Dear members of MFGG!Competitions have been on hold for a while, and now it's time to bring them back. A new set of rules, a new way of scheduling, and an intention to bring more focus to each individual competition by posting about them on the mainsite and bringing back the forum announcement should revitalize one of the core components of our forum. Please have a read through this rather long post, ask questions for clarifications and if you have a good reason for why a rule should be changed, please step forward. General Competition RulesIn this box, you will find the overall competition rules. They are universally valid for each competition type. Significant changes have been made to "Competition Setup", and all other paragraphs have been changed or merged to bring more clarity. General Competition Rules wrote: Competition Setup- Competitions are scheduled in a fixed manner, at least one week ahead, but usually more. This is to give participants the necessary preparation time to plan their lives around the competitions they want to enter. With only one competition being held at any given time and the average competition lasting 2 weeks (voting included), you can expect 4 to 5 competitions of each type per year. Take your time and make your few chances count. As demand rises, the frequency of competitions may increase.
- A competition winner gets the privilege of setting up the next competition on the schedule, even if it is a different category than the one you won. If you can not come up with an idea for any reason or are not going to be online on the scheduled date, you can ask somebody else, preferably the runner-up, to do that for you. If you can not find anybody, inform a staff member.
- You can choose a theme for your competition. It should be narrow enough to provide a challenge for the entrants, but broad enough to have some variety among the entries. The theme must have some relevance to the things we're doing here at MFGG, and preferably produce results that can be uploaded to the MFGG Mainsite.
- You can and are encouraged to add additional rules and restrictions to your competition, if you think they make sense and shake things up a bit. Rules that contradict the overall competition rules should be run by an Administrator first.
- Use your common sense to find a theme that draws attention of participants and voters. Try to come up with a unique theme that has never been used before. On a case to case basis, partial recycling of old themes or themes of other competition categories can work too, considering the ever changing nature of MFGG's member base.
- You can enter in a competition you set up yourself. If you win twice in a row, the runner-up gets to set up the next competition instead of you.
- If no competition is set up on the scheduled starting date, the administration will do so the following day. There will not be a deadline extension however.
Entering- To enter, you submit a post to the competition's topic containing a link to your entry
- All competitions are solo competitions. You can not submit an entry as a team.
- Entries must follow the overall board rules.
- You must be a registered member of MFGG to enter. Do not submit an entry for somebody else.
- Your entry must be made by you. Do not submit other people's work under your name.
- Do not hand in stolen work.
- Only one entry per person is accepted. If you change your mind during the competition, you need to declare which of your entries counts.
- A "Work In Progress" (WIP) entry must be labeled as such, or it might accidentally be mistaken for your finished entry.
- Edited or pre-made work is not accepted. To promote a fair competition, all entries must be made between the announcement of the competition theme and the deadline.
- Try to be as original as possible. Especially when somebody already showed a WIP of his entry, try to do something else and do not shamelessly copy somebody's idea.
Duration- A competition starts as soon as the theme has been announced, which happens at any point during its scheduled beginning day.
- Entries can be handed in until the given deadline. If no timezone is given, entries are accepted as long as the deadline date is still active in any timezone around the world, even if you do not live in that time zone. The same rule applies to voting deadlines.
- Extensions are not permitted anymore. In the past they have not lead to an increased number of entries, but more likely contributed to entrants not taking the real deadlines seriously.
Voting- After the deadline of the competition, the voting process takes place.
- Should there be more than 5 entries, there will be a Top 5 Voting. In Top 5 Voting you must vote for your favorite 5 entries. Order does not matter. The entries with the most votes proceed to final voting.
- In Final Voting you must vote for your favorite entry. When Final Voting is over, the entry with the most votes wins.
- The voting process takes exactly 3 days. If Top 5 Voting is held, there will be 2 days for Top 5 Voting and 1 day for Final Voting.
- Only judge what was entered for the given competition and be as objective as possible.
- You can not vote for yourself, neither in Top 5, nor Final Voting. You can always decide not to vote at all, but are encouraged to, showing your sportsmanship.
- Make your votes clear by posting only the name you vote for, or by posting a clear message like "I vote for ___". If your vote is part of a larger post including reviews of all entries, it is recommended to highlight the vote, e.g. by bolding.
Miscellaneous- MFGG Competitions are events that are about coming together and creating great projects. Be fair and show your respect to make the competition enjoyable for everyone.
- If there is a lack of clarity in the theme, the competition creator has the final word. Admins and mods overrule the competition creator. Usually admins and mods do not need to interfere though. Ask as soon as possible, so you and others have more time to accommodate.
Category Specific RulesLet's go to the specific rules for each category. Sprite Competition Specific Rules wrote: - All entries must potentially be useful in a game.
