text:
The 2014 GDSE Winter Game Jam
The jam has ended!
And by the number of votes, John McDonald is the winner! Congratulations to everyone who participated in the jam! See you next time, sometime during late Spring.

Please review all posted answers and upvote the games that you like!
Voting will end on Sunday, the 9th of February.
Note: We have extended the jam's duration by a day, due to timezone issues.
We've decided that the winter GameJam will take place between Jan 31
5 PM and Feb 3 5PM UTC time.
The Jam has started. Post your games as answers to this question. Submission deadline for your timezone
The Theme is "Time is Broken"

The rules
--------- Mostly similar to those used in the previous jam, with a couple of differences.

Participants are allowed to write games for any platform.
All publicly available libraries and middleware are allowed.    All publicly available creation tools (e.g. Photoshop or 3DS Max) are
allowed.
The entrant is allowed use any premade assets as long as    they're freely available on the web and the licenses allow them to be    used
in an open source project (e.g. opengameart.org).
Assets created by the entrant during the game jam may also be used.
The forming of teams is not allowed.
Each entrant may ask questions on the main    gamedev.stackexchange site, as long as the questions are on-topic as    per normal site
rules. Alternatively, the chatroom may also be used.
Each entrant must release their game as open source after attaching a    license of their choice.

The two voting questions that I have opened have been answered:

Participants are free to write games that are not web based if they so desire.
The theme will be selected at random, from a list of possible themes, by a computer program.

Just to note my concerns for next time: The start/end times for North America start ~10am on Friday (a work day), and end at ~10am on Sunday. Consider expanding the range to cover the weekend for all time zones.

http://i.stack.imgur.com/tgcif.jpg

This question has been closed to prevent new answers (submissions) from being posted after the deadline.

Congrats to everyone that finished!

Locked for posterity.

Out of Time
Play Now  *works best in Chrome (CraftyJS may throw an exception in FF, sorry)
Arrow keys or WSAD to move. No other controls. Sound isn't required, but it gives you audio queues and is really helpful.
I don't want to say too much else because you need to figure it out yourself.
Source
BitBucket Mercurial Repository
Made using CraftyJS, Tiled Map Editor, Tiled Map Builder for CraftyJS, and all sorts of art from OpenGameArt.org:

Mountain Terrain
Town & Other Terrain Features
Heroine
Heroine Hair
Skeleton
Clock Sound

Gear pickups were replaced post-jam by a friend of mine: Landon Deren.
The gear pickup sound was created using as3sfxr
I created two original pieces: The "bones" sound, and the "wake up" sound.

It doesn't appear to work 100% correctly in IE 10 either; I assume that's expected (because, you know, it's IE)?

Is there a way to restart without refreshing the page? The game took a good 15 seconds to load and I just learned that skeletons don't like hugs. (Nothing happens after "YOU ARE DEAD".)

@JoshPetrie, Yeah... Sounds about right, and sorry about that

@Anko, I was planning to have a way to reset the game, but as of right now, the only thing you can do is press F5

Makes it more important to stay alive, eh?

It's called "hardcore mode," it's a feature! (Works in Safari, by the way, a bit jittery at the start but otherwise fine, I think.)

Time Is Broken
I didn't have enough time to get it working, so I did not bother with a proper title.
Here it is, just like how I didn't plan it. Too little time, and experience as this was my first jam, but I'm still proud of it. Scriptable entities and everything!
So it has a time thingie. It might not be apparant, but the glitch happening every 30 seconds is why time is broken in this game. Therefore it is completly valid entry! It does not work at all as I intended, but at least it has something related to time being broken.
While I acknowledge it is a really bad game, I still hope it is not the worst in the jam. ;) Anyway, I still had fun creating it and I will participate in upcoming jams.
Download and sources
Sources are available on github, and you can download the debug build from here.
How to play
Arrow keys move, space bar shoots. Nothing else in there.
Technical details
I used C# and OpenTK, and developed it under Linux. It should work on any platform with mono or .NET 4.0 installed. No other libraries used. I wrote the ECS engine and sprite renderer myself. If you wish to have more information about anything in the code, please ask me in the GD.SE chat.
All textures used in the game are from OpenGameArt.Org. Thanks for releasing such great resources!
I release all source code included in the git repository under MIT licence.

Nice work Lasse. It's certainly related to time being broken.

Pew Pew - In the broken time
This is a game I began to work on for full some days ago. Now its ready with a little storyline about the time is broken. Hope you enjoy it. Controls: the arrow keys and clicking on button.
Game: https://www.mediafire.com/?w5ty1d3q233k0u0
Source: https://www.mediafire.com/?mhmje9za4o6scje
I have made all the resources by myself.
Git publish is coming soon, but right now I have some problems with pushing to GitHub
I'm using Eclipse Public License v1.0

Crashed in the middle of a battle :(. At version 0.0.3, I can't wait to see what version 1.0.0 will look like!

@Byte56 I don't know why. It is not happening on my pc. Is it reproducing?

Yeah, just click away from the game window, then click the game window again to give it focus. Crashes every time.

@Byte56 Weird. I tested it out right now, but no crash when i defocused and focused the window

Ah, appears to only happen when on a different monitor than the main monitor in a multi-monitor setup.

This is neat. I upvoted it so in return at least work more on it. It can become quite awesome with more polish work :)

@AlexM. :D Finally something useful that I have made. This is just 0.0.3 version so more is coming. :D

Broken Time
A very quick game created on iOS. To play the game, open Xcode and run the app on your device. If you would like to change the way the game is controlled, change the 'preferredInput' variable in GameViewController.m (0 = tilt, 1 = dpad, 2 = external keyboard)
Source
https://github.com/javadog36/Broken-Time
Credits

Platformer Art - Kenney (kenney.nl)
Town Music - CynicMusic (cynicmusic.com)
Battle Music - CynicMusic (cynicmusic.com)
Raygun Sound - Apollo Music (apollo-music.de)
Spider Sounds - Ogrebane (opengameart.com)

Hah, those are quite a lot of requirements (Mac OS X, Xcode, a developer's license...). Could you please show us a gameplay video instead? Not a lot of people would be able to play your game I believe, and it would be a pity to not get voted if it's good.

@AlexM. I don't think you need a developer's license to just run the app on a device. In any case, I'll try to put together a video later

You do. You can run it on the simulator, but not an actual device (plus you need to provision the device, which many people may not want to do for their carry phone if that's all they have).

@JoshPetrie Ah. Well it should work on the simulator if you enable the dpad. I'll put together a video later.

So I still need to go buy a Mac, or buy a copy of OSX to run in a VM?

@MickLH Yes, but as a response, I would need to buy a Windows computer to run most other games. We were allowed to create non-web games in this contest ;)

@javadog36 non sense, you can always use wine (or it's equivalent for mac!)

@Ali.S I've always found that wine doesn't work too well

@javadog36 I'm still looking forward for the video. :) BTW There are no windows-only games submitted. My game runs on any platform that can run mono (including mac), joapet's game is using java and I was able to run it on my linux machine, and John's game is web-based which runs on any html5-enabled platform. I also got Mick's engine to build on my linux machine, though I did not get it to run properly. But that is most likely because of for some reason I can not use GL3 contexts on this laptop even if there is support for it.

@Lasse If I do make a video, it may not be for awhile (sorry). My schedule has filled up rather quickly, and I'm not going to have the time to make one anytime soon :/

Find the game
Here's the engine half finished, the game is to figure out how to play it and have fun, this counts "time" and "broken" right? ;)
Source: https://github.com/micklh/MagicWorks
(I'm joking, although please do post "High Scores" if anyone manages to play it :P)

could you please also upload a binary?

I believe it is part of the game to find (build) the binary


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Suggest or choose a theme for the 2014 Winter GDSE Game Jam!
Suggest a theme if you have one on your mind, upvote the themes that have already been suggested and you like, and downvote those that you do not like. I'll add some to get us started.
Format (with Byte's filler text that I shamelessly stole, to get answers to meet length criteria):
Theme Name
-
Vote up the themes you want, vote down the themes you don't.

Choosing random from the top 5 or what?

That was suggested yes. Seems like a good idea to me.

Time is broken.
Vote up the themes you want; vote down the themes you don't.

Chain reaction.
Vote up the themes you want; vote down the themes you don't.

Replication.
Vote up the themes you want; vote down the themes you don't.

Amplify.
Vote up the themes you want; vote down the themes you don't.

Glitches
Vote up the themes you want; vote down the themes you don't.

Survival of the fittest.
Vote up the themes you want; vote down the themes you don't.

Rules are made to be broken.
Vote up the themes you want; vote down the themes you don't.

Sandbox
Vote up the themes you want; vote down the themes you don't.

Swarm
Vote up the themes you want; vote down the themes you don't.

Abnormal Inputs
Vote up the themes you want; vote down the themes you don't.

Rage Quit
Vote up the themes you want; vote down the themes you don't.

Build It
Vote up the themes you want; vote down the themes you don't.

Mad scientist.
Vote up the themes you want; vote down the themes you don't.

Lights and Visibility
Vote up the themes you want; vote down the themes you don't.

Trust no one.
Vote up the themes you want; vote down the themes you don't.

