Good afternoon lads and lasses!
This years is slowly passing by, I have to take a few decisions on the AGS Awards 2011. Let me sum them up, feel free to voice your opinion.
Categories
Last year some categories were quite low on nomination/vote count. Those were:
-Best Tutorial or Documentation
-Best Programming in Non Adventure
I think it's right to scrap them from AGS Awards 2010.
Best programming in an adventure game would then become best programming full stop, a category open to adventure games and non adventure games.
Ceremony
Last year's ceremony was held on IRC. In 2007 and 2008 SSH made a downloadable game ceremony (http://ssh.me.uk/AGS_Awards_2008.zip). I'm calling for a plain vote here: state which one you prefer in this thread, I will organize things accordingly.
Caveat
If you'd like your game to be nominated and voted for the AGS awards 2010, remember to add it to the big database (http://www.adventuregamestudio.co.uk/games.php)!
1. I much prefer a downloadable ceremony to the IRC! I loved the 2008 edition. :D
2. I don't mind scrapping the best tutorial/documentation award because I was never much into those things, but I'm not sure about scrapping the best non-adventure programming award. We have quite a few real great non-adventures this year. Also, personally I'm always very impressed by what a variety of things you can code with Adventure Game Studio and believe emphasizing it in the Awards is beneficial for promoting the engine.
Ceremony:
I think the IRC one went very well and vote to have the same done for the 2010 awards!
Would be cool if in the future we would be able to actually arrange a real event though I guess that will never happen... unless some rich AGS member arranges it :P.
Quote from: bicilotti on Wed 06/10/2010 14:17:52
-Best Tutorial or Documentation
-Best Programming in Non Adventure
An award I've won in the past, and the only award I had a chance to win this year! Damn! :P
A note: of course, if we were to scrap those, all non adv games would have the right to compete in best programming.
Hm...
I like the award for good documentation. Few games bother to make it, and I think it deserves recognition if they do.
I don't really see the point of "best programming in a non-adventure", that's really a niche award. Non-adventures tend to be judged by their programming anyway.
And I strongly prefer a downloadable ceremony because everyone can see that, even a month later, whereas an IRC event will surely be missed by some people who have a busy schedule or simply are in the wrong time zone.
Vince, I'm going to burn you at the stake for saying such ridiculous things. You've still got "Best Non-Adventure" to at least being a nominee in, JACKASS!!1 ;D
Quote from: bicilotti on Wed 06/10/2010 14:46:40
A note: of course, if we were to scrap those, all non adv games would have the right to compete in best programming.
Is this a good idea? What would you have to code into an adventure game to win over any sort of non-adventure title?
Quote from: bicilotti on Wed 06/10/2010 14:17:52
Ceremony
Last year's ceremony was held on IRC. In 2007 and 2008 SSH made a downloadable game ceremony (http://ssh.me.uk/AGS_Awards_2008.zip). I'm calling for a plain vote here: state which one you prefer in this thread, I will organize things accordingly.
How about combining the two?
If we can use Dualnames game with a full blown server, and create a room especially for the comp with a podium & stage and everybody would be able to login, I think that could be awesome!
Quote from: Ascovel on Wed 06/10/2010 16:16:58
Quote from: bicilotti on Wed 06/10/2010 14:46:40
A note: of course, if we were to scrap those, all non adv games would have the right to compete in best programming.
Is this a good idea? What would you have to code into an adventure game to win over any sort of non-adventure title?
To add more meat to the discussion, previous "programming" winners (before it was split in 2 categories):
art of theft
linus bruckman
Adventures in the Galaxy of Fantabulous Wonderment
5 Days a Stranger
Maniac Mansion Deluxe
Kings Quest 2 VGA Remake
Pleurghburg: Dark AgesIt seems adv won a fair share of it but I see your point for sure.
Quote from: tzachs on Wed 06/10/2010 16:33:54
Quote from: bicilotti on Wed 06/10/2010 14:17:52
Ceremony
Last year's ceremony was held on IRC. In 2007 and 2008 SSH made a downloadable game ceremony (http://ssh.me.uk/AGS_Awards_2008.zip). I'm calling for a plain vote here: state which one you prefer in this thread, I will organize things accordingly.
