LibreJam

Hello, and welcome to the home of the bimonthly game jam for libre games, LibreJam!

At the beginning of every other month, the jam begins, with a unique theme being released to add extra challenge. Participants have one week to develop and publish their game, working solo or in teams. Once time is up, all games are published to the site for others to view, and ratings are opened for seven days, before a winner is announced.

Current Jam

• Status: Collecting ratings
• Week number: 202101
• Theme: Cooperation
• Submissions end at: 2021-01-07 23:59 UTC
• Ratings end at: 2021-01-14 23:59 UTC

Chat

Participants are encouraged to come and chat with each other in the IRC channel; there you can check out what other people are working on, brainstorm ideas, or even find people to team up with.

The mailing list is the preferred way of asking questions about the jam, as others with the same questions will be able to see the posts and find their answers more quickly. Of course, the mailing list is also a great place to open up a question or discussion to the community.

Additionally, you will need to use the mailing list to submit your completed game. You may also use it to keep a development log, if you want others to leave feedback on your progress while you work on your game.

• IRC: #librejam on Freenode.
• Mailing list: librejam@leagueh.xyz, archives

Rules

1. All code and assets must be provided under an FSD-approved license (see also: The Free Software Definition).
   • Any software required to run the game must also be available under an OSI-approved license.
   • Preferably, only open source tools should be used to develop the game, but this is not a strict requirement.
2. Content must be appropriate and safe for work.
   • We maintain a zero tolerance policy for hate speech and/or harassment.
   • If you choose to develop a game that makes fun of someone or their likeness, please ensure it is in good spirit; letting them know first is probably a good idea.
   • Including a political message with your game is allowed, but in dangerous territory. Your game may be removed.
3. Games must fit the theme in some way.
   • It doesn’t need to fit the theme perfectly, you’re free to use your imagination and make it a bit of a stretch if you like.
   • Occasionally the theme may include some mandatory criteria, which must be met in order for your submission to be counted.
4. Important mechanics must be developed within the duration of the game jam.
   • Unique gameplay must be developed after the theme is announced. For example, you are not allowed to submit a “match 3” game without adding any unique mechanics to it.
   • You are, however, allowed to reuse code and assets, so long as you are adding new value to them through your new mechanics.

All submissions must comply with these rules, or they will be discarded. Egregious violations may result in you being banned from community channels.

In addition to the above rules, there are some guidelines that you might want to keep in mind while developing your game. These are not mandatory, but they’re generally good advice for helping you create an end product which is fun for everyone:

• If you are submitting your game in a language other than English, please consider providing an English translation as well.
  • Submissions in other languages are allowed (and, in fact, encouraged!), but nevertheless, most of the LibreJam community only speaks English.
  • As a result, if you submit a game without English support, you probably won’t get very many ratings or feedback.
• Write a build script which makes compiling your game from source easy.
  • Many people are using devices with different software or libraries. As a result, it is often necessary for them to compile your game from source in order to play it.
  • Creating an easy to use build script not only helps expand your audience, but it is also good software development practice in general, and reflects well on your competency as a programmer.
• Allow players to rebind the controls.
  • Not everyone uses a standard “QWERTY” keyboard layout. Permanently setting your game controls to common combinations like “WASD” can make life very difficult for such players.
  • If your game doesn’t provide a way to rebind its controls, consider using “scan codes” instead of “key codes” in your controller code. This will map your controls to physical keys on the keyboard, ensuring your game works regardless of the player’s keyboard layout.
• Describe your game in your submission post.
  • When the jam ends, you will need to submit your game on the mailing list. Although simply attaching the source code to an empty email is sufficient, it is recommended that you write a short description about your game.
  • Telling others what your game is and how it is played will improve your chances of receiving feedback and positive ratings. If you leave your post empty, they may just skip over your game and play something else.

Submissions

Once your game is finished, submit it by sending an email to librejam@leagueh.xyz. The subject line should be in the format “[SUBMISSION] WEEK - Game name here”. Obviously, you should replace “WEEK” with the week number (probably listed at the top of this page). You then have two options to attach your game:

Option one is to attach your game’s source code to the email, preferably in a compressed .tar or .zip file. This is the preferred method if your game is small. If your game is large, however, uploading will probably take a long time, so you may wish to use the second option instead. Any submissions larger than 100MiB made using this method will be discarded. Once your game has been submitted, you cannot publish any new updates to it, so playtest thoroughly before you send.

Option two is to upload your game to an external source, like a file hosting service or a git web service. If you choose to take this approach, you must provide a link to a file which will not change if you modify your game. This is important! Providing a link which downloads a .zip file of the latest main branch is unacceptable. If you are using a git repo, you should instead create a tag and provide a download link to that. Once you have selected a download link, determine its SHA256 checksum, and add it to your email. On UNIX systems, you can find the SHA256 checksum of a file easily using the sha256sum command. This is to ensure that your game is not modified after the submission date.

Note that librejam@leagueh.xyz is not a private email address; your message will be displayed publicly in the archive, and others will be able to reply to it with their own comments and feedback.

Ratings

Anyone can submit ratings for games, not just jam participants. To submit a rating, reply to the submission post for the game in question on the mailing list. Ratings are accepted until the end time given at the top of the page, after which ratings for all games are tallied and winners are announced. Ratings must include a number between 0 and 9, inclusive, for each of the following categories:

• Overall
• Theme
• Graphics
• Sound

Jam index

• 202101 - Cooperation
• 202012 - Engineering in space

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