Expect the Unexpected.
Vote up the themes you want; vote down the themes you don't.

Sub zero
Vote up the themes you want; vote down the themes you don't.

Fractals
Vote up the themes you want; vote down the themes you don't.

Reap what you sow.
Vote up the themes you want; vote down the themes you don't.

Education.
Vote up the themes you want; vote down the themes you don't.

Organic vs machine.
Vote up the themes you want; vote down the themes you don't.

Wireframe
Vote up the themes you want; vote down the themes you don't.

It's Alive!
Vote up the themes you want; vote down the themes you don't.

You are what you eat
Vote up the themes you want; vote down the themes you don't.

Reticulating splines.
Vote up the themes you want; vote down the themes you don't.

Time Travelling Snowmen
Vote up the themes you want; vote down the themes you don't.

Benefits of Failure
Vote up the themes you want; vote down the themes you don't.

Angry machines
Vote up the themes you want; vote down the themes you don't.

States of matter.
Vote up the themes you want; vote down the themes you don't.

Dreams
Vote up the themes you want; vote down the themes you don't.

Bigger on the inside.
Vote up the themes you want; vote down the themes you don't.

Todders
Vote up the themes you want; vote down the themes you don't.

Rhythm and Rhyme
Vote up the themes you want; vote down the themes you don't.

Forgetfulness
Vote up the themes you want; vote down the themes you don't.

Hacking
Vote up the themes you want; vote down the themes you don't.

Gotta collect 'em all!
Vote up the themes you want; vote down the themes you don't.

World Peace
Vote up the themes you want; vote down the themes you don't.

Dark and Light
Vote up the themes you want; vote down the themes you don't.

Baby, it's cold outside
Vote up the themes you want; vote down the themes you don't.

Local Multiplayer
Vote up the themes you want; vote down the themes you don't.

Lack of snow
Vote up the themes you want; vote down the themes you don't.

Less is more
Vote up the themes you want; vote down the themes you don't.

Suicide
Vote up the themes you want; vote down the themes you don't.

Save the world
Vote up the themes you want; vote down the themes you don't.

1999 Mode
Vote up the themes you want; vote down the themes you don't.

Miami Vice
Vote up the themes you want; vote down the themes you don't.

source: Stack Exchange

license: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

sort: votes


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Vote for the 2014 Winter Game Jam logo!
We of the chatrooms have decided that we wanted to make a new logo for the Winter Game Jam, honoring the amazing hats that SE and Elias Stein (the artist) have provided for us this winter. We are going to be posting possible logos in the next week or so, so keep visiting this post until the jam, and vote on your favorites. Anyone in the community is welcome to submit their own version of the logo, the original is right here!

Please, no downvotes. Only upvotes for the ones that you like!
Answers to this question are to include only the picture and a short, 1-2 sentence description.

Maybe someone can take this and do something nicer with it:

It's supposed to be something like a snowflake.

Goddamit Byte, you classy upstaging bastard you :D

Somebody suggested a fractal theme already right? Right?

And here is my Snowflake GDSE complete with snowman

With transparency and slightly larger:

Now with more jam:

Perhaps transparent background though if this one wins :)

I agree @Dave. Also, where is the jam?

@Pip in the jar.

I have a feeling I'd like this even without anything in the middle. Good job!

Look. At. Byte's.

This logo is simple, but exemplifies the winter and our hosts, the SE staff.

No "winter is coming" hat? :P

@JoshPetrie I tried it, but it didn't fit the dimensions of the jar very well.... the santa hat fit only slightly better

all_licenses: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/


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What makes this question too broad?
I ask this specifically for one of my own question but I'd like to know what the standard is when question get closed for being "too broad." Anyway let's discuss mine first:
https://gamedev.stackexchange.com/questions/68715/pixel-density-in-modern-games
I do not see why this is too broad. I already put down a standard for the year 2008 by mentioning Half-Life. I pretty much ask for nowadays standard, not a specific, not a list of all games from past year, just a standard I can aim for. I believe this could be a couple lines of text with a newish title or perhaps a link as source. So why would this question be broad?
Why would other questions be too broad? I see some questions around SE that have answers the size of two pages, would those be too broad? What about multiple answers does that make a question too broad?
Back to my question, or rather compare it to another one:
LOD in modern games
This one is about level of detail in modern (asked in 2010) titles. It is basically the same except I ask for pixel density. Yet this LOD question turned out to be very helpful.
Also, why can just one guy close my question?

Well for one, you don't specify your platform.  Pixel density (or probably more accurately described as "texel density") on a modern iPhone game vs. a PC game can be quite varied.  It can also vary depending on what your desired min spec platform is or the kind of game you're making or the kind of tech you're using.
Texel density if you're using something like virtual texturing or dynamic texturing can be quite a bit higher than if you're doing your standard mechanisms for repeating textures.  Indoor games vs outdoor games can also matter.  It can also vary depending on how many different types of textures you need in your scene based on your visual target.
A better question for the site would be how to make the decisions on texel density rather than what other games do.  Because the specifics of your platforms, visuals, and so forth are going to determine what your decisions should be.

The question you asked is "do modern games use a higher pixel density than four pixels per inch?" along with a related follow up, "how far do games stray from that rule?" (all emphasis mine).
I assert that this question is too broad because:

The domain of all modern games is so large that no one person can realistically have the relevant knowledge of it, and therefore it's very unlikely for there to be single correct answer to the question.
"Modern" is localized in time, and while you provide a timeframe for your initial example implicitly, by naming a particular game, you don't provide a timeframe for what "modern" is.
This is not a subject for which there is a standard within the industry, so different games are very likely to do very different things (that all have various pros and cons) based on the specific needs of that game, it's platform, or what have you.

Further, I believe the question is inappropriate for at least one other reason (not in a "too broad" sense, but in more of an "off topic" sense):

You are asking about what is essentially industry trivia, and not about a specific problem you are having building your own game. Industry trivia isn't something we have generally considered on-topic here (there have been a few related meta discussions that touch on the topic).

I believe there's a good question here, and I presume you do want this knowledge for some project of yours, but we have to work with the questions as they are written, there's only so much jumping-to-conclusions that we can reasonably do without running too much of a risk of misinterpreting the asker and providing misleading answers. (if you really do just want to have a discussion about it, that's also great, but this isn't the site for it; there's a list of good places to have such a discussion in the Help Center, including our own chat). I think a better way to phrase that question would be along the lines of asking for a good texel density measure to achieve a certain level of visual fidelity on a certain platform under certain normal gameplay conditions, for example.
To address some of your other questions:

I see some questions around SE that have answers the size of 2 pages,
  would those be to broad?

Maybe; probably. The number of answers a question could have is less of an indicator than the size of any single potential answer is. Further, just because "other SE" sites permit a certain level of broadness doesn't mean this one does. Finally, just because you can find a similar example of a question that did remain open doesn't make a case for either side: it's possible the other question was just missed, for example, or (as in the case of that LOD question, it could be that the question was asked before a current policy was enacted; the LOD question is from 2010). It's also possible I'm wrong, in which case the community can overturn my voting decision or discuss the issue here on meta.

Also, why can just one guy close my question?

It's a privilege I have as an elected site moderator. The balance for that privilege is that the community can still overturn my binding close vote with a sufficient number of reopen votes on the question.


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What direction should we give askers of "is my approach viable" questions?
Consider the following question:
How can I handle merging and splitting lots in a city block?
The original version of this question presents a reasonable problem that the asker would like a solution for. It is a well-defined, interesting problem relevant to game development, and would make a good question on this site.
Unfortunately, the asker then went on to present a pretty viable-sounding solution within the question itself and the actual question posed was "is this solution viable?" This reduces the question to a yes-or-no question, and perhaps related follow-up, but it generally does not make for a good question or good answers. We typically close this questions for a variety of reasons, usually because they are opinion-based or too broad (since we lack the relevant details and background to actually address the viability of the solution unless it's totally off the rails).
I would like to save these sorts of questions. So how should we go about that?

Our previous discussion on this topic:  http://meta.gamedev.stackexchange.com/questions/1048/how-can-i-do-x-my-idea-is-to-use-plan-y-would-that-work  And one from meta.stackoverflow:  http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/108969/best-way-to-deal-with-questions-answered-by-the-op-in-the-question-instead-of-in

Oh, I completely failed to find those. Thanks.

I have also noticed that quite often the community asks for more information than the basic question. Which often leads to the attempt at a solution / partial solution appearing in the question.

What I think we should do for these questions (modified slightly per the MSO post that Trevor helpfully pointed me at) is:

Remove the proposed solution or current approach from the question.
Edit the question so that instead of asking "is this okay?" or "any suggestions or advice for improvements?" parts, it is simply asking "how can I accomplish this?"
Post the proposed solution as a community wiki answer.

This allows the asker to get their original question ("is this a good idea?") answered implicitly based on the number of upvotes their answer gets. It also allows room for other users to post alternative solutions without having to wiggle around the rather poorly-suited-for-the-site query of "is this okay?" and it avoids the feeling of cheapness one might get by gaining reputation through an answer that is just restating a proposed solution (via the community wiki flag).
Obviously this should only apply if the proposed solution is actually a viable one; as pointed out in our original discussion on this topic, it's possible that the user's solution is really just a demonstration of steps they've tried that aren't working for them.

