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Classic Games (Games) Entertainment Games News

KTH Game Awards Grande Finale 107

Posted by michael from the time-wasting dept.
CoderByBirth writes "The winners of the KTH Game Awards, a game programming competition for students held in Sweden were announced yesterday at KTH (The Royal Institute Of Technology) in Stockholm. 25 teams participated in the competition, which was divided into two parts, where the first part was to create a Technical Design Document (TDD) and a Game Design Document (GDD) and the second was to complete a working game demo or prototype. The student submissions were reviewed by a jury consisting of employees from DICE (creators of Battlefield 1942, Pinball Dreams) and Starbreeze Studios (Outforce, Enclave) as well as a representative from KTH. You can download the top three submissions here."
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KTH Game Awards Grande Finale More

KTH Game Awards Grande Finale

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  • What about Linux? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 09, 2003 @10:25AM (#5919015)
    I guess there should be a similar competition for Linux games. There are enough Windows games already. We need more for open-source platforms.

    • Re:What about Linux? (Score:5, Informative)

      by Stary ( 151493 ) <stary@novasphere.net> on Friday May 09, 2003 @10:46AM (#5919178) Homepage Journal
      The competition was not only for Windows games. Our game (Velox) runs on Windows, Solaris and Linux, for instance. The competition page states a deadline for handin of a "PC or UNIX executable", and you might also note that one team has made a game for the Gameboy Advance.
      • I all for Linux as much as the next person, but developers have to live too and they are going to develop for the market that has more potential buyers. Its the catch 22, more people need to use Linux before there are more good programs, and developers will not put as much effort into Linux programming until there are more people using it.

        Need a calculator [webcalc.net]?

        • Re:What about Linux? (Score:4, Insightful)

          by porttikivi ( 93246 ) on Friday May 09, 2003 @11:28AM (#5919493)
          Yeah, but it escapes me, why the people who design the kernels, drivers, desktops, "system applications" and all that other open source stuff do not need to "make a living". Why the game designers are the only exception?
          • I'm completely confused by what you mean here...

            The people who design the kernels, drivers, etc, etc. DO need to make a living. Or they'd be dead.

            There are open source games out there as well, there are free as in beer games too. Those developers obviously find some other way to make money.

            And lots of people who contribute to open source linux apps get paid for it.

            Nobody ever said they shouldn't, it's their choice to continue developing for free if they aren't making money off of it.
          • it escapes me, why the people who design the kernels, drivers, desktops, "system applications" and all that other open source stuff do not need to "make a living". Why the game designers are the only exception?

            Because a competitive (which does not even necessarily equal "good") game must be timely. A FPS game with bitmapped monsters and no ability to look around freely, such as the original Doom, has no way to survive in the marketplace today even if it was free. Since commercial games are written full-t

        • Re:What about Linux? (Score:4, Insightful)

          by Realistic_Dragon ( 655151 ) on Friday May 09, 2003 @11:29AM (#5919501) Homepage
          As long as the games are well written, they should be easily portable: They should be written in a cross platform language, like C++ (no, I don't mean Java - not until we all have P7 9000 machines!) which can be easily compiled on Windows or UNIX. They should be writen to use open standards as far as possible. Games that exploit OpenGL are easy to port, games that use the protritary, limited, locked down bodge of an API (biased? me?) known as DirectX are not. This way (as happened for UT2k3) games can be available on _both_ Windows and Linux for very little extra cost. It's a shame MS is trying to put a spoke in the wheel of this kind of thing, not only with Direct X and dropping where possible support of OpenGL (no OpenGL support in the XBox I see...) but also by offering developers great wodges of cash to develop nativly in DirectX and make the game available on the XBox first, ensuring that OpenGL games and Linux support are far less attractive than would otherwise be the case.
          • I'm always a little surprised when I see opensource 2D games written in DirectX, especially when they mention plans to port it to another platform. I'm not about to tell anyone how to code when they do it for their own amusement, and I can see why someone might want to stick with an API they're familiar with, but when the issue of porting comes in using DirectX just boggles my mind.

            I think a lot of people simply aren't even familiar with SDL, WxWindows, or other multiplatform solutions yet. I make it a poi
          • "As long as the games are well written, they should be easily portable" I read somewhere prior to Q3A coming out that John Carmack only had to write about 15k more code for the Mac port. But then we does not let himself get stuck in proprietary bullshit.

