This is going to be a different kind of challenge. As mentioned in the Tower Defense recap, this one and potentially more in the future will venture into sports:

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The next challenge is coming soon. While the challenges so far have been focused on remaking old games or implementing a genre, the next challenge will venture into a new area for GameDev Challenges - sports.

Sports represent the purest form of game design balance. After all, the resulting winner of most sports contests result in the higher skilled, more strategic player(s) winning. The next challenge will be to implement the rules of the challenge's selected sport into a digital game. This could mean creating a game based on the sport, or it could mean designing a completely unrelated genre game that uses the sport's rules / game design mechanics for its own.

The Game of Baseball

Specifically, we're going to focus on the game of Baseball.

While Baseball has grown to be an international sport, the version we are most familiar with formed in the United States in the 19th century. The game's roots can be traced to the 18th century England and as far back as the 14th century in France. In the United States, the modern form of the game was played by amateurs using informal rules and homemade equipment until the sport grew in popularity and inspired semi-professional national baseball clubs in the 1860s. The first officially recognized rules of modern baseball have been called the Knickerbocker Rules, consisting of 20 rules for the game. Some of these original rules are at odds with modern rules.

These days Major League Baseball is the official professional baseball organization in the United States, and they maintain a rulebook consisting of over 150 pages of rules. That's a lot of rules, and making a game true to those rules is a herculean effort. Let's leave that up to the likes of AAA studios.

Instead, you are challenged to create a game that includes the original rules of baseball still relevant to the modern game. Namely:

1. The bases shall be from "home" to second base, forty-two paces; from first to third base, forty-two paces, equidistant.
2. The game to consist of twenty-one counts, or aces; but at the conclusion an equal number of hands must be played.
3. The ball must be pitched, not thrown, for the bat.
4. A ball knocked out of the field, or outside the range of the first and third base, is foul.
5. Three balls being struck at and missed and the last one caught, is a hand-out; if not caught it is considered fair, and the striker bound to run.
6. If a ball be struck, or tipped, and caught, either flying or on the first bound, it is a hand out.
7. A player running the bases shall be out, if the ball is in the hands of an adversary on the base, or the runner is touched with it before he makes his base; it being understood, however, that in no instance is a ball to be thrown at him.
8. Three hands out, all out.
9. Players must take their strike in regular turn.
10. No ace or base can be made on a foul strike.
11. But one base allowed when a ball bounds out of the field when struck.

You can view more information and the modern take on these rules here.

I know we are a worldwide community and not all members who want to participate in this challenge will know much about the game of baseball, but that is part of the challenge! To be more personal, baseball is a game that I grew up playing and was drafted to play professionally. I know the game very well and am looking forward to sharing it with the GameDev.net community through this exercise.

Satisfying the Challenge

So does this mean you have to create a baseball video game? No, but of course that is a perfectly viable idea.

The intent of this challenge is to go through a game design exercise. Sports like baseball have remained effectively the same through economic and technological upheaval through several generations. The minutiae in the rules may adapt to the changing world (MLB is working to shorten the duration of games through rules changes due to limited attention spans), but the essence of the game is the same as it was in the 1800s. This begs the question: is there a fundamental design principle in games like baseball? What can we learn about game design from game's like baseball?

You may want to use the game of baseball as a template for a shooter, a strategy game, or a tower defense game. You may want to implement a baseball video game. You may have another idea.

Whatever you do, as long as we can identify the 11 rules of the game listed above as gameplay or game design elements in your game, then you satisfy the challenge.

Make sense? If not, ask your questions in the comments below. Otherwise, time for the technical specs.

Minimum Challenge Requirements

Your game must have:

• Implementation of the 11 rules of baseball as listed above
• Main Menu and a way to return the menu
• Scoring
• Winner/Loser results screen
• Audio: sound effects
• May be text, 2D, or 3D
• May be implemented for mobile, desktop, or web platforms

Challenge Bonus

Implementing the rules of baseball should allow some of the game's strategy to be effective in your baseball-derived game. In a simple example, if a runner is on 3rd and there are less than two outs, the strategy for the batter is to hit the ball to the outfield so the runner can score.

You will get a surprise bonus if your game has elements of baseball strategy.

Dates

The official Challenge period starts on August 8, 2018 and ends on September 15, 2018 at 11:59pm IDL.

Submission

Create a new topic in the GameDev Challenge Group Forum as a submission announcement and include:

• Link to project posted for download in GameDev Projects (you can use itch.io too, but no award without it on GameDev Projects!)
  • Upload your files to the project so other members can download and play
  • Please contact me if your submission is a web-based game
• Screenshots should be included on the GameDev Project page and/or the Gallery Album for your project. Embedding screenshots in the topic announcement is encouraged.
  • Embedding YouTube or Vimeo trailers is also encouraged
• A small post-mortem in a GameDev.net Blog associated with your GameDev Project (select Project when posting blog), where you can share what went right, what went wrong, or just share a nifty trick you learned
• Source-code link is encouraged for educational purposes
  • Github link, zip download in GameDev Project, or otherwise

Challenge Award

Participants who complete the challenge will receive the Summer Baseball award in their profiles:

Participants who achieve the Challenge Bonus will receive a special award to be announced at the completion of the challenge.

As always, ask questions and for clarification of the rules if you need them. Otherwise... play ball!