But as note, sometimes asking a question and giving it an answer could be received poorly by the community. The answer might not be downvoted. But also might not be upvoted, so the upvotes might not reflect the actual quality of the answer.

Yes, but that is always true across all questions and answers on the site, so I think that's a wash.

@concept3d: I can't say that won't ever happen, but it definitely shouldn't.

I just tried to apply this solution here: http://gamedev.stackexchange.com/questions/72023/should-i-make-a-game-business , and I found it doesn't work for closed questions. Alas.


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Why is there no voting for closing or holding questions?
I've been on StackExchange sites for over a couple years, some sites work, others don't. What concerns me about this site is the amount of "on hold" questions that are closed by only one person. On stackexchange it takes 5 votes to close a question, which is fine. But after spending a couple months on this site, it is starting to seem to me like it's someone's personal kingdom and not a community Q&A site... If community feels like a question is off topic, let community decide so.
Consider my last question on animation timings that was closed by a single person 4 minutes after it being posted.

It takes five votes to close a question on any StackExchange site. It also takes a single vote from a moderator to close a question (which is what happened in the case of your question).
When a question is voted for closure, it first goes into an "on hold" state. The purpose of this state is to provide guidance as to the closure reason and allow the post to be edited to address the issues raised in the closure reason. Questions so edited go into the reopen queue so that the community may vote on reopening them.
We do this because some types of questions are not considered a good fit for the StackExchange Q&A format. That doesn't mean they are "bad" in general or "stupid" questions, and closing them isn't intended to be a punishment. But StackExchange in general and GDSE in particular isn't a forum, and so certain kinds of questions just don't fit.
Among those types of questions are those that are overly broad or for which the answers are primarily based on opinion and not objective data, such as yours.
We close questions aggressively because it's better for the site in the long run. When off-topic questions are left open, not only do they provide a bad precedent, but they also tend to attract off-topic answers that become invalid when the question is subsequently edited, thus degrading the quality of the post and answers for future visitors.
There's a large amount of moderator-close votes here because there isn't as much voting by the community itself. We've been trying things to encourage more active participation by users with sufficient reputation to cast votes, with mixed results. I would really prefer not to have the moderators stepping in so often, but I would prefer allowing the site to fill up with off-topic questions even less, so this is where we are right now.

For what it's worth, I'd have voted to close that question too, for the same reason, if the mods hadn't gotten to it first.
The question is completely opinion-based, asking for people's opinions about how long particular game actions should take.  It's the equivalent of asking us "how long should my piece of string be?"
There are no objective answers to that sort of question -- what works best will be different for every game based upon what your intentions are, so we can't provide universal, objectively-correct values.
Best advice is to iterate rapidly until you find satisfactory values which work for your game.

Is there any way to say "I agree"? I.e. to back up a moderator decision so that the asker knows that this isn't just an arbitrary decision by a single over-zealous moderator?
I do check through closed posts to see if the questions are savable, but I don't think I've found any instances yet of closed questions that weren't closed for a decent reason.

Am I wrong to say that it seems there are votes in one direction but not in the other? I can vote to re-open, but not express a counter-vote that it shouldn't be; I can vote to close, but not vote to say "actually this question isn't that bad in my opinion." I'm not saying that's required in the cases mentioned, just double checking that I'm not missing a part of the system.

You aren't missing anything; there isn't any such aspect of the system. As to your "agreement" query; generally when we issue a binding close vote we leave a comment explaining why. The best mechanism you have to express agreement with that is to up vote the comment (don't post an "I agree" comment though).

It only takes one vote from a moderator to put questions on hold. It's not closed yet, it's on hold giving you an opportunity to adjust the question to be on topic.
When questions are clearly off topic, moderators often decide to put the question on hold before it progresses too far into getting answers. Otherwise, a question will be answered, then those answers need to be adjusted when the question is modified, or the question is later closed, leaving the answerers feeling like they wasted their time. Things just become messy.
This happens a bit more often on this site because there are not enough people with close privileges for closing to happen in a timely manner (if at all).
If you have questions which you think should be open, you can edit them to be placed into the reopen queue. Also making your case for why you think it's on topic in the comments or here on meta is a good option.

Unfortunately a lot of questions here are off topic because of the huge number of beginners' questions. A lot of the topics about game design are also opinion based (maybe we need to address this). Unlike stackoverflow where questions are usually about implementation details which usually have a correct answer. We also get alot of which tech to use questions, which makes the number of off topic questions higher.
It's not a personal kingdom, If moderators always wait for the community to  close, then a lot of the questions will still be opened because of the low number of 3k+ users, and the relatively low traffic on the site (unlike SO).
On the other hand your question is opinion based I would have closed that too, but moderators got it first.


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Does game design questions being on topic and opinion based being off-topic contradict?
Well my concern was raised when I saw this meta thread about a game design question being closed. Even though I agree the question is off topic and was asking for opinions.
I find that most game design questions are opinion based in the first (which is also a big factor of why we have average and great games) My only concern is that game design questions being primarily opinion based are not fit for this site, which make it less useful. But I still think we can address them in a way that they become on-topic questions, How do you think we can address them other than closing?

Related prior discussions are here and here.

"Good subjective" is okay, "bad subjective" is not. I think it's more difficult to ask a question that is game design focused that is a "good" subjective question, but it has been done and continues to be done.
I will reiterate again that having a question put on hold is not a punishment and so if voting to close is the proper solution to an inappropriate question for the site, do it.
That said, there is another recourse available to you. If you see an inappropriate question and believe it can be salvaged, edit it and make it salvageable. That's why the edit privilege exists. If you lack the privilege to edit or to vote to close, flag it.
The only incorrect thing to do with an inappropriate question on this, or any other StackExchange site, is to do nothing.


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How to encourage on hold questions to be improved by the asker?
This is an issue that is bugging me, a lot of the on hold questions can be improved, yet I feel like most people don't get the idea that their questions will be reopened once they are improved. I think it's our fault we are not conveying this idea correctly. And they feel like it won't be opened, so often they vanish from the site afterwards. One example is this, I think it can be considerably improved but it's hard for us to edit it. So can we encourage the asker to edit his question so it can be reopened. I feel like we are not explaining that On Hold doesn't mean closed and can be improved clearly.

Why should the author wait until the reopen-process is finished when they can just delete the old question and ask a new one? The new question will be open immediately and won't have a stigma from a lengthy this-should-be-closed-because discussion and often also some down-votes.

Except in situations where questions are closed because we don't have enough information, feel free to edit the question to fit with the rules of the site. Be bold. The outcomes from this are:

We now have a question that can be answered, thus improving the site.

OR

The user comes back and fixes the question you edited to mean what they really wanted, thus starting the process of them editing the question to fit.

Otherwise, the only way to encourage them is to suggest they edit the question via a comment. Point out what should be changed and suggest they change it.


text:
The Fall 2013 GDSE Game Jam
Congratulations, everyone!
The jam has ended, and the voting session started already. Check out the answers to this question and the games inside them, and vote them up if you think they deserve it. Downvotes are fine if that's how you want to vote, but at least leave a comment so the creators know how they should improve.
The voting will end on Friday, the 8th of November, at 23:59 UTC.
If you wanted to participate but didn't have the chance, don't be sad! There'll be another jam next year during Winter, and it will be twice as awesome. Honest!

Original text:

Theme: There can only be one.
Ladies and gentlemen, start your code editors! The GameJam is going to
  start on Fri, Nov 1 2013 at 12:00 pm GMT(a nice countdown timer is
  here), so make sure you've read all of the below if you wish to
  participate. Also, take a look at our event here and feel free to
  register if you wish to participate (it's not exactly necessary, but
  recommended). We also recommend bookmarking this question to get to it
  quicker.
The rules

Only one game per entrant is allowed, and the game must run in a    browser.
All publicly available libraries and middleware are allowed. All publicly available creation tools (e.g. Photoshop or 3DS Max) are
  allowed.
The entrant is allowed use any premade assets as long as they're freely available on the web and the licenses allow them to be used in
  an open source project (e.g. opengameart.org). Assets created by the
  entrant during the game jam may also be used.
The forming of teams is not allowed, but each entrant may ask    questions on the main gamedev.stackexchange site, as long as the
  questions are ontopic as per the rules. Alternatively, the chatroom
  may also be used.
Each entrant must release their game as open source after attaching a    license of their choice. All of the games submitted during the
  gamejam will be uploaded to a public Github repository.

What to do next
Once the jam starts, this question will be unlocked and the theme will
  be named. After you're done working on your game and feel it's ready,
  add an answer to this question, in which you must include:

The name of your game and a nice description for it;
A link to your playable game;
A link to a .zip containing all of your game's sources.

For hosting solutions, in case you don't have one ready to use, you
  might want to take a look at Dropbox, Google Drive and Github.
What to do when the jam ends
This is the easiest part. Just take a look at what the other participants created, then decide > which games
  deserve your vote. To vote for a game, vote on the maker's answer.

How long will we have to make our games? Like, how long is the Jam?

You have until 11:59 AM Monday, the 4th of November UTC time.

Congrats to everyone that finished! Let the voting begin!

When does the voting period end?

whne is the next 1?

