Well, we managed to pull off another decent game in the collaboration. Although there are some things we didn't get to because of the 8 hour time frame, the project is playable and represents a great base for adding stuff in the future. Participants in this collab included RBWhitaker, Brett208, and PiscesMike.

Code can be downloaded from:
https://bitbucket.org/xeviousteam/xevious

The video below has some free youtube music since I still haven't figured out how to capture audio with my video recording software, but the game itself includes 12 background music tracks courtesy of Incompetech which are selected from randomly, and some laser shooting sound effects.

At any rate, this is up for discussion, so if you don't think something is going to work for you, speak up.

1. We'll use a shared repository for the code. My preference is BitBucket and Mercurial, but if somebody refused BitBucket, I could probably be talked into GitHub and Git. With BitBucket, the maximum team size before needing to pay for it is 5 people. But with a 1-day event, I can't imagine being useful with more than 5 people anyway, so if we hit that limit, we split into two teams.
2. I can do Mercurial/BitBucket training via Twitch on Friday if people want a crash course. I do also have tutorials. I know a lot of people around here are already using Mercurial and BitBucket, so I won't do this unless people ask.
3. We can talk via the chat room during development.
4. I'd be open to a voice chat server, but I know that doesn't work for everybody, and the last time we did that, we, er, uh… got kicked out. So I'm less inclined to go with this approach, but if somebody wants to make it easy for us, I'd join in, personally.
5. We've usually made a design document using Google Docs. It works really well for outlining our plans. I'd suggest we do it again.
6. I'd love to find a "shared whiteboard" system somehow. When I'm doing development, I have two whiteboards (one on the wall, and a smaller one on my desk). It's great for drawing out things. Perhaps there's a free Windows Store app (did you guys upgrade to Win 10 yet?) or just a website that we could use. I don't know what it would be at this point. Maybe I'll do a little research. At any rate, this would be intended for short little side discussions (design, etc.) that need something more than just text.
7. While we've never tried it, I might also be interested in managing the things we want to do in something like Target Process or Trello. Trello is definitely lighter weight. I like Target Process much better, but perhaps Trello is a better fit for this sort of thing. But maybe the Google Doc is good enough.

The other thing I want to talk about here is to start a discussion about how to deal with the initial stuff. It seems like the problem is, we can't just easily jump in without stomping on each others' toes. There's not much stuff that can be shared right at the very beginning. And in the past, that meant spending an hour or two up front with everybody waiting for somebody (me) to get enough put together that they can pull down the repository and start making their own changes. It's bad for everybody, because it's wasted time, and it's bad for me, because the pressure falls on me to get the design done (a) correctly and (b) quickly.

I don't know the answer to this, but here are a few options:

1. We decide on a game early. Perhaps by Wednesday night. That gives us two evenings (or mornings or whatever) to start brainstorming what we want to do and how. That puts us in a position where we might have enough in the way of boundaries between the various pieces thought out that we could actually simultaneously start development at the beginning.
2. We have an optional 1 or 2 hour session in advance of the 8 hours where people who are particularly interested in this upfront design/architecture can work together to get it right. (Basically pack #1 into a 1-2 hour thing just before the collab.)
3. Same as #2, but I just do it myself, rather than lots of discussion, and I stream it on Twitch and explain what I'm doing. Because there's no discussion among a group, ("I am not a committee!") I can get through it faster (probably 30 to 60 minutes instead) and because it's on Twitch, people can see how it all works in advance so I don't have to explain it all repeatedly. This of course leaves the unresolved issue of I'm doing a bunch of the interesting stuff without people, which I'm not a huge fan of. (It's a collab, after all.)
4. Of course the problem with the other three proposals is that the time starts to sink into other hours and even other days. So this option would be to do one of the earlier options in the first hour or two of the official collab, and just deal with it eating into our time. This is less of a problem if you think you might hang around for a while after the official 8-hour block ends.
5. Or… just make the competition 10 hours instead of 8. Personally, I like 8. It leaves time in the evening to go back to things you put off all day. And it's a full work day, so it kind of showcases what you can get done in a day of programming, if you have no distractions. (Honestly, I get way more done in these collabs than in a typical work day. It's sad but true.)

Anyway… I know that's a lot to digest. I'm open to other possibilities for both of these topics. Like I said, the sooner we can get the discussion started (and ended) the better. We don't have much time left at this point. (That's really my fault though for not getting the ball rolling before I left on vacation.)

To that end, here are some suggestions that came up in previous collabs that went unused:

• Asteroids
• Thrust
• Joust
• Breakout
• Qbert

And here's a few more ideas that might push us in slightly different directions, although I feel like these might be a little harder.

• Qix (line drawing could get interesting…)
• Xevious (just generally a more complicated game, but possibly within our reach)
• Dvorak Card Game (Basically a card game engine, rather than a specific game. Perhaps this would include/require some sort of scripting language that we load in from a file.)

For some reason, I'm suddenly really liking the Dvorak one. Somebody talk me out of it before I get us in too deep.

We don't know exactly what time we'll start yet, and I know people are scattered across the world. I know that for some people, even if you were really interested in joining this, but a bad time got chosen for you, that might be a deal breaker.

So we need to figure out the time still, and I know some people won't be able to really sign up until we do so. The trick is that the best time depends quite a bit on who joins us, and how many people join. If everybody is within a couple hours of each other (last time we had all USA people) then it's pretty simple. Or if we end up with 4 in the US and 4 in Europe, we can break the collab into two teams and run them at different times.

So… I guess what I'm saying is, please go ahead and sign up if you're interested, even if you think the timing might end up being a deal breaker for you. (Maybe people can put their name, plus the country they live in, or the time zone they're in or something.)

We won't hold you to the sign-up list. If you sign up but then drop out, that's OK. And if you don't sign up, we'd still be happy to have you drop in the day of the collab anyway.

We still need to:

1. Make a signup list.
2. Pick a time. (Probably dependent on who's joining.)
3. Pick a game to make.
4. Perhaps talk strategy about collaboration and how to handle the initial core setup stuff. I know we didn't have that working very well during the first Collab, and while I've honestly forgotten, I don't think we really had it solved much better the second time around.

I'd propose C#/XNA, though I don't think it would be too hard to convince me to go the MonoGame route, since I think most of us here could use a little more MonoGame experience (including myself). We'd get more done with XNA, I think, but MonoGame would be a good use of time.

And of course, if we get 5+ people jumping in, I'd probably suggest splitting into a couple of teams. Maybe even competing with different technology stacks or something. Just for fun.

We can talk about what game to make in a separate thread. I just want to know what day might work well for people.

Saturdays tend to be the best for the most people, so I think we aim for one of those. And I want to give people enough time to take time off from work or ask for a different shift, or otherwise make time available on their calendar. So I'm thinking sometime in mid-April maybe.

So I'll put the 11th of April, the 18th of April, and the 25th of April as options. Any thoughts? Any of those days particularly good or bad for people?