Rules

See below for all the standard rules.

additional requirements

In its infinite wisdom, the rule-o-matic has ruled as follows:

genre requirements:

there is only one genre requirement:

Your game must have a "planet Mars" theme. This can be anything from a tetris clone with a picture of Mars in the background to a real time strategy taking place on the surface of the red planet. Other than that, the game genre is free. You may create any type of game you like (puzzle, shooter, adventure, rpg, etc.).

technical requirements:

there will be two technical requirements
  1. You may not use a rectangular grid (i.e. tilemap). Other map shapes or cell shapes are ok (e.g. triangular, hexagonal, ...). You also may choose not to use any grid at all, but in that case it must be very clear that you are not using a grid, so in that case your choice of game type is very limited.
  2. Your game must have a real GUI, something with dialogs and buttons. You may use the allegro built-in dialog functions, some allegro add-on such as those you can find here on allegro.cc, or you may whip up one of your own. It is up to you how prominent the GUI is featured, be it only in the main menu or throughout the game.

artistic requirements:

there will be two artistical requirements
  1. Feature chemical formulas, e.g. H20 or C2H5OH (alcohol). You may use them as functional elements in your game, or just as background because they look cool.
  2. Your game must feature a jelly (or jello if you're American? The stuff that comes as blocks of rubbery gel which you disolve in hot water then put into the fridge to set) like substance.

bonus rule:

there is one bonus rule:

Act of Dog

The Act of Dog is designed as a get-out clause for not implementing one or more of the requirements - providing that the entrant can come up with a extremely good explanation for not doing so. And when I mean good, I'm talking watertight. If I can find a way through it, then I will.

Lame excuses will be not be accepted, and may result in public embarrassment for the entrant concerned. Successful attempts at 'social engineering' will give you a waiver. All 'Acts of Dog' must be negotiated with me via Email before the entry is submitted on Monday morning.

Humour (of all grades) may be employed in your argument. Other techniques (underhand or otherwise) will have varying levels of success. Send all petitions to amarillion@yahoo.com with good reasons, bribes, incriminating evidence and pitiful pleading. Judgement will be as swift as the organiser sees fit.

Standard rules

1. time: The competition is from Friday nov 21, noon GMT to Monday nov 24, noon GMT. You are not allowed to write code for your entry before or after these times. All entries must be submitted before noon GMT, Monday 24 to an address that will be provided later (some people won’t have an internet connection at that time, in that case you can get an exemption for this deadline. Please let me know in advance if this is the case for you).

2. size: the entry may not be larger than 250 kb, zipped. This gives you roughly 500 kb of uncompressed files.

3. source: the complete source code must be included with the entry, including the source code of any libraries that it depends on. Exception: of course you don’t have to include the source to Allegro.

4. code reuse Because reusing code is an essential hacking skill, You can use any code that you are legally able to do so (your own, GPLed, giftware, public domain or any other Free Software licence).

5. Allegro & other libs. The game may make use of Allegro add-on libs or other libs as long as they are portable. The game must make use of Allegro.

6. programming language you may use any programming language that Allegro supports

7. portability. Your entry should be trivial to port to any platform that Allegro supports. This means that you are not allowed to use any OS-specific features in your game (Essentially you should aim to make your entry compile out of the box on all platforms, but this can be hard to realize for people who don't have access to those platforms).

8. additional rules. There will be additional rules that are announced at Friday nov 21, noon GMT. These rules come in four categories: Genre Requirements, Technical requirements, Artistic requirements and Bonus rules.

9. reviewing and deciding a winner. To ensure that each entry will be reviewed, each entrant will be assigned entries to review and grade. Awards will be assigned based on these grades. There will be awards in the following categories:

  • Best overall

  • Best implementation of technical requirements

  • Best implementation of artistical requirements

  • Best implementation of genre requirements

Other Important Info

You can assume that everyone will have a copy of the latest stable Allegro library (standard installation) installed. You do not need to supply one. You should consider uploading binaries for people who have problems compiling the source onto your own website. I will be checking that the binary and source match up, so adding enhancements to the 'competition binary' is not permitted..

If source code is reused from legal sources (your own, GPLed, public domain) you should declare this and what changes have been made, so that your work can be assessed for the voting.

People should keep a informative and interesting account of their development through the competition. This can be sent after the competition for those people with no Email over the weekend. This does not affect your space requirement.

A web-based speedhack log facility will hopefully be available during the competition.

You can make use of all information sources, mailing lists as you see fit. This is not an exam! :-)

Any other questions? Send mail to me and keep working! I'll get back to you as soon as I can.. :-)

Link provided by the allegro banner network:

Last update : Mon Dec 29 10:16:13 2003 GMT.
Click here to contact me. Link to my website