Like Clockwork
Program your medieval archer bot to seek and destroy your opponents' bots.

Up to date documentation  (This post will be locked and grow stale)
Playable Version  (Works in Firefox and Chrome*)
Source

* Chrome users must go to chrome://flags and Enable Experimental JavaScript
How to Create a Bot:
Blockly is used to create all bot scripts. They have a wonderful tutorial on how to use it to get through a maze.
From the bot list, you need to log in using either your Google account (or OAuth provider, experimental). Once logged in, click Create a Bot! from the bot list. Enter a name and description for the bot, you will not be able to publish with both of these.
Drag and connect blocks from the sidebar inside the Blockly window to make a script. All blocks must be connected. The entire code block is wrapped in a while(true), so you do not need to manually create a forever loop. Here's a quick look at what you can do:
Movement
Moving costs 10 'ticks'. You can move forward or backward. If you bump into a wall, the Bumped flag will be true, but you will still lose your 10 ticks.
Turning left and right consumes 10 ticks, and turns your character left or right.
Use Facing to tell which direction you are facing. Compare this to direction block, or just use the Is Facing block if you prefer. No ticks.
Scan
All scans use 3 ticks and populate the Last Scan Result block that you can compare to the Scan Type block to see what you've scanned (Nothing, Wall, Bot, or Arrow). Scanning left or right will only scan 10 tiles, while scanning forward will scan until it hits something. (There's also a perimeter scan that I forgot to include)
Attacking
Your bots are archers with a limited quiver of 30 arrows. Shooting an arrow will cost you 10 ticks, and 1 arrow. Arrows travel at one tile per click, so it is (barely) possible to scan one and jump out of the way if you're not facing it. Arrows kill instantly (I may change this later).
If you're desperate, you can also stab your opponent, which kills any bot in the space directly in front of you. This will only cost you 5 ticks.
Saving/Loading
Pressing "Save" will give you a URL that you can keep a record of, or share, but it will not make the bot available for fights. In order to fight, you must publish your bot. Currently, there is no way to load a bot, BUT you can either use that Save URL, or let Blockly remember the last bot you were working on. It will automatically load your last working environment.
You can save over your own old bots if you provide the exact same name. If you provide a different name, a new bot will be created. There is no way to delete old bots, or mistakes, sorry. Other player's bots can not presently be seen, this is something I am working toward.
Here is an Example Bot which you must be logged in to see.
Fight!
From the bot selection screen, select one or more bots (up to 8), then press Fight Selected Bots. You will be taken to the battle ground (assuming you are actually running FireFox 26+). From here, the bots should start following their scripts and try to kill each other, trying ever so hard to be the one and only. If the battle goes well, you will be presented with a screen indicating the victor. You can press any key to replay the match.
Technology Stack

Crafty JS - For the battle ground
Blockly - For the block scripting to javascript
Google App Engine - For the shared data store, and Hosting

I also make use of a "future" JavaScript function yield, and was able to get this to work in FireFox, but was unable to find any docs on getting this to run in Chrome, other than the fact that Chrome has support for it, somewhere.
All of the tools (except JavaScript) used for this were new to me when I started this project.
Bugs

Scripts can (and do) cause infinite loops, and prevent the battle from starting
The "Scan Forward" block has a bug. If you use the "Scan **" block and select Forward from the drop down, it will correct this issue.
When attempting to publish, you may get a JavaScript exception: Expecting code from statement block "clockwork_scan_forward". I am not sure what causes this just yet.
Adding comments to the blocks will break the script. (If you don't know how to add comments, don't worry about it)

Fixed Post-jam:

Using > or < in an expression will incorrectly translate as & gt; and & lt; and cause the bot's script to halt the battle ground
Using the Repeat block translates to a for loop that uses < and will break for same reason as above

There are surely some more bugs in there. My first tester was able to halt the battle simulation, so surely there will be others. The most common symptom is that the battle simulation will either stop in its tracks, partially load, or not load at all. If any of these happen, I'd like to know which bot(s) cause this.
Wishlist

Random start locations
Scoreboard. Record a bot's wins and losses
Edit scripts
View other people's scripts, and copy them
Position of nearest enemy (and own position)
More maps
Warrior and Wizard classes
Mines, Burst arrow shots, more scan types, a block stance, etc.

Nice work. It would be nice not to publish email addresses and have editing. I liked the use of Blockly, I hadn't used that before and it's pretty neat.

I'm using the user's "nickname". I'll look to see if there's something more private

@JohnMcDonald in case of google apps on custom domain, you show the whole email address.

Gets my vote. Good stuff.

so if I can use math and those kinda things, why there is no variable block?

@Ali.S, No time. It will come

I have made one post-jam fix to hide email addresses and email equivalents. It will now only show the first 4 characters of someone's email/"nickname". @Byte56

@JohnMcDonald Cool, thanks. You're now disqualified for modifying your entry after the deadline. ;)

@Byte56 why? no one objected in chat.... oh... the face.... :P

sweet game lots of complexety for short jam!

Thanks. It would not have been possible without Blockly, Google App Engine, and Yield.

Thanks guys!  And it works in Chrome* now!

TCOB1
The game genre is "endless" space racing where players are eliminated by asteroids. The last player in the game wins. The game can be played in both single player and multiplayer. Up to 4 players can compete at once. More instructions on the game page.

Playable version
Zipped source code

Nice work. I do feel like the AI is too good (pre-cognitive almost). Or maybe I'm just bad at playing :)

I like the potential for this very simplistic concept. I think the game would benefit from a mouse-follow control system. Lots of ways to expand on this simple concept. With multiplayers, I could envision the tactic of trying to push other players into the asteroid! haha

Sperm Race
The game we've all won once already (except for you test tube babies), reach the egg first!
Press the space bar quickly to swim faster than your competitors. Be the first to reach the egg to win the game.

Play here.
Source.

Made with Unity3D. You'll need the Unity Web Player to play.
The sound file is from here: http://www.freesound.org/people/Robinhood76/sounds/163066/

Best graphics, high realism, love it. I think the best interpretation of the theme. Just the controls feel a bit like ... ;)

There can be only one (Planet)
(I like the highlander phrasing better.)
Playable link
Source
My entry is a battle of two planets in a solar system. The planets gradually gather resources, which they can use to defend their colony or to hurl objects at the opposing planet.  The last planet not yet destroyed is the winner.
Gameplay
Players can allocate resources in different proportions to alter their infrastructure and ability to attack.  Resources can be allocated to:

Mass - increase the frequency and destructive capacity of attacks with more mass in orbit.
Fuel - increase the possible launch trajectories with more fuel
Colonies - increase population base of your planet for faster resource production
Technology - improve LOTS OF STUFF (but only if implemented)

When attacking, a player has these options:

Mass - Increase the size of the project above the minimum (also decreases delta-v)
Fuel - Increase the delta-v of each launched object
Angle - Aim the trajectory relative to the current player's planet velocity.
Corrections - Add engines to the mass to alter its orbit mid-flight.

Technicals
This game uses the html Canvas API with no drawing framework.  I did use a simple javascript requestAnimationFrame loop and component structure that I had previously built.  It's available here (now with a gamejam branch!)
The planets and projectiles use an unoptimized n-body gravity simulation.  Each object applies an impulse ( gravitational force and delta time) to each other object.  The gravitational constant and rate of passage of time can be altered to influence the game.  The simulation becomes very inaccurate at high speed.
Missing Features
In the future! Add these:

Technology resource for gaining radar, defensive systems, projectile course prediction...
Correction option for attacking - Hitting another planet is really, really hard to accomplish.  Basically impossible.  This option would give the projectiles the ability to "home-in" on the enemy planets, which would greatly help the game on its way to becomming winnable.
Collision detection - This would seem to have been essential to the game, but because collisions are extremely rare, the chances of hitting a planet were only slightly decreased by not having any such check.  Much like not buying powerball tickets.
Survivability - the chance for an impact to only partially destroy an enemy, allowing them to continue fighting.  For example, by diminishing their population.
Strategic zoom - the ability to zoom in on an arbitary area.  This would be useful to follow a planet or view a launch or hit.  The objects are already drawn in a world coordinates, so this feature would only require adjusting the world translation and scale operations.  There is a mousewheel event handler, but it doesn't do anything.
Other solar system objects for increased tactical decisions, such as nuetral planets, moons, and asteroid belts.
Removing the physics update from the frame limiter, to get maximum accuracy all the time.
Multiplayer or AI or both.
art and sound and stuff.  A tutorial.  A backstory.

Nice work. You're right it's near impossible to hit the other planet. I had enough projectiles in space to slow the simulation down to a crawl.

Pretty neat simulation.

There can only be one end of the world.
In this game you play as the virus that will bring this end, but this is no normal virus it is a zombie virus (Zombies in a computer game, no way right!). You play as the virus moving through the blood stream consuming other viruses to make your zombies stats stronger to take over countries. Beware the white blood cells, if you touch one its game over, no matter how few people are left on the plant.
Big thank you to MicKLH, for allowing me to be able to post
Links:
Playable: http://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/31368264/Patient%20Zero.html
Source Files: https://www.dropbox.com/sh/b2rzgho4tqmejsa/W9jT2_1lbU
Controls:
Arrow keys || wasd
Tech:
Vanilla unity3d
Any feed back more than welcome

Nice work Martin. It's a bit long (kind of gets a little boring), but I like the premise. Congrats on creating something complete.

