2010 October Lisp Game Dev Competition

The 2010 October Lisp Game Dev Competition is a fun, seven-day, online challenge for lisp hackers to produce computer games using a lisp variant.

When and where

• Currently completed. The event began on Sunday, October 24 at 2010-10-24 00:01 UTC and ran until Sunday, October 31 (ish).
• The competition is entirely run online. Chat about it on IRC at #lispgames on chat.freenode.net and follow lispgames on Twitter.

Post-mortems

LGDC organizing post-mortem

• Planning some things a few weeks early helped a lot, even if they weren't all enacted this time. When the proposed start date came, it was simply a matter of declaring that the competition was on.
• ... except that no specific time had been discussed previously, so we agreed on an arbitrary time a few hours ahead, in order to keep things straightforward.
• Such a short period was not quite enough for getting the word out. As it happened, about half the entries were submitted a few days after the promotion drive. It would have been better to have begun with 3-5 days of lead time.
• Promotion was a mixed bag.
  • The regular lispgames channels (#lispgames, wiki and dto's blog) were good starting points, but mainly reached a familiar crowd.
  • The @lispgames Twitter account was still new, and posting about the LGDC helped gain ~15 followers.
  • Xach's blog post probably drove some traffic too.
  • We have no information on what announcing on #lisp, #clojure and #quicklisp did.
  • A post on lispforum.com didn't elicit any direct response but seemed to have brought more Twitter followers.
  • But all are worth repeating for the next event.
• arbscht's private goal was to get 3 or 4 entries in total, so 5 is a great result. 5 is probably a good number for frequent LGDC events in the future, especially if it happens monthly or bi-monthly.
• 7 days is about right.
• Entry didn't close at the start, submissions could be made until the end. This worked out well: some people entered late (perhaps toying with an idea privately before committing to a submission?), and too much pressure wouldn't have been fun anyway.
• We left the deadline intentionally vague (Sunday...ish), which seems to have been a good idea given how many people entered late. At least for this effort, we're interested in progress, not finished products. But this seemed to confuse a few people, both entrants and observers.
• Allowing entrants to work on existing projects rather than having to invent something from scratch also helped. dto worked on an existing system, and humasect entered with something from a different, simultaneous competition.
• No prizes on offer. I'd like to see that change for a future event (maybe ILGE instead of LGDC). Imagine giving something like a copy of Land of Lisp for the winner — fitting, and not unrealistically costly.

Add your post-mortem here

How to enter

• Build a game using a lisp language while the competition is on, and publish it somewhere.
• Register on this wiki and add your details below by Sunday, October 31.

Rules

• Use a lisp variant as the primary language to build your game. That can include Common Lisp, Scheme, Clojure, Emacs Lisp, or even your own lisp-like invention. The rest of the technology is up to you.
• Work on your project substantially during the competition. You may continue developing a project you started before the competition, but we want to see some new work being done on it.

Entries

List your name and project (with links) if you are entering the competition. You can enter at any time until Sunday, October 31, but we like to see works in progress.

• XIOBEAT, by dto. Here's the XIOBEAT page. See also the video trailer.
• Parenchute, by arbscht. Description forthcoming.
• huma4drl, by humasect. progress at huma4drl
• Asteroid Jumper, by smithzv. A gameplay mix of Asteroids and a side-scroller (didn't come together...)
• Game, by Author. Description.