Unity Game Developer Contest 2016

There's really no way for them to prove that the person registered made it. Unless they make you take some SAT-like coding test, which I highly doubt... Even if they say you can't, you can get away with it.

 

One more clarification; do you need to have internet access to do a first time build? I ask because I got an error last night building a test UWP app about NuGet unable to restore packages.

EDIT: nvm, see recent post, I got everything setup and working.

 

You may not be a lawyer or someone in that department, but which ones? I'm curious.

 

Ok guys, I have officially entered. Wish me luck!

 

Many states consider minors "legally incompetent" meaning even if they sign a contract, it's not binding. Only the parent/guardian can sign a contract for their children.

 

True, I can definitely see why this one was put in place; just take a look at the less academic guys that were in my year 12 class...

 

Ok people, here's a word of warning before jumping in; I just ran into this issue while building my test project and was able to fix it up, now everything works on my end.
http://forum.unity3d.com/threads/warning-do-not-update-to-windows-sdk-10-0-10586-0-just-yet.371074/

For those who are entering; who wants a simple tutorial on getting UWP working? While Microsoft are working on official guides, I can write a simple guide on building a basic project. (Such steps would work for every other project, I would think, would have to test this)

@Aurore: If when I write it, you wish the porting guides to be updated with it, give me a heads up.

 

I don't mean to derail the thread, but this seems like a little hyperbole. Is there historical proof of this?
Thanks for clarifying.

 

I have a mac...

 

it's a bit frustrating when we basically have 30 days to do this.. right smack dab in the middle of holiday season.

basically you're wanting ported games from other platforms and not something new?

 

That's actually incorrect.

Read step 2:
"Create or port, using the Development Tools (as defined below), an original game that is playable on Windows Universal Platform"

http://unity3d.com/contest/windows

 

Can I work on windows 8.1 pro or I need windows 10?

 

As far as I know, you can build UWP 10 apps on windows 8.1, but to run them, you need either windows 10 installed, or a tablet/phone you can test with. (i.e. if you have your windows 8.1 machine and, say, a windows 10 surface tablet, use the surface to test the apps)

 

Well... being that it's next year the deadlines are set, we actually have about 50-60 days if you include both December and most of January 2016.

In other words, that should be a decent chunk of time to port/create your game, submit it to the windows store, get it approved, then submit your entry. personally, judging by how quick in the past I have had something working in a couple of weeks, I should be good.

 

...And hopefully know about bootcamp, that as far as I know works with windows 10, would have to check.

EDIT: Found something that may help you: https://support.apple.com/en-au/HT204990
Good luck. From the looks of things, any mac from mid-2012 fully upgraded should work.

 

This contest seems great that i can push my skills to the limit and try and earn a price but..how fair it is overall?
I am curious how fair will it be let's say for a team that has been working over a game for 3 months now and is about to release it vs a single indie dev which just saw the contest announcement before 5 days ago and just began prototyping the game. It just doesn't feel right from a single developer point of view if there are 3-4 teams which will enter with a polished game already made and was about to be released anyway. Can you explain a bit further about the judging system. I would love to contest, but if i have no chance of winning then why i should bother meeting the deadline when there are approximately 1 month for developing and 2-3 weeks trying to push the game in the Windows store.

 

Just a few beginners questions before I have never done this before:
1. To build for this contest I go to: build settings> windows store > sdk > universal 10 and uwp build type xaml or d3d?
2. Visual studio 2015 community, professional or enterprise?
3. To test for phone can I use Microsoft Emulator for Windows 10 Mobile and will it work for windows 10 pc if I test it on windows 8.1?
4. I didn't understood part about using other peoples resources like models or so? If I bought them or are open source?

 

Allow me to answer a few, as I have successfully built a UWP unity game while testing my toolset for this comp.

For Question 1: I honestly have no idea about the option for XAML/D3d, and which is faster/more optimized, would have to do some profiling to work this out. (Maybe UT know something I don't? ) In other words, I can't give a recommendation here.

For Question 2: Purely user preference, although I would recommend Community if you have a tight budget and just want to get started on building UWP apps.
A warning as well; have a careful read of this thread before jumping in: http://forum.unity3d.com/threads/warning-do-not-update-to-windows-sdk-10-0-10586-0-just-yet.371074/ This link details a unity bug that can cause projects generated by unity to fail to open in Visual Studio 2015. It also has a brilliant editor script to use as a workaround, and I currently use that to make the workflow smoother. (yea, manually editing version numbers in a .csproj file every single time?! Stuff that... )

For Question 3: Not sure what you're trying to say, but I would have to see if the Windows 10 mobile emulator will work with unity games. (Probably not... It would probably be sluggish doing so anyway) As for testing on real devices, you will very definitely need a Windows 10 device for that. For actually building the game though, you only need 8.1.

For Question 4: I am more thinking that they mean using intellectual property without permission. (say, using Mario without asking Nintendo first. ) in other words, if it's either your own assets, an asset pack someone is selling, (and you bought it of course) or open-source assets, (such as a couple of my unity 4.x contributions... ) you should be good here. (I would recommend having a bit of originality though for the sake of earning marks when having your game judged)

 

Thank you s

Thank you ser for taking time to answer me

 

Sure I don't want to derail this one either but answering this question will end that way anyway... but as you feel I'm exaggerating I'll address it and keep my examples to this year only.