Looks good to me :) I like it.

I like the blood stream simulation and the backstory. I did not expect that at the end of level :) Thumbs up.

ya its to long and slow

Exit Vector
A game where you must clear every exit except the one you use to win the level (which must not be touched). Uses straight canvas to render and box2d for physics.

Playable
Source

Does that mean the ball is supposed to touch all the starting boxes except one?

@Byte56 Yes, that's it.

OK. I guess I just wasn't waiting long enough for it to settle. Thanks.

@MickLH - very nice! Finished three levels and will play more. But there are bugs - when I finished 3rd stage, I saved my progress, then after load it would always say: Too many goals reached after touching one... Anyway you could make it into a full-fledged Box2D sandbox tool.

Sorry for subjecting you all to bugs, I only ended up with like 12 hours to work on it. I forgot to make it count the number of goals after loading, but to be fair I'll leave it as it until after judging.

not much to do with the theme :/


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Too many how to start questions?
Well, lately I have been active on gamedev stackexchange one thing I noticed is that I come by a lot of how to start questions (almost daily). Unfortunately almost all of them are closed being off-topic. I think there's a problem here, since this is clearly a legitimate question and most new people don't really know where to start.
I have a suggestion that new signed up users are asked what level of experience and the reason he/she is coming to stackexchange, for example:

Beginner (programming and gamedev)
Beginner ( only in gamedev ) but knows how to program.
Intermedia in game dev and programming.
Expert
etc

And then depending on his skill level he/she will be guided for existing resources. This way (I think) will:

Get rid of a lot of how to start questions.
Help more people get started.
Help find appropriate technology depending on their background.

Do you think this is feasible ?

*Questions. I would suggest an edit, but I cannot :P

"since this is clearly a legitimate question" - not on this site

@sm4 Given that SO is famous for being a programming Q&A site, it would be natural for new users to assume the gamedev version of SO is a Q&A site for game development. That could encompass anything. We already know few people actually go through the help center before posting, so they're going to proceed based on their assumptions. I can not think of a good reason why we should not set up a canonical "getting started" question to which we can refer those asking.

@ktodisco that's what I was trying to say, and for more experienced people maybe we should show them "how to contribute better to the site page".

This sounds great in theory, but it also assumes that users are going to do some research, even if direct links to possibly useful information are provided for them and they don't have to look it up themselves, they still have to read the content.
Truth of the matter is we already do that for them:

This obviously isn't an answer to the problem as a whole but to answer whether or not I think this is feasible... maybe. Useful? Probably not.
Between the Help Center (especially this question and this question), and the similar questions box when you are asking a question, we've got it covered.
For clarification on why the help center useful, in addition to the guidelines that are really good at explaining what should and should not be on the site, I look to mainly the following section:

Where can I ask subjective, discussion, and other questions not fit for this site?

Our chat room

Reddit

Gamedev.net

Did you already search with your favorite search engine to see if your question has  been asked/answered elsewhere?

Are you simply looking for someone to make a decision for you? Are you suffering from analysis paralysis? Just make a choice and go with it, see where it takes you. Or perhaps you could roll some dice or flip a coin.

The problem is all of this requires the user to take the time to actually read content that is put right before them which is really what seems to not be happening.

Do you think this is feasible?

No, I don't.
It's not just a matter of the software not supporting it (and there being no precedent for a similar site-specific addition anywhere else on the network), nor just the matter that StackExchange is a Q&A archive (not a tutorial repository for neophytes).
No, mostly the problem is correctly establishing the set of "experience buckets" to put users into and relying on them to correctly self-select. It is extremely difficult, in practice, to accurate define a set of skill level tiers that can reasonably cover the gamut of all users. Your example tiers are woefully underspecified.
Furthermore, people are mostly unskilled and unaware of it, and will tend to misdiagnose their own level of competence in a domain.
Additionally, you have the problem of appropriately cataloguing your suggested "tier-appropriate resources" -- under what criteria is something considered a "good" resource for a beginner-level user? Especially considering that vast majority of users seem to fall into the less-experienced tier, community voting on the content is not likely to be a reasonable approach. And also, who is going to curate the content for "expert" users?
Next, there's the usability problem. As ToddersLegrande points out, users are already ignoring the help center links, information that is designed to guide them right from the start. You could argue that the link is too out-of-the-way, and that by forcing a modal UX in front of them when they first sign up, you'd solve that problem. Unfortunately, users don't read dialog boxes (plus, when you are new or unregistered, the sites already display fairly large banner prompts directing you to information about what the site is about).
Finally, it's not what this site is about. We are not here to be everything to everybody, and one of the things we've decided not to be is a wiki for beginner-level bootstrapping tutorials.

well I pretty much agree with everything you said. It's a suggestion that I though would be nice to get feedback on. btw nice article you linked "Journal of personality"

Yes, the Dunning-Kruger effect is particularly prevelant in new developers. Why else would a green developer think they could make an MMO?

This is a problem that obviously isn't going to go away.  As Josh said, people don't read dialog boxes (IME they don't even read "readme"s) so no matter how this information is conveyed during the sign-up process, it's just not going to work.
Maybe it's the case that we're taking the wrong tack here.  Closing these questions as off-topic is frustrating for the people doing the closing, as well as annoying for the person who's question is closed.  Having to continually redirect people to the usual resources is annoying too.
Maybe if we had one good solid asked-and-answered "how to start" question, with the answer containing the usual links, these questions could more usefully be closed as duplicates of it?  The original question would also need to be closed, of course, to prevent that from attracting replies and degenerating into a discussion.
This is coming from the perspective of closing-as-duplicate seeming less of a slap-down to new members, and would reduce the workload involved in pointing new members to the usual resources.

This is exactly what should be done.  In the same way that SO has a question like this, gamedev should have a go-to question about getting started in game development for all to reference. As long as new users can post questions, "getting started" questions are inevitable. Closing and pointing the asker to a comprehensive resource would be better and friendlier than just closing and essentially saying "your question is bad."

Agreed, a stock standard answer is more friendly than telling people their question is bad. Honestly speaking we need more users, gamedev isn't exactly packed. An initial bad experience can often put people off.


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Downvote suggestion layout issue
I was downvoting a question today, and I noticed an issue with the tags behind the blue suggestion box. Part of the tags are behind but the triangles in the end are in-front. The tags in the question are c++ and mmo.

What browser were you using for this, just curious? It took me some time to find a question with tags in the right position, but I wasn't able to repro on my end, so knowing which browsers it is breaking on would be keen.

It's a long time ago, so probably whatever was the latest Firefox at the time.

Out of curiosity, then, does it no longer persist for you in your current rendition of Firefox?


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How to improve 'Atmospheric scattering sky from space artifacts' question?
The question seems to attract low-effort answers, which point to sites that I originally used when researching the subject. I've also reviewed the linked source code multiple times against the answers and the outcome has been the same: the artefacts remain.
My feeling is that the question fails to pin-point the problem concisely and therefore distracts people who might be able to answer. How can I improve the question so that it would eventually get answered and my problem would be solved?

My feeling is that the poor answers come down to a few things:

Complex subject matter that few will be specialized in (physics-based shaders).
Much effort required to follow up on your research links.
A lack of focus because many issues were mentioned (two shaders mentioned, fCameraAngle, lack of hue, wrong line positioning, negating the ray, etc).

I suspect you may get better results if the question was very simple and direct, e.g. "I get this screenshot when fCameraAngle = 1, which is correct, and this when fCameraAngle = 0.9, which is not. Note the x, y and z wrong with it. What's going on?".


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Flood the site with softball questions?
I was inspired by this question.  It's short and concise.  It doesn't include any useless details.  It has answers with subtleties that may not be obvious.
My idea is to add simple but answerable questions to the site, as if we were repeating the beta process of demonstrating what makes a good question.  My hope is that this would improve some of the problems we have with low quality of new content.
Obviously, we should try to edit every salvageable question into a good one.  But that leaves us waiting for bad questions so that we can try to repair them.  In the meantime, our site lacks some basic, useful content that would be helpful in the general case.  (And never forget that SO doesn't post tutorials.)
So why not create some good content deliberately?  There's no rule against asking a question while already knowing the answer, and simple questions can have complex, thorough answers.  Getting multiple viewpoints' answers to simple questions (good subjective) would be great.  Community wiki or not, these question would raise the average question quality.

A short list of benefits:

Good example questions for new users (lead by example)
Good landing points for search engines, to help folks find their solutions (spirit of SO).
Good duplicate votes when a new user posts a less well-formed version of the question.
Add how-to content without violating the format of the site.

Here's the kind of content problem that I think this would solve:

Q: "How do I learn to do X in Y language with Z constraints?"
Q: "I tried to do this; I had this unique implementation problem; fix it please?"
Q: "I am having this problem doing X because I lack fundamental understanding of the myriad sub-tasks involved.  Now what?"
Q: "Can I get a tutorial for X?"

