GitHub Open Source Friday, 21 Aug 2020

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From YouTube: Open Source Friday and JS13K Games

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Join us live for Open Source Fridays at https://www.meetup.com/GitHub-Virtual-Meetup

This is our VOD (recording) from the Open Source Friday live stream on the 21st August 2020, 2pm AEST. We spoke with Andrzej Mazur, the creator of JS13K Games hear the ins and outs of the competition, how to reduce your game size, and how to get involved in what you're passionate about.

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A

Hello, everyone and welcome to the github twitch open source, friday stream. I am so so excited to have so many of you here hello and welcome to be dougie. Welcome to mv karen. How are you hey, pink ham, great to have you here as well? We're super excited. We've got a very, very special guest with us today for open source friday. We are in the australian time zone, but he's coming to us all the way from poland, so we're very, very excited to have with us the creator of js 13k games.

A

How are you going.

A

Hello and welcome: how are you, how are you today.

A

Well, give us one second, one: second, you're, muted: there we go. How are you.

B

I'm okay. Thank you.

A

Good yeah, I'm really really happy to have here. We're super excited that you could be part of our streams and again, thank you so much for getting up so so early. I think you said it was like what five or six am where you are.

B

Yeah exactly six am, but uh I'm super happy to be here. Thank you. Thanks for the invitation we.

A

Are very, very excited to have you now I think my first order of business. I was chatting to lee, I believe um you may know lee uh you and they have worked together for a little while um and I was chatting to lee and I was like how how do you pronounce his name and lee's like that's something you're gonna have to ask him. So could you please tell me how do I pronounce your name, so I can welcome you all to the lovely viewers here.

B

So it's andrei.

A

B

A

B

Yeah perfectly I mean you can use mdu, you can use ender, I'm fine with whatever suits you.

A

Sounds good now you say your audio is a little bit low, so you just want to um I'll get you to talk just for a little bit just introduce yourself um and maybe a little bit have a bit about how you get started um in playing video games and things and all kind of adjust the audio as you're chatting.

B

uh Sure so um my company is called enclave games, so you can imagine that if you played fallout there was this faction code, enclave.

B

So I was influenced by a fallout fallout 2 to be exact, and I was uh I was working as a front-end developer for many years and then decided to switch to building games actually, which was yeah. I was using javascript. So I wanted to see if you can build javascript games and it was pretty early, but you could do that.

B

It kind of worked and it went. uh It went from there.

A

And I think one of the things that we're here to talk about today is json nk games. So um for those people who don't know about js 13k games, would you like to tell us about? I mean I could obviously talk about it? um I don't think I would definitely I would do it justice so um tell our amazing viewers. What js 13k games is all about.

B

Sure so it's an online competition that runs yearly since 2012.. It runs between and september 13th and uh if you're, an html5 game developer, uh you are given a task to create a game in 13 kilobytes uh package. uh So it's quite a challenge, uh but uh from what I saw, uh the participants uh really picked that size limit and I think it's it got quite popular because of that. um So you have a whole month. You don't have to spend like 48 hours uh locked in a basement and drink energy drinks.

B

uh You can participate in your own pace. uh You can work in the evenings uh over the weekends. If you don't have time if you work full-time or if you go on two-week vacations- uh and I think that's uh that's also quite uh important in in this competition that you don't have to rush uh building something.

A

So it's not like one of those 48-hour hackathon thing, it's more like october 1st or the github hackathon. We have running where you can, as you said, get to work at your own pace right.

B

A

Yeah and I think um one of the things I I was like wow 13 kilobytes it that can't be a lot of kilowatts like give us some context of like what 13 kilobytes is like. You know how big are some games, like you know, standard games these days and like just just how small is 13 kilobytes.

B

uh That's quite small: um there are small screenshots on the website where the entries are listed and those are bigger than the games themselves. um Yes, the small screenshots.

B

So that's that's quite challenging. I mean games right now. You usually even web games, are measured in megabytes and desktop games in gigabytes, so 13 kilobytes is really really small.

B

And it's interesting that if you switch your mindset to some rules, it's actually not that small.

B

Obviously, you can't use big images or big libraries, but there is um a lib called contra which will give you some basic tools for starter development and with the right approach, uh and the key here is procedural generation.

