wise guy

Yeah. It's 100% not the right time for me to undertake this task due to IRL commitments. I'll probably revisit it at some point in the near future. Never say never and all that.

But hey on the plus side there wasn't a load of unnecessary bikeshedding unlike regular committees so that's great

[Luis]

my thoughts in no particular order:

• im wondering if making something with hard / rigid framework and focus would be good to keep it from going into trainwreck mode.
• like maybe all programming has to be in a particular platform. One that is 'easy' enough for someone to pick up and make something usable even if they have no experience with it.
• I do agree with a previous post that ideally it should be steered to people totally new to programming or arting for game etc.
• On the other hand i think a team that has no experience whatsoever making a game and being thrown to make a game might lead to frustration, i feel like someone in there would have to know whats going on. Like even if i programmed rather than art, i feel like i could probably steer the art i'm not working on into something is suited to make a game with, or i can steer the music to be something that could work for a game etc. I feel like every team would need a shepherd of some sort.
• I like the idea and its a very interesting concept, i feel like its a great learning experience potentially, and maybe a greater appreciation for the craft itself.

I'll keep thinking about it

[OmarShehata]

At 10/2/21 08:26 AM, Luis wrote:i feel like someone in there would have to know whats going on. Like even if i programmed rather than art, i feel like i could probably steer the art i'm not working on into something is suited to make a game with, or i can steer the music to be something that could work for a game etc.

I feel strongly about this too which is why I like the idea of leaning into this being a "mentoring jam". And have a "Looking for a mentor/mentee" type of thing where like I would post here's (1) what I know very well (2) what I'd love to learn.

I think it would work well if there are enough people offering to mentor. That'll probably be the bottleneck.

Also @Luis when you said it'd be nice to pick an engine that even if you're a total beginner you could still do something, it made me think of Kaboom: https://kaboomjs.com/

I haven't actually used it but it's made by the people who made Replit (https://replit.com/) which makes it super easy to make stuff for young students (I think like 12 - 18 years old) but it's still a real programming environment. That could actually be a really cool collaboration with them (and get a lot of new young creators sharing their work on NG who may not have grown up with flash games). I'd love to organize that.

[BobbyBurt]

At 10/2/21 12:37 PM, OmarShehata wrote:Also @Luis when you said it'd be nice to pick an engine that even if you're a total beginner you could still do something, it made me think of Kaboom: https://kaboomjs.com/

I haven't actually used it but it's made by the people who made Replit (https://replit.com/) which makes it super easy to make stuff for young students (I think like 12 - 18 years old) but it's still a real programming environment. That could actually be a really cool collaboration with them (and get a lot of new young creators sharing their work on NG who may not have grown up with flash games). I'd love to organize that.

@LaJBel told me about Kaboom, I know they can vouch for it. Using a more obscure framework could have us running into some of the problems we've discussed, mainly lack of community / mentor support, but if it's as simple as it's made out to be then I suppose mentors can quickly familiarize themselves with it prior to the event, maybe make tutorials / templates / examples. I could see this being something similar to past framework specific jams the Phaser or Haxeflixel ones, but this time focusing on people who haven't coded at all / young people. Def potential there, I'd like to hear more from people who can vouch for Kaboom.

[Luis]

At 10/2/21 12:37 PM, OmarShehata wrote:

At 10/2/21 08:26 AM, Luis wrote:i feel like someone in there would have to know whats going on. Like even if i programmed rather than art, i feel like i could probably steer the art i'm not working on into something is suited to make a game with, or i can steer the music to be something that could work for a game etc.

I feel strongly about this too which is why I like the idea of leaning into this being a "mentoring jam". And have a "Looking for a mentor/mentee" type of thing where like I would post here's (1) what I know very well (2) what I'd love to learn.

I think it would work well if there are enough people offering to mentor. That'll probably be the bottleneck.

Also @Luis when you said it'd be nice to pick an engine that even if you're a total beginner you could still do something, it made me think of Kaboom: https://kaboomjs.com/

I haven't actually used it but it's made by the people who made Replit (https://replit.com/) which makes it super easy to make stuff for young students (I think like 12 - 18 years old) but it's still a real programming environment. That could actually be a really cool collaboration with them (and get a lot of new young creators sharing their work on NG who may not have grown up with flash games). I'd love to organize that.

I like the concept of mentor jam itself. Which might be somewhat different than what gimmick has in mind. Would be cool to mix veteran with someone with genuinely interested but new to games.

