Weekly Open Source Game Jam - Week 1

Hosted by Healz4Life · #WeeklyOpenSourceGameJam

Ratings

This jam is now over. It ran from 2021-08-06 17:00:00 to 2021-08-12 17:00:00. View results

There's an unneeded and stunting secretiveness to projects often, that I think should be faded out of the GameDev community. Imagine what could be made if your favorite games' source code was all on GitHub. Advancements are made when we work together.

Collaborate to make a game with the goal of other people using, learning from, and expanding upon your work.

Week 1 Theme: Parallel Worlds

All "Open Source" submissions should be under the "Creative Commons" (CC) licenses, CC0 or CC BY.

(CC0) or (Public Domain) lets people use your work without any restriction.

(CC BY) adds upon (CC0) with people legally needing to credit you for your work.
(If you want to learn more about (CC) licenses you can follow the link here)

The streamlined Game Jam formula

Discord

1. When the theme is announced, discuss your ideas for games in #Theme-Discussion
(No need to keep those ideas a secret, get them out there to be shared.)

2. Find a team by listing your talents in #Looking-For-Team
(A team is not required, but you will gain from meeting fellow game devs and leveling up those networking skills.)

3. Use Trello to organize your project, optionally using this template made by me
(Trello seems to be familiar to most people within Game Jams, I wouldn't spend more time looking at alternatives.)

4. Use GitHub to collaboratively share project files
(Make sure each team member has their own branch, and that it's known what might conflict before being pushed to master.)

5. Make your game
(You can either keep it simple and polish it, or have more of an experimental demo. Don't forget your team is doing this for fun!)

6. Playtest - Have your team do it, have your friends do it, and ask the internet if they can do it in #Get-Feedback or anywhere else
(Get early feedback, see what small changes you can make to improve your project, and expand upon the parts people like.) (How-to video)

7. Set up your itch.io project page. Instructions can be found on this Game Jam's page by pressing "Join Jam" then "Submit your project"
(Make sure to get an early version of the project up, then improve things like the page theme later if you have time.)

8. Add credits onto the itch.io project page, Trello, and GitHub, so the credits can be found anywhere needed
(List where everything used in the project is from, even if it's not required. Maybe even thank asset creators and show them what you made.)

9. Open Source-ify your project by, on the project page linking to and setting the view to public, as well as on GitHub and Trello
(By allowing the public to view your GitHub and Trello pages, you can allow people to make their own remixes from where you left off)

10. Publish by putting a link to your project in #Jam-Submissions and make sure to @ mention all team members for credit
(Feel free to tweet your project page link with #WeeklyOpenSourceGameJam)

Bonus: When the Game Jam ends try out the submissions, if you give them a rating and creative comment it goes a long way!
(Did you know itch.io has their own app for PC? Download it here, and try out desktop downloads as easy as browser-only ones.)

Notes

Licenses - What/how to use them when publishing

(Disclaimer: I'm not a legal professional)

GitHub:

Browse to your main repository page at GitHub, this will look like "github.com/MemberName/ProjectName"
Above where it shows your last commit choose "Add File > Create New File"
Name it "LICENSE", so "Choose a license template" shows up
Select either:
(CC0) - "Creative Commons Zero v1.0 Universal" or manually paste in "This work is licensed under Attribution 4.0 International"
Also on your GitHub description page include either:
"This work is marked with CC0 1.0 Universal" or "This work is licensed under Attribution 4.0 International"

itch.io:

Browse to your main project page here on itch.io, this will look like "MemberName.itch.io/ProjectName"
Select "Edit game > Metadata > Release info"
Under "License for assets" choose either:
(CC0) - "Creative Commons Zero v1.0 Universal" or (CC BY) - "Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International"
Also on your itch.io project description page include either:
"This work is marked with CC0 1.0 Universal" or "This work is licensed under Attribution 4.0 International"

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Look out for (CC ND)
(ND) - No derivatives or adaptations of the work are permitted.
It's important that assets used are allowed to be re-distributed, so that your project can be uploaded to GitHub publicly.

Want to change copyright later? No problem!
Keep your original page open source, title it "open source beta", make a new project page, and have it be your official release page.

Other

When planning your game you'll want to make clear what the most important to get done first are.
Make sure to either make a priority list, or alternatively put the most important tasks further up on Trello and reorganize them anytime.

At the end of the Jam, you should be able to download the source code from any submissions you like!

Using a color palette is a simple but effective way to improve your game's visuals. Lospec has a nice gallery to look through.

Voting criteria will be based on best use of theme (Theme clearly used, for an interesting concept).

Sources for free assets

You are highly encouraged to use other works with similar (CC) licenses in your project, whether it's art, code, music, or stories.

Credits for this GameJam page

Potra by Alejo Bergmann is the font used in this GameJam's banner image.
Glass jar isolated transparent by maja7777 is the jar image edited for the cover image.

itch.io