B

You can have something shown on the on the screen.

B

That will look interesting and it won't take much space.

A

So what are some of your top tips for saving space in in a game because, obviously, as you mentioned, like half the screenshots on your website more than 13 kilobytes. So how do you actually save that much space.

B

So um I would recommend checking out the resources page, uh which is quite long uh right now, with so many resources, tutorials and articles about all the ways to prepare something for the competition.

B

um I would say that if you don't want to create something from scratch, contra js is the most popular uh micro framework and it takes a few kilobytes and there are a few tutorials how to get started with uh with contra and you you can use images if you do try to have them in one sprite sheet and you can use tools like tiny png to lower the size of the sprite sheet.

B

um There are also tools for sounds and music. It sounds uh interesting that an mp3 will have like three megabytes, uh but you can still generate, sounds and generate music using javascript and play that in your entry, and this will fit within the 30 kilobyte size limit.

B

So you might be surprised uh with some entries uh where they have uh cool graphics, uh sounds music and all that uh and that's all in 30 kilobytes. um You can remember about the fact that this is the size of the zip package, zip compresses text and and code really well.

B

So if you put everything in one index.html, if you embed images, if you generate sounds uh this- should compress it compress uh really good and you should be able to build something within the size limit.

B

Plus we have the web xr category, where you are free to use libraries like a-frame, which will give you components for free, uh which you can build your game into, and I remember people were telling me that when they tried a-frame, uh they didn't even use the whole 13 kilobytes, uh because you could build something in like five or six kilobytes zip, which is really really cool.

A

That's pretty insane: we've got carry in the chat saying the good old jquery itself is at least 27 kilowatts and, if you think about some of even the early games like ocarina of time, I think was 32 megabytes, um which is still in itself insane considering the size of games now, and so when you think of something, that's only 13 kilobytes, you think. Oh, what can't be that good like it can't be that big. It can't be like that intense. So what are the kind of games that people are actually producing with 13 kilobytes.

B

That's quite interesting because at the very beginning, like few years ago, um those games were usually simple, 2d games because in general web games it was a challenge to build something for the web, uh but it evolved over the years, and I remember, I think, there's still um a question in the rules.

B

If someone can use webgl- and it was uh I've written this this like a few years ago- that you actually can try um having webgl, but it might be hard to create a first person. Shooter and a few people took this as a challenge and they actually built a few 3d first person shooters one was called something like yet another doom clone or something like that, and it was really really impressive.

B

um People were building uh 3d, real-time strategy games uh with shaders lighting and everything, and I'm like I'm blown away by how you could actually do that. It's like um I, I had no idea you could. You could do something like that, and the best thing about the competition is that every single entry from every possible year, their source code in a commented form, is available on github.

B

So you can actually play any of the 1 300 something games and you can check the source code of every possible submission and see how someone built it and um yeah.

A

So you're saying that people aren't just making, like you, know, pong or tic tac toe anything like they're, actually making like shooters and role-playing games in less than 13 kilowatts.

B

A

That's just like mind-blowing, so you mentioned.

B

A

That a lot of the games are available. Actually all the games are available on github. um So if we jump into- and we look at some of the- I think we can look here and look at the previous games so where, if I wanted to find again well, let's bring out okay, maybe one of your favorite ones. um Where would we go to find these games and to check them out.

B

So if you click on 2019.

B

You should see the page from previous years and you can click on winners or entries at the top at the top yeah. So um I can't say I have one or a few favorite games because I have like a ton of those and.

B

Then uh that's like that's uh too tough. For me, I mean uh yeah swag.

A

Shot yeah yeah yeah you can, you can find out here we're presented with their page. We've got their twitter um their website and then their their github. So if we go look at their github repo, all righty they've got a good reading. We know exactly what it is so intend to be a throwback to the 90s first person, shooters wow um you've got five weapons. You got a pistol rocket launcher a rocket launcher.

A

You got me um shotgun machine gun and a railgun, and the goal is to score as many words as possible for eliminating the robots. This looks insane.

B

A

B

So uh there are um so many cool games and the level of quality is like so intense that um over the years uh my personal favorites were ending in, like uh top 20 top 50 top 100.

