uDevGames 2004 – Macintosh Game Development Contest announced

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iDevGames, the leading website for Macintosh game development, announced the start of the “uDevGames 2004 – Macintosh Game Development Contest” today.

“The uDevGames contest has promoted the creation of many fantastic games over the years, helped to encourage the growth of publicly available source code, and has brought many independent Mac developers to the limelight”, said iDevGames Sponsorship Manager, Rocco Bowling, “Awarding prizes to developers who participate in uDevGames confirms one of iDevGames’ core values that ‘motivation’ is the key to turning game coders into game developers.”

Serving as a showcase for creative and fun games that are created within a three-month development period, the uDevGames Contest is the premiere annual event in the Mac game development scene, for both developers and enthusiasts alike. This year’s contest features many new improvements, including a new category to determine “Best Story” in a game, judging by noted industry professionals to determine “Best Polish” ? or the level of professionalism and finish displayed in a game, as well as the adherence to OSI http://www.opensource.org/licenses/ approved licenses for all source code released in uDevGames 2004.

“I feel that the requirement of submitting the source code of each game under an OSI approved license starting this year will help bind our contestants to a larger family, making uDevGames the largest Open Source game programming contest, as well as highlighting the Macintosh as a great platform to the Open Source community,” explained iDevGames Editor-in-Chief Carlos Camacho in the press release.

uDevGames 2004 provides entrants with three months to design, develop, and finish a game ? including all coding, graphics, and sound ? which will be subject to a voting in the categories of Gameplay, Graphics, Audio, Originality, Story, and Polish. Prizes will be distributed to the developers or teams for the top three entries in each category. Awards are also offered for the special categories of Best Overall Game, Best Newcomer, and an Editor’s Choice Prize.

uDevGames 2004 will be the fourth iteration of the contest, and since the first year, over $50,000 in prizes have been awarded to winning entrants to help energize Macintosh gaming. Last year’s contest featured over 40 games created by independent Mac developers from around the world and received international press coverage by leading Macintosh sites such as Inside Mac Games http://www.insidemacgames.com and Apple’s Games section http://www.apple.com/games/.

Entries are limited to one per person or team, and must run natively in Mac OS X. Entries may be created with any Mac OS tool, but must be less than 10MB when compressed. The source code, or source files, for all entries must be submitted to iDevGames. The Official Rules, and Registration for uDevGames can be found at http://www.udevgames.com.

5 Comments

  2. I’ve always considered this one of the biggest problems with convincing people to switch. As soon as they mention games, it’s hard to get them to overcome the “We get all the popular games, just a little bit later” explanation. More game development will be a boon for getting more people to stop hesitating. (Frankly, I tell people if they want games, that’s fine. Keep the PC and just Add a Mac for everything else. That’s what I did.)

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  3. I completely agree. The biggest switcher problem. Increased home market share is the only solution to this one. Even then it’s going to take an 18 month lag to take effect.

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  4. Glad to hear the positive comments regarding the contest and more game development on the Mac. I hope all of you can come visit iDevGames, and even try to help out with one of the entries. Look around the forum there and it’s easy to find people looking for help with sound, art, or even game testing (the ‘fun’ part of game development!).

    Also, as you mentioned about the 18 month effect, that may be true. Thankfully, for the uDevGames contest, all games need to be developed within a 3 month timespan, so we’ll get to see and play new games very soon. Were you referring 18 onths to the increase in home market share?

    I’ve entered the contest the last two years and hope to assemble a team this year, so if you have any questions or would like to help on a team’s project, please contact me.

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