Rule-O-Matic

Don't read too much into the results of these sample spins! The method of picking rules is yet to be tweaked to its full potential, and until a good selection of rules have been added, it's rather meaningless.

Once the Rule-O-Matic has been spun for a final time, the authors of the selected rules will be contacted in order to add clarifications and last minute twists. They won't be allowed to do anything drastic, and to limit their advantage of a heads up, they won't know for sure which of the rules atually were selected. (For example, they may be notified that one of three specific rules have been selected.)

Here is a sample spin, with the following rules being chosen:

1. Genre requirements

   The Darkness Rule (Great)

   
   The game must be set at night and take advantage of the darkness and shadows as part of the gamplay. Maybe you can hide in the shadows or only see a small part of the world through torches at a time.
   
   What ever you decide, darkness must be a major part of the gameplay.

2. Technical requirements

   There are 2 technical requirements:

   Krakka-BOOM (Good)

   You must explode things. Preferably beasties or nasty people. Bonus points for environment interactivity (aka blow up the walls!).

   Non-linearity (Good)

   We have had enough of games where there is The One And Only Path to the success.
   
   Either the game should be possible to finish in many different ways, or the player should be given a good deal of freedom to move about and choose which quests or missions to pursue.
   
   In a nutshell: when you play the game another time but make different choices, the gameplay experience will also change in some essential way.

3. Artistic requirements

   There is 1 artistic requirement:

   Water (Good)

   Include some form of water in the environment. It doesn't have to be something that you can interact with.

4. Bonus rules

   There is 1 bonus rule:

   Senior Discount (OK)

   You can't teach an old dog new tricks! If you add Senior Citizens to your game, you can switch out ONE of the rules for a rule used in a previous speedhack.

5. Other Important Info

   All entries must comply with all requirements except where nullified by Act of Dog.

   All entries must be submitted on or before 12:00 UTC on Monday 25th July without fail. All entries must be supplied in a ZIP file equal to or less than 250 KB in size. All source code, makefiles, documentation, and references to additional libraries used must be supplied in the ZIP file.

   You can assume that everyone will have a copy of Allegro (standard installation) installed. You do not need to supply one. It is okay to use a more recent version of Allegro, but if someone is unable to compile your game because of that, it's your fault. 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 Internet access over the weekend. This does not affect your space requirement.

   A web-based "blog" update page will be available. This will allow spectators to see what is going on :-)

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