Vote for your favourite games from the Atari Lynx 30th Birthday Programming Competition

[Igor]

Thanks, I was wondering if this would be in my local time zone (Australia)

[Rick Dangerous]

Ooops, looks like i missed this, thought it went to the end of September!

 

I would vote:

 

1. On Duty  (freaking epic; hope this makes it to a cart someday w more levels!)

2. Sky Raiders  (LOVE River Raid; had to vote for this one)

3. Assembloids  (just too fun not to include; great tunes and visuals.)

 

All fun and great though; was just getting into Nutmeg this weekend!

[UHATEIT]

I was trying to vote yesterday before it closed as it was still open. But on my cell phone it wouldn't let me click anything to vote up. Similar to Video Game Critic.com their site also doesn't allow voting on a cell phone. 

[+karri]

2 hours ago, travistouchdown said:

Ooops, looks like i missed this, thought it went to the end of September!

 

I would vote:

 

1. On Duty  (freaking epic; hope this makes it to a cart someday w more levels!)

2. Sky Raiders  (LOVE River Raid; had to vote for this one)

3. Assembloids  (just too fun not to include; great tunes and visuals.)

 

All fun and great though; was just getting into Nutmeg this weekend!

 

On Duty cart version is planned to have 29 levels. Release date 17th of October, 2019.

Most of the levels are already on the cart. In the competition On Duty had 9 levels.

[Igor]

Thanks to everyone who voted. I will not be taking votes that are outside of the poll time (the boundary needs to be set, sorry).

This is what the bonus points look like based on the poll. Whether or not this is indicative of the final points assigned to each entry is yet to be seen.

 

4TTude                         3*0 + 2*1 + 2        = 4
Assembloids                    3*6 + 2*11 + 6        = 46
Find a way to my heart        3*0 + 2*0 + 1        = 1
Growing Ties                3*9 + 2*5 + 8        = 45
Lynx Quest                    3*16 + 2*8 + 4        = 68
Nutmeg                        3*1 + 2*4 + 9        = 20
On Duty                        3*11 + 2*12 + 9        = 66
Sky Raider                    3*2 + 2*3 + 4        = 16
The Inside World            3*0 + 2*2 + 1        = 5
Undergrounders                3*1 + 2*0 + 1        = 4
YNXA                        3*4 + 2*4 + 5        = 25

 

More details of the scoring system are now available... https://atarigamer.com/pages/atari-lynx-30th-birthday-programming-competition#scoring

 

The social media aspect of the bonus points hasn't been calculated yet, but any more comments after today will not be counted.

 

[+karri]

Wow. You have really put some time into developing a scoring system. In a way it is funny that my stuff covers both end of the spectrum  

 

One of the best games and the worst game of them all...

 

Obviously you guys have nothing over for ? (Find a way to my heart - just 1 point)

[Igor]

That's why it took a long time to put together too. I wanted a fair system that wasn't just a typical game review type of thing.

[laoo]

2 hours ago, Igor said:

This is what the bonus points look like based on the poll.

I'm not convinced whether this is fair scoring system - I can came up with countless examples of possible counter-intuitive results.

But I'm not arguing that there exists a fair one though.

 

[Igor]

Are you talking about the poll bonus points or the whole scoring system?

[laoo]

17 minutes ago, Igor said:

Are you talking about the poll bonus points or the whole scoring system?

I was referring only to the algorithm for calculating the result of voting poll ( The vote count is multiplied by 3 (first place poll), 2 (second place poll) or 1 (third place poll). )

[+karri]

Using coefficients was discarded years ago in favor for majority of votes in dancing. That was the algorithm I was describing a few mails ago.

 

Currently the closest algorithm that produce a fair result when different elements are judged is a simple median.

 

Example:

Creativity 0..5
Implementation 0..5
Gameplay 0..5
Replay 0..5
Completion 0..5

 

Instead of trying to add up all votes we found out that the median takes away efforts to discredit a competitor or favour a competitor.

 

So if Creativity gets the votes 1,1,5,3,2 the median is 3

Implementation 2,4,4,5,4 the median is 4

and so on.