B

If you play the entries, um it's it's insane that the games from like there were games that were ending up like year or two years ago in like 100 uh plays, and it was my favorite and- and uh I was hoping for this game to win, and it was like 100 something so.

A

Take that back over 100 games are submitted every year for this you're saying.

B

uh Actually, recently, it's 250 around that.

A

Wow so over 250 people every single year, although I'm.

B

More people, because it's 250 entries there are solo developers, many of them, but there are also teams. I remember some team um had like eight people working on an entry, uh so sometimes it's crazy and.

A

B

A

On hang on, there's that many games produced each year just for this, that are less than 13 kilobytes.

B

And um I'm I'm not even surprised by stories. People telling me that they take a vacation from their day job to focus on their competition, which.

A

B

Of crazy but it happens.

A

Okay, so so this competition, it sounds like there's some pretty cool prizes up for grabs that if people are taking time off so so what can people you know win as prizes and um yeah we'll start there? First, what? What can you get from being part of this.

B

So um yeah there are a whole bunch of different prizes, um usually about 20 20, something different kinds of prizes.

B

Usually those are software licenses for anything you can imagine you could use for game development or front-end development, because many participants are front-end developers as well.

B

We also have the tradition of sending t-shirts which designs are created every single year, so you have different kinds of designs and if you end up in top 100 overall or 15 games in the webxr category, you will get a free t-shirt shipped worldwide for free.

B

We also have some hardware prices uh this year in the webxr category. We have the magic leap ar device the web monetization one have nintendo switch. We also have stuff for every participant.

B

The web monetization thing is supported by coil and they are offering um free memberships to every participant who submit a game, and there are many many many different um licenses for creating graphics for writing code for editors, for whatever you can basically imagine and yeah yeah.

B

So uh I stopped counting like I don't know two or three years ago, but uh when I did, uh the prices were usually worth about 20 thousand dollars, which is kind of impressive. I think, but the cool thing, the cool thing is people value participation itself and uh like getting feedback from experts from judges and and creating the games. So even though, there's a bunch of prizes, it's not the most important part of the competition.

A

Have there been any um like big wins or anything like that in the last few years, like has any like game going on to either the game itself or developers going on to like be part of a bigger company or produce like a big game, or anything like that?.

B

Yeah, so um there were games like evil, glitch or glitchbuster, which uh won a few years ago, and the authors of them created.

B

So many developers are creating post competition versions of their games, but evil, glitch and glitchbuster were the games that the developers went one step further and they released the games on steam. So you could actually buy the games on steam that were the the prototypes or say were uh created uh during the competition. So that's uh that's kind of uh really cool and um interesting story.

B

uh Stories are also, if you're looking for a job, you can participate in the competition because many developers were recruited because of building games for the competition, and I had success stories from people who participated some competition. Some companies were supporting the competition recruited and those developers, and they were then representing those companies, as experts or judges in the competition which uh which is kind of cool.

A

That's pretty cool now, if I have a quick look at your resources page and when I go back to this, because this is the open source friday stream um check out your resources pages a whole bunch of resources and stuff on um how to get started and things like that. um What kind of resources are there or what kind of um platforms are people building on top of like? Are there open source platforms that people are taking utilizing or or are most of these games like built completely from scratch?.

B

um It's mostly open source. um There are so many tools people can just use for free and modify it and use it. However, they want.

B

I mentioned contra js, which I think is the most popular micro library, um but there are so many tools and, and people are sharing whatever they are building there is a guy called maxine mozier.

B

I hope I'm pronouncing his name right, nickname sam, who built so many pools for 13k before the competition starts that it can help with. Basically anything you can imagine in the competition having good controls, showing emojis, processing, stuff, etc, etc.

B

If you want to play with css 3d, there are plenty of tools for that so and this only one guy out of like many other people, uh building uh creating tools and sharing them on github, which I'm really proud of, because it's um it's all about the community, people really care for each other and help each other. And if you have any issues with anything, you can jump on our slack ask questions and someone will definitely help you, because it is a competition.

B

But it's a competition in which uh you want to build something and you can help other developers create something- and I think that's uh that's kind of important.

