I've given a ton of thought to this, and I think I've seen all the evidence I need to see on programming languages. I've already said that this contest won't be open to non-TGC members this year (in fact, I'll probably go so far as to say you'll need to register your entry in the official competition thread once it's created, probably just by posting and saying "ya, I'm joining this officially" hehe). Cash put up a really strong arguement against IF creation tools, and it sounds like everyone who is planning on entering will be using DBC, DBP, or Playbasic anyway. So unless one of the other judges is seriously opposed to this ruling, I'm going to say that any and all entries will need to be created using TGC software; software that is officially sold and/ or distributed by TGC, with no exceptions. Here's my thinking behind this: If we say "all languages excepted, but IF tools aren't allowed," and we ask for source code, what's to keep someone from faking a language that they know the judges aren't familiar with? For instance, I don't know anything whatsoever about Ruby... someone could show me code for something written in Ruby and I would just say "sure, good job," because I don't know anything about it. It would be impossible to fake DB code because I know my way around it... does that make sense?
And about submitting source: We won't be reading all of the source this time around, there won't be any going through the source with a fine comb this year. So while we're going to ask that everyone submits code, if you want to cut out portions of the code that you don't want anyone to see, I'm cool with that (just rem in that you removed it and let us know what the missing source did). So long as you leave enough that the judges can tell that you actually made the game, I'm fine with it. I think that's fair... I'm one of the most secretive developers on TGC so I can definitely understand where people are coming from when they don't want to share their engines with the judges. But if the source looks like this...
cls
` secret code removed
end
then obviously we wouldn't accept that, lol.
Quote: "will be using my plugin for one thing in the game, but thats all, I assume thats fine?"
Yes, all plugins/ expansions will be allowed so long as they don't break any of the rules of the competition.
Quote: "Does the no media rule also include no text files to store data, rooms, etc.?"
I've given this a ton of thought, and media seems to be the hardest rule to define. So, I'm defining it like this, as bluntly as possible.
The "no media" rule is targeted directly at 2D or 3D assets, music, or sound effects... none of these can be used. This rule DOES NOT extend to text files, dll's, source files, or anything else not defined as media here. If you already have media in your project at this point, you can rem it out and leave it in your source, and we won't care about that. You'll be allowed to use
lines to partition your screen, but they can only be one solid color. Backgrounds are forbidden, and ASCII art is out of the question as well. If you want to provide a map, you can do so in an image file associated with your project, and if you mention it in your readme file, the judges will look at and use that map if you want us to. I gave this a lot of thought over the past few days and this is seemingly the best direction to go here.
"In an interstellar burst, I'm back to save the universe"