Now we have these responses:

C: "Duplicate: how to accomplish core game function X."
A: "You have this bug and this bug, but you also need to read this question because you're doing it wrong from the get-go."
C: "Too broad.  P.S.: read this question and this question and this question."
C: "No, no tutorials here.  But search the site for your topic and you will find other people asking specific questions about it."

I don't think we need any formal process for these, more of a general tactic.  If you find yourself reading a bad question and wishing you had a good one to reference, then make one up.  Make it answerable and language agnostic with narrow scope.  Then maybe that bad question won't be asked as frequently in the future.

Yes, I think this is a great idea. And have actually thought of doing exactly this.
It's part of the reason I modified the question you linked to be far more generic than it was. It makes it a very easily linkable question for many of the similar situations which derive from.
I made a list a while back of questions I thought might be good:

How to move an object from point A to point B
Rotate to face a point
How to do X for N seconds?
Changing a value over time
Using the debugger

The last one is kind of off topic for the site maybe, but it would be nice to have something to link to, sometimes it's the answer people need. It would be an answer similar to the one I posted here.

You're like the only candidate for Reversal ever with the linked question

@bobobobo This one and this one are closer :p Query

Strong yes. I usually try to answer those types of questions, but the unfortunate truth is that they are often hidden behind a horrendously written, and seemingly unrelated title and question-text. They could sure use much better titles and question-texts:

What image file format should I use for my game?
How do I prevent piracy in my game?
How does audio work in games?
What is the rendering pipeline?
How do firewalls work?

There's a lot of ultra-fundamental knowledge that at least I would like to share, but we could definitely have much better questions, since the questions are what attracts visitors.

YES

Other SE sites take it a step further and have the concept of "Canonical Questions" which poor quality or annoyingly regular questions can be closed as duplicates of.  For example, the following list on ServerFault: https://meta.serverfault.com/questions/1986/what-are-the-canonical-answers-weve-discovered-over-the-years
This tactic could even be used for the dreaded "how do I get started?" question, and would IMO be a much more effective approach (and much less discouraging to new members) than the current tactic of closing them as Off Topic and maybe - if you're in a good mood - directing them to a more appropriate resource in a comment.
There's precedent for that on other SE sites too; again from ServerFault: https://serverfault.com/questions/9766/what-a-beginner-should-know-learn-for-sysadmin-job
These questions can have their content agreed on, then asked, answered and locked (which is - once again - the precedent).


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Process that involves taking time to get to the root of a poorly worded question
I noticed this post today : How to make something happen every N seconds in game?
It was modified to a much more generic, and even a understandable question. However, I don't think it was the question the user was trying to ask. It's likely a question or two in the comments could have resulted in a quality question.
The clarification or at least a step closer to what the user was asking came up in the comments.
Also, before edits there was more information in the question that given further clarification was indeed valuable information for someone to provide an answer. While I do appreciate the moderator looking to make the question/answer worthwhile, it ignores the user's goal in trying to get an answer to his question.
If there doesn't exist already a moderation process that addresses this kind of thing, it'd be worthwhile to have one so that the ideal outcome is that the user gets his question answered or pointed to content on the site that already answers it.
Changing the question to something that doesn't fit the intended question, for whatever reason, results in a negative experience for that user.
Update

Now it looks like this

The revision history is available in the question. Is there something specific you wanted to highlight by including a screen shot of it?

Yeah, I posted what it was originally when I viewed it, and now I've updated with what it looks like now. Not sure why it's changed, but the original wording of the question gives context to this question. A blank entry, doesn't.

You need to click the arrow to expand the details of the revision.

It also show that you edited the question just shortly after I posted this question, so that's kind of odd. But, either way, my original point is just that we try to facilitate answering the intended question as that's a value to any individual user.

ok, sorry I didn't see the arrow. see that now. But yeah, still good to have it in the question with that wording.

Yes, I edited the question after answering here to again remove the unrelated question and asked the user to post it as a new question.

It's certainly challenging. Questions often come in the form of multiple simpler problems. I think breaking these questions into their simpler components and encouraging the user to ask the questions that were filtered out  as new questions is the best option.
In the case of the question you linked, I didn't feel as though the changing of the sprite was the root question. I let the user know I modified their question. They didn't respond to the comment, but I see now that later they edited the question again. I've added another comment to their question and reverted the changes. I've asked them to ask the sprite changing issue as a new question. Since changing a sprite and making a recurring function are totally unrelated.

It's weird how the revision history seems to be different now that it was originally. How does that happen? Posted image above as to how it looked before.

All I am saying is that process should probably be to ask first before changing to something that isn't going to answer his question. Or at least saying "is this what you mean?" after changing, as opposed to "I'm changing it to this, because it's more useful."  Goal should be to have his intended question answered ? Or am I missing something here?

It's typically much better to edit with your best judgment first. If questions are left in a state where they're unclear, it can easily generate a number of answers that are all answering different questions. Once answers are in the mix, it's much harder to get things sorted. Since at that point, the question is clarified and you're usually left with answers that aren't answering the question any more. That leaves a bad experience for the people answering. Clearly the goal is to have the intended question answered. That's what I was attempting.

agreed, although I guess I question the judgement on that one given the revision history as it originally was shown. He clearly was working with Java2d and wanted to know how change the sprite based on a timer. Once the judgement call is made, I do agree it's best to stick with it. So as my question states, some process that goes a bit further than with this one would be ideal. Hopefully process can make the judgement call a bit more likely to get the user's question answered.

You only need look at another question that user asked: http://gamedev.stackexchange.com/questions/65648/. If you've been around the site for a while you'll see this kind of thing regularly. People like to include all the details of what kind of game they're making, then ask a very generic question. Also, if you have a suggestion for a process that can make judgement calls better, I'm sure more than just this site would benefit from that :)

Just asking is all I'm saying would be good process, or at minimum asking after saying "Is this what you mean ?". All I'm saying is that the original question had one of two ways it could go and changing a sprite frame in java2d seems like it was one of the two and worth clarifying.

Part of the process is undoubtedly educating users on how to best go about drafting a good question and ultimately getting a good answer. But if we've decided that it's not worth the time, then we can abort and do like was done here or just delete the question altogether.

Yes, it's a continuing process. It's hard to make everyone happy. Thanks for you input.

no problem. was just a suggestion.


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Why this question was migrated to Stack Overflow?
Even if this question seems like a general object oriented or code design question, I still find it relevant to game development, my point is if a question is about code design of a game engine, doesn't this make it a game development related question? game developers are software engineers in the end.

I migrated that question because it was on its way to being closed. Three people had already voted on it being closed as off topic here. Since I agreed that it was off topic here, I'd rather see it migrated than closed.
The criteria for questions like that is:

Would a professional game developer give me a better/different/more
  specific answer to this question than other programmers?

The rationale that we're all software engineers in the end isn't really appropriate thinking in this case. Stackoverflow is the place for those types of questions, we don't need to duplicate them here.

well I get it. It's about if a domain knowledge in game development specifically is required or not.

Yep, it's about if the knowledge is specific to game development. Game developers use a lot of knowledge that's general to all developers, the questions that are general to all developers go on stackoverflow, the ones that are specific to game development go here.

This is an old debate.
The current policy is:

Programming questions that aren't specific to game development are
  off-topic here, but can be asked on Stack Overflow. A good rule of
  thumb is to ask yourself "would a professional game developer give me
  a better/different/more specific answer to this question than other
  programmers?"

As you said, game development is just software development, and the question you linked is primarily a software engineering problem. Consequently, it is not necessarily likely to get a better answer from a game developer than a non-game developer, and the question is a better fit for StackOverflow.
Further, even though we can assume the focus of the question is on making a game, since it was asked here first, there really isn't much actual material in the question that is game-development-specific or related.

well I understand now. Even if it's related, its about if a domain specific knowledge is required or not, did I get it right ?


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Why is an advertisement for a closed beta site showing up?

I wasn't sure where this should be brought up,  so here it is, probably something that a developer should look at.

I deleted the post from the community ads thread that I believe to be responsible for the ad appearing, so it should no longer appear.

is there any way that Joe User can do that or is that strictly a moderator privilege?

@Malachi You can vote down the ad. Only ads with (I think?) 6+ votes will be displayed on the sidebar.

I apologize, but where are these posted? link please.

http://meta.gamedev.stackexchange.com/questions/983/community-promotion-ads-2013


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Why are some of the better answers not being upvoted?
Lately I've been trying to get more involved in the game development community, one of the things I try to do, is to try to contribute to the community by answering some questions that I think I know their answers. I am still trying to figure out how to provide better answers, but so far I failed to understand.
Better to explain with examples, some of the answers that I expect to be good to be upvoted, end up being not. For example this answer was only upvoted once, even though I think it was as good and even got into more details.
This answer was less upvoted than the highest, even though it's more comprehensive and explain things better.
On the other hand this answer, which I wrote in less than 20secs which I think was not that good (and honestly thought would be downvoted) got 5 upvotes.
But sometimes it works like this, and you get upvotes as you expect.
I am not trying to whine about answers not being upvoted, but trying to understand why good answers are not "always" upvoted, and sometimes not so good answers are, and I've seen a lot of the other peoples' good answers not upvoted?
Does that have to do with long answers? Community interest? or explaining basic concepts? or other reasons?
Understanding this might help me understand what makes a better answer.