A

I think that's what I really love about hackathons like, even though you're all in all game jams, even though you're all in you know different teams you're working towards, like you know the challenge. um People are really really keen to help like to help other people out um and if I look at these resource pages, like nearly everything here is on github, so everyone go check it out. um I know lee riley is here in the chat: hey lee, thanks for dropping in, unfortunately, um we've disabled link sharing on our um our twitch stream.

A

So um uh thanks for sharing all the links lee I'm trying to reshare them back again for you, um because we we don't have link sharing, enabled for for a bunch of obvious reasons that lately sends his regards over any um anyhow. Now I wanted to um have a quick chat.

A

I want to have a quick chat to um about how you really got into this. I know you talked a little bit about like how just nk games started and things like that, but like I'm, assuming that you're a gamer yourself right, yeah yep. So how did you get into gaming? What kind of games do you like.

B

um So I kind of like.

B

I so I mentioned enclave games. uh Fallout 2 is like an important game for me um and I think I I pretty early started thinking about building games even before starting my job as a front-end developer, I was studying learning c-plus plus, so I for my bachelor degree, I created a platformer game in c plus because it was the only language I was I known back then so gaming is obviously important for me.

B

But from the very beginning I thought about how those games could have been built and if I could build something similar, I was playing with jquery in, like I don't know, 2010, ish or something and seeing if you can build anything with it uh and you can actually you could actually build games with jquery.

B

Then some html5 game engines started to appear. So I experimented with that.

B

So I do play games not that much anymore that I would like to, but I also enjoy developing games and whenever I play something I imagine if I could, like maybe change it somehow or like you know, take some lessons from that. So it's kind of uh not 100 enjoying playing the games but like thinking about well, maybe I could change this or add that to my game or something like that.

A

Yeah, I think so now, I'm a little bit of a gamer myself. um I play games and stream. So I thought I would do really briefly is um this is the winner from last year um and by looks it we can literally just go onto the website and click play the game. um This is the person who one last year. Would you like to talk to this um and also as a judge because you're one of the judges?

A

What are the judges looking for when they play the game um yeah and just maybe some of your thoughts on it.

B

Yeah, so um it's um so the game is really cool. You can you control the um an entity that have to like um go like escape, uh open, the the gates or um and um so yeah.

B

So the task is, you have to go to the red spot, open the gate, but okay, what now so the the thing is now you are presented with a second version of yourself and you have to operate so you obviously have to put one entity on the button to open the gate and use the other to go to the second spot.

B

A

To make um as like, how is this 13 kilobytes.

B

B

That's a good question. I mean you can check the source code. um There are so many lessons learned uh blog posts uh called postmortems where you can read about how the games were actually created and about about the judging about the scoring.

B

So, basically, experts right now focus on giving constructive feedback, because um when I asked what what what is the most important aspect of the competition, many people respond: that feedback from the judges from the experts, so getting feedback from the experts saying that this was really good and this could be improved, uh was really really important.

B

And um so the voting system is actually um participants themselves voting for uh each other's games.

B

B

They can really value stuff because they know how hard it is to build uh something in 15, kilobytes.

A

A

B

Yeah, so there are so so many really cool games. I mean you can play those games for hours. um There are games blowing your mind and they were like 26th place two years ago or something like that. So it's it's really impressive, that the level of quality is so high.

A

Yeah I mean this is just blowing my mind right now at how this is able to be 13 kilobytes like there's like sounds in it.

A

There are like different, like look at all the things that are happening on the screen, um even like little things, I'm picking up like the fact that there's a light over the current, like this, the one that I'm currently controlling, um so you can see as I move it around like there's a light that shines a little bit um the animation of taking you back all these extra things outside the fact. It's also 3d, I'm just like.

B

Yeah, so uh it was interesting that um it was actually in the very first year already that I learned I mean uh there was one game that eventually won the competition in 2012 uh called space p, um which uh so I was play testing the games to see if they work. So I can accept them, but I started playing space p and after one hour or so, I realized that I should.

B

Be I think, oh I have a bug there. You have to remove the eight zero parts from the url. Sorry.

A

About that, this is the one that won back in the first time.

B

Yeah so so it won in 2012, and so the the most impressive thing about this game was that it didn't look like a game created in 30 kilobytes.

B

It looked full, it looked like a full game.

