Dream Build Play 2009

I'm tempted to enter too. But the contest dwarfs the size any of GameDev's 4E contests. Dream Build Play had 350 entries last year. 4E6 had less than 20. The shot of winning (especially with programmer's art) is so slim. But a chance for a 40K grand prize or a 20K first prize or a 10K second prize or and a 5K third prize, for mere 4 months of work, may be worth it.

But I'll need to get an Xbox 360 too.

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Original post by cyansoft I'm tempted to enter too. But the contest dwarfs the size any of GameDev's 4E contests. Dream Build Play had 350 entries last year. 4E6 had less than 20. The shot of winning (especially with programmer's art) is so slim. But a chance for a 40K grand prize or a 20K first prize or a 10K second prize or and a 5K third prize, for mere 4 months of work, may be worth it. But I'll need to get an Xbox 360 too.

I'm not going to enter because I don't have any time. However, even tho the chances of winning might be slim, it might give you a chance of actually developing a game that's worth selling through an indie store.

Hell, even tho you may not win, you still end up with portfolio piece and something you could expand and attempt to sell through the XBox 360 gamestore(XLBA or something?).

Toolmaker

I might give it a try, if anything for the free Creator's Club trial. I suck pretty bad when it comes to programming, so it would give me a reason to actually further develop my programming skills. Maybe if a programmer here would want to pair up, that'd make things easier. I'm a professional designer and I studied 3d modeling and animation in college. I'm a bit rusty with my 3d skills, but I'm sure I can muster them back if needs be [wink]

[Edited by - zer0wolf on March 29, 2009 2:28:24 PM]

The prizes are more than tempting.

But I need to
a) Team up with a good modeller.
b) Learn C#
c) Get an xbox360 or someone who has it

It's a shame that you can't use all the good stuff I know (Havok, Ogre, OpenAL, Asio, native threading, though the latter can be arranged) because dlls for managed code won't work in xbox.

Furthermore Garbage collectors are the big pain for major projects and I'm not used to them.

And my C# + XNA skills should match my C++ + Ogre skills in less than 4 months. So... I don't think so.

May be when I give XNA a try...

I'm gonna try for it. The odds are admittedly slim, but I see it as a good motivator, and a solid deadline, which is something that's usually lacking in hobby projects.

I'm certainly no artist, so instead I'm gunning more for the technical originality side of things by making a 4D game. The concept is a bit fuzzy since I'm still finishing the "engine" if you will. Basically though, you'll play as a glome and will have to navigate 4D marble madness style stages viewed from a 3D cross-section that you can freely point along some combination of the X, Y, or W axes. To make it easier to get around, I'm also writing some 4D shaders to give the player visual feedback about the extra dimension (lucky that because of RGBA colors and homogeneous coordinates, HLSL supports arbitrary 4D vectors).

It remains to be seen if I'll be able to polish it into an actual finished product by the deadline, to say nothing of whether it will actually be FUN. I honestly have no idea if it will be, but I really want to find out :)

"Now I have the time and all I need is an Xbox 360. And maybe a good idea - anyone got one for me?"

Maybe a RPGish game that teaches a foreign language?

It's tempting, but I don't have the skillset. I know more about D-flat major than programming in C#. I suppose I could leverage my knowledge of C++ and pick up the language, but it would involve a lot of extra work and I'd have to hinge my entire strategy around learning it, which isn't what I had intended. While I'd love to give Xbox 360 development a go eventually, I don't think I'm ready for it now. And I'd have to get an Xbox 360 too. The loaner I've got from my sister isn't going to stick around forever.

There's also some slightly hairy development issues in store in the contest, judging from the fine print. It looks like the game has to be playable on the XNA Game Studio 3.1 toolkit, but said toolkit doesn't get released until March. I'm sure it will be very compatible with the current model, but it reminds me of Robocup challenge I was in several years back involving the Sony AIBO. Sony didn't release the toolkit until a couple of months before the contest, and all the documentation was in Japanese. Things were.. awkward. [grin]

Theoretically you could use Managed C++, but I don't see why you'd want to [smile]. C# is easy, so is XNA. I think the most difficult thing might be the Xbox performance (big issues: you have 4 cores to use, and kernel-mode switches are very expensive).


XNA 3.1 seems to add avatar and video support - so I guess that games that need those things will be at a disadvantage, but everyone else will be fine.


anothrguitarist: although that kind of depends on actually knowing a foreign language.

JPatrick: that sounds crazy - I think I need a diagram!

I might try to get a few people in my work cohort to participate. There's no shortage of willing programmers but it's the designers and artists I'm worried about! I also don't want to take on the full team size of 7 since then we have to split any prize money!

damn, and my 360 just died. Where the hell is my return box already?