How about combining the two?
If we can use Dualnames game with a full blown server, and create a room especially for the comp with a podium & stage and everybody would be able to login, I think that could be awesome!
I thought about having this and that, but my work-life in the first few months of 2011 is for sure going to be miserable, so I think it's safer to choose one and only one (or to have more hosts :P )
Quote from: tzachs on Wed 06/10/2010 16:33:54
How about combining the two?
If we can use Dualnames game with a full blown server, and create a room especially for the comp with a podium & stage and everybody would be able to login, I think that could be awesome!
Massively Multiplayer Online Award Show (MMOA)! Man, that would be awesome! And a first, I think. Everyone could log in, create an avatar, and then experience sitting in polite rows while the stars of the AGS community take the stage and give speeches that go on for far too long.*
Someone needs to make this happen!
Barring that, I vote for a downloadable game like SSH did. I just find them to be incredibly neat.
- Ponch
Quote from: Ponch on Wed 06/10/2010 16:45:48
Massively Multiplayer Online Award Show (MMOA)! Man, that would be awesome! And a first, I think. Everyone could log in, create an avatar, and then experience sitting in polite rows while the stars of the AGS community take the stage and give speeches that go on for far too long.*
You're missing an asterisk somewhere, don't you? :P
I'm sure it won't be much to code such a thing. I will of course, if we decide that its the way to go, some hard working testers. And so far, it has only be possible via Hamachi. Cause none of us has the money/equipment/resources/will ecc. to set up a server.
It sounds bloody neat.
It may as well be possible.
A. I need lots of beta-testers to fix any chances of bugs that might ruin this.
B. The coordination of this might be hard. Possibly impossible without a proper server and the usage of Hamachi.
C. I'm not against some hard-work.
Hmm having only been a participant of one years worth of awards my opinion should be taken with a couple of handfuls of salt.
However I really enjoyed the IRC ceremony last year. It was a fun community event.
I did watch the 2008 (or 07 i cant remember) ceremony and for me it just wasnt as good.
I agree with bici on those awards being scrapped providing there is obviously still a slot for Best Non-Adventure.
something to consider is perhaps a 'Best Module/Plugin' award and possibly splitting the game award into Drama and Comedy.
Just food for thought.
If there is a category for the best boring demo - I'm in!
Quote from: Harg on Thu 07/10/2010 19:17:23
If there is a category for the best boring demo - I'm in!
Ah, you mean bringing back the P3n1s award? :P
No offence to SSH, but the "in-game" award ceremony is dreadfully anticlimactic. I love the sense of occasion live IRC-ing brings to the awards, and you lose that by just having the download. Plus the whole thing is logged, so an edited game-based version could be made for people who missed it.
Best Documentation always struck me as rather redundant, since only a handful are usually fit to qualify. It's also a little arbitrary. Is the best documentation one that's slickly produced, or one that explains the objectives of the game in a clear and concise way (something you can accomplish with a plain text file)?
I think best programming should be a single award. I'm also generally against splitting awards into too many niches.
I much prefer the in-game ceremony, though see the drawbacks and I like the dynamism of the live event too. I'm just not that fond of chat rooms in general, I guess, and I always have to install IRC and figure out how to connect to the right server and all that again every time.
A live multi-player AGS game would be awesome.
Best documentation might become more relevant if it included in-game hint systems and other more modern ways of handling documentation, but unfortunately qualified nominees would be even fewer.
I'm also a big fan of the in-game version. Perhaps that's because I've never used IRC and don't 100% know what it is. Perhaps it's because Nelly was so much bigger than all the other characters. Who can say?
Quote from: bicilotti on Wed 06/10/2010 16:49:39
You're missing an asterisk somewhere, don't you? :P
Yes I am. I had something very witty I was going to footnote the post with, but I suddenly had to get back to work. Then when I came back, I couldn't get the forum to work. And now I've forgotten what it was I was going to say.
Also, I'll never forget the sight of an enormous Nelly terrorizing all the other little sprites. It was quite an award ceremony that night.
- Ponch
I just sort of kind of had a bit of a little old idea... but it's not a big deal or anything or something.
I figure it could be nice to do the ceremony as a video stream with, for example, UStream. Since UStream supports co-hosts, we'd have the main channel that would show graphics and text and other such things. There'd be the main ceremony host on one of the co-host streams and we'd have guest hosts to announce winners and such on the third stream. The person who ran the main channel would be in charge of music and switching co-hosts and other behind-the-scenes work. UStream even has built-in chat. If we got some nice people with fancy clothes and silly hats to be presenters, I think it could go really well. Acceptance speeches could be done with Skype or in the chat.
Just an idea, please don't shoot me in the face.
Yay!!! For Stikam!!! Yay!!!
And we can have nominees showing up in the top windows!
Quote from: Radiant on Thu 07/10/2010 19:30:20
Ah, you mean bringing back the P3n1s award? :P
Bring it back! It looks like this community needs black sheep!
Quote from: LimpingFish on Fri 08/10/2010 00:20:41
Best Documentation always struck me as rather redundant, since only a handful are usually fit to qualify. It's also a little arbitrary. Is the best documentation one that's slickly produced, or one that explains the objectives of the game in a clear and concise way (something you can accomplish with a plain text file)?
I don't think "best documentation" is any more or any less arbitrary than the other awards.
For instance, suppose there's a game with artsy black-and-white graphics. Some people may want to give this the "best graphics" award for the stylistic choice and artistic impressionism. Other people may think that it doesn't qualify because it's only two colors. Both are valid opinions, and that's why the award is decided by vote count, and not by arbitrarily declaring that one of those sides is "right". Same goes for best documentation.
I would like to see "best documentation" included. I think if a game has a good documentation then it speaks for the overall effort put into the game. So it's a good indication for a "good" game.
Now feel free to prove me wrong with great documentations to shitty games... :)
As someone who has thus far made nothing but non-adventures, I'd have argued in favour of keeping the two categories apart. Then again, seeing some non-adventures in the list of winners does tell me it's not as if it's completely biased in the adventure direction!
Yeah, removing the best programming in non-adventure game award will penalize adventure games more than non-adventure games. In a non-adventure game programming is easy to see for the players, the whole gameplay is entirely different so it must have required a whole lot of coding to get AGS to do that.
In an adventure game, good programming is vastly non-linear stories, it's puzzles with multiple solutions, objects with multiple interactions, it's dynamic backgrounds where water flow, leaves shake, rain fall, lights flicker, clouds and sun move, it's NPCs that mind their own business and do their own things, it's conversations that can end on vastly different notes depending of the tone you used, it's music that dynamically change depending on the situation... stuff that is much more subtle and tied to other aspect of the game, and often players have no idea about the hours of coding behind those things.
Quote from: DualnamesA. I need lots of beta-testers to fix any chances of bugs that might ruin this.
This was only an idea that sparked after I read the above quote (I didn't think about it much), but, after it's beta tested and ready to go, why not test it for the first time with a pre-awards show type thing? Have it like an hour or even a couple hours before hand. People can log in, hang around and chat for a bit and see if anything major occurs that can be fixed before the actual show?
Yes, that was the whole idea behind my saying Snake. (Not really, but I'm pretending to be smart). :D
Still the only viable way is via a VPN network such as Hamachi. Which is a shame. And a limit to 16 people.
QuoteYeah, removing the best programming in non-adventure game award will penalize adventure games more than non-adventure games.
Seconded.
Is there a nomination for the best demo?
@Harg: to be nominated, there has to be something in the database ;)
I'd also like to see the p3n1s award back in action, maybe even an ic3y P3nix :=
Anyhow the last years' IRC/Skype combination was a hell lot of fun and I'd say: make it Live again. Is there a way to reserve bandwith on Stickam? The typical performance might not be sufficient - I'd even donate a few bucks.