B

That somebody didn't care about the 15 kilobyte limit, so the game is the game. Mechanic is rather simple. You defend your planet uh from attacks, and then you get some bonus points coins extra stuff. You can upgrade your base, so the the the most impressive part was that uh it didn't look like 13, like somebody has to compromise something for the size of 13 kilobytes.

B

It just looked like a complete game with many options, levels, uh bonuses, etc.

A

Etc, like almost like um a system where you can like upgrade and buy things like that, exactly.

B

A

So this is the first, so when you this was obviously the first year. Did you even.

B

A

That something like this was possible.

B

No, I mean every single year, I'm really surprised, but by what can you actually build within the size limit? I had no idea you can like build so many cool games and seeing first-person shooters or like uh real-time strategy games, uh 3d uh with shaders and everything. That's um that's like super impressive and.

A

You can you can github as well.

B

Yes, so, as I mentioned before, every single entry from every single year, uh their source code in a readable form because you submit a compressed minified code to the competition, but you also have to provide a link to the github repository with commented or at least readable for a source code.

B

So you can actually see how the games were implemented. uh I was worried that people will copy that and submit in the next years as their own. Interestingly enough, this doesn't happen. uh So I'm I'm really happy that people use that to learn and um yeah.

B

So so, for example, the next year the the exact same guy won the the second year with even better game, and then I think it was like third or fourth year when he built another game that was even better than the first two, but he ended up in, I don't know top 10 or top 20, because the level of quality already increased.

B

So it's super impressive to see more and more high quality games and, as I mentioned one of my favorites from two or three years ago, that would totally win the competition in 2012, 2013 or 14 ended up one in 100 something place.

A

So yeah that's better right.

B

Absolutely yes,.

A

And like if we look at all of these, like not all the games have them, but like most of the games, I'm seeing have um like a license, which means they they are open source.

A

If you've got a license, you can open source it, um and that's really good to hear that not everyone is taking those games and um just simply rehashing them or building on top of them actually creating something brand new every year, and I think that's like a testament to what you've built um and also the type of people who are coming in. I think that's, that's just really cool and it's so good to hear.

A

There's just grown so much, um there's, probably a bunch of people either that are listening right now or that are gonna, be watching the vod afterwards um they're like hey. This is really cool. I would love to do it. What are your tips for like just getting involved.

B

uh So there was a famous quote: um how do I start making games? How do I become a game developer and the answer is start making games because there are so many tutorials and so many learning material that to become a game developer. You can just start building games and- and that's it there's no certificate, no, nothing!

B

That gets you there. If you start building games, you're a game developer already, so there are plenty of resources. uh If you want to learn from the uh competition. People are writing uh post mortems in which they describe what went good uh during the development of the game for the competition, what they could have done, better, etc, etc. So yeah in general.

B

If you want to start building games just start building games and I think the the most important part is like playing with the code, creating something for fun and seeing if this works um and um you can, it could be your day job. It's not easy, I would say if you want to earn a lot, you could probably stay as a front-end developer in a corporation.

B

But if this is your passion- and you want to make money out of that- you can many games that were submitted to the competition were then submitted to publisher portals where publishers pay for having those game games on the on their website. So you can actually make money out of uh creating games even for the competition uh you can create games outside of the competition for game portals.

B

We also have the web monetization category, which is like a new thing where you can actually earn money out of people just playing your games.

B

So that's that's something you should definitely check out yeah I mean, if you want to.

B

If you want to become a game developer, just start building games and uh with uh with the experience uh you will build better and better games and we will be a better developer.

A

I think that's something: we've talked about a lot on these open source friday streams and something that um nick young from contour brought up a couple weeks ago to people like how do I get involved in open source? How do I get involved in this and we kind of just I the answer is always just start. It doesn't matter what it is, whether it's game, development, whether it's open source that you want to get involved with it's you know just being a developer content creation, like anything, is really.

A

I think the answer is nearly always just just start, because if you start somewhere, then you can kind of grow from there and I think um something like js. Certain games is a really good way to get started in game development.

A

um I think the fact that it's um you know a small threshold is so good and one of the guys in the chat tacky man um who I know as a developer as well he's just like just find a passion, plain and simple, and then you just go for it right if you're passionate about something just do it, um and I know some people are listening in now and watching the vod later might be thinking hey. This is really good. I do actually really want to get started.