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Theoretically you could use Managed C++

Can c/c++, stl code be used, perhaps wrapped in unsafe blocks like I heard in standard c#? If so, the non-graphics code can be ported by copy and paste?

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native threading,

I also heard the cpu has been limited. What does that mean.

In general, I would prefer to develop on c++/opengl. Wonder if anyone has taken this route before porting to XNA.

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Original post by rumble Quote: Theoretically you could use Managed C++ Can c/c++, stl code be used, perhaps wrapped in unsafe blocks like I heard in standard c#? If so, the non-graphics code can be ported by copy and paste?

no, you would have to build a pure CLR assembly (compiler switch /clr:pure), no mixed-mode is possible on the 360. I'm not sure, but I don't even think that unsafe code blocks work on the 360.

The thing about C++/CLR is that it runs in a mixed native/managed mode. A distinction is drawn between C++ types and CLR types. You have seperate resource pools for each. In order to get C++ to work with XNA on the 360, you'd have to discard the C++ features and create only CLR type stuff through C++. At that point, you might as well be writing in C#, because the CLR extensions to C++ are a completely separate from the rest of the language.

I've written identical programs in C++/CLR building to a pure CLR assembly and C# and have had serious thread synchronization issues *inside .NET classes* (my app was not specifically multi-threaded) in the C++/CLR version that were not present in the C# version. The apps were the same architecture, using only the .NET class library, just translated between the two languages.

I'm not really familiar with this contest.

Is the game required to be made between the start and end dates ... or can it be something that has been previously worked on?

Reading the rules (and I'm not sure I've ready them correctly - it's an awful legalese TOS-style document), it looks like you can use any game you've made. Providing you've not tried to get it onto Xbox Live before.

The four month timeframe is really going to give an advantage to people who have been working on their entries for a year or two, unfortunately.

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Original post by Andrew Russell Reading the rules (and I'm not sure I've ready them correctly - it's an awful legalese TOS-style document), it looks like you can use any game you've made. Providing you've not tried to get it onto Xbox Live before. The four month timeframe is really going to give an advantage to people who have been working on their entries for a year or two, unfortunately.

Yeah, I've been trying, somewhat in vain, to grok the rules as well. I've been working on my project for months now and it would suck to be disqualified because I started too early. I work slow anyway, so it's not really a huge advantage for me. Also though because I'm related to someone who recently resigned from MS, and the language isn't clear about whether having relatives there at any particular time disqualifies you, or only at time of entry.

If anyone is good at parsing this kind of document, I'm sure we'd all like to understand it better. If I had to guess though, I'd wager that starting at any time is fine, because enforcing any kind of timetable strikes me as almost impossible. There's really no way to guarantee when source or assets were created, and it would boil down to disqualifying entries because they seem "too good."

It doesn't matter when you started it. I'm hoping to get in this year, but I have to finish my 2nd XNA book first. [sad] If someone is looking to team up, I have an idea or two that I've been kicking around a while.

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Original post by Andrew Russell Theoretically you could use Managed C++, but I don't see why you'd want to [smile].

Actually the rules doesn't allow that (yes I do read it and somewhat understand it):

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For code to run on the Xbox 360 console it must be developed in C# and based on the XNA Game Studio 3.1 framework. Native .dll wrapped in managed code will not work on the Xbox 360 console.

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Original post by Andrew Russell C# is easy, so is XNA.

That's what I've heard. However one thing is doing something fancy (though that might be enough to win?), another thing is mastering it.

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Original post by Andrew Russell I think the most difficult thing might be the Xbox performance (big issues: you have 4 cores to use, and kernel-mode switches are very expensive).

I've heard you're only able to use 3 out of 4 cores. However that's fine to me. I love threading engines and have my own algorithms.
Though kernel switches look ugly like you said

What worries me, is the garbage collection, which some experiences say it can get pretty annoying

Cheers
Dark Sylinc

Well, I'm definitely entering the contest now. I just ordered a 360 from newegg.com plus a recharge pack for the wireless controller, and a new 19 inch wide screen LCD monitor (since my only television is downstairs, is 50 some inches in size, and I don't feel like dragging the computer downstairs). Then I had to buy a special cable since the one that comes with the 360 is HDMI to component video, and I need HDMI to either DVI or VGA for the new monitor.

With almost 400 dollars invested in this project, now I have a real financial incentive complete and submit a game: if I don't, I wasted 400 bucks!

I am really looking forward to it but want to get a team of three or four members together and don't have any team members yet. I already have a good idea and can do code. If anyone is interested or looking for a team mate please let me know. you can email me at rpj.programmer@gmail.com

have a nice day!