Quote: Original post by d000hgQuote: Original post by coderx75It's a competition to demonstrate your ability to make an innovative, original and fun game. If you're not creative then you shouldn't be leading a game project, but working as a coder for someone who is. That's not meant as an insult. If you are really amazing at coding someone's ideas, use that talent. Teams are allowed and maybe your ability to do impossible things with shaders can be used on implementing another person's ideas. But it is not a competition for technical ability. You saw the winning entry for 4E4 right?Quote: Original post by d000hg
Making a game is about creativity not just being good at C++. Nobody said it was supposed to be easy. And you don't have to get your game idea in the first two days, spend some time thinking not just coding...
True, but some of us are more technical than creative. Initially, I saw this year's selection of elements to be somewhat restrictive to the less creative types (as was last year's selection), and as I said before, for such a time investment this should be something we'll all WANT to create.
That's not in context with my entire reply.
My point isn't for myself but for the contest in general. One thing that in no way helps creativity is restriction. Yes, using a minimal toolset to achieve an end result can yield some pretty creative and clever implementations, but restriction on the design of that implementation rarely yields desirable results, IMO.
The problem that I noticed with last year's contest (and this year somewhat) was that it seemed to force creativity. I agree that it's a "competition to demonstrate creativity", but is it not possible for someone to be creative with very basic elements? If I hand you a canvas, paints of the primary colors and a brush and tell you to be creative, you can. If I give you a canvas and four rubber stamps, you're probably not going to be too excited about puting forth the time and effort. I see this only leading to less finished projects which won't do the contest any good.
As I said before, I'm really not unhappy with this year's elements. I actually think the selection of elements could yield some games that are far different from what we're used to seeing roll out of the AAA studios. I'm only arguing they are restrictive in many ways and that could result in fewer finished entries.