New to this year's competition is an online Rule-O-Matic. The more people that participate in this, the better.

http://www.speedhack.allegro.cc/

You'll notice there is a new Rule-O-Matic section. You can add rules and rate other people's rules. This will help determine which rules will govern the 2005 competition. Once there are a number of rules entered, I'll add a "Spin the Rule-O-Matic" page where you can see a sample, generated ruleset.

Looks good so far

This is the best rule. All right thinking programmers will vote for it.

I rated all the ones I could. Most were good, some were bad.

I've added over fifty rules to get the thing primed. Most of them have come from earlier SpeedHacks and suggestions in previous threads.

Registration for the SpeedHack will be begin within a few days. I'm going to make it a requirement that before you can register, you first have to add a few of your own rules and rate a handful of others. This is to encourage more participation, and hopefully get rules that people will enjoy.

If you happen to notice one of your rules gets deleted, don't re-add it. It most likely means that it was a duplicate of an earlier rule.

I make mention of this on the Add Rule page, but just to make sure people understand what the categories mean:

• Genre - restricts the type of game, theme, environment, or major goals. Things like Action, Role Playing, Outer Space, and Save a Princess to Win are all considered genres for the purposes of the competition.

• Technical - something specific that must be included within the confines of the Genre. It might be something like "Mouse must be used for gameplay" or "You must fight a troll."

• Artistic - a more liberal rule that is open to interpretation or something dealing with with visuals and audio styles. Some examples include: Ambient Noises, something must Mutate, implement the Four Seasons.

• Bonus - a for-fun rule that isn't necessarily game play related. The traditional bonus rule is Act of Dog, where you can opt out of a rule. Feel free to suggest such things like "Drink no caffeine," but it's best if it's something that others can see.

As always, the spirit of this competition is to have fun. Getting worked up over the rules isn't worth it! They are there to just add some craziness to the atmosphere and hopefully provide some inspiration.

I added a rule (Utter Dementia). For some examples of existing things I consider to be utterly demented, see things such as:

The game should contain no text.....::)
The game should be feminine.........::)
The game should be set in a bag of chips.....::)

There's no need for that. Rate rules you don't like down. Add your own rules.

Anyone with a bad attitude need not apply.

Done.

Not a big issue, but there's a slight problem with the generator & the special "no rules" rules; I see I can get one requirement stating there is no requirement, and another stating an additional requirement! Not a big deal, sure, but I figured I'd mention it.
Anyway, I rated the rules that were up and submitted a bunch. Seems pretty active; I see new rules are still popping up at a reasonable rate, and the ratings on mine are fluctuating. Very neat

I voted that one Good. It's really cool, actually. Imagine dialogue which consists entirely of speech bubbles with symbolic representations in them. Would be an interesting challenge.

Thanks! We need as much input as we can get, especially from creative people

If you're not the creative type, don't feel bad about not adding a lot of rules. (Everyone will thank you for not doing so!) But please go through and rate as many as you have time for. You can come back from time to time and rate the new rules.

While the Rule-O-Matic could possibly bring conflicting rules, human intervention will prevent it from being a problem.

A Rule-O-Matic spin page has been added. It will be tweaked a lot as rules get added and rated. It tries to pick rules that are more popular, but still giving lesser ones a chance.

It would eliminate the "Internationalization(mininum 2 languages supported) Rule", so the spinning should make sure that these two rules could not be in at the same time.

I rated all the rules Matthew. I think you have enough now to do the competition.

I rated everything I could, added some of my own. Most of the rules that were already there were good enough, but I rated most of those I remembered from previous Speedhacks "bad". I don't think I want repetition.

That reminded me of a game called Live-a-Live by... by Square, I think. One of the chapters was set in prehistoric times, and the method of communication was identical to that you described. It was done perfectly and many "conversations" held in picture language made me laugh.

I'm sure that exact rule would produce many interesting entries.

By the way, as I am rating rules, I am seeing many rules that have been chosen by the Rule-O-Matic in the previous speedhacks.
What are the odds that these rules come out again ? Is it possible to prevent the Rule-O-Matic from choosing them ? I especially mean it for the artistic rules, because it will be less interesting for the people who have entered the previous speedhacks, and it will be difficult to really be inspired and do things that haven't been done in the previous speedhacks.

Hm, is there a way to re-rate a rule I think I accidently mis-rated?

Did I miss something? Most of the links refer to last year's compo. And the Rule-o-matic links don't take me anywhere.

Rated all rules and added a new one but i don't know if i'll be able to enter the contest.

Rated all, but i saw some awesome one's.

Just for these, go do your contrib' and rate them all...

Hah. We should have a contest which has as many of the rules as possible and the goal is to come up with a game idea that works.

Marcello

I've voted. It seems to be spinning relatively good rules.

Some of these rules sound tough, though.

Not at all, if there's no text in the game all the languages in the world are automatically supported. Though, the intern... rule would be rather useless, it doesn't make them incompatible.

No need to tweak the spinner, good rule sets seem to be coming up

Anyway, I rated a bunch and added a few, I'm going back to rate and add more

With the exception of Bonus Rules, previously used rules won't be recycled.

