pouët.net

Ok, so things are moving forward. It would be cool to hear what you guys would like as challenges. I really like Preacher's really simple suggestion of "3D starfield", but it would be very interesting to see more suggestions!

You got your challenges right here scene.org effect poll

gloom: Old-school effects reborn is always fun :)

*facepalm*

Excellent suggestion. :) Ok, so we have these as well then:

I'd say no to...

Copperbars - hardware effect that's absolutely pointless to do unless you're on the hardware.
Phong shading - That's a technique, not an effect in itself. A "rotating object" would be an effect, and you could phong-shade it if you wanted to.
Multi-scrollers - I'd say that a "scroller" is a better idea, since you can make many if you want or then just make a good one.
Hypnoglow - Doesn't offer much chance for innovation I guess
Bump mapping - With parallax mapping techniques and all that, is it really an effect nowadays or is it a technique to be used in conjunction with something else?

I'd like to have something more open-ended like "interference", "infinity zoomer" or "scroller". And yes, the timezone thing is an issue. A week is a long time to procrastinate on a small task, but perhaps it wouldn't too long?

From the top of my head: fire, cloth, landscape, black hole, zoomer, flower, splines, rain, glass, feedback, spring, blur, light, electricity, .

or even more abstract, conceptual ones like galaxy, wallpaper, darkness, crystal, power, atom ...

i'm more curious about the techical restraints.

what resources are allowed? (textures? meshes? how many?)
what platforms? (is there an upper limit?)
what size limitations?
what interactivity?

etc.

Preacher: excellent feedback! I like the idea of switching between two types of challenges, like "conceptual" and "concrete".

Gargaj: it's completely up in the air. I'm hoping you guys will contribute to throw up suggestions for limitations and such. With regards to file size, I think it shouldn't be about that really, but still something reasonable. Resources: if you make them, you can use them? Platforms: this is perhaps the most interesting one, and I don't really want to influence that too much. I think it should be open for many people though, with perhaps some exceptions. Interactivity.. a simple yes or no? Or change with the challenges?

So, an example challenge could be:

Topic: 3D starfield
Max filesize: 10 MB
Interactivity: Yes

..and then we'll need to figure out something for the deadlines so that we don't exclude anyone because they just happen to live in a country that digests more than it's fair share of pancakes. :)

I don't see why there should be any artificial limits, since any cheating or lameness would be quite easy to spot if publishing the source code and material is a requirement.

Being that it will probably be a lone coder working on this it might make the barrier to entry lower if you allow the use of public domain texture packs and other such useful resources.

mmm... pancakes.

I'm not too sold on required interactivity. For me the fun of coding comes from the actual coding of the scene, and I sure as hell do enough user input parsing at work :) If it's cool to interact with, I'm sure that the voters will reward for this accordingly.

Not to mention assets made by friends. I don't see why this couldn't be a (demo)group effort as well.

i understand that the rules would be tailor-made for every compo, but the question was more about tendency.

is it okay to precalculate half the effect in textures, lookup tables, mesh data just because it runs faster / looks better that way but ends up several times bigger?

the thing about interactivity is that it would really put emphasis on the versatility of the effect (after all if there's no music, there's no flow, so might as well?)

Gargaj: to pre-calculate sine/cosine must be STRICTLY FORBIDDEN!

That was just an example of things variying over the different challenges. As in: I can see cases where it would be exciting to mix things up a bit by saying something like:

"Okay, in this one, the fractal landscape-challenge, interactivity is required. However, you can decide on what kind of interactivity you choose to incorporate. It can be adjusting your cruising speed by blowing into the microphone, or mouse to move around, or changing from day to night by using the arrow keys".

You know, that sort of thing. :)

Yeah, that was actually what I ment, though the phrase "you make it" was perhaps badly chosen. :)

how about color restrictions? in one compo, an example: "colors allowed: red and blue nuances." in another compo: "all colors allowed" etc..

one additional effect i just remembered:
- voxels

another thing that would be cool if not weird, how about also have some challenges like make the coders try an solve a task or use their imagination implement or merge specific algorithms together to make an effect.
it doesnt have to be strict rules for this because you dont have to be a math genious, but your task could be to make something look like a specific merged-effect. oh, well, i guess its quite obvious anyway, but things we havent seen before, like voxel-fractal-zoomer or bubble-fire-effect or something like that. just something that is imaginative. things that can be a bit tricky to apply with a specific algorithm but might be a challenge for the coders if you want it to look unique. could be cool to see what ppl come up with.

it might be old effect that you and i have allready seen before but imagination is probably important to make it look interesting. we may've seen them around but it is actually two effects into another and you could be quite inovative:

- fire cube (old effect but what the heck, ppl can come up with something cooler)
- freedirectional voxel fractal zoomer (now, wouldnt that be a challenge? might be hard to implement freedirectional voxels in software, so fd excluded but you know)
- sphere voxels (seen allready, but how about make it look like the sun?)

and here are some additional effects:
- plants
- clouds
- gels
- text-writer (or could be greetings type of thing, not long lines of text)

hum. i think we've covered alot now. so its up for gloom or the organizers to really make it happen! :D

i = we

Why not have some special compos inbetween, like e.g 4k procedural pouet logo gfx compo, but i guess that would be to hard for a fun compo.

books
flooding things
grassfields
exploding trailer wagons
timelapsing things getting older (fruit, houses, threes, people...)
use *this 3D-model* in your work
bending metal plates
normal view changing after taking some kind of drug
procedural realtime 1D-rendering (there is one 1D demo that use jpg's)
bursting lightbulb
sunset
gayest thing ever
using embossing to make something goodlooking for once

computer screen divided into small square called pixels
digital world created only with triangles
hexagonal columns
cubes rotating on screen
flashing the screen in sync with music
moving text in curvy line over screen

isnt 10 megs a bit much? if i where to host a compo i would make that 1-2 megs unpacked. only because that fitted a 3.5 inch diskette in the early days :P

click here to download the reference implementation

*g*

Why not 1.44 megs packed, then? Plus, why not make the limit 4 gigs, since that's basically the size of the USB stick that replaced floppies?

I don't think archive-size is very important, it should just be something that makes the contributions managable, really. Color-restrictions don't really sound too exciting either, exept perhaps one challenge where only grayscale is allowed.