- Typically, a theme should not require only a single sprite, but a useable sprite sheet or tile sheet.
- As a rule of thumb, entries should contain enough content to work as Mainsite submissions
Drawing Competition Specific Rules wrote: - Collages or photos/photo edits are not allowed. Entries must be drawn either by hand, in a digital drawing tool of your choice or a combination of both. Hand drawn images can of course be photographed, but preferably scanned.
Music Competition Specific Rules wrote: - All songs must consist of your own work. You may reuse a short drum loop, for example, but you may not take someone else's work (such as the MIDIs found at VGMusic.com), make small alterations to it, and submit it as a Music Competition entry.
Minigame Competition Specific Rules wrote: - You are allowed to borrow some code from your own old projects, to avoid having to reinvent the wheel. This means most code that is not directly related to the game logic, e.g. input handling, asset handling, collision handling, drawing, etc. Do not try to use this rule to justify complete recycling old game engines completely or similar. The Administration reserves the right to disqualify entries who abuse this privilege.
- Resources other than code like graphics/music/sound can be used from existing sources. Ripped resources are also allowed. These are primarily programming/game design competitions.
- Entries should be reasonably small in file size and runnable on the average user's system without having to download additional software.
- All tools and libraries that fulfill all of the above rules are allowed.
- Like all other competition types, this is also a solo competition. All programming and game design must be done by yourself. You can ask other members to make graphics and sound for you, however they will not receive a reward with you. This is what Music and Sprite competitions are for.
Special Competitions wrote: This competition will be in a new category each time, for example cooking, 3D modelling, gaming or whatever else we can come up with. There will be some options to choose from based on member suggestions and the one with the most votes will be held. ScheduleHave a look at this schedule. It will get updated regularly and tell you at least 1 week ahead when a competition will happen. It will also be announced on the mainsite. We hope to get more people to enter as well as to vote this way. And more people entering and more people voting makes any earned position in these competitions feel much better. We kick off with a Spriting Competition next week, then cycle through until we reach the Minigame Competition in the beginning of April and close the cycle with a new Special Competition. Schedule wrote: - 2014/March/8th - 2014/March/15th Spriting Competition #1
- 2014/March/19th - 2014/March/26th Drawing Competition #1
- 2014/March/29th - 2014/April/5th Music Competition #1
- 2014/April/9th - 2014/April/19th Minigame Competition #1
- 2014/April/23rd - 2014/April/30th Special Competition #???
Discussion on RewardsThis box contains information about the rewards you can earn by entering competitions, but it is not final. Please help us find the ideal way to solve this problem by reading the suggestions and telling us what you thing is better and why. EDIT: Disclaimer: this is not a democratic vote, this is a discussion. The option that comes with the better arguments will be used, and you can argue beyond the 2 options presented here. Those are however the most feasible to do. Rewards wrote: Badges- Option 1: Each category has its own set of badges: Top 5 Badge (for placing in the top 5), Silver Badge (2nd place) and finally a Golden Badge (1st place). If you win multiple times, your golden badge gets upgraded to something more awesome each 5 competitions you win.
- Option 2: We introduce a point system and have only a single badge per category. Golden Badges get you 10 points, Runner-Up 6 points, Top-5: 3 points, Participant: 1 point. Depending on how many points you have accumulated, your badge will get fancier.
Best of the Year Award- For each Spriting, Drawing, Music and Minigame Competitions, once per year a special voting is held, the Best of the Year Award.
- The voting happens between all entries that have placed in the Top 5 during the past year in each category.
- First there is a Top 5 Voting, followed by a Final Voting that will determine the three best entries of the year. Both voting phases take one week and are done via PM, similar to the MFGG Awards.
- If you have placed in the Top 5 multiple times during regular competitions, you will also have multiple entries in the Top 5 Voting phase. However, for the Final Voting, only your best entry will be taken, to avoid one person winning multiple awards in a single category. You can however win multiple times in different categories.
- The winners determined by the Final Voting will receive a special badge, as well as a digital prize like a Steam game, provided that we have the necessary funds to do so. Which and how many prizes can be won, will be announced the latest before the start of the voting.
Please read and discuss.
[size=150]Dear members of MFGG![/size]
Competitions have been on hold for a while, and now it's time to bring them back. A new set of rules, a new way of scheduling, and an intention to bring more focus to each individual competition by posting about them on the mainsite and bringing back the forum announcement should revitalize one of the core components of our forum.
Please have a read through this rather long post, ask questions for clarifications and if you have a good reason for why a rule should be changed, please step forward.
[size=150]General Competition Rules[/size]
In this box, you will find the overall competition rules. They are universally valid for each competition type.