Missed the IRC event but just watched the 2008 downloadable ceremony and thought it was awesome. Good fun seeing all these characters we know and love mingle together, presenting awards and whatnot. A neat little thing that certainly bonds the community permanently. Honestly I'm not sure how important the interactivity of it was though. It could just as well have been recorded and posted as a video on youtube. This would no doubts be good external exposure for AGS as a platform as well. Also, being a video it would allow for more crazy editing such as adding short, memorable sequences from games, etc.
I realize making such a ceremony is incredible amounts of work however. I'm impressed by the 2008 effort, it was very well executed in many ways.
So in short, I don't know which is better irc or download, but a video ceremony would -apart from being a fun event - ALSO be good constant, passive promotion for AGS.
edit: just read the whole thread and see that video event has been mentioned, do not confuse this with what I am proposing. Not the same idea. I'm talking edited recorded ags material, not live actor stuff.
I'm all for IRC!
Last year was awesome :)
IRC sounds great, if only I can remember it this year... :-\
I'd vote irc for the ceremony, always a nice evening to put aside real life and interact with the community in real time!1 Now that I've met biccilotti it makes his hosting even more prestigious for me :D
And I miss the square p3nix award too...
But whatever happens I'm sure any type of ceremony and categories will be fantastico :)
I did like the award games and thought "why do so many people say that they miss the irc ceremony, this awards game is great". But after last years irc ceremony I can hoestly say - the irc ceremony is even better! It was also fun to have a simultane skype session (however, next time we should find a reliable host first, the QOS was sometimes very bad).
Hey don't blame it on the greek! :D
I'd also love a reliable skype host. Usually matt hosts and he's great. Matt as in Tier. The IRC ceremony should always be there. Really. :D
Downloadable-in-game ceremony, absolutely!
Quote from: WHAM on Mon 25/10/2010 13:10:03
Downloadable-in-game ceremony, absolutely!
I second this idea.
At the least, even if we go down the IRC road, can't we also have a download ceremony too? That way cranky old men like me who aren't going to do the IRC can still have something too.
I also second the idea of bringing back the p3n1s award in some fashion! :D
Quote from: Ponch on Mon 25/10/2010 15:51:03
I also second the idea of bringing back the p3n1s award in some fashion! :D
Wouldn't the Square Penix games fill out all the nominations?
Quote from: Ascovel on Mon 25/10/2010 16:21:38
Quote from: Ponch on Mon 25/10/2010 15:51:03
I also second the idea of bringing back the p3n1s award in some fashion! :D
Wouldn't the Square Penix games fill out all the nominations?
And Oceanspirit Dennis could present the award! ;D
I approve of the return of the p3n1s award, and not just because it'd be the only one I'd have any hope of winning!
Quote from: Ponch on Mon 25/10/2010 19:18:19
And Oceanspirit Dennis could present the award! ;D
Did you say halloween costume idea. ;D
Quote from: anian on Mon 25/10/2010 19:25:24
Quote from: Ponch on Mon 25/10/2010 19:18:19
And Oceanspirit Dennis could present the award! ;D
Did you say halloween costume idea. ;D
Someone needs to get on this right away!
About the penis award, I'm thinking of me and nemo co-hosting the event both in irc, and then creating a game as well. Since AGS awards will probably won't have it. You can have the Oscars you know.. :P
Seriously.
Ok, it seems to me that IRC wins over game by 8 votes versus 5 (so IRC it will be).
Remember, if you want your game to be eligible for the awards, add it to the database before 2010 ends.
I think before doing anything like the 'penis award' you should really consider the morality of a group of 20-somethings ridiculing a 14 year old kid on the internet like that.
I mean at what point does something like that become just plain malicious?
Quote from: bicilotti on Wed 06/10/2010 14:17:52
-Best Tutorial or Documentation
I think it's right to scrap them from AGS Awards 2010.
Oh, come on! I put all that effort into my documentation just to take this one home :/
Anyway, isn't timing problematic with the IRC ceremony as there are people from all around the world here?
usually, the best non-adventures are good precisely because they make use of original programming techniques.
So in a way, you're just voting for the 'best non-adventure' in two awards with the same name.
