Time Frame Discussion

Time Frame Discussion

rbwhitaker 10 Nov 2015 13:38

We were discussing the next competition in the forum last night, and tentatively settled on January 2016. That gives us a month and a half to get ready for it.

It's sort of a happy coincidence that those dates line up with the month boundary and start on a Friday and end on a Sunday (start and end on weekends) like I prefer, which is nice.

Those dates aren't set in stone at this point, so if you're interested in joining the competition, but want to propose a shift in dates, feel free to do so. (There are few enough people who do these competitions, and enough lead time right now that we can still shift dates easily.)

Re: Time Frame Discussion

rbwhitaker 10 Nov 2015 13:42

I should probably put down a deadline for deciding on dates. Let's say the end of the day a week from now. End of the day on the 17th of November. If you want different dates, speak up by then!

Re: Time Frame Discussion

Swatacular 10 Nov 2015 13:49

I'm fine with the dates 1st through the 31st..

Re: Time Frame Discussion

Marcus42 10 Nov 2015 15:51

Having the competition span the month of January does work for me, so if that's what everyone wants, let's go for it! However, that would just narrowly miss Christmas Break for me, in which I'd have a lot of extra time to program, so I'm also going to throw out the dates December 18th to January 17th. (Or, if people would rather, the 19th to the 18th.) If these aren't optimal for most (or any) people, though, then I vote for having it in January.

Re: Time Frame Discussion

Brett208 11 Nov 2015 10:29

I would enjoy participating in the Challenge. However, my family and I are moving in January. So the suggested timeline wouldn't work for me.

My goal is to complete the game I've been working on by the end of the year and submit for peer review. It is very close, but very close on a large project always means more work left than I think! I'm currently doing major refactoring on the code that governs character movement, which is I believe the 4th time I've rewritten it. :|

If the competition falls partially in December, I'll plan on participating. If not, I likely won't participate, hopefully because the project is done more than I am just busy with the move.

Something around 4DEC-30JAN would work best for me.

-Brett

Re: Time Frame Discussion

rbwhitaker 20 Nov 2015 03:55

I've been meaning to come back here and add another post, but I've been so busy with other things, I haven't had a chance to catch my breath and write a post. But seeing as how the deadline I originally posted has come and gone, I think I need to rearrange my priorities enough to come back and post here anyway…

So based on talking to people in the forum and in the comments here, that a lot of people would probably prefer something earlier than January. Like many of you have stated, I too have plenty of time off around Christmas and could put it to good use.

I think I'm convinced we should move the start up a bit.

Now that we've decided that, we need to figure out exactly when we're going to do this thing.

Right now, the two date ranges that have been proposed are:

• 18th of December to 17th of January
• 4th of December to 3rd of January

I'm going to throw in another option that I think is worth discussion. Swatacular came up with it in the forum, and there's a lot I like about it:

• 18th of December to 31st of January

This date range would make the competition officially a 6-week competition. The people who have time off around the holidays could take advantage of it. The people who are too busy with family to do any game dev over that time frame can mostly put it off until January 1st and still get a full month in.

In addition, there has been quite a bit of talk about doing longer competitions. Definitely, most people in these competitions have been continuing development after the competition officially ends, sometimes spanning multiple competitions. It seems like experimenting with a longer competition might be interesting.

I'm not trying to convince anybody of these dates or the longer time frame. (Though I do think I like it, personally.) I'm just putting it out there as an option.

I think we need a few more days to really figure out the new time frame, so let's talk about this through Monday the 23rd. I'll try to go get a theme thread going in case we decide to move it up to December 4th, which is really only a couple of weeks away at this point.

Re: Time Frame Discussion

Marcus42 21 Nov 2015 18:26

I really like the idea of having the six week competition for a lot of the same reasons that you gave - that has my vote!

Re: Time Frame Discussion

rbwhitaker 24 Nov 2015 01:24

Only a few more hours to weigh in on dates for the competition (barring somebody presenting yet another creative idea). Otherwise, I think we'll just go with the 6 week competition, starting on the 18th.

Re: Time Frame Discussion

Brett208 27 Nov 2015 19:55

Was a final decision made on the starting date? The 18th sounds fine to me. I'll probably be fairly inactive the second half of the contest due to other life commitments, but will still check in and see how everyone else is progressing!

-Brett

Re: Time Frame Discussion

rbwhitaker 30 Nov 2015 15:00

Yeah, there wasn't any dissent to the 6-week time frame, running from the 18th of December through the 31st of January, so I think that's pretty well finalized now.