          • Let me take you out of your dream here. About 95% of commerical console games never are / will never be well-written. At best, they have a decent design and architecture, but they will never be perfectly portable. The reason is that virtually all parts constantly evolve during the game's development stages, and compromises are constantly made to adhere code to the constraints of the console regarding memory and performance. You allways end up with shit somewhere..

            One other thing: OpenGL nowadays is simply

  • Demo Winners (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 09, 2003 @10:28AM (#5919034)
    Any of these game demos worth downloading? There aren't any descriptions on the site.

  • How I feel about programming competitions (Score:4, Insightful)

    by A Proud American ( 657806 ) on Friday May 09, 2003 @10:29AM (#5919046)
    I don't like when programming competitions allow coders to select their own technologies.

    If the goal of these competitions is to foster new programming talent, I think it's best to give them an exact specification document detailing exactly what technologies (languages, platforms, hardware) need to be used.

    The real world of professional programming generally tends to involve projects with unchangable parameters. My boss never tells me to make a warhead however I want to -- there's always a specification of what technologies I must use.

    • Re:How I feel about programming competitions (Score:4, Insightful)

      by Timesprout ( 579035 ) on Friday May 09, 2003 @10:35AM (#5919106)
      and exactly how many competitions to code games in VB will you enter ?

      A lot of game development involves pushing the boundaries. Its a lot easier and emminently more practical to do that when you are already familiar/expert with the technology.

      In your job you are constrained to use what you are told but you were probably hired because you were at least familiar if not proficient in the organisations technology standards already, not becase they felt like converting a few perl codes to c++ gurus.
      • A lot of game development involves pushing the boundaries

        Don't forget they require you to 'think outside the box', by 'reaching a new level of immersion', 'extending gameplay dynamics', and ...ack i just had a gag reflex kick in for no reason. i'll get back some more vapid catchphrases later...;)
    • My boss never tells me to make a warhead however I want to -- there's always a specification of what technologies I must use.

      Your boss tells you to make a warhead? Wow! Even when I worked for the Ministry of Defence, that never happened to me...

    • A compromise would be to hand the developers the game specification documentation and let them choose the language/hardware. Whoever meets the most bullet points in the game spec wins, or whatever metric you want to use..

    • Re:How I feel about programming competitions (Score:4, Interesting)

      by morgajel ( 568462 ) on Friday May 09, 2003 @11:29AM (#5919499)
      well, think of it this way....
      suppose the promoters said "ok, now all of your programs need to be in COBOL, no exceptions!"

      do you think they might be limiting their audience a little.
      the point is creativity isn't limited to one language. they're looking for a new game, something that hand't been tried before. Don't cut their feet off by forcing them into one language.

      you sound like one of those grumpy old men that bitch at "the kids with their damned rock music"

      As for real world experience, limiting the language is just rediculous. Yes, in the real world, you get a job and you might only be allowed to use one language. however EVERY real world job doesn't use just one language. Don't shaft the people who know c++ just because you think it should be done in java, or vice versa.

      Hell, although it's not comparable, I made a blackjack game [homelinux.net] in ruby just for shits and giggles.

      the language that they choose shouldn't matter. it comes down to using the right tool for the job.
      for some it's c++, or other's it's haskell, java or perl.

      oh, and another point- you say to limit it to platform. Well, reading through the posts, one [slashdot.org] of the teams says they wrote it for solaris, linux and windows. So you're saying that they should have limited it to one platform? which one?
      you say windows and you'll probably piss of a lot of slashdotters.
      you say linux and it'll never make it mainstream.

      Let them do what they want to do. if they make a great game, fine, if they don't, oh well. Let it be their choice.
    • This isn't a programming competition!!! It's a game development competition. There is a HUGE difference there.

      Their job was to come up with the best game, not the best technology. The technology is and should be irrelevent. There are tons of games out there for the game boy advance that are way more fun to play than Quake III, despite the different (inferior) technology used.

      Bottom line: There's a difference between a game development competition and a programming competition.

  • The Winner (Score:5, Informative)

    by CoderByBirth ( 585951 ) on Friday May 09, 2003 @10:29AM (#5919047)
    You can also download the winning game here:
    Xazzon [xazzon.com]

  • Cool competition - Hard to Read (Score:4, Insightful)

    by hether ( 101201 ) on Friday May 09, 2003 @10:31AM (#5919062)
    This is a very neat competition. I enjoyed reading through the team's descriptions and goals for making their games. Everything from making a game that's easy to start but hard to stop, to making a 3D only game, etc.

    Just wanted to mention too that this bright purple/blue color still makes reading game stories very hard on the eyes. I thought after the huge number of posts lamenting this fact that perhaps the editors would actually change it. Don't know what I was thinking.