But on the other hand, I fear that if they were bunged in with the adventure games in the programming award, then the award will be overshadowed by the non-adventures and those adventures which do have good programming may not be recognized for it.
Personally my solution would be to scrap 'best programming in a non-adventure' because the chances are that the non-adventure that wins 'best non-adventure', does so precisely because of its clever use of code.
(sorry, that was a really long-winded way of wording things... :-[ )
Quote from: Calin Leafshade on Sun 14/11/2010 12:07:17
I think before doing anything like the 'penis award' you should really consider the morality of a group of 20-somethings ridiculing a 14 year old kid on the internet like that.
I mean at what point does something like that become just plain malicious?
Cause its fun as hell. And so far no 14 yr olds won that award ASFAIK. The penis award is the single most important thing about AGS, when I first joined. Even if its officially abandoned that doesn't mean anything. The Penis award wasn't for mocking, it was for laughing, it was for bonding the community. Yeah, it's silly, but take it for what it is.
The times have changed. This isn't for mocking. Otherwise I would have won it when I could.
Ah, of course, if someone wants to make a game ceremony or something similar, you are more than welcomed!
What ever happened to the forum awards?
Quote from: IndieBoy on Sun 14/11/2010 15:26:50
What ever happened to the forum awards?
The FOREGOs? They died. People lost interest, I suppose.
Quote from: Calin Leafshade on Sun 14/11/2010 12:07:17
I think before doing anything like the 'penis award' you should really consider the morality of a group of 20-somethings ridiculing a 14 year old kid on the internet like that.
The reason the P3n1s was discontinued was not a 14-year-old kid :P
Anyway, a good answer imho would be to only let people nominate themselves for the P3n1s award. Then we can all go vote for Me Go Store or something like that.
Quote from: bicilotti on Sun 14/11/2010 14:18:14
Ah, of course, if someone wants to make a game ceremony or something similar, you are more than welcomed!
I think that'd be awesome! I'd love to see that
I was trying to incorporate IRC in AGS and I have something that works (presumably) but is still very experimental. I hope it can be used combined with Duals' game chat; that would be awesome. Then if the ceremony is done at IRC folks can follow it with the game if they'd like. We'll just put the extra communication needed in a different channel.
I'll show you what I have right now:
http://shutupload.com/dl/a01c37809f2a/
It will connect to the official IRC server, though if that causes annoyance I will remove it. :P
That'd be nice to implement monsieour Wyz. I've checked it and it was really nice :D. Well done.
Quote from: Wyz on Mon 15/11/2010 02:45:15
I was trying to incorporate IRC in AGS and I have something that works (presumably) but is still very experimental. I hope it can be used combined with Duals' game chat; that would be awesome. Then if the ceremony is done at IRC folks can follow it with the game if they'd like. We'll just put the extra communication needed in a different channel.
I'll show you what I have right now:
http://shutupload.com/dl/a01c37809f2a/
It will connect to the official IRC server, though if that causes annoyance I will remove it. :P
This is awesome stuff!
Would it be possible to controll a character inside this - kind of as a moderator? That'd be awesome
Excellent work Wyz! Feel free to harass me to get this parallel thing done!
Thanks! ;D
Quote from: mode7 on Mon 15/11/2010 08:38:57
Would it be possible to controll a character inside this - kind of as a moderator? That'd be awesome
Yes, it should be possible; Duals and I are thinking how to do this but if anyone has suggestions feel free to give them. We'll open a topic soon.
It should be hosted by Ocean Spirit Dennis.
And you should make some special animations for clapping, poking and getting naked and running around.
Why not having a stage like this/ this stage(http://www.mobygames.com/game/dos/indiana-jones-and-the-fate-of-atlantis/screenshots/gameShotId,2360/), put OSD in there, replace the gui with a chat window, hardcode the pictures of the nominees in the game (which are known beforehand). Enabeling some special moderator mode which is accessed by a pasword, which allows to display typed text as speech and letting the moderator walk around and do animations by clicking or keypressing, changing the pictures...
If you don't have the pw you can just watch and chat.