[lajbel]

At 10/2/21 12:50 PM, BobbyBurt wrote:

At 10/2/21 12:37 PM, OmarShehata wrote:Also @Luis when you said it'd be nice to pick an engine that even if you're a total beginner you could still do something, it made me think of Kaboom: https://kaboomjs.com/

I haven't actually used it but it's made by the people who made Replit (https://replit.com/) which makes it super easy to make stuff for young students (I think like 12 - 18 years old) but it's still a real programming environment. That could actually be a really cool collaboration with them (and get a lot of new young creators sharing their work on NG who may not have grown up with flash games). I'd love to organize that.

@LaJBel told me about Kaboom, I know they can vouch for it. Using a more obscure framework could have us running into some of the problems we've discussed, mainly lack of community / mentor support, but if it's as simple as it's made out to be then I suppose mentors can quickly familiarize themselves with it prior to the event, maybe make tutorials / templates / examples. I could see this being something similar to past framework specific jams the Phaser or Haxeflixel ones, but this time focusing on people who haven't coded at all / young people. Def potential there, I'd like to hear more from people who can vouch for Kaboom.

Yeah Kaboom is very excellent for new and old people, and you can even use it with Newgrounds.io with a plugin I've made (it's at newgrounds.io/downloads)

[BobbyBurt]

https://twitter.com/kenneynl/status/1449907126374109186?s=21

offshoot idea: gamejam specifically for gamedevs to try out other engines, languages and workflows. Those experienced with an engine, say Unity, could prepare learning material prior and be available to help others who are learning the engine for the jam, while they themselves are trying another toolset. Of course newbies could join too, but it would be an unlevel playing field

This seems a lot more do-able, but it’s pretty different from the original concept. Just an idea this tweet made me consider.

[Gimmick]

@GraeBush I received your PM, unfortunately I can't really reply to it as my outbox has been full for some time now. I'm really grateful for the offer, but I don't think I'm in a position to be handling that responsibility right now - this might be a better idea in the run-up to this jam when it occurs, if it's still viable at that point. Alternatively, if it was made as an announcement of sorts, or otherwise merged with existing channels then it'd probably be easier to manage. Would you like to post it here, in case anyone else who's more capable than I and interested wants to take you up on it?

At 10/2/21 08:26 AM, Luis wrote:my thoughts in no particular order:

I'll keep thinking about it

You nailed it! It's kind of like backseat driving in a way, with the intent of getting the person 'at the wheels' to learn in the process. Hopefully it wouldn't literally be "do this, do that" without any idea of the fundamentals involved, but that's dependent on the people in the team who are mentoring, or more crudely "backseat driving".

On the one hand, keeping the programming limited to one language and/or platform would make it far easier to manage. On the other, giving people the freedom to pick something / be assigned one of many things would also probably bring more exposure to a wide array of tools, rather than favouring a particular language/engine. It would probably also give people a chance to work with a game engine they haven't (as @BobbyBurt mentioned), if they're confident in their abilities in picking it up and teaching someone else at the same time.

At 10/2/21 12:37 PM, OmarShehata wrote:I feel strongly about this too which is why I like the idea of leaning into this being a "mentoring jam". And have a "Looking for a mentor/mentee" type of thing where like I would post here's (1) what I know very well (2) what I'd love to learn.

At 10/2/21 01:03 PM, Luis wrote:I like the concept of mentor jam itself. Which might be somewhat different than what gimmick has in mind. Would be cool to mix veteran with someone with genuinely interested but new to games.

In my view, it's very similar! I guess the main difference between a mentor jam and what I initially described is that in a mentor jam there would be 1 main mentor of some type, e.g. programming/art/audio, whereas in the OP it's like 1 mentor for each type, e.g. a team's member's mentoring each other in a way. Both of them have their merits; as I see it, if each member were a mentor of sorts it'd make it feel less lopsided, as everyone would feel they have something to contribute, but at the same time the added effort in doing so might also cause a larger slowdown than if there were just 1.

At 10/2/21 12:37 PM, OmarShehata wrote:I think it would work well if there are enough people offering to mentor. That'll probably be the bottleneck.

Definitely. I wonder if letting people self-identify as a mentor would reduce the bottleneck, or if it would cause trouble regarding competence.

I haven't actually used it but it's made by the people who made Replit (https://replit.com/) which makes it super easy to make stuff for young students (I think like 12 - 18 years old) but it's still a real programming environment. That could actually be a really cool collaboration with them (and get a lot of new young creators sharing their work on NG who may not have grown up with flash games). I'd love to organize that.

That sounds like an amazing idea!

[GraeBush]

@Gimmick - No worries, trust me I completely understand. I just wanted to reach out and touch base with you. I would prefer my new identity to remain as a fresh start, this is the reason I reached out in more of a private message. Personally, there are a few good people here so far, but I wouldn't want to publicly advertise anything we spoke about, as most people are naturally selfish and would love an easy ego boost. I am here if you ever need anything. Thanks for getting back to me :)