Judging Results

Contests 4K Game Competition - 2009
#61

Not any more - u13 :stuck_out_tongue:
The error message and stack trace from Webstart’s console is up a few posts, but it’s long-winded without being informative.

[quote]I would also just like to be able to play your games.
[/quote]
Try on the Mac.

#62

I was able to play it on the Mac just fine. :slight_smile: Very nice work. Despite requiring two players it was a cleverly done game. :slight_smile:

#63

Some stats:
The games can be divided into three categories: applications launched by JNLP, applets launched by JNLP, and applets embedded in a webpage.
The games as a whole break down 49 :: 11 :: 7 with one game not counted because its host website is timing out so I can’t get its JNLP file to check.
The games for which at least one judge failed to assign a score break down 7 :: 5 :: 0.
By judge:
Chris: 3 :: 0 :: 0
darkfrog/sunsett: 3* :: 4 :: 0
Mark: 2* :: 2 :: 0

  • for 1 of these the problem is attributable to problems acquiring the microphone.

I wonder, sunsett, whether you can also play Bridge4k, NiGHTS 4k and Pixeloids4k on the Mac. If so that would be very suggestive of issues with applets in JNLP with u12. I’m also curious as to which version of Java Chris was using.

In general this might feed in to how people approach the applet-only debate on http://www.java-gaming.org/index.php/topic,20142.0.html

#64

I think changing the results was a bad move. Good or bad, fair or not, once published they should be final. Its kinda unfair to tell people they took 2th or 3rd place and take it back.
I also don’t like the idea of removing the highest and lowest judge score, it doesn’t make sense to me(even though one of the judges gave my game probably the lowest postive score of the entire contest while all others were much more open-handed :P). Except for the 0% issues i think the current judging system is fine. The community voting has one big problem: the best games get all the comments and reviews, and most of the other games gets nothing.

#65

java version “1.5.0_16”
Java™ 2 Runtime Environment, Standard Edition (build 1.5.0_16-b06-284)
Java HotSpot™ Client VM (build 1.5.0_16-133, mixed mode, sharing)

OS X of course.

#66

Hi Darkfrog. My game was WorldRallyDriver4K: http://www.java4k.com/index.php?action=games&method=reviews&cid=5#197

Your comment was “Basic racing game. Nice idea, but limited in scope.” which I didn’t understand what you meant by this. I have a feeling you were referring to the fact that there was only ghost cars and no opponents, but I wasn’t sure? If you have a chance, can you please explain your comment? Were you hoping to see something else in the game?

Also, I was a little disappointed that your score was very different to all the other judges scores. Anywhoo, as everyone says, it’s just a fun comp. …although, I’m totally stoked that Desert Bus didn’t beat me! ;D

EDIT: I just worked out, if my game failed to run for you and you gave me 0. I would jump from 15th place into 5th place. So I’m going to pretend that happened. Yay me! 5th place! Woohoo! 8)

Cheers,
Ranger.

#67

I didn’t mean this as a critique. It’s not a bad thing that you gave everybody lower scores, I’m just not happy about the way this might have given me an unfair advantage (since your scores didn’t affect two of my games). This is in no way your fault, it’s just a side effect of the changed scoring system. I don’t want to be treated in any special way, whether positive or negative.

I would very much appreciate it if you could try those two games (Pixeloids4k and Bridge4k), as well as the others mentioned by userek (from other participants) on your mac. If they don’t work there I have no idea what’s going on, but I’ll then proceed to send you a PM with debugging versions so that I can fix the errors (I like when people can actually play my games!). If they do work on the mac, however, I’d appreciate any comments you might have! :slight_smile:

Also, I believe userek might have a point in that the list shouldn’t be changed, while on the other hand, I think the list was problematic. That’s why I think we should’ve waited for some more opinions from the community before changing it… but I clearly didn’t express this in a good way, and I’m obviously partly responsible for the change. Please accept my sincere apologies for any inconvenience this might have caused.

I will now try to let this rest.

#68

Finally got around to looking at everyone scores. I think it would have been more fair on everyone to allow the worst score to be dropped, instead of simply ignoring the 0 point scores, as it does seem that Darkfrog did have trouble running a lot of the games, and he did tend to score people lower then most of the other judges. Is it too late to change? Maybe something to think about for next year?

DISCLAIMER: My game would benefit if this happens.

#69

Yes, I replayed it again to validate why I said that when I judged it, and it was because there weren’t other players. I know this is a 4k game but I ranked it down because there was almost no enjoyment in playing it even though I think you have a great foundation there. If you either added networked players or computer players it would probably have been one of the higher ranked games for me. I hope you don’t begrudge me, but this is definitely a personal opinion, and you can disagree if you like and even ask that I not be a judge again, but I do stand by my rating and evaluation. I do apologize for not giving further detail though.

