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I'm afraid I still don't have a website put together, so in the mean time, watch this space for details on how and where to register. Send any questions/complaints to me via PM, and I'll try to get back to you promptly.
And now, let's throw out the details I can tell you at this point:
Barring any unforeseen conflicts, your judges are
* Elig
* KenOhki
*
* Tecki
* Terryn
* SPECIAL MYSTERY JUDGE!!!1
And for the uninitiated, the rules. Actually, everyone should pay attention, there are some new rules here:
1. To participate as a contestent in the competiton, you must register a team of up to three people and no more. If your team consists of more than one person, please provide a team name (of course, you may do so if you're competing alone, too). Details on the registration process are to be announced.
2. A team of three people may also designate one alternate, who will compete in place of a main team member in the event that said member cannot participate. To discourage any rule gaming, alternate switches must be made at the commencement of the competition; no team changes will be allowed after the DoZ has begun.
3. No competitor, whether team member or team alternate, may be a member or alternate of more than one team. This should be obvious, but it needs to be said.
4. Before the competition begins, a number will be sent to the email address provided in your registration information. This number is your team number for anonimity purposes and falls under the guidelines in rule 5. Your team number should be used as the name of your main .MZX file, and ideally should be contained in the filenames of all files packaged with your game (e.g. '1357_01.PAL', 'CITY1(1357).CHR').
5. The rule of anonymity is in effect from the moment your team number is received until the moment the judges' scores are officially announced. Under no circumstances should you reveal any information connecting your team with your submitted game until the period of anonymity is over. This includes disclosing your team number, or inserting the names of yourself or your team members into the game submission, but is by no means limited to such. Basically, if any judge discovers through any method that your team authored your game before all information is publicly released, then you are in breach of anonymity. Violation of this rule is grounds for disqualification from the competition.
5a. We understand that there are MZXers with defining style characteristics that may potentially indicate their team as the author of a certain game. This blurs the line as to what constitutes a breach of anonymity, and therefore we would ask two things: a) Judges should only consider a game in violation of the rule if there is no possible way it could have been made by someone else; and b) the MZXers in question, and you know who you are: consider trying something new.
6. All materials submitted in your game, with the sole exception of music and sound effects, must be created by your team and during the 24 hours alotted for the competition. Any materials discovered to be made outside of the team or the time period will result in disqualification. This includes materials made by an alternate.
6a. Exceptions: You may use the default MZX font and palette. Though this may not help your score, it will not disqualify you. If you are using SMZX mode 1 or 2, you may also use the default SMZX palettes, but you'll have to work out a font on your own. We were planning on providing a default, but never managed to get one, and since we figure very few people, if ANY, are going to use SMZX anyway...
6b: As far as MZX utilities (e.g. CharTools, MagiCow's SMZX Palette Editor, etc.) go, I've decided that the rule concerning this will be such: as long as the actual MZX code in the file is original to the 24 hour period, then it's okay. Basically, you can use something like palfade to generate a string of palette fading commands, and that's just fine, but you can't copy in code from a premade engine.
7. At the beginning of the DoZ, there will be two separate themes announced, one general in nature, and one specific (typically, the general theme is an abstract idea, while the specific theme is a concrete, tangible noun). These themes will be announced on IRC in #mzx, and posted here for convenience: Intelligence (General) and Swords (Specific). Eventually they'll probably find their way over to ZeuxWorld, too. Your submission must incorporate ONE of these themes (not both) in a clear and discernable way. After noticing several instances in the past where adherence to the competition theme was obviously an afterthought: If a majority of the judges (three or more) grade the theme category less than 25%, your game will be disqualified.
8. Regarding submissions:
- Games are to be submitted to me (Wervyn) through DCC on IRC or emailed to wervyn@earthlink.net.
- Games may be submitted through email at any time from the start of the competition up until the end. DCC will not have such a large window, but I will be available on IRC starting two hours before the submission deadline (11:00 AM - 1:00 PM, EST).
- There will be an hour long grace period after the deadline in which you may still submit and incur a score penalty, as follows:
- - One to fifteen minutes late - 5% deducted from final score.