Significant changes have been made to "Competition Setup", and all other paragraphs have been changed or merged to bring more clarity.
[quote="General Competition Rules"]
[b]Competition Setup[/b][list]
[*] Competitions are scheduled in a fixed manner, at least one week ahead, but usually more. This is to give participants the necessary preparation time to plan their lives around the competitions they want to enter. With only one competition being held at any given time and the average competition lasting 2 weeks (voting included), you can expect 4 to 5 competitions of each type per year. Take your time and make your few chances count. As demand rises, the frequency of competitions may increase.
[*] A competition winner gets the privilege of setting up the next competition on the schedule, even if it is a different category than the one you won. If you can not come up with an idea for any reason or are not going to be online on the scheduled date, you can ask somebody else, preferably the runner-up, to do that for you. If you can not find anybody, inform a staff member.
[*] You can choose a theme for your competition. It should be narrow enough to provide a challenge for the entrants, but broad enough to have some variety among the entries. The theme must have some relevance to the things we're doing here at MFGG, and preferably produce results that can be uploaded to the MFGG Mainsite.
[*] You can and are encouraged to add additional rules and restrictions to your competition, if you think they make sense and shake things up a bit. Rules that contradict the overall competition rules should be run by an Administrator first.
[*] Use your common sense to find a theme that draws attention of participants and voters. Try to come up with a unique theme that has never been used before. On a case to case basis, partial recycling of old themes or themes of other competition categories can work too, considering the ever changing nature of MFGG's member base.
[*] You can enter in a competition you set up yourself. If you win twice in a row, the runner-up gets to set up the next competition instead of you.
[*] If no competition is set up on the scheduled starting date, the administration will do so the following day. There will not be a deadline extension however.[/list]
[b]Entering[/b][list]
[*] To enter, you submit a post to the competition's topic containing a link to your entry
[*] All competitions are solo competitions. You can not submit an entry as a team.
[*] Entries must follow the overall board rules.
[*] You must be a registered member of MFGG to enter. Do not submit an entry for somebody else.
[*] Your entry must be made by you. Do not submit other people's work under your name.
[*] Do not hand in stolen work.
[*] Only one entry per person is accepted. If you change your mind during the competition, you need to declare which of your entries counts.
[*] A "Work In Progress" (WIP) entry must be labeled as such, or it might accidentally be mistaken for your finished entry.
[*] Edited or pre-made work is not accepted. To promote a fair competition, all entries must be made between the announcement of the competition theme and the deadline.
[*] Try to be as original as possible. Especially when somebody already showed a WIP of his entry, try to do something else and do not shamelessly copy somebody's idea.[/list]
[b]Duration[/b][list]
[*] A competition starts as soon as the theme has been announced, which happens at any point during its scheduled beginning day.
[*] Entries can be handed in until the given deadline. If no timezone is given, entries are accepted as long as the deadline date is still active in any timezone around the world, even if you do not live in that time zone. The same rule applies to voting deadlines.
[*] Extensions are not permitted anymore. In the past they have not lead to an increased number of entries, but more likely contributed to entrants not taking the real deadlines seriously.[/list]
[b]Voting[/b][list]
[*] After the deadline of the competition, the voting process takes place.
[*] Should there be more than 5 entries, there will be a Top 5 Voting. In Top 5 Voting you must vote for your favorite 5 entries. Order does not matter. The entries with the most votes proceed to final voting.
[*] In Final Voting you must vote for your favorite entry. When Final Voting is over, the entry with the most votes wins.
[*] The voting process takes exactly 3 days. If Top 5 Voting is held, there will be 2 days for Top 5 Voting and 1 day for Final Voting.
[*] Only judge what was entered for the given competition and be as objective as possible.
[*] You can not vote for yourself, neither in Top 5, nor Final Voting. You can always decide not to vote at all, but are encouraged to, showing your sportsmanship.
[*] Make your votes clear by posting only the name you vote for, or by posting a clear message like "I vote for ___". If your vote is part of a larger post including reviews of all entries, it is recommended to highlight the vote, e.g. by bolding.[/list]
[b]Miscellaneous[/b][list]
[*] MFGG Competitions are events that are about coming together and creating great projects. Be fair and show your respect to make the competition enjoyable for everyone.
[*] If there is a lack of clarity in the theme, the competition creator has the final word. Admins and mods overrule the competition creator. Usually admins and mods do not need to interfere though. Ask as soon as possible, so you and others have more time to accommodate.
[/quote]
[size=150]Category Specific Rules[/size]
Let's go to the specific rules for each category.
[quote="Sprite Competition Specific Rules"]
[list]
[*]All entries must potentially be useful in a game.
[*]Typically, a theme should not require only a single sprite, but a useable sprite sheet or tile sheet.