Most recently, their director of QA explained this in some detail when they decided to pull BB10 support. The short version (in my opinion) is this, if the company paying Unity to build for their platform stops doing so and they believe the platform to not be a prime seller for Unity (you can arguably assume this to mean anything other than Desktops, iOS or Android) then they will pull support. You can see this as well as they have strongly suggested the web player will be decomissioned long before WebGL will be officially supported - leaving companies like the medical company I work for, that uses a Unity Web component, in an unsupported state for an undefined length of time.

When they pull support they post a generalized blog post. And a few months later just start omitting it from versions. As you can imagine, with less than 1% of Unity developers frequenting their forums (their numbers, total devs divided by forum users) it comes as quite a shock to the developers. It isn't the end of the world but it is definitely something you want to be aware of anytime you build for a fringe platform with these guys.

Right now I need to keep 7 different versions of Unity installed, juggling licenses using license files, because of how fragmented it's become for consoles, fringe platforms an VR hardware. I'll eventually need an 8th when they pull Win10 Universal. Even their 5.2 web player is incompatible with 5.1 builds - causing more installer fragmentation. And if we want to focus on consoles this year there is the whole PSM, 360 and PS3 (links on the Microsoft and Sony internal forums) discussion although they were influenced externally. Point to my sentence being there is some technical debt and future support risk you will inherit by following their beta / contest / fringe platform model.

 

I do have a question though:

Since the idea is to develop a Universal Windows Platform game, how can I check on which Windows 10 platform the game is being executed during runtime?

Because let's say that on Windows Phone I want the controls to make use of the touch screen, and on Desktop I want mouse + keyboard.

How would I verify this?

 

That one I don't know... Maybe the Microsoft API's have something we can use? (Probably something along the lines of "WindowsContinuum.CheckState()" )

You're welcome.

 

@Kerm_Ed cheers man!

 

Kind of feels like a lot more time should have been given on this one between the announcement and submission deadline?

 

I see, thank you very much for the reply

 

@SteveJ I do agree with that. Designing, programming, modeling/drawing, polishing and publishing for one and a half month seems really hard objective to achieve. It kind of feels like the contest is made for indies who are almost at the end of finishing their game or for a really ambitioned ones who can take that pressure. I am already at the third day of doing my game for the contest and the way I see it, either ill get forced to release it early without a lot of content and semi polished or not try to make it at all in order to get a good finished product.

 

not sure how your calendar works, but they also clearly state:

guessing 'several' is more than two with a minimum of 3 and maximum of 4(?)... that means you have until the beginning of January (say 1st week), ... essential without doing "anything" other than working over the holidays. you have 30 days.

 

all under 18's: "YESSS!!!"

 

Or 40... but then again, a couple of weeks have gone by already. Plus, I did just check my calendar, and there's a two week margin between recommended submission date to windows store, and final deadline for submitting to the contest.

Also... we have about 4-6 weeks tops. I can actually get a lot done between now and then, it depends on what I decide to do.

 

That's what I would have done. number 2 in particular is something Asphalt 8 (and probably a whole lot of other mobile titles) does, and that's a windows store game. (Not sure if it's UWP now or not though...)

 

I read the details and it just says games must run on Windows 10. I build my games for Windows 8.0, but they run on Win10 also. Is that okay, or do I have to target 8.1 or specifically 10?

I haven't followed these types of contests... do big name shops usually win them?

 

From what I'm reading (multiple times) it only states games must run on Win10, but nothing about Win10 SDK or that they can't target Win8/8.1... am I missing something?

 

It's a contest on making a Windows 10 UWP app...

But for those wondering if you need a Win10 machine to develop, no, you can use 8.1, but to test, you need windows 10, as it is the only one that has the Windows Core. (The thing that makes UWP possible)

Oh yes, and as far as I know, you need the Windows 10 SDK, and this is the reason VS2015 is a requirement.

 

Hi, is it necessary to build it on a Windows 10 machine... I have Windows 8.1 and am using 8.1 SDK for windows store games to build the games. Do I need to move on to a Windows 10 machine.

 

Thanks, I just read up on UWP and all clear now. Easy to get confused because they called Win8.1 apps "universal" also. Some day the English language will only have one word, that means everything and nothing at the same time.

 

hmmm maybe ill be in this contest

 

So if I am using Windows 10 with a keyboard and mouse and don't have access to test on a device that supports touch, what do I do then? How can I make sure touch works? And is it 100% necessary to support touch in order to be eligible for the contest?

 

So glad to hear that! I was so worried about touch controls!

 

Can I submit more than 1 game? I have 4 games now I've put in the Window's store. 2 of which might stand a chance of an honorable mention. I don't want to choose a favorite child.

 

True. I actually forgot about the "universal 8.1" mode... I think that was more to do with supporting windows RT and 8.1, since they were different architectures.
Windows 10 UWP takes a slightly different approach by simply making all windows 10 versions have common APIs, thus making it super easy to have one app run on all sorts of devices. (8.1/RT didn't really have this...)

I would imagine though that it would earn more points, as it would be truly "universal..." (i.e. technically supports everything controls-wise, of which is a potential side-goal of having games ported to UWP)

 

How are ties handled if there is a tie in the quality of submission category as well? Programmers must think of edge cases A contest of skill cannot be arbitrary.

 

Heh, heh... the possibilities! They would probably use something else to make one "better than the other" though. Jo probably knows something, just wait for her to come back and reply.

 

Sounds like fun.

 

Rock, paper, scissors, lizard, Spock

 

Sonic, Mario, Zangief... the list of possible matches continues!