OLPC Game Jam for an XO Laptop 72
An anonymous reader writes "The OLPC project has announced a three-day game development jam session is scheduled to begin June 8 on the campus of Olin College, an engineering school in Needham, Massachusetts. 'The game jam is an opportunity for developers to create new types of games that rely on features of the XO's design such as mesh networking between nearby users, an integrated still or video camera, and a tablet mode for mobile gaming. Beyond creating games that teach specific tasks like counting or reading, OLPC hopes the contest will produce templates that allow kids to build their own games, according to OLPC's development guidelines.' The grand prize is a free OLPC laptop. All games created at the weekend-long event will be licensed under the GNU General Public License, and posted on the SourceForge site."
I Can't Wait... (Score:1)
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Or make it live action ! (Score:2)
More seriously, even if the mesh doesn't provide GPS-grade precision, the mesh may have some interesting localisation-like possibility, like counting how much "mesh-hops" apart are the children. This could enable some guesstimation about position.
Maybe not enough for live-action Quake.
But definitely something to consider for making a kind of Radar-Assisted game of Hide'n'Seek.
Novelty item? (Score:2)
Re:Novelty item? (Score:5, Insightful)
If you're taking part in this competition, chances are very good that you support the mission of the OLPC program. If you win and receive an actual unit, it just makes further development and testing for the platform that much easier for you. It's more about supporting the goal than it is about the payout (hey, isn't that what OSS is generally about?).
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Re:Novelty item? (Score:4, Insightful)
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If you win and receive an actual unit, it just makes further development and testing for the platform that much easier for you.
The part that throws me is that they're only giving away one XO for first place. These things are supposed to be cheap, give away a bunch. Give the best entries two (to facillitate testing of mesh-dependent software.)
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On closer reading, they have four distinct development tracks, so there might be four separate prizes. Anyone know the details?
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Had to fix that one
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Airfare? (Score:1, Offtopic)
How is it possible for the vast majority of people who wish to compete in these events to do so without having to spend hundreds of dollars on round-trip airfare?
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Worst come to worst, they can give up their Spring Break plans and pay for the trip themselves. Which would YOU chose, a hazy week of drunken stupor and puke-filled orgies on the beach or three days with your develope
Re:Airfare? (Score:4, Insightful)
It looks like there's also a $100 registration fee, but that includes food and lodging for the event. Seems to me like they're actually working pretty hard to keep it inexpensive. There's also a scholarship [hackronym.com] to reduce the costs for students. I'm sure they'd be happy to do more, given the money--see their donation [hackronym.com] page if you know anyone that could chip in.
I know professionalism is out of the question (Score:1, Troll)
Yes, many people know, and there is a (small) link on the top of the page, but even the semblance of editing is appreciated.
Hrmm.... (Score:3, Interesting)
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Virtual loom?
Re:I see it (Score:5, Informative)
If nothing else, as I said earlier, most sexual abuse on children is by relatives and close family friends. It isn't by "paedophiles", but is rather simply opportunistic. The people we should be worried about are those who actually are abusive, not just those who have thoughts that maybe abusive (or maybe about consensual sex for all we know).
QUOTE (http://www.nncc.org/Abuse/sex.abuse.html)
Eighty-five percent of sexual assaults on children are committed by someone the child knows and usually trusts - an immediate family member, a relative, a neighbor, or a friend of the family.
QUOTE (http://www.ocfs.state.ny.us/main/publications/Pu
In many cases reported in New York State and nationwide, children are sexually abused by people they know and trust - relatives (even parents or siblings), friends of the family, and authority figures (teachers, youth group leaders, clergy, etc.). Sexual abuse usually occurs in places where children feel comfortable or safe - at home or in the home of a family friend.
QUOTE (http://www.bbc.co.uk/parenting/your_kids/safety_
Sexual abuse is far more likely to be carried out by someone a child knows, such as a relative or friend of the family, than by a stranger. And sometimes older children abuse younger children.
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This is pretty cool (Score:2)
One, making sure that all the games developed are released under the GPL is a far cry from similar development contests by commercial companies that stipulate that all entries become the property of the sponsoring company, this should encourage people to enter.
Two, while the prize is (as far as I can tell) only for the "best" game developed, I'm sure a number of people will enter just for the fun of it, and because their work will still be available to them (see first thought) they won't be w
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And given the popularity of virtual worlds nowadays, I'm
Emulator (Score:1, Troll)
It these an emulator or sdk of something one could use to try and develop for hardware involved here ?
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Sell XOs and you might get developers (Score:2)
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The whole 'you're too privileged to be able to buy this' attitude of Negroponte turns me off to the whole project. Unless I and every other potential contributor can actually own one, there's no way to get really excited and motivated to help.
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Seriously though, I thought the "buy two, get one" plan that was suggested in the early days of the OLPC project was great. Shame they canned that.
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But any number of organizations are trying to appeal to that sense of altruism, doing all sorts of different things in developing nations. Being able to own the laptop would be a huge differentiator to help me make up my mind if I were to choose which among those organizations I want to support. And what if the laptop is a piece of crap? Bett
Or hey (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Or hey (Score:5, Informative)
A little OT, but I think that the interface is generally pretty good, but at least so far in the beta builds the file-selection dialogs for opening up text & drawings are still the (absolutely atrocious) Gnome defaults that are made even worse because the limited screen real estate on OLPC means the fields are too small to even see properly. Making a simplified and OLPC-friendly file dialog would be a major improvement.
incoherent (Score:2)
That definite goes in the top 10 worst
large nintendo DS? (Score:2)
so any party game concepts that work on the DS should work on the XO i guess
Sim City (Score:2)
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Hell yes baby!
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Brilliant! (Score:1)
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ORPC (Score:1, Troll)
The Incredible Machine! (Score:5, Interesting)
Something along the SimCity games would be cool, too, i guess.
Maybe the owners of those franchises (Dynamix [?] and Maxis) could even help out a bit, for PR reasons?
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Soccer anyone? (Score:1)
I was thinking frisbee... (Score:2)
Maybe dodgeball^h^h^h^hsquare?
MMORPGs (Score:1)
Millennium Campaign Games Wiki (Score:2)
Squeak? eToys? Hello? (Score:1)
Efficient Code - (Score:1)
Which is a Good Thing(TM).