#70

Yes, both games do work on my Mac and I did enjoy playing both of them. I apologize for not taking the time to run it on another machine, but I do believe that supporting (what was) the latest version of Java (1.6u12) is a valid expectation. However, it would seem since several of you have seen the same issues it sounds like something peculiar about u12. Perhaps next year if we created a list of games that wouldn’t play and gave an opportunity for those people to either fix them or track down specifics of why they didn’t work it would help keep this from being a problem, but at the time I only had access to play from my Windows machine and hadn’t seen any other judge reviews, so I had to base my score on what I was seeing, and that was that it didn’t work.

If you still care to have a review:

Pixeloids4k: This was a very interesting game and I enjoy this kind of puzzle game. It has the makings of a great game beyond the 4k competition.

Bridge4k: Also very nice. Reminds me of a high-school project I once did. The physics were well done and is impressive work for a 4k game.

#71

It would appear that 1.6u12 is the root cause here. However, I think the original scoring was right and dropping zero scores or lowest scores I think is a bad idea in my opinion. Particularly in my case I judged generally lower than the other judges, but as long as the results are left alone it does lower the end scores, but it doesn’t alter the placement of the people within the ranks.

#72

Thanks for the clarification Darkfrog. I now understand your rating and comment. BTW: Did you see the save and load replay feature (pressing R in game)? The idea was you send your friend your replay data and they race against it. I did want to do proper network play, unfortunately this wasn’t possible in 4k.

Definitely no begrudging. In fact, I would like to say thanks for giving up your time to be a judge. It really is appreciated! :slight_smile:

#73

This actually surprised me. I spent multiple days (game time :o) playing this game (although it’s a shame, my score is missing, grr), and found it highly enjoyable. The car physics feel right and racing against the top scorers was a HUGE motivation (even playing against my own ghost car was great). The only thing I missed was a bigger (configurable) game screen, so I had to turn down my resolution for playing…

That’s the priviledge of the judge - to rate by personal opinion. That’s absolutely fine. Also I think that for every participant it’s absolute fine to question the score they get. If that leads to a (heated) discussion, it’s also fine. But lets all keep in mind that this was a GREAT competition with GREAT games and a LOT OF FUN. So everone here be glad you participated (as dev or judge).

Also now the score is fixed, so let’s focus discussion of score rules for next year. Please stop this “it would have been” and “The first score was better” comments. My vote goes for the proposed “bin” rating and a special treatment for “does not run”, which should not be omitted but just weighted differently. Also the range of JDKs to test on should be announced before and there should be a release deadline followed by a week or two of compatibility testing by the judges (just start up every game and see if it runs, accepts keyboard input etc.), so the authors would have a chance to fix the problems before the actual reviews.

The last point I’d like to make is some kind of special “innovation” or “originality” score because of the rating of frequent flyer. IMO it’s not wise to penalize an author for using new uncertain paths, just because the judges don’t have the right equipment. And come on folks - no mic??? You get a headset for under $10 at any consumer electronics retailer - and you can use this with skype afterwards :o

:smiley: :smiley: :smiley: But again for all judges and devs of this year GREAT WORK, GREAT REVIEWS, GREAT GAMES - Thank You All :smiley: :smiley: :smiley:

#74

Thanks darkfrog, I really appreciate the comments!

cylab:
Thanks for changing the direction of the discussion, I agree that we’ve discussed the past enough now. As for an innovation score, here are my two cents: I thought about it, and in fact was about to propose the same thing, because I felt it would be an interesting addition. Just before I proposed it I realized something, however: having only four kilobytes limits you a lot, and the goal of the contest is (I think?) to push as much content as you can into 4kb.

I believe that adding an innovation category might make authors focus on originality instead of getting the most out of the space, thus making java4k more similar to other game creation contests. While I absolutely love the “innovation” category of contests like ludumdare, I do not think we should add it to this contest. But that’s just my personal opinion, feel free to disagree. :slight_smile:

#75

Thanks Cylab! Your score is still there. Click on the Top 100 Players link. Your 5th of all time! http://craig.dlinkddns.com/WorldRallyDriver/highscores.html?Top100 The main HighScore table is a rolling high score table (probably should mention that somewhere).

Totally agree with all your other comments too! Good post! :slight_smile:

#76

Ah, good to know…

Holy SHI**, I got beaten at USA :frowning: Now I have to abadon all my responsibilities and go for that score again - SIGH :wink:

#77

IMHO it’s not a bad thing to focus on originality :wink:

Anyway, since this would be a another voting category, it won’t dictate the overall score but only influence it by a fourth. And you get a separate originality score table like the other category score tables, so original/innovative games would gain visibility.

#78

IIRC it was stated somewhere that this would happen, but I think it got cut because of time constraints.

#79

I’ve just been testing here, and NiGHTS works for me on .07, .11 and .12, so I don’t think it’s a u12 thing. I’m on XP 32bit though, so my guess is it’s either a Vista or a 64bit issue.

I’ve sent you a pm with an url for testing, it’d be great if you could give that a try when you’ve got a moment.

#80

Will do. You may need to bump me because it will be next week before I will be able test on my Vista machine (I’m on vacation at the moment).