Finally found my way to this topic to say, as usual and expected from me, that it'd be good if this contest was open to Prizm (and Casio calculators in general) entries, as well as entries for the HP Prime, etc.
It's not that I plan on participating, but I appreciate seeing new software being developed for less popular calculators, and there have already been too many contests that were not open to said calculators.
If I'm seeing correctly, the last contest open to entries targeting the Prizm was back in November 2012, two years ago
. Even if we end up not seeing many entries for non-TI calculators, I think opening the possibility would not hurt.
The Prizm was once seen as the most promising calculator around, to a point where it almost seemed Cemetech was becoming Casio-focused, with very positive articles and posts being written by many people including Kerm. It's sad to think that the same device is now basically forgotten, not just in this community for sure, but
especially here. The reasons for such are not for this post (especially since I've written my views many times, and will probably write more as things happen and my view changes). But still in this topic of which calculators to allow, I think it isn't reasonable to put endorsements, relationships and "work with graphing calculator companies" before the community, and I really hope that's a "much less important" factor, as Kerm said, and that it will continue to be. Otherwise the community will be lost to sponsorships.
Now, on the topic for the contest... while motivating educational entries is good, it shouldn't be a restriction, especially not if the motivation behind it is the "work with graphing calculator companies"; is the point to sound nice to teachers, schools and such companies, or to have fun developing new things? Not saying that we should annoy such parties on purpose - well the opposite - but that their non-annoyance should not be a primary factor, to the point of restricting people's creativity.
While a more open contest in the likes of Ludum Dare would probably get more entries, I believe the quality of most entries would be lower than with a closed-topic contest - simply because it would be easier for people to go with too ambitious projects - not that they are impossible to complete, but what I've seen in previous contests and not just here is that a considerable fraction of people end up giving up or submitting unfinished things, because of lack of time, motivation, or both. With a more closed topic I think it's easier for people to focus and present something finished, and it could also be easier to judge more objectively - but in this I have no experience, so I may be totally wrong.
Speaking of projects that are left incomplete (as is the case with so many game projects, for the Prizm and other calculators), I just thought of something that as far as I know has never been tried and I'm not sure would work very well as a contest, but here it goes anyway. It consists on finishing unfinished projects. Since I joined this community I have seen too many promising projects get abandoned. Sometimes, when they are made for a contest, they are submitted with the note "this is still a alpha/beta version, will be finished some day", but of course that day never arrives.
How would such a thing work? Well, for a start, people who have unfinished projects of theirs that are provably abandoned for long (to prevent people from submitting something they were working on already, before the contest was announced) could resume work on these projects and finish them (or at least take them to the next preview release). The idea is that since these projects would be resumed by the people who originally made them, there would be no licensing/copyrights/credits issues.
In the case of incomplete projects for which their source is available and the licensing terms allow "remixing", other people could resume work on the existing code, if it is of good enough quality, modifying it as necessary but keeping within the original spirit of the thing. Of course, the end result would need to credit the original authors and respect the original licensing terms.
In the case of incomplete and closed projects, one of two things could be done after asking the original author for permission: one, is to ask for the source code (not necessarily making it open source, it could be more like licensing the code to another person) and work from there, then releasing with appropriate credits and licensing as discussed with the author. Other, if the source code is not made available/is lost, is to re-implement everything from scratch while keeping as much as possible within the original specification - much like a port of closed-source games where people add new features while taking into account the main ideas.
The quite obvious reason why I don't think this would work in a contest is the difficulty in judging the entries. Someone that took an almost-finished project would need very little work to get a finished product, while someone that took what was basically a draft will have much more work, let alone those who are working in a project of theirs but lost the original source code and assets. Judges could take the "how much work had to be done, and how much work was actually done" factors into account, but this is hard to measure - highly subjective. Another problem could be the shortage of unfinished projects, but a quick browse through the Prizm forums alone tells me that for it at least, there would be no short supply.
Of course anyone can just pick up on unfinished projects at any time, but the idea of doing it in a contest is that you would have more people working simultaneously towards similar goals, with a nice end result of having less abandoned projects around, like a housekeeping marathon but for abandoned projects.
Well, I leave my two cents here, even if not for this contest... sorry-but-not-sorry for the long post
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