No. In the big picture, a couple mistaken ratings won't hurt. I wanted to keep the interface as simple as possible.

Some of the links are still from last year (participants & download link), but the Rule-O-Matic links should be visible and working. I'd try clearing the browser's cache.

I rated some more & had some fun with the spinner -- I really like the rule sets I'm seeing

Great! I was worried about this, too. After all, the speedhack (for me) is about trying something new.

ML: I found a bug. I hit Read Progess Log from the rule-o-matic pages, and i get a 404, it tries to go to the log stuff from the rule-o-matic directory

Hehehe, voted most artistic stuff bad, and most technical ones good.

• No keyboard: That is a nice one. I would have extended that to "No input during gameplay", so that players need to do it all before (a script with instructions, an algorithm, type the movements and shoots and then run the game to see if with those movements and shoots survived long enough, etc).

• No artistic rule: Yessssssssssssss.

• No text: I like it as well.

• VM: Yes, I could use the one for SH 2001 I think

• The Tables Have Turned: Excellent. I have a very advanced Pacman where you control the four ghosts and need to hunt the Pacman

Mine:

• Offline lag: Everyone who has played a networking game (especially through Internet) has experienced it. Why not make an offline game with lag? The game must respond with a configurable lag.

• ASCII, come back: Only ASCII art allowed.

Isn't this a contradiction to No artistic rules?

Btw i added the rule to have only 4 colours at the same time on the screen, i think interesting art can come from this rule.

I added the Act of Google one, among a few others

There are some excellent rules now, but I think my favourite is the 'no rules' one!

It would be shame if the networking rule was used, as some of us have no networking knowledge at all.

If that rule came up I would definatly make a sims-like game where you had to climb to the top of the corporate ladder by making connections and friendships with powerful people

Um... what's the challenge, then?

Besides, many people have difficulty finding inspiration for a new game. With the speedhack rules, the requirements make you find an idea, and often a weird or twisted one.

That's funnier that way . A no rules speedhack could be boring. I mean what's the point. It would be any game you are coding in you spare time, with your ideas. The only difference is that you oblige yourself to do it in 3 days.

Moreover, in a no rules speedhack, we would have no way to make sure the game was written only during speedhack...

It was a shame when the fractals rule was used, not many poeple knew fractals. You can always use a networking library too, are you afraid to learn something new? I think a networking rule would be fun

Learning how to do basics fractals is much easier that learning how to write networking code. Plus fractals have no platform specific issues

I still can't get the rule-o-matic links to work, except the spin.

I'm likely going to incorporate (optional) networking into my entry, whether or not it is required.
Depends how much time I have left over.

However, networking takes a little too much time to learn and implement for a 48-hour single-man competition. Considering that you need to focus on other rules as well it would be far too difficult for those who have never used it before.. and even if they have it will take too much time.

Basic networking is simple, is my point. You could use a simple lib to do it. Doesn't matter too much to me though. I plan on using networking either way.

BTW, you could use something like libcurl like Marcello did for his TINS entry, that would qualify as networking.

I'm not so sure this fits as an artistic rule...

But networking in a game is more complex and, as Derezo said, takes more than 48 hours to learn. But you are right, Marcello found a nice way to successfully elude (not exactly elude but you get the idea) this rule.

Hmmm, I dunno. Of course I'm always keen to learn new things, but I kinda like the idea of Speedhack being a chance to shine in what I'm already good at, not producing something useless that was part of an early learning curve.

I've always thought of speedhacks as great times to try out new things.

My sensei likes to say: When you only do the things you can, you'll stay what you are.

One of the many fun things at speedhack is that you'll have to think out of the box most of the time. Of course you can something simple, as well.
Networking can be anything. You could use libcurl. Doing so will take around 30minutes, and you could add something simple like online hiscores, or you could interrupt your game with special news from allegro.cc or something. You don't have to code a mmorpg.

Also: the network rule is just one of the many possibilities.

Rated many, added a few. I really like most of the rules you all have posted, this will be a very interesting Speedhack.

[edit]

The sign up page is now active. People will have up until the competition to enter or withdraw.

As mentioned earlier, there is a requirement that you add three rules and rate ten rules before you can join. So, if you plan on joining you should at least enter your rules now so that they can be rated by plenty of people.

A word of advice to anyone who has yet to check out the online Rule-O-Matic: please read the info I posted earlier in this thread, and review and rate some rules before adding your own.

Hmm. Would it be possible to release Technical rules further in advance (than the day of) so people who don't know how to say make fractals or write a VM (for example) can study up before the event?

Some of the rules I'm seeing would make me spend more time on learning some complex math equation or set of algorithms than actually creating the game

First off, fractals and VMs are old rules that won't be recycled. Second, I don't really think that there are that many rules that force you to learn new things. Third, the Rule-O-Matic won't be spun until the day before the competition and the wording of such rules won't be finalized until very close to the start of the competition.

That said, in the unlikely event that something tricky does come up that requires some research, I'll make a reference to it.

Thats all I was aksing for

edit:
Now if only both the Pirates and Monkey rules are selected that would be interesting.

I agreed that Networking what a bit too hard to learn during speedhack, but here is an even worse technical rