A good idea in principle but this is the tricky bit:
This would need to be defined so everyone was presenting the same information.
[quote=āhrobertson, post:162, topic:546ā]
This would need to be defined so everyone was presenting the same information.[/quote]
Iām not sure how thatās tricky. Make the same information available to all players. Boom. Done. From there, how can the game ensure that a player can see the bits of information that they want - and when they want it? The goal is to avoid cluttering the screen with all the displays, or distracting the player with uninteresting information that they donāt care about.
The real tricky part is creating a game where the player isnāt obliged to have the screen covered in UI crap. It may seem like great fun to be able to designate a target for automated firing by a gun turret, but when the player is changing targets every 10 seconds for 10 gun turrets, itās more a game of whack-a-mole than anything else. As ever, ignore the fiction and look at what the player actually does when playing the game.
But thatās far beyond the scope of a competition, given that it involves the design of an entire game.
Iām for narowing it down to just one pice or set of related pieces of information and having that as a design challenge.
Also allows for multiple such chalenges and allows for concentrated endavour without drifting off to more meta or dofferent problems.
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I like the idea. 
Now we just have to figure out what information do we want to be included in the challenge. Any suggestions?
Ship status. Resources, damage, etc.
Identification and tracking information on interesting objects. Ships, stations, cities, etc.
I like the idea of coding something that I want to code in my spare time, something interesting, something a bit more juicy.
My suggestion is that you leave the subject of the prototype to the actual participants, think weāll get much more interesting entries that way. Every coder has that āideaā they want to work on, not sure how many people find coding on āInformation Presentationā (a GUI essentially) a fun way to spend a week or two of their spare time.
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But should it at least be a gameplay feature?
It just needs to be Infinity related, anything from procedural tree generation to modular station design and everything in between.
Would that not make comparing the entries rather difficult?
Iām not sure about the data presentation idea either though. Strikes me as more of an art thing.
Does it really matter if we can rate it on a 1-10 scale for sound, graphics, idea and gameplay?
Just making something that is good to this hardcore bunch on the forums is fine. Iām sure that if you took two random games on Steam Greenlight and compared them, there would be some consensus on which one is better.
At the end of the day, people can vote and the votes can be counted, let them decide.
Thatās true.
So a random Infinity related prototype it is then? Preferably by coding but any method of presenting the idea is accepted.
Hmm, the coding idea is getting away from what I thought the theme of these would be, āFan Art Challengesā.
Well depending on the method of presentation it could be drifting away from the āArtā part of the original idea a little bit. But it would be a shame to limit the challenges if there is considerable interest in the community for such challenges too. Perhaps the presentation of the idea should be visual in some way?
By definition of art, āany expression or application of human creative skill and imagination, typically in a visual formā.
Making it visual is probably a good idea. 
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Personally Iām not big on the visual stuff. I think the last time I created a GUI was 10 years ago using VB6ā¦
I suppose I could do a web interface but I think its more likely that I wonāt be taking part.
As an example, you will see from the cockpit we have in the KS vid we included some very WIP art based instrumentation, but we will probably will not have time for a WIP UI.
We really need to playtest to get a good handle what information is pertinent, and where to place it. This iterative process will likely guide future cockpit designs, etc. It may be too early to get into this too deeply with an āart challengeā. However, I donāt want to stop anyone. If community members want to spend time on it, ideas before we playtest canāt hurt, as long as ppl realize it could be all for naught. (unlikely though as it is a space shooter, there are other game experiences to draw upon).
I like the idea of the challenge being about āwhat do you think the GUI should look likeā, but it would end up more like a discussion with visuals and examples than a contest. I would love to see a discussion with people contributing examples and visuals instead of just words 
Iād like to try designing an interface, though itās really a subject that requires testing with users. However, for user tests you need to give users specific tasks or scenarios, in other words: gameplay.
I guess this is why I think it might be a ābad ideaā.
I personally, would love to see a challenge on what the factions looks like, what they wear, etc However, this would take some very high levels of artistic talent.