Why we dont have GAME development contests

[amigadave]

I don't know if it's such a good idea to host a competition. There might not be enough entries. I'm sure the people who actually want to make Amiga games will want to make them without needing to be offered the chance of a reward from a competition. If someone makes a decent game for an Amiga system these days, we just need to promote and digitally distribute it successfully to earn the authors enough money to buy themselves an Indivision or a RAM expansion or whatever they need for their Amiga. This is why we've been working hard to build Underground Arcade, it will be a place for any Amiga games makers to hook up with artists, musicians, coders and playtesters, then promote and distribute their game from the one united site.

I agree with Cammy's logic and reasons.  If anyone wants to promote an Amiga game competition, do it for the fun of it, not for a reward of some prize or amount of money.  If the programmers want to code for money or to get a prize, let them sell the game when it is done and buy their own prizes.  Maybe Cammy's group, the Underground Arcade, can start a game "idea" contest that the Underground Arcade programmers and artists will judge and pick the winner.  The winner would then get an equal share of any money made from the sale of the completed game after it was coded by the Underground Arcade programmers and all the art and music were created for it.  Each programmer and artist and music creator would count as one equal share, plus the contest winner as one additional equal share holder of any profits made from selling the game.  That way, after nine weeks of hard work, they would each get $5.72 from the 3 copies of the game that got sold for $29.95 each. :roflmao:

Seriously, I do like the idea of the Underground Arcade and I hope that more people will use it to get more Amiga apps and games produced and published.  It is a great idea and a great service to those who might otherwise not be able to complete an entire programming project by themselves.

[amigadave]

Just to take the other communities that I participate, the MSX community have at least three contests each year:

Passion MSX
Konamito Basic Game Contest
And finally MSXDEV

For MSXDEV (http://msxdev.msxblue.com/), community produce several new games every year. Just for this contest, the total number of entries (for all years) is an amazing 83! (http://msxdev.msxblue.com/gameindex.htm)

Any ideas about why that's not too common in the Amiga Community?

Because there are hardly any Amiga developers left in our community.  In fact, with the split of the Amiga community into three, or more separate directions, I think the number of developers has dropped dangerously low and threatens to be a potentially life ending cause to all Amiga variants if we can't turn things around very soon.

With such low numbers of developers left, it is only a matter of time before the low number of new apps and games leads to a steady decline of users too, which will then lead to THE END!  We have been on life support for several years already (some would say that it is already over and the Amiga community has been dead for years).

[amigadave]

Don't dispair Cammy, keep hoping that Amiga programming will improve a little anyway.  I am still working on that plan to get kids/teens interested in programming and using Amigas that I told you about.

I have to add that I am typing this post from my A1200 using IBrowse2.4 and Miami via my wireless card.  That is something that I have wanted to get set up and working for a long time.

[amigadave]

smerf, people like you make me not want to come to amiga.org.

Don't let him push you away from here.  He must have a sad life to feel the need to constantly come here and put down the Amiga developers that are still left writing games and other apps and utilities not only for AmigaOS4.x, but for AmigaOS3.x, MorphOS2.x and all variants of AROS.

I agree that there are too few developers, but there are still many that create useful programs for us.  I am very thanful for one in particular, Fab, who has done such a great job on the MorphOS version of OWB that I am browsing and typing this message into.

@smerf,  You are really starting to get very boring and tiresome.  For your information there have been 50 new software packages uploaded to Aminet in just the last 14 days.  That is over 3 per day from your "Non-existant" Amiga developers who are writing the "no software is being developed" that you claim.  That also does not count the numbers of other Amiga software projects that are currently being worked on that don't show up on that list.  Not bad for a platform that you claim in your signature as being "dead, dead, dead".  Of course now you will come back and say that all of those software packages are crap so they should not be considered real as another way to slap the few remaining Amiga software developers in the face, or some other such nonsense.  I wonder how you would feel if we all turned on you and made light of, or made fun of the work that you do?  Tell me, why are you here?  Is it because your life is so pathetic that you have nothing better to do than to come here and try to stir people up for your enjoyment?  (to the moderators, that is a valid question, not a statement or direct attack on smerf.  I really want to know why he feels he needs to repeatedly come here and try to put down the Amiga and Amiga developers over and over and over again)

Edit: @trekiej,  Using Hollywood could be a very good idea to create a game creator similar to AMOS Pro, which had a huge following at one time.  The advantage of using Hollywood is that it can easily compile to so many different platforms, which could make it interesting even for some developers that are only interested in making a buck from their spare time coding.  Of course it won't be as good as Assembly language, or Machine Code, but almost nobody uses those languages to make games these days.  Look at all the crappy games that are made using Visual Basic on Windows machines.  I wonder how Hollywood compares to Visual Basic for speed and versatility?

[amigadave]

I can see how tweaking an Amiga OCS computer to it's maximum potential might be a rewarding experience that a few others might appreciate, but the majority of Amiga users would probably look at it and criticize it for many assorted reasons.  Other Amiga users would criticize it for being a waste of time and tell you that you should be using your programming talents on AmigaOS4.1 programs, since there is so little native programming happening for the Next Gen Amiga systems.

But if seems like fun to any of you, I say go for it and ignore all the negative comments you might get during or after you are done.  It is a sad fact that you need a thick skin to be an Amiga user these days.

My hopes are for more ambitious Amiga programming projects to appear, ones that will require at minimum a 68030/40MHz, or 50MHz with 8mb or more RAM and a graphics card.  Then let us see just how far those resources can be tweaked to amaze even the most jaded of Amiga users.  Hopefully such games or apps could also easily be ported to AOS4.x and MOS2.x since the program is aimed at RTG from the start.

[amigadave]

Backbone looks cool.  It reminds me of a game maker prog. for the Apple IIE back in the day.

Once I get my Miggy up and running I think I may just have to give this a try... :-D

That would be a good way to give back to the Amiga community, now that you have a new A4000T to participate in said community.  There are plenty of free development tools for the AmigaOS.  I just gave away some Amiga programming books to the AmiWest organizers SACC club, or I would offer them to you.

[amigadave]

As far as I know, OSX PPC does not, and cannot run on the SAM440, but it does run on some people's Pegasos2 machines and they can run both MorphOS2.4 and AmigaOS4.1.