What is SteemitJam and how does it work?
SteemitJam is a monthly game creation event where participants create a game under 72 hours following a specific theme. It is a great opportunity to start something new, improve a skill or find motivation. The fourth edition of the event will start on April 6th at 0:00 GMT and will end on April 9th at 0:00 GMT. When the event starts, I will make a post announcing the theme that the participants will work on for the SteemitJam. I will use my open-source program trustless-random-generator to generate a random theme transparently.
"Rules"
Rules won't really be enforced, but you may be missing the point of this event if you don't follow them. To be honest, if you don't want to follow them just don't, but you should at least say it in your submission post.
- No teams, this is a solo challenge. If you absolutely want to be in a team, just go ahead. As I said, these aren't really rules.
- You must own all the code, art and sound used for your entry. However, game engines, frameworks and libraries are permitted.
- You must share the code when you submit your entry.
- You must submit your entry before the end of the event.
- You must respect the theme (Which will be announced at the start of the event).
How do I join?
Simply wait until the theme is announced, then start working on your game! Once you are finished, you simply need to submit your entry and you are done! If you want to chat you should join the Discord
How do I submit my entry?
Create a Steemit post with the following information :
- Title of your game.
- Description of your game.
- How to play your game/Controls (If it is not clear in the game)
- A download link for your game (I recommend supporting more platforms than Windows).
- A download link for the source code (Can also be a link to a GitHub repository).
- Include screenshots/videos (Optional, but recommended).
- Installation instructions (If necessary).
Publish the post with the tag #steemitjamsubmission
Modifying an entry after the jam
If you realized that you made a typo or you have found a game-breaking bug that makes the game crash, you can still change it after the event but please make your change clear. It should look like this in your submission post :
{{link}} Game v1.0
{{link}} Source Code v1.0
{{link}} v1.1 (Fixed typo "your" to "you're" after deadline)
{{link}} Source Code v1.1
Don't modify your entry to add features. This completely breaks the point of a game jam.
Who 'wins'?
SteemitJam does not have any official 'winner'. Instead, you get sweet post rewards! I encourage people to write blog posts on their favorite games. These posts will bring attention to the author of the respective game.
I will personally review each game (Oh and don't forget to support Linux systems!). I will say what I liked about them and what is to improve. I encourage people to do so, but it is not mandatory.
Browse the posts on #steemitjamsubmission to see the entries.
Progress blogs and post-mortems
You are free to write blogs about your game before the end of the deadline, showing what you have done so far, GIFs, pictures, videos or more. It is also interesting to read post-mortems or watching time-lapses. I encourage people to make them using the #steemitjam tag.
Potential themes
This is a list of potential themes for the third edition of SteemitJam, if you want a theme added or removed, just request it in the comments or on Discord.
- Floating islands
- Limited space
- Expanding
- Tiny machines
- Only three colors
- Broken world
- Start with nothing
- One level but constantly changing
- Death is useful
- One minute
- Everything is connected
- Signal lost
- Parallel worlds
- Moving fortress
- You are alone
- Machines
- Running out of space
- On / Off
- Connections
- Blockchain
- 1 vs 100
- It spreads
- Infection
- Artificial Life
- Hive mind
What are you classing as a game engine? There's quite a bit of difference between them all because most of the game makers (GameGuru, RPGmaker etc) are still game engines too but have less of a immediate learning curve than the game engines that do less of it for you. Most of the game makers you still need to code if you want more than a very basic game but you can make a game with drag and drop. It lets people start off by just looking at what code they need to do x thing they want to do though, so it is a good start for some. I, myself, have just downloaded Unreal yesterday after noticing it on the Epic Games launcher and thinking "I should try that", but haven't tried to use it yet, though I have learned some C#, html5, javascript, jquery, php etc through my study and I did mostly make a html5 2D shooter game type thing, but something wouldn't work for me and the lecturer was going to help me work it out in term break but then she didn't so I still need to go back and solve that sometime. I had trouble making randomly spawning enemies shoot bullets out of guns as it couldn't seem to work it out based on the coordinates of the enemy so the bullets would end up having stuff like x=NaN and attempts to fix it stuffed other things up unfortunately. I passed and I think I actually exceeded what needed to be done for the course, but it would have been a lot better if it actually was completely functional. Sorry I'm rambling on. It's just my one experience of making a proper game other than fiddling with GameGuru (which was only fiddling and no coding at that point so isn't the same as what I was doing making a web game - to do much exciting with GameGuru you need to use LUA but I was just fiddling with the basic drag and drop style functions). Most of the other coding I have done for study has been to make very basic "games" - like a game that counts how much you click on a square - and to make websites and animations for websites etc.
This sounds like it would be a bit of fun either way.
A game engine is usually similar to a framework in a way that it helps you manage graphics, sound, inputs and more, but an engine will also manage your entities.
Example of engines : GameMaker, Unity3D, Unreal
Example of frameworks : LibGDX, SFML
As said above, engines and frameworks are welcome :)