Multiplayer Comp Deadline - Timezone?

Howdy,

I'm taking the deadline of the comp to be 2008 October 31st, 23:59. My question is, what timezone? I'm in South Africa, so I don't want to upload the final comp version too late because of time differences, and I need every last millisecond I can get to work on my game. ;)

Furthermore, what are the rules about making revisions to the game after the competition deadline? Since the competition is feeding games directly into your live selection of games, I assume you'd want them to be as good as possible, and if there are problems, for them to be corrected asap. So is it ok to continue improving/refining the game after the deadline? Or must we leave them alone until judging is complete?

Ah... it would seem my question is irrelevant... First the comp page states: "To kickoff the development of multiplayer games, we're giving away $20,000 in prize money to the three best games created using the Nonoba Multiplayer API before November 1, 2008.", but then "The winners will be announced on November 1, 2008.".

Thus, considering there's 2 days left, there's no way my game would get any significant amount of plays within that time, so I won't bother releasing it until I've put more time into it.

Actually we have found a few judges to be the primary factor as its more fair to be frank. I will just change the text on the site :)

Regarding time zone we are in GMT+1 so the server will swap over there to a new day.

/Chris

Hi Chris,

Thanks for the response. I've been thinking about it, and as much as I'd like to enter the comp, and have a shot at that highly tempting prize, I don't think releasing it now is a good idea.

Despite all the hours I've put into the game, it simply isn't where I wanted it to be by now. I'd rather hold back for another month or two and get it right.

The game is a 1v1 strategy, and something I've noticed about the Nonoba MP games is that those some of games are 'dead'.

They don't get played because of this scenario: Player creates a game, no one joins, they get tired of waiting and leave. (And that happens over and over for different players over the course of a day) Occationally two people will match up successfully, but it's by pure chance when it does happen.

Thus, the player needs something to do while waiting, so I think I'll need to build an AI to play against. In reality I want people playing against other people, but for that to happen, people need to 'gather' in the game's play area, which means giving them something to do while they wait for other players to pitch up. (Obviously the persistent world games have the advantage in this area)

So if I were to release now, I expect it'll just end up as another 'dead' game on the site.

Oh, another thing, I think I saw someone here talking about observers a while back, which I think is an excellent way to help the players find opponents, where they can join a game where someone's playing an AI, and challenge them to a game vs a real person. Do you have plans to support observers in games?

We are doing some rather massive changes to how users can interact with the multiplayer games. One of which is that we will have a generic lobby entrance system for the users. Basically you will be able to access all games on the site from one common lobby.

This new lobby system will notify users when a new game is created such that if two people will want to play your game they don't have to rely on someone seeing your open game in the game lobby. Additionally a "newest created multiplayer rooms" component will be all over the site.

Regarding spectators this is something you as a developer will have to implement, if you look at the tic tac toe example it support such.