- - Sixteen to thirty minutes late - 15% deducted from final score.
- - Thirty-one to forty-five minutes late - 30% deducted from final score.
- - Forty-five minutes to one hour late - 50% deducted from final score.
Games submitted more than one hour late will be disqualified.
- Submission time is counted thus: For DCC, from the moment the transfer begins; for email, from the timestamp on the message.
- You are allowed one, and ONLY one patch submission, which will discard the submission time and content of the first submission and replace it with a (hopefully) fixed version counted at the new submission time. For this reason, you should not submit your game until you are fully satisfied that it is complete.
9. Your submission should be a .ZIP or .MZX file named with your team number (i.e. '1357.ZIP'). Don't give me other formats, there is NO reason you shouldn't be able to make a standard zip file. This file will be extracted into its own separate directory and is expected to run "out of the box". It will be judged in the form it is received.
10. The judges will be using Megazeux v2.69c, so it is in your best interest to make sure your game runs with that version. In particular, avoid swap world, as that hasn't been fixed in the public version. You may use SMZX mode, but it will not award you any score bonuses.
UPDATE: 11. There is now a special mystery judge, in addition to the main five. This judge will score the games like the other judges, but his rank weight score will be out of 200 points for a total of 500.
To recap, the competition starts at 1:00 PM EST, January 2, and ends at the same time on January 3. That's 10:00 AM PST, and 6:00 PM GMT. Mark your calendars.
UPDATE: Revvy had to resign the position due to school things, apparently a lot of work crops up for him right after the Winter Break. Kurushimi has told me that he'll be up to judging even if he isn't able to compete, so he'll be taking Revvy's place.
To those who have asked (and to those who have not but are probably wondering) about registration/sign up, I have no idea when or IF I'll get a page up, so for now, just send me an email with the following information:
* Team Name (optional if only one member, required otherwise)
* Team Members (one to three names)
* Team Alternate (optional, must have more than one member)
* Return Email (optional, if omitted I will send replies to the sender)
Also, I've made some changes and additions to rule 6.
UPDATE: The list of teams is growing, somewhat at least. To everyone who has replied in this thread about registration, you need to send me an email.
* Mirror Image Games (Smallhacker)
* Team We Give Up Trying to Figure Out Some Goddamn Witty Name (RoSS, Fungahhh, Zell_1388)
* The moronic Bogeyman (thunderdog)
* ZoMbIeGuY
* FinnTards (Jauhis, Tommy, Marcus)
* MR HAPPY AND THE JACKET POTATOES OF DOOM (Lancer-X, Skylark)
* Team ZelapsoStijo (Soriakk, CrystalZero)
* Zuo Inc (Clowd, Aziri Zuo, Nicosov)
* Team Better than Es (Exophase, Quasar84, Ghent)
* Team Here's Your Proof (gofer-chan, Dr. Chocobo, PJ Pajamas)
* THE BISCUITMZX LEGIONNAIRES (GOD OF STUPIDITY)
* The End
* JangoFett
* The Lone Wolf Rides Alone (WildWeasel)
* barbarian's team (durr, could it be barbarian?)
* Sci-Freak
* Heck With Team Names (Pyro1588, Commodorejohn)
* Long Train Failin' (Revvy)
* Dropkick Your Teeths (NoahSoft, Aeon17)
* Logicow
(Apparently, the Finnards™ did eventually figure out how to send that email.)
UPDATE: There appears to have been some confusion/griping about emailing me and such. Because of this, Lancer-X has graciously provided this form for your registration needs. NOW YOU HAVE NO EXCUSE
UPDATE: All judges, you guys should know who you are by now, we'll be having a judges' meeting sometime around 1 or 2 pm on Thursday, so be on IRC in #mzx around then. We'll be hammering out any issues in the scoring system and discussing various other related things, so be around for further instruction.
UPDATE: To whoever thought it would be a fun idea to use the provided PHP form to mailbomb me, if ten emails is all you can muster, please, that's pathetic. Even so, as soon as I link you up to an account here, you are so banned, or at least paroled.
Of course, what else can you really expect out of New Jersey.
