Conference hydra::amiga_v1

1518.0. "Badge Killer Demo Stuff" by VIDEO::LEIBOW (Michael Leibow) Thu Jul 07 1988 10:18

5/27/88
 
                The First Annual BADGE Killer Demo Contest!
 
 
*Introduction*
 
        The Bay Area Amiga Developers' Group is sponsoring, for the second
time, a competition designed to provide some impetus to the creative
and sometimes demented developers and users of the Amiga to create
some killer demos.  The rewards consist of cold hard cash, recognition
throughout the Amiga community, and some neat toys.
 
        Do not hesitate to enter because you don't feel you can compete with
commercial developers; some of the best Demos were hacked together in
a few hours by newcomers to the machine. There is nothing so fun as
making your Amiga turn some new tricks!
 
 
*Time/Place*
 
        The actual competition will take place on Thursday, October 20th,
1988, at Stanford University, during the regularly scheduled October
BADGE (Actual location to be announced.) All enterants must submit a
letter of intent to compete by September 15th, 1988, entries must be
received by September 29th, 1988 to be eligible for the contest.
 
 
*Prizes*
 
        There shall be at least nine prizes awarded: The prizes consist
of cash, hardware, and software. The prize categories last year were:
First, Second, and Third Overall, Best Category A (512K), Best
Category B (1M), Best Category C (1M+), Best Use of Sound, Best Use of
Graphics, and Funniest.  The grand prize was an Amiga 2000, donated by
Commodore.  The exact prizes this year and their corresponding
categories have yet to be determined.
 
 
*Rules*
 
Entry:
 
        All entries must be freely redistributable.  Floppies with the best
Demos will be sent to Fred Fish for inclusion in his Freely Redist-
ributable Library and will be made available to any interested
parties, including dealers.
 
        Source is *not* required, but appreciated in the spirit of Amiga
hackerdom.  If source is provided, it too will be distributed.
 
        Two judging catagories, Either custom programs or tool-based Demos
are acceptable.  If a tool-based Demo is entered, the `player' tool
must be provided on the Demo disk.
 
        No Demos will be accepted if they are directly derived from a
commercial product.  In other words, a Demo-mode version of FirePower(tm)
is not acceptable.
 
        Shareware is not permitted.
 
        Only one entry per person will be accepted.
 
        Anyone may enter.
 
Technical Qualifications:
 
        All Demos shall run under Version 1.3 Workbench.
 
        All Demos must be runnable from the WorkBench by double clicking on
their icons and from the CLI by specifyiing the name of the Demo only.
 
        All files required for the Demo, except those on the standard 1.3
Workbench Disk or AmigaBASIC, shall fit on one standard 3.5 inch Amiga
floppy.  The Demo should be runable with the standard 1.3 Workbench
Disk in DF0: and the Demo disk in DF1: on an Amiga with 1 meg of
memory.  All files required for the Demo should be in a drawer that
can be dragged to any device, all files referenced by the Demo should
not use logical names or absolute paths, except for the standard
logical names defined after a cold boot onto a standard 1.3 Workbench.
References to custom fonts or libraries should be made relative to the
current directory the Demo is run from.
 
        All Demos should return all memory after a Flush Libs command is
issued from WorkBench.  All Demos should run on any CPU supported by
KickStart.  If you don't have access to a 68020 based machine, please
send in your demo early and let us check for you.  Demos cannot write
to disk and will be disqualified if they attempt to.  If a Demo Gurus
from cold boot it will be disqualified.
 
        Unlike last year there is no time limit on a demos length, however
only 5 minutes or less will be shown the night of the contest.  If it
does not have a clearly indicated meathod of termination any key/
button press should cause it to return control to the user.
 
        Each Demo should require little or no user interaction.  If any
user interaction is required, complete and clear instructions shall have
been displayed at the beginning.  A mode in which absolutely no user
interaction is required is highly recommended, even for those Demos
that benefit from user interaction.
 
        The decisions of the judges and BADGE are final.
 
 
*Suggestions*
 
Possible methods of termination include a window on the WorkBench with
a close gadget (ala RoboCity), a close gadget in the Demos window (ala
Boing), at worst it should terminate of its their own accord in one minute.
 
Demos should not take over the machine.  If you have taken over
Intuition than you should watch for key or mousebutton presses, and
pause or quit the demo to allow the user to interact with other parts
of the Amiga.  Custom screens can and should be made dragable and
depth arrangable.
 