A

um Are there opportunities for people in js that incame um games, you've kind of mentioned? It just touched a little bit um but to to find a team and to find other people to build a game with you kind of mention the slack channel but other opportunities for people to find people and submit as a team.

B

Yes, absolutely we have a team's channel where people can connect and every single year I'm seeing people joining teams and um it can get really crazy because, like a few years ago, we so there is a js 1k. There was js 1k competition where you built something in one kilobyte.

A

B

And so a bunch of people joined forces, I don't remember it was like five or ten different developers and they created an entry called 26 games in one well and there was like 26 games in one 13 kilobytes package and that's yeah.

A

B

A

B

Yes, so that's like, and there is a whole bunch of examples like those and.

A

B

Am sitting here going.

A

Why does forza take up 76 gigabytes of space on my game? And you know people can build a game for a half kilowatt.

B

Yeah, so um I really like seeing people connect and team up with other developers from around the world and uh building something for the competition, so you can, even if you're totally new, haven't built anything you can join. The community join forces with someone, and there are so many success stories of people starting uh from scratch, not knowing anything, joining team, creating something and then sharing this and saying that.

B

Well, this was the very first game I have built, and there are many success stories of people, then starting to work on other games or like joining a company building games, etc, etc. So it's a it's a great opportunity and the the tools on the resources page are mostly by other developers, just creating something for their own use and then realizing other people could use that as well.

B

So, for example, you have written some um some micro engine or like tool that will compress images better or like will help you do something you can, uh since you know how to put stuff on github, because you are having your game there already.

B

You can share the tools as well put it on github on the resources page and other people can already use them and that's what open source could be. It is basically using other people open source, stuff and contributing if uh I'm seeing um discussions in the contra channel about stuff that could be added to the library. The author is there, so he's literally fixing any issues instantly and like after five minutes, it's like hey. This is like fixed, and this is the next release.

B

So uh it's really awesome to see that the whole community working on improving tools so.

A

You've got the maintainers of certain repos helping out like while this is going on so they've kind of got in their head. That hey just 13k games is is available. We're here to help is that kind of how it works.

B

Yes exactly and it's it's really great to see people collaborate um like yesterday, we announced something called os 13k, which is like a micro operating system with trophies and all the stuff that so basically uh games um showcased on the website uh share the same local storage.

B

So they so we usually say don't do don't clear the whole storage, because you will remove all the saves from other games, but they took this back. Well, it's not a back, but like it's not a back. It's a feature saying that they are using that to have to be able to create trophies from any game submitted to the competition, and this trophy will be showcased in the os 13k.

B

So you can actually see all the trophies you can get in different games submitted to the competition. It's also pro. It's also providing some tools to share your generated sounds or music, uh so you can actually have like a playlist of uh of different kinds of music that is present uh in in the competition entries so um and, like I don't know like five or seven or ten different people worked on having that released.

B

uh So I'm really proud of community. Of of those people doing that for fun and releasing that and giving that to other developers to play with.

A

And if we look at the resources page, we kind of touched on a little bit like most of like especially the top bit the game, engines and boilerplates. Most of this stuff is on github and you're, saying like the maintainers, are getting a lot out of it by having um getting feedback directly from the people who are using the product or using the um the repo and the the making changes on the fly for the game.

A

Are you seeing or do you know if there's any of the maintainers of seeing a um an uptake in contributions around this time? Like are any of these people working on their games? They going back and then contributing to any of these projects? Do you know of.

B

um Yeah I mean there are many cases where people create some libraries and then and other developers contribute to those or they help each other, send some bug, fixes, etc.

B

So there is a vibrant community and since the all the source code is on github, I'm seeing many developers helping each other and and contributing back and since, like many people use contra, for example, a spike in activity around this library during the competition is really high and the author itself adds a lot of stuff and other developers are also contributing by just using or testing it, but also adding some some features.

B

um So it's uh it's really cool to see um this kind of uh like the community, helping each other.

A

Yeah, I think that's right, I kind of said it before about the hackathons and that's one of the reasons why I love hackathons, so much and in game jams. It's just people helping everyone else and helping each other and building the community and you know contributing to each other's code and helping one another out, even though they're all in competition.