UPDATE: You've all undoubtedly been wondering about scoring and just how it's going to be done this year. Well, fret not, it's not much different, just a few changed numbers and the removal of the all but useless Sound category.
Gameplay - 75/400 The meat and potatoes of any game, if you don't have gameplay, what DO you have? This encompasses how well the game works as a whole, how fluid the play is, and most importantly, whether it's FUN or not.
Graphics - 60/400 All this emphasis on graphics over game these days is sickening! But even so, graphics are an important part of the game, since without them, we'd just be playing text adventures (not entirely a bad thing, but still). So, does your game look nice, have you made good use of space and color, or do I want to stab out my eyes as soon as I load the title screen?
Innovation - 45/400 Mother is the necessity of innovation, or something like that. We at the DoZ value creativity and new design concepts highly. Of course, make sure your brilliant idea WORKS, first. Innovation that makes the game new, interesting, on basically makes me go "hmm, never thought of doing that before" is a good thing. Innovation that crashes my computer, not so much.
Plot - 40/400 Me, I'm a sucker for a good story, I can almost forgive a game for being buggy as hell and for looking like my monitor threw up, if the story sends me into raptures of ecstacy. Almost. Story is important, but it's not going to carry your game any more than your nifty sword engine will. Also, plot will be scored according to how important the judge thinks plot is to the game. You probably won't get a perfect score here without a perfect plot, but you might get a decent score here for no plot at all, if your game is designed to be a mindless arcade shoot-em-up.
Music/Sound - 35/400 Music does for the ears what graphics do for the eyes. Humans being (by and large) visual creatures, this category is only worth about half as much, but it's still important. Music creates ambience, and sound effects heighten the atmosphere. If they don't work with the game, then they might as well not be there. For this reason, you may be awarded a few pity points for having no sound or music , since we firmly believe that no audio is better than bad audio.
Theme - 30/400 The purpose of the theme category is more to ensure that you're following the rules than it is to get you points. That said, you'll be sorry if you completely neglect this, since as outlined in rule 7, if three or more judges score your theme less than 25% (less than 8 points), you automatically lose.
Discretion - 15/400 For all the niggling little details that just don't seem to fit in any other category. Mostly, this is about using common sense and good taste. Loads of pointless obscenity, obvious pandering to the judges (as opposed to subtle pandering, which can be a good thing if done right), and sometimes particularly addle-brained bugs, all will get you counted off here.
Rank Weighting - 100/400 This is a special score for the judges, so that they can incorporate their gut instinct into an otherwise methodical system. Unlike the other scores, which are directly designated by the judge, the rank weight is awarded proportionally based on the judges personal ranking of the games from best to worst. What happens is the judges favorite game receives a full hundred points, the judges least favorite game receives no points, and the games in between receive a percentage of the points based on how high they are on the list. For those interested in the formula, RW = (N - R)/(N - 1) * 100, RW is rank weight, R is the judge's awarded rank, and N is the total number of entries. IMPORTANT: This is NOT simply a restatement of the games' ranks as calculated from their other categorical scores. This is so that the judge can express their personal feelings on the submissions as a whole, independent of any other scoring they might have made.
Five judges, 400 points each, 2000 points total. After this has been done, the mystery judge will add his scores for another 500 possible points. This brings the final score to a possible 2500 points. Late penalties incurred during the grace period described in rule 8 will be deducted from this final, 2500 point score.
UPDATE: After lots of consideration, I've realized that having an entire 20% of the final score being linearly attributed from 0 to 500 according to one person's arbitrary ranking is going to skew the final scores something awful. I might as well not have the other judges at all if I'm going to do that. For this reason, the mystery judge will give the games a rubric score out of 300, and will simply have 200 rank weight points instead of the normal 100.
I apologize for the inconvenience of changing the rules around so late. The whole mystery judge thing was a last minute decision the day before the competition, so I didn't really have time to iron all the wrinkles out of how it would work. I still believe, though, that you will be able to appreciate that decision, at least on some level, once the scores are out.
"Well, I didn't mean it like THAT..."
Posted 23 December 2003 - 02:20 PM
holy snap! The logic of that frickin astounds me....seriously, I have no idea how the heck I missed that
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