1. Add an image 2. Include a bulleted list or headings 3. Answer simple questions first (people like to upvote things they know, confirms they knew it) 4. Make it onto the "Hot Questions" list (found under the StackExchange link in the top left).

@Byte56 thanks for the useful tips. I will keep them in mind.

It really depends.
Writing long answers is not always the best idea -- sometimes a short, concise answer is all that is warranted. It's certainly less time-consuming to parse and thus more likely to be fully-evaluated. Often I am browsing the site during down time at work or some other activity, and I don't have time to read and judge longer answers regardless of their quality (since I want to give a fair assessment and not just up-vote something because it's long or well-formatted or uses pictures).
Answers which are to a more niche domain or problem may tend to get fewer votes because fewer people feel qualified to judge the material.
Personally I find excessive use of bold in answers (like in yours to the displacement mapping question) to be annoying (to the point where I'd usually edit them out or at least replace with italic, except in cases where I've also answered the same question to avoid any concerns of trying to sabotage an answer).
It's going to depend a lot on the people who view the question, the mood they are in right now, how much time they have to evaluate answers, and what their own criteria for determining whether an answer deserves a vote (up or down) are.

Upvotes reflect the number of people who find the answer useful. This is only sometimes related to the amount of effort you put in the answers (although some people do vote on answers that show effort, but anyone can vote however they want). In a sense the SE system rewards "good" answers, for a certain definition of good (which of course may not match your own definition):

Fast answers
Easy to read answers (including formatting, illustrations, the way you structure your answer)
Popular answers (expressing a popular opinion, or on a popular subject)
Polite answers
Answers that are not obviously wrong

Some other things people have noticed are covered here: Six simple tips to get Stack Overflow reputation fast
some of it is satirical, but most of it makes sense considering SE's objective: getting fast, readable, quality answers. Some of the tips can be of practical use; better formatting really does make things easier to read and digest, it's part of being a good communicator.
This does mean that if you are an expert in a narrow field providing quality, lengthy answers, you'll get much less upvotes than trite, populist answers that touch nerves in the right way, but it's always lonely at the top :)

I may not 100% agree with you, I more agree with Josh's answer, but what you said makes sense. Regarding my own definition of a good answer, I think a good answer should tackle the problem with the right amount of detail. The problem is about getting this amount right while maintaining accuracy, regarding your time, other peoples' time to read, and the length of answer (readability). Regarding the being on the top, statistically you are correct, but everyone wants to be on the top, and I know I should work hard to get to it.


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Is it "better" to post here or at "Unity Answers" questions about Unity?
Unity has a dedicated Q&A site, and I'm wondering if it is better to ask a question here or there, with "better" meaning more or less "I'll have higher chances of getting quality answers, faster".
This is not about what's in-topic here, I'm just asking your opinion, from your personal experience (no guesses, please: I'm also able to guess, I don't need that).
(obviously posting both here and there would maximise results)
edit: this question might also be interpreted as "does Unity experts usually partecipate in both communities?". I definitely do not take this for granted, hence this question.

In my experience the Unity Answers site is like Stack Exchange if it were an unmoderated wasteland with large numbers of duplicated questions, answers that are just comments and unanswered questions. That's just my opinion.

@Byte56 I have dual feelings about that. What concerns me is that both Unity Answers and [tag:unity] here have a very high number of answerless questions.

Actually, we have 565 Unity questions with at least one answer and only 88 without an answer. Of those 88 unanswered, only 38 have a score of 1 or greater. Given that many of those unanswered questions look to be very localized or "lack of research" type questions, I'd say we're doing pretty well with a .15 unanswered/answered ratio. From what I can tell, Unity answers has 26,700 unanswered 111,630 questions with answers giving them a .24 ratio. Note that lower ratios are better. Further, given the aforementioned state of the Unity Answers site, the answered question number is likely lower.

@Byte56 I appreciate very much finding and giving numbers : )

Cross-posting within the StackExchange network like that is generally frowned upon, although Unity Answers is not actually part of the StackExchange network (it just uses similar software).
I would still argue, however, that by cross-posting you devalue both communities slightly because you split the answer pool and don't provide that single authoritative answer.
Consequently, I'd apply a similar rule to that which is applied to determine if a question is better here or on SO - would a dedicated Unity developer be able to give you a better answer than a general game developer? If so, post on Unity Answers. Otherwise post here.
This means if you are asking how to do something specific to Unity, I'd say you should put it over there. But if you are asking how to do something that just happens to use Unity but isn't really about twiddling any particular knobs and dials Unity provides, or directly using Unity's APIs, ask it here.
Optimally, any of the Unity experts that hang out here would also be hanging out there, so you aren't going to narrow your audience that much by posting to a single site. (I cannot confirm this hypothesis of course, since I don't have analysis tools at Unity Answers.)

The problem with this approach is that you assume that the average Unity expert partecipates in both communities, while I'm totally unconvinced of that assertion (which is part of this question). (-1 just because I feel this does not address my concern, despite it maybe was my fault I wasn't clear enough - nothing personal of course)

"would a dedicated Unity developer be able to give you a better answer than a general game developer? If so, post on Unity Answers. Otherwise post here." +1

@Byte56 I'm not following here, though: if you think that Unity Answers is lacking quality in general, wouldn't it be better to post here regardless?

@Lohoris When you have two sites of equal quality, I think that ideally it's best to post only to one. If you wanted to choose between the two, I think that quote is the best option for doing so. My comments on the question are prompting you to consider the choice of the Unity Answers site as an equal.


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How do we get more professionals on GDSE?
Well, I know this question has been discussed here and probably here, but my point to re-discuss this topic, is to get an overview of how community especially the high scorers evaluate the current state of the site, especially after around 3 years of the site launch. My points are:

Are we attracting more game dev. professionals here ?
Are we attracting artists and designers, or SE sites are more aimed towards programmers in nature?
How do you evaluate the current state of the site, QA quality, Signal/Ratio, I know a lot of the kids just want to make the next big MMO, and I know it's not going anywhere but maybe attracting more professionals will raise the overall quality?

Your points about moderation and traffic seem to be different enough from the main question about attracting professionals -- perhaps consider asking them seperately?

Well, I think you are right I will split them.

Since you aren't a professional in game development and I think you've given some pretty nice answers, I don't think being a professional is a requirement.

It's really hard to say if we are attracting more or fewer professionals -- that isn't a metric we gather (or one we reliably could). There are probably more professional visitors than are obvious to you, because many of them will want to hide that fact from the general population, for various reasons.
Personally, I don't really think it matters that much how many industry professionals we attract to the site. What matters is the ability to give quality answers and/or ask quality questions and help maintain and improve the utility of the overall site.
It is not necessarily true that a professional game developer will by definition be capable of giving better answers or asking better questions. Consequently, why does it matter what percentage of our population consists of professional game developers (or even professional non-game developers)? What value does it add, exactly?
My opinion is that it does not necessarily add any value. The individual person adds (or subtracts) value from the site. It isn't their job title that does.

Well, professionals tend to have better knowledge, statistically speaking (at least) I think this tends to be true. I don't know if someone (like me) with few personal projects and some 3D experience will be able to contribute as much as someone with several games delivered. The problem with game industry in general is that it's being exclusive. A lot of the great techniques seems to stay exclusive for certain companies, having more of these people might benefit the whole community. What am talking about may not be true. In the end contribution is a personal preference..

and please note that I was not talking about patents. I am talking about general coding, design and optimization practices.

As a professional, I can assure you that it's a false assumption that being a professional implies having better knowledge. There are several hobbyists on this site I'd rather work with than some of the co-workers I have had in my career.

Further, you also have to remember that a professional's knowledge is for professional projects, and the needs of those projects often differ wildly from hobbyist projects, such that a technique or bit of knowledge that served well on a professional game would not necessarily be that beneficial for a hobbyist.

tldr: smart people are smart people, but professionals are not necessarily smart people.

Well, maybe I have been misinformed. Thanks for the insight.

You can't make this place enjoyable for both professionals and hobbyists in the same measure. If you want to bring in professionals, turn this into a site which deals with professional matters only, and make it inaccessible to the hobbyists.
Imagine important professional game developer's name coming here. Do you think he'd just waste his time telling some random user about how to make his shader work? Because that's the level the questions we get reach to.
Similarly, do you think he'd ask an important and meaningful question while knowing it would swim around in a sea of "halp! my code doesn't work" questions?
I'm pretty sure the stackexchange isn't exactly meant to attract that many professionals either, judging by its current policies. It's very open so it's likely the hobbyists are the main target.

Stackoverflow for instance has many of the most reputable professionals around "Jon Skeet" for instance, and they answer alot of the basic questions why wouldn't pro game devs come here? there are a lot of beginners on SO.

SO is about basic questions. At least half of what is there is about debugging code or asking for a piece of code that does some particular thing.

You also need to tell us what you would expect from a professional. So, what would you expect a professional to do here exactly? If it is answering the same questions as the other users, chances are the difference in answer quality won't be very huge.

please check my comment on Josh's answer.


