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

   Insanity! (Good)

   Your project should either be about insanity or have a featured character who is insane.

2. Technical requirements

   There is 1 technical requirement:

   Inversion (Great)

   At specific times inside the game, something becomes inverted. For example, the screen flips, or gravity changes its direction.

3. Artistic requirements

   There is 1 artistic requirement:

   Chancey (Good)

   Random chance must play a big part of the game. This could range from different chances of firing or killing an enemy, to levels changing randomly around the player.
   
   Despite the randomness, the game must still be fun to play!

4. Bonus rules

   There are 2 bonus rules:

   Act of Dog (OK)

   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 arron@ashutt.demon.co.uk with good reasons, bribes, incriminating evidence and pitiful pleading. Judgement will be as swift as the organiser sees fit.

   Act of Elephant (OK)

   Hm, let me see if I can copy Arron's style..
   
   The Act of Elephant is for people with lack of certain skills to implement certain requirements. The Speedhack is notorious for requiring lots of rules, some of which make sense, some others don't. This is why the bonus rules were invented. The Act of Elephant is the opposite bonus rule of the Act of Dog. Instead of skipping a rule by inventing a humourous excuse, you now skip a humourous rule, but have to implement two additional hard technical requirements.
   
   For example, if the Genre rule is something like "make a joke game", but you think that rule in itself must be a joke, you could now apply the Act of Elephant, instead of dropping out of the contest. Or if the Artistic rule is "make laughable noises", but you are a wholly not humourous person, then again, you can apply the Act of Elephant.
   
   The two additional technical rules may be assigned by the speedhack organisator for all applicants of this bonus rule with another spin of the Rule-O-Matic, or are otherwise choosen by yourself. It is at the discretion of whoever rates your game if your Act of Elephant should lead to deduction of points or not - so you must decide if you try yourself at a poor attempt at the rule you don't like, or have to implement two extra rules instead and still may lose points.

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! :-)