  • A what? (Score:5, Funny)

    by Prince_Ali ( 614163 ) on Friday May 09, 2003 @10:35AM (#5919099) Journal
    Design... document...? I know what the individual words mean, but taken together it sounds like nonsense!

    • Re:A what? (Score:2, Funny)

      by stratjakt ( 596332 )
      It is nonsense! Wonderful upper management nonsense!

      If you've ever seen one, it reads like something from Lewis Carrol or Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, or maybe more like a Dr. Suess poem.

  • Dang, the server's already slashdotted..damn browser crashed when I tried to go to amazon while downloading. Hmm... Maybe amazon doesn't want me to play games o_O

  • Any prizes? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by fatwreckfan ( 322865 ) on Friday May 09, 2003 @10:45AM (#5919168)
    Were there any prizes for this competition? Do the winners get money to continue development or anything? The page is down now, but when I got to scan over it earlier I didn't see anything.

  • Those poor, poor students! (Score:4, Funny)

    by HoldmyCauls ( 239328 ) on Friday May 09, 2003 @11:18AM (#5919413) Journal
    ...a game programming competition for students held in Sweden...

    If the poor bastards are being held in Sweden, it's the least that can be done to raise their esteem!

    Let's get Tina Yothers et al together to try and free them!
  • now there was a game. The original and best pinball game ever. I still play regularly using winfellow. Lets all here it for PD.

  • NTH Game awards (Score:2, Informative)

    by Andreas(R) ( 448328 )
    NTH (Norwegian Institute of Science and Technology) [www.ntnu.no] also held a similar game award [idi.ntnu.no] for student projects.

    NTH is better than KTN :)
  • Its been /.'ed. Any mirrors?

    Rus

  • Xazzon review (Score:3, Interesting)

    by John Harrison ( 223649 ) <johnharrison@@@gmail...com> on Friday May 09, 2003 @12:25PM (#5919973) Homepage Journal
    So I managed to download and play Xazzon. It is what you would expect, a 3D version of Zaxxon. Pretty good for a student project, but it doesn't seem very efficient.

    As with most student projects, it seems to assume that you have a pretty fast machine. I have a machine that can run Q3A reasonably and this little Zaxxon game gets 12fps on it. They didn't spend much time optimizing or testing on slow machines. Even at 320x240 (windowed) it runs like a dog. Also, the ship goes out of control after a while, with the point of view switching jerkily from one side to the other.

    Some of you will say that I need a new machine, which is true, but for what this game is it could run a lot faster.

    When I was in school we had an assignment to make an asteroids game. Most of the projects were barely playable they were so slow. There were only a few each quarter that were worth playing. Yet using the same computers my group made a 3d space fighter game in which you pilot a ship through an asteroid field instead of the usual top-down 2d asteroids. Not only was it more ambitious than the normal games, it ran faster too, because we cared about efficiency from the start and made sure it was playable. You can download the Windows port here. [angelfire.com] It isn't nearly as polished as the Zaxxon game, but it was a 2 week project, and was playable on a 60 MHz Mac Performa with no 3d acceleration.

    • For the record:

      The game was reviewed during a 20 minute presentation.

      Considering this, we selected to spend more time adding content and polish the game rather than optimize it.

      Target platform for the game is at least a 1.0 GHz PC with Geforce 2 MX400.

      Optimization in and of itself would be a waste of time considering these premises.

      Some teams failed horribly by trying to create "The Ultimate" game engine.

      You can download the game at :

      xazzon.com [xazzon.com]
      //Viktor Lundström, Xazzon Lead Programmer
      • Hey, it seems that what you did worked for you. Congrats on winning the contest. Like I said, it seems to have a lot of polish.

        Optimization would not have been a complete waste of time given that if it is able to be run on a lesser machine it will run even better on a fast one. I don't see what it is doing that couldn't be done on a much slower machine.

        Did the judges play it during the presentation or did you "present" it?

        Anyhow, the game looks pretty fun, I just wish I was able to play it.

  • Mirror (Score:1, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Dunno if needed :) -But anyway:

    http://multimedia.campus.luth.se/kth_games/
  • What ever happened to game developers understanding that making a game perform well was the highest priority?

    Aspiring developers back in the demoscene truly understood the art of coding. It was all about finding are more optimized, elegant solution than the previous guy, and making the computer pull things off that made the user's jaw drop. Coders used integer math and lookup tables in interesting ways to avoid performance-expensive floating point or trigonometric computations. They hand-optimized code

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