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Do you think we need moderators from different time zones?
I notice that the site lacks any moderation at day time (GMT+3), even though I am not particularly a high scorer and consider myself a hobbyist. I feel I am one of the few people who are active during the day (GMT+3) and trying to help flag questions, do you think the site needs a moderator from the "Eastern" part of the earth [GMT, GMT+3 ] since most of the moderators seem to be living in Pacific time-zones ?
Do you think more active moderation will help GDSE get more traffic?

Aren't most of the mods eastern?

well not what I noticed, at least from what I know most of them are based in the US.

We're currently all US based. With two of us being in GMT+8.

Our average flag handling time is less than two hours (down from several hours since our recent election).
I think we currently have more than enough coverage in terms of moderators and high-ranking users to maintain the status quo in terms of quality. I don't see how adding more diamond moderators would improve site quality any, and I certainly don't think there will be a traffic correlation.
Note, too, that moderators are not appointed (except for the beta moderator, I think, but that's irrelevant here). Moderators are elected, which means that even if we thought there was a need for more diamonds, we could not guarantee that the new diamonds would be from a particular geographic region.

Active moderation won't get more traffic, it'll get rid of bad questions/spam...promoting will get us more traffic.
I personally don't see the need unless the problem demands it. And i don't think there is such a problem that calls for it either.
If a flag takes a few hours to be dealt with its not that bad.
...At least not for now.


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Is this a good community wiki question?
Before posting the question, I'd like to know if it fits to be a community wiki question in the GD.SE main. Clearly it would be way too broad to be a normal question. My question would be "What are the most common pitfalls with buffer objects in OpenGL?" The question is about people's experiences with the buffer objects, what they encountered when implementing their renderers and how did they solve the problems if they did? The question would include all the buffer objects that the OpenGL wiki has listed as such.
I think it would fit as a community wiki, because it does not have a single answer, and the multiple answers would not outdate quickly. If it is not, should it then be splitted up, asking "What are the common optimization techniques when using X buffer objects?" questions? Just like this question is. EDIT: And right after me posting this the example was put on hold as too broad. Just my luck I guess.

That linked question has a great answer by concept3d, but it's a great answer to a totally different (broader, inappropriate) question.

What question does it answer then? In my opinion it does answer the question. Is the answer too broad then? That it might be. How about editing it to be more spesific?

It answers the question in the general sense that it covers generic optimizations applicable to lots of domains, without specifically calling out details pertaining to the question (which is hard because the question is too broad). I wouldn't edit it because the question itself is poor, and I don't see the need to remove information (that people presumably voting him up for) or massively re-write the response; that feels like a disservice to the poster.

In this case, I think you'd just be relying on the community wiki status to serve as a crutch for a poorly-defined question. I don't think that's an appropriate use of community wiki, and most importantly I don't think it would set a good precedent for such questions in the future.

In addition to what Josh said...
In the old days I would have been inclined to VTC "what are the common pitfalls" as "not a real question".  Several alternatives suggest themselves: "how to avoid common pitfalls" would improve it, "how to avoid this specific common pitfall" is even better, but by then we're going away from what seems to be the intent of your suggestion.
Related to this, it's just far too broad to generate useful answers: "OpenGL" on it's own is a huge topic with huge variation between different GL_VERSIONs.  Even the buffer object APIs can be completely different in GL1.5 code versus GL4.4 code.  With compatibility contexts you can say "this pitfall can be avoided by just not using buffer objects", with core contexts you can't.  Any concievable answer is going to be of use to only a subset of potentially interested people.
Despite all of this I gave your question a +1 because I believe that it is a topic for which useful questions with useful answers can and do exist.  The problem is that a single, broad, all-encompassing question is just not the right thing here.  Plenty of questions about OpenGL buffer objects already exist on the site, and can be found via the search facility, and people should be encouraged to use that to see if the pitfall they're encountering is one for which a solution may already exist.


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When to flag a question and when to vote for closing?
So the question explains itself, since both have the same options, when is each one more appropriate ?

Voting to close should be your go-to action when you see questions that are off topic, unclear or duplicates. Flagging should be used when a question needs moderator attention. This is used for spam, offensive posts or other situations where moderator intervention is needed.
Flagging to close allows lower rep users to bring questions that should be closed to the attention of higher rep users and moderators, who have the power to vote to close.
When a user flags to close, it places the question in the review queue for high rep users and moderators alike. It does not show up as a moderator flag.
When a user with enough rep to vote to close should be voting to close, not flagging to close. Any flags to close by a user with more than 3000 rep, the flag will automatically be converted to a vote to close.


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Why was closed as "non-constructive" removed?
When I used to be active on the site at the beginning (around two years ago) many questions were closed as "not constructive." When I recently came back I noticed this was no longer the case. Was "not constructive" removed because it wasn't actually a reason, or was it simply replaced with better reasons?

The rationale for changing the close reasons, and the implementation of the "on hold" waiting period are explained in this Meta post.


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Remove version-specific xna tags
XNA will never get past version 4, and version 3.1 should be unused (though xna-3.1 has 3 questions this year, 5 total, somehow), I am of the opinion that xna and xna-4.0 should be merged.  But I could not initiate the voting process:

Your question title and question body are at odds -- do you want to remove all version tags, merge XNA and XNA 4, or both?

I think [tag:xna-4.0] should be subsumed under [tag:xna].  [tag:xna-3.1] could stay or go.  Probably stay, since the few questions that use it seem to asking specifically about version differences.


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Why was this question considered off-topic?
https://gamedev.stackexchange.com/questions/66826/unity-server-side-physics-is-there-a-cheaper-alternative-to-ulink

I obviously can't speak for Byte56, but reviewing the question myself, I'd agree with his assessment that it's off-topic and agree with the reason he chose for closing it:

Questions that are about "which tech to use" are outside the scope of the site.

This is clearly a "which tech to use" question; from the text of the question itself:

Is there any kind of alternative that doesn't have you write your own physics engine?

In your comment you're saying: "'does this exist or not' can't be OT" but "does this exist or not" on it's own isn't a valid question either.  "Does this exist or not" is answerable by a single word: "yes" or "no", but that answer is of no use to you or to anyone else.  You're not asking for a "yes or no" answer, you're asking for more, you're asking for a recommendation of which tech to use as a follow-on from that "yes or no".
The problem with recommendations of which tech to use is that they're too localized (an answer that's relevant to your requirements may be completely irrelevant for everyone else) and they're coloured by personal opinion (many people will just recommend their own personal favourites).
See also the Meta post linked in the close reason for further discussion on this matter.

Yes, this is accurate.


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Community Promotion Ads - 2014
It's the time of the year again, namely it is December 2013, and so we shall now refresh our Community Promotion Ads for the new year.
What are Community Promotion Ads?
Community Promotion Ads are community-vetted advertisements that will show up on the main site, in the right sidebar. The purpose of this question is the vetting process. Images of the advertisements are provided, and community voting will enable the advertisements to be shown.
Why do we have Community Promotion Ads?
This is a method for the community to control what gets promoted to visitors on the site. For example, you might promote the following things:

cool game development related open source apps
the site's twitter account
scripts packs or power tools
project or blogs from notable or just community devs
cool events or conferences
anything else your community would genuinely be interested in

The goal is for future visitors to find out about the stuff your community deems important. This also serves as a way to promote information and resources that are relevant to your own community's interests, both for those already in the community and those yet to join.
Why do we reset the ads every year?
Some services will maintain usefulness over the years, while other things will wane to allow for new faces to show up. Resetting the ads every year helps accommodate this, and allows old ads that have served their purpose to be cycled out for fresher ads for newer things. This helps keep the material in the ads relevant to not just the subject matter of the community, but to the current status of the community. We reset the ads once a year, every December.
The community promotion ads have no restrictions against reposting an ad from a previous cycle. If a particular service or ad is very valuable to the community and will continue to be so, it is a good idea to repost it. It may be helpful to give it a new face in the process, so as to prevent the imagery of the ad from getting stale after a year of exposure.
How does it work?
The answers you post to this question must conform to the following rules, or they will be ignored.

All answers should be in the exact form of:
[![Tagline to show on mouseover][1]][2]

   [1]: http://image-url
   [2]: http://clickthrough-url

Please do not add anything else to the body of the post. If you want to discuss something, do it in the comments.
The question must always be tagged with the magic community-ads tag. In addition to enabling the functionality of the advertisements, this tag also pre-fills the answer form with the above required form.

Image requirements

The image that you create must be 220 x 250 pixels
Must be hosted through our standard image uploader (imgur)
Must be GIF or PNG
No animated GIFs
Absolute limit on file size of 150 KB

Score Threshold
There is a minimum score threshold an answer must meet (currently 6) before it will be shown on the main site.
You can check out the ads that have met the threshold with basic click stats here.

This Code Golf ad is from a promotion on our meta site. Here is its counterpart ad.

+1 Nice, thanks Matthew!

This is a demonstration post to indicate how this should look when an ad is posted. It also doubles as your twitter ad, but it's up to you if you wish to promote it by voting.

http://graphicdesign.stackexchange.com/

This Code Golf ad is from a promotion on our meta site. Here is its counterpart ad.

Is this in.... Perl? @Doorknob

@Pip Haha, yep, very very ugly Perl. Courtesy of http://codegolf.stackexchange.com/a/4254/3808

Nice! I was reading a book on Perl the other day.