A

So I think that's something I really like, and um you know big kudos to yourself um for getting this going and like it's been running for like what eight years now this is its ninth year yeah. um So what is your vision for js 13k games moving forward and where do you see it kind of going.

B

um I would like to see it grow in a way it grows over the years, because it's um I'm really impressed that every single year there is something new happening around the competition.

B

The the webxr category was introduced like three years or four years ago, web monetization last year, um I'm getting so much help uh running the competition from from developers that helped build the validation board. So I don't have to manually check the submissions or like the voting system, so people can actually focus on on that.

B

So I'm I'm really thankful to all the developers helping with the competition, and I can imagine that uh in the next year we will have more tools. More developers, help me with the competition and I'm I'm happy with how the competition is evolving and growing uh over the years.

B

So I I don't have any like high expectations or anything, I'm just happy with how it works every single year and that people are happy to develop games and submit the competition and they are building pools and and experiences that I couldn't even imagine are possible, like the 26 games in one or like tiny operating system uh or like real-time strategy games in in 3d webgl with shaders and whatnot. So uh I'm really impressed by the quality of games, and I would like to see this slowly forever.

A

I think from what I'm seeing right now, it looks like it's definitely going to be on going on for a fairly long time now, you've been pretty much solo, ship steering, js 7k games. We can see on your website. You've got a bunch of really cool judges um and it looks like they're from all over the world in so many different time zones. So how do you all work together? To judge the games and to um you know, come up with the winners and things.

B

So there are um two parts to that, so um the experts actually uh because previously we had judges who are playing the games, but it was okay. When you had 60 entries, but with 250, it's really tough to play all the games.

B

We had some judges that were playing all of them, but it's really hard to play all and judge them um in a way that uh that will be fair. So we so the competition evolved and we have experts who are actually providing feedback uh playing small amount of games comparably small. So, for example, an expert have um so when the competition submission time ends.

B

September 13th and the winners are announced on october 4th an expert have three weeks to play, given games like 20 or 30 games and provide written feedback of playing those games and saying this was really good. This could be improved and, as I mentioned, developers really value the feedback and then there's also the voting system in which developers themselves who submit the games, vote on other people's games, and then winners are announced out of that.

B

So we have the best experts in the field who create the games and they also vote for for the games and and the winners are announced out of that voting.

A

Yeah, that sounds sounds pretty good and I think, um as you I just said, like people really value that feedback, and I think that is one of the reasons why a lot of people get involved in game jams or hackathons is to normally build out their their profiles and their cv um or for a lot of people build out their github contribution graph. um It's to get that. You know that industry, expertise that industry um experience and to get the feedback from the people.

A

So if this is something you do want to get into, you've got that really good feedback and a really good base that you can go and like build on top of so.

B

Absolutely absolutely I mean uh there are: there were many cases in which uh participating in the competition or having any open source stuff or like anything as a hobby, was an advantage in a job interview. So one thing is having skills or job experience, but the other is having some some passion and having some cool projects to show, because there were many cases where somebody was recruited, because a recruiter saw a game submitted to the competition which, which is really cool. For me,.

A

So you can say everything: you've built has been helping. People get jobs, which is incredible.

B

A

Amazing, I just I think it's great. I mean um I don't know how much you've looked into my background or anything like that, and I don't expect you to of all. But you know that is the reason why I love running hackathons is because, um especially when I had my first company when we hired people, our question was: have you actually been a hacked on, like you know, we're hiring for a developer role? It's like. Have you been a hacker?

A

If the answer was no, it's like well what that's okay, but have you done anything outside your university degree, because if you haven't it says you're not passionate about what you're doing and for people to give up their time to either go to a hackathon or participate in a game jam or be part of something like hacktoberfest or something like that. It just shows that you're actually passionate about that and that's what people want to hire for. They don't necessarily just want to hire for your skills.

A

I mean your skills are good, but you can kind of teach skills. You can't really teach. You know the passion, the drive and the motivation. So I think you know it's fantastic. You put something together like this.

B

Yeah, if, if you have like hundreds of cvs- and you have to look for something that will stand out uh those kind of projects, those kind of activities uh definitely help.

A

Yeah 100 great, so um if anyone in the chat or those are watching whatever there's a link, um go join up um if you're interested in in game development, if you're interested in um you're writing your games in tiny little files- um and I think yeah techy man is exactly right: do you have to have a portfolio outside your actual portfolio?