When run from the WB it is possible to set the stack within the Icon,
but if run from CLI it is possible that the stack will be as small as
the default of 4000 bytes.  If you require more stack, please check
the stack on entry to your program, exit gracefully and inform the
user what he needs to change to run your program.
 
If your program can repeat, make it a command line argument so that a
script can run your demo several times.  Also it is a good idea to pay
attention to is WorkBench ToolTypes, so that two project icons can
point at your tool (Demo), with different arguments, such as single
play or infinite loop.
 
 
*Entry Fee*
 
        No entry fee is required, but donations toward the prize money and
operational expenses of the contest are encouraged.  If at least $5.00
is sent, a floppy containing at least the top-three ranking Demos will
be returned.  All donations will be acknowledged in a file distributed
with the Demos and displayed by a script written to run the Demos.
Please donate, and help make this Contest successful!
 
 
*Judging*
 
        There will be two classes, custom programs and tool-based Demos.
They will be run by dragging their drawer from the submission disk to
a hard disk or ram disk and then clicking on their icon.
 
        During judging, all Demos will be run on an Amiga 2000, with the
appropriate amount of memory.
 
        If the response is great, there will be a prejudging step to prune
the number of Demos down to 30.  This prejudging will be held just
like the final contest, but only ten judges shall be used.
 
        The main contest will be held with everyone present voting.  Each
demo will be shown, and then everyone present will be requested to score
that demo on their own judging card.  At the end of the meeting, the
judging cards will be collected; the results will be tabulated and the
awards presented the following evening.
 
        The judging will be based on a 100 point total.  The judging
categories will be: Technical, 30 points.  Nift, 30 points.  Use of
Graphics, 15 points.  Use of Sound, 15 points.  Amiga Specifics, 10
points.
 
        The Technical category will be judged before the meeting; it is
expected that each Demo shall receive the full 30 points for this
category.  The requirements are that the Demo shall not require reboot
to exit; shall have a clearly indicated and simple method to exit the
Demo; shall return all system memory and other resources; shall work
with a 60-column workbench as well as an 80-column workbench, and
shall not write to either disk during execution.  A Demo may take over
the machine, but it should run to completion and return to the Work-
Bench correctly.  You should be able to execute the Demo from a
command script and have the command script continue at the end of the
Demo.
 
        The Nift category is just sheer impressiveness and impact.  The
Use of Graphics category and Use of Sound categories are intended to be
self-explanatory; how effectively did the Demo make use of the graphics
and sound capabilities of the Amiga?  Finally, the Amiga Specifics
category is intended to judge how much this Demo sets the Amiga apart
from other computers; was it obvious that this type of Demo could not
have been done on an Atari or Mac, for instance?
 
        All points will be totalled, and then, for each individual Demo,
the highest 10% scores and the lowest 10% scores will be eliminated and
an average taken.  Prizes will be determined strictly by ranking the
Demos by the resultant average.
 
        All entrants will receive a notice of the final results.
 
 
*Entry Instructions*
 
        To enter, initially send a letter of intent.  Include a sheet of
paper with the following information: Your name, telephone number, and
address. Then, send in your Demo on one 3.5 inch floppy, with no files
on the floppy but those required for your demo, excluding any files on
the standard 1.3 Workbench floppy, to Randy Spencer, Killer Demo
Contest, Box 4542, Berkeley, CA 94704.  A short description of your
demo will help in the judging.  You are also encouraged to include a
donation towards the prize money; $5.00 will get you a floppy with at
least the top three demos on it.  All submitted materials become the
property of BADGE and will not be returned.  Make sure you get
registered by September 15, 1988 and that your entry gets to Randy by
September 29, 1988.  If you plan to attend the BADGE meeting and you
do not usually attend, please indicate this so an appropriate-sized
room can be reserved.
 
 
*Announcement Distribution*
 
        Please give this announcement the widest possible distribution.  Post
it to bboards, announce it at User Group meetings, print it out and
give it to friends.
 
Thanks go out to the following companies for their most generous
donations to last years contest:
 
        Amazing Devices
        ASDG
        Boing
        Commodore Business Machines
        Felsina Software
        INFO Magazine
        Manx C
        MicroBotics
        Pacific Press
        Radical Eye Software
        Software Visions
 

    given those rules, I hope Commodore decides to ship 1.3 sometime
    before October.... :-)
    
    -Dave