[*]As a rule of thumb, entries should contain enough content to work as Mainsite submissions[/list]
[/quote]
[quote="Drawing Competition Specific Rules"]
[list]
[*]Collages or photos/photo edits are not allowed. Entries must be drawn either by hand, in a digital drawing tool of your choice or a combination of both. Hand drawn images can of course be photographed, but preferably scanned.[/list]
[/quote]
[quote="Music Competition Specific Rules"][list]
[*]All songs must consist of your own work. You may reuse a short drum loop, for example, but you may not take someone else's work (such as the MIDIs found at VGMusic.com), make small alterations to it, and submit it as a Music Competition entry.[/list]
[/quote]
[quote="Minigame Competition Specific Rules"][list]
[*] You are allowed to borrow some code from your own old projects, to avoid having to reinvent the wheel. This means most code that is not directly related to the game logic, e.g. input handling, asset handling, collision handling, drawing, etc. Do not try to use this rule to justify complete recycling old game engines completely or similar. The Administration reserves the right to disqualify entries who abuse this privilege.
[*] Resources other than code like graphics/music/sound can be used from existing sources. Ripped resources are also allowed. These are primarily programming/game design competitions.
[*] Entries should be reasonably small in file size and runnable on the average user's system without having to download additional software.
[*] All tools and libraries that fulfill all of the above rules are allowed.
[*] Like all other competition types, this is also a solo competition. All programming and game design must be done by yourself. You can ask other members to make graphics and sound for you, however they will not receive a reward with you. This is what Music and Sprite competitions are for.[/list]
[/quote]
[quote="Special Competitions"]This competition will be in a new category each time, for example cooking, 3D modelling, gaming or whatever else we can come up with. There will be some options to choose from based on member suggestions and the one with the most votes will be held.[/quote]
[size=150]Schedule[/size]
Have a look at this schedule. It will get updated regularly and tell you at least 1 week ahead when a competition will happen.
It will also be announced on the mainsite. We hope to get more people to enter as well as to vote this way. And more people entering and more people voting makes any earned position in these competitions feel much better.
We kick off with a Spriting Competition next week, then cycle through until we reach the Minigame Competition in the beginning of April and close the cycle with a new Special Competition.
[quote="Schedule"][list]
[*] [b]2014/March/8th - 2014/March/15th[/b] Spriting Competition #1
[*] [b]2014/March/19th - 2014/March/26th[/b] Drawing Competition #1
[*] [b]2014/March/29th - 2014/April/5th[/b] Music Competition #1
[*] [b]2014/April/9th - 2014/April/19th[/b] Minigame Competition #1
[*] [b]2014/April/23rd - 2014/April/30th[/b] Special Competition #???[/list][/list][/quote]
[size=150]Discussion on Rewards[/size]
This box contains information about the rewards you can earn by entering competitions, but it is not final. Please help us find the ideal way to solve this problem by reading the suggestions and telling us what you thing is better and why.
EDIT: Disclaimer: this is not a democratic vote, this is a discussion. The option that comes with the better arguments will be used, and you can argue beyond the 2 options presented here. Those are however the most feasible to do.
[quote="Rewards"]
[b]Badges[/b][list]
[*] Option 1: Each category has its own set of badges: Top 5 Badge (for placing in the top 5), Silver Badge (2nd place) and finally a Golden Badge (1st place). If you win multiple times, your golden badge gets upgraded to something more awesome each 5 competitions you win.
[*] Option 2: We introduce a point system and have only a single badge per category. Golden Badges get you 10 points, Runner-Up 6 points, Top-5: 3 points, Participant: 1 point. Depending on how many points you have accumulated, your badge will get fancier.[/list]
[b]Best of the Year Award[/b][list]
[*] For each Spriting, Drawing, Music and Minigame Competitions, once per year a special voting is held, the Best of the Year Award.
[*] The voting happens between all entries that have placed in the Top 5 during the past year in each category.
[*] First there is a Top 5 Voting, followed by a Final Voting that will determine the three best entries of the year. Both voting phases take one week and are done via PM, similar to the MFGG Awards.
[*] If you have placed in the Top 5 multiple times during regular competitions, you will also have multiple entries in the Top 5 Voting phase. However, for the Final Voting, only your best entry will be taken, to avoid one person winning multiple awards in a single category. You can however win multiple times in different categories.
[*] The winners determined by the Final Voting will receive a special badge, as well as a digital prize like a Steam game, provided that we have the necessary funds to do so. Which and how many prizes can be won, will be announced the latest before the start of the voting.[/list]
[/quote]
Please read and discuss.
_________________
Guinea 2013 Reference (1) | 11 (1) | 10 (1) | 08/09 (1, 2) |
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