A

um So you have your portfolio of your skills and the jobs that you've done. um But what about? What are your extracurricular activities and how do they um play into you know the job that you're looking for because, as you've um said andre is um you know everyone when who goes for an interview.

A

You've pretty much all got the same skills because you're playing for the job. So what makes you stand out and I think it's you know it's those things like hey I've I participated in third, even if you don't win, even if you don't get in the top ten, all the top 100. You know the fact that you actually.

B

I mean yes, there are, there are so many like I there are so many games submitted to the competition, but I'm over the years. I'm learning about people who are building something but didn't submit it, and I realized that there are many of those, because I was participating in many jams and I didn't submit something because I didn't finish it.

B

So there are like hundreds of games every year that aren't submitted to the competition, and it's I mean we were talking about this- that um if you submit something that is buggy and if you think it's ugly, but it works. That's already an achievement. You already submitted something uh because there were many people building and and didn't finish. So, if you finish it, you can call it the 0.1 version and just improve the post competition versions.

B

uh But it's if you can submit something. That's already an achievement.

A

A

The idea pitch the thing or just you just do the actual thing, and then you know what is actually more important is what you say after you know: I've I've done this game, but I'm planning on when I've got more time or you know the next day. I'm planning to do this and this and this and this, and I think that's what people really value the fact that you've thought about the next stage and that that's not what um you know. That's not the only the be all, and also that was actually going to be.

A

My my last question to you. As you know, what are your tips to people who are a bit worried about submitting games or whatever evil? You basically answer questions just just go for it anyway,.

B

Yeah go for it, I mean, if, if you uh write your plan, if you want to, if you start building something, throw away as much as possible, don't over complicate it. If it's simple enough, you will be able to finish the development, submit the game, and then you can work after the competition with some extra stuff, so removing extra stuff removing, what's not necessary as a way to go. So you have like a working prototype and you still have.

B

If you still have time- and you still have space now- you can add something on top of it. But if you have a working prototype, you can submit it in any time. Even if something happens, and you lose two weeks because uh your family will tell you we have to go on a vacation, uh you still can submit something and be happy with it.

A

I think that's the thing right is that you've really got nothing to lose.

B

A

B

A

Mean what are you gonna? Lose you mean you might not get the top prize, but that's not the end of the world, so I think um yeah. I think your your tips and um ideas there just you know so valuable for so many people who are looking at this industry going. I don't know where to get started, I'm worried about submitting something. That's not finished.

A

I think you've kind of answered all the questions for people and now it's kind of up to you know the viewers here and anyone else, who's thinking about getting involved in games or hackathons. Is it's it's really up to you now to just go and do it. I think.

B

I mean if I would be a recruiter and I would sing one big unfinished mmo rpg versus 10, simple html5 games that you can play directly in the browser that that is important, that the the second case is someone who can actually finish and deliver projects in limited time. uh So that's uh that's really really important. Yes,.

A

Or small constraints, but whichever way you want to look at it, oh another thing I think you know everything you said is just so on point and um yeah. I just want to thank you again so so much for joining us, uh especially.

B

A

All the way from poland and tuning in at you know it's now seven o'clock, your time, you're, probably gonna, go back to bed. Now um we really thank you so much for being on um the channel.

B

Thank you so much.

A

um Just share js7k games and we really hope a lot of people um tune in and participate in the competition.

B

A

All right, thank you so much.

B

Thank you. Everybody.

A

All righty everyone thank you, so so much for being part of um today's live stream. um We're very very excited very, very thankful um to have you know the amazing creator from js70k games with us, and he has some really really amazing top tips on getting involved in game jams. Hackathons, just taking your passion and just running, for, I think that's, what's really really important, um as as you mentioned, all the games um that are created on js7k games are available on github.

A

Not all of them have open source licenses, but a good majority of them do so. A lot of them are open source, um so go check them out again, thanks everyone for tuning in keep an eye on our social media and our twitch channel for the next stream. I'm gonna be doug you'll, be chatting to some of the maintainers over on the american time zone and we've always got some really exciting content on our twitch channel for you. So I want to thank you for being here and we'll see you all next time. Alright, thanks.

A