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

   Labyrinth Game (OK)

   Your game should revolve around a maze or a labyrinth.

2. Technical requirements

   There are 2 technical requirements:

   Picasso (OK)

   The player must control the game completely or partially by drawing directly on the screen with the mouse, changing the playing field, adding obstacles, bombs, paths, jelly or whatever the game theme requires. Extra kudos for a toolbar with different drawing tools.

   Need for speed (OK)

   The game must be played at more than the speed that is considered standard for the genre, and should speed up gradually during the course of the gameplay.

3. Artistic requirements

   There are 2 artistic requirements:

   Alien Abduction (Good)

   Your entry must include an element of alien abduction. What the aliens are, what they are abducting, and the actual method of abduction is entirely up to you.

   Cheat codes (Good)

   There must have at least two secret cheat codes in the game that are not visible nor documented to the casual users (they must be shown in some readme.txt file or something like that for acknowledgement and review by others entrants, but no more than that). When triggered, that cheat codes does incredible things that would be very hard or impossible to happen otherwise. BTW, these things don't need be necessarily good or useful things.

4. Bonus rules

   There are 2 bonus rules:

   Act of Act of Recursiveness (Good)

   Clever use of recursiveness will give bonus. It could be a code thing or something in the graphics. It could even be the way you interprete a rule. If one rule says you have to save a princess, you could make a game where a princess has to save a princess.

   Act of Genesis (Good)

   You may omit one other rule if your game does not use any external data files.

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! :-)