Note: the operating system is not restricted into MSDOS, even though it is preferred. For more information please keep reading on. Note: It is not enough to upload an entry into incoming directory. I repeat: it is NOT ENOUGH! You will, must and have to let us KNOW it is an entry into the competition and not just a normal upload. -- X2 Game Development Competition Rules 1.02 -- ** General information Judges (see 00judges.txt) or members of their family may not enter. The judges' decisions are final and no correspondence shall be entered into. We reserve the right to interpret and to change the rules without any further notice. The current rules are available on x2ftp.oulu.fi in the special contest directory. Please see the version number in the title. The closing date of the contest is Saturday 30th of September 1995. We reserve the right to accept entries after the closing date. NEW: The closing date of the contest is Sunday 31th of DECember 1995. The entry must be a new product and be released for the first time ever after the 31st of May 1995. We reserve the right to accept other entries, too. The special contest directory is at the moment ftp://x2ftp.oulu.fi/pub/msdos/programming/contest/ ** How to enter Send the entries to us by . anonymous ftp upload into x2ftp.oulu.fi: /incoming/* . post to X2 Support Group, P.O. Box 16, FIN-90571 Oulu, Finland . only entries received before the closing date will be valid Entries must be accompanied by information such as . name of the contestant . contact info including email and surface addresses . category to enter, only one per entry . important: tell us you are entering the contest! We reserve the right to disqualify entries without any further notice. An entry may be disqualified, if . it is not created by the person(s) claiming to be the author(s) . it contains material that is not freely redistributable . it contains offending material or material with poor taste . it is too low quality. Low quality does not mean small or simple. . it doesn't follow the rules of the contest Please note that commercial utilities and libraries may be used while creating the entries, if the result product is freely redistributable. This means that eg. commercial graphics and sound libraries may be used to create games, if you have the right to use those libraries. Accepted entries will be listed in the contest directory. ** Elimination rounds There are three elimination rounds . first to determine, if the entry is accepted . second to determine, if it is a potential winner . third to determine who gets the prizes We try to give feedback for each entry. In the first round we tell privately, why the entry was disqualified and try to suggest possible changes to make it acceptable. In the second round we give privately a short review of the entries and suggest ways of improvement. In the third round we make publicly available long reviews about the winners. ** Categories to enter The categories are 1) tutorial or magazine article 2) game with source code 3) new game by one person 4) new game by a team 5) tetris 6) utility 1) We prefer operating system independent articles related to game development, but also value highly advanced low-level material. You could introduce a useful algorithm, a game concept, new hardware, a file format or standard, some basic programming technique or special effects. 2) Attention will be put into readability of the source code, comments, program design, modularity, names of the data and functions, portability, used algorithms and techniques, information hiding and other general good programming techniques. A good game will be valued higher. 3) Source code is not required. We will pay attention to playability, general representation, replayability, installing, graphics, sound, user interface etc. Originality as a new game concept or as an intriguing way of handling old ideas will be valued higher. 4) See previous. We accept here also playable demos of commercial games, but reserve the right not to give them prizes. The demos must be allowed to be included on cdrom. After the contest there will be a public voting for the best game in game categories with some cdrom prizes given to random voters. 5) Tetris in any possible way using any possible techniques for any possible system. The more exotic, weird or fun, the better. 6) Game programming utility. It is amazing how many different kind of utilities a game programmer needs. Source code is not required, but it would compensate possible lack of power in features. ** Hardware and Operating Systems We have the following systems available at the moment. If your entry requires something else, please include all necessary missing parts: MSDOS, Windows 3.x . 386/486, SVGA . P5/90, SoundBlaster 16, 32M RAM Macintosh . Plus . II fx, II cx, LC, II si . Quadra 700 Unix (SunOS preferred) . portable code for Solaris 2.x, X11 revision 5 . Sun3/Sun4 . SparcSTATION 10, IPC, 1+ (Solaris 2.4) . DECstation 5000/133, 32M RAM, 1280x1024 color . IRIS Indy R4000PC, Irix 5.3, 32K RAM, 1280x1024 color . A Linux system is also possible.. Amiga . Amiga 500 . Amiga 2000 . Amiga 4000 (68040/25), 16M fast, 2M chip If necessary also DAT, CD-ROM and floptical entries can be handled. They are not preferred, but we can handle anything. Just try us. ** We have prizes, for we are many You can check the prizes in the special contest directory, a general introduction can be found in the 00prizes.txt text file. At the moment it is not yet desided how they will be divided into the different catagories, but they all will be given to winners. It is most likely that there will be one prize per winner to maximize the number of winners and thus encourage more people to enter and to get interested in the game development business. If necessary there might be some special prizes for the best entry in each operating system, for the best graphics or sound or just for being such a good and innovative entry. Please note that this contest is organized for the sake of information, sharing, helping and the love of games. X2 Support Group and our guest judges make no profit whatsoever, on the contrary! Therefore we also expect similar jovial attitude from our kind contestants: it is more important to participate than to win. ** Thank you I know you can talk, let's see what you can do.