 

So in the end you get a single sum of the medians as the score. It is the judge in the middle that decides. All extreme elements are filtered out.

 

In my experience this brings the majority opinion of how good the game is.

 

[Igor]

Remember the poll points and judge points are worked out very differently. Poll and social media points are just bonus points to differentiate any entries that judges can't decide on clearly.

[+karri]

"Fair play" has been one of my most important topic when you involve human opinions as a measurement instrument.

 

What I described above is the end result of 20+ years of development in the sports dance community. This system is currently in use in world championships and world games. Basically the idea is to always look for a majority of opinions at every stage. The median is a good tool as it accurately represents the median value of a group.

[+karri]

12 minutes ago, Igor said:

Remember the poll points and judge points are worked out very differently. Poll and social media points are just bonus points to differentiate any entries that judges can't decide on clearly.

The results are the same in this case. So the discussion is merely teoretical. Congrats to "Lynx Quest"!

[Igor]

I wouldn't jump to conclusions yet ?

[Nop90]

2 hours ago, karri said:

Wow. You have really put some time into developing a scoring system. In a way it is funny that my stuff covers both end of the spectrum  

 

One of the best games and the worst game of them all...

  

Obviously you guys have nothing over for ? (Find a way to my heart - just 1 point) 

Find a way to my heart is not the wost game, can be simple but it's not bad at all. Time will be a better judge.

[+karri]

There were so many games in this competition that I never played for more than a few minutes. Once my tuning of On Duty is over I would like to spend some time on the heavyweights of this competition that have more content than you can see in 5 minutes.

 

Plus I also hope to show off these competition games at PRGE, eJagfest and AmsteR Jam evening party. So it would be nice to read some reviews...

 

Next up is Silly Ventures which I sadly cannot attend in person (I am on stage twice during that week-end).

[Fadest]

There is also the french RGC in November/December this year near Paris. I should attend and will be happy to showcase the games (may have 3 McWill Lynx for the event). 

[Igor]

Is the display stand I'm making for PRGE going to go on a round-the-world trip then? ?

[+karri]

Yep. R.J. asked me to bring all Lynx related stuff with me to Amsterdam. After all it was his project 30 years ago...

[Igor]

Cool ? I'll pay for the return shipping after all that is done with. Reserve a copy of On Duty for me to send back in the same parcel, plus those empty PCB carts please.

[+karri]

Right. After all this touring I sweep the remaining crumbs in a plastic bag and mail it to "down under".

[Igor]

12 hours ago, karri said:

Right. After all this touring I sweep the remaining crumbs in a plastic bag and mail it to "down under".

Haha yes, well it's already booked in to appear in next year's PAXAus (I might even be there in person).

[Ninjabba]

On 9/30/2019 at 8:16 PM, karri said:

 

On Duty cart version is planned to have 29 levels. Release date 17th of October, 2019.

Most of the levels are already on the cart. In the competition On Duty had 9 levels.

Wow  that's quite a massive amount of content. 

 

I made my mind up by giving scores to replayability, completion and technical achievement to each of the projects, making it incredibly hard to decide still. 

[KevinMos3]

I found it difficult to limit my votes to a top 3, because to me, my personal top 4 are pretty much tied.  It seems like the poll could be split into 3 categories: one for multi-level games (like On Duty, Nutmeg, Ynxa), one for quick twitch or puzzle games (like Assembloids, Growing Ties, 4ttude, Find a Way to My Heart), and one for demos (like Inside World, Lynx Quest, Undergrounders).

 

It's hard to rank multi-level games against puzzle games or demos. 

- The multi-level games are interesting and engaging when we have more time to play, and thankfully each of these save your progress so they can be played in short bursts as well (each of these are phenomenal in their own way). 

- The puzzle games have a definite preference in certain moods or circumstances and are engaging when we don't have a lot of spare time (I love each of these for various reasons).

- I couldn't personally rate demos along with the first two categories.  Lynx Quest, for example, looks amazing and has potential to be one of the best games on the Lynx even among the original commercial releases once completed, but in its current state, I could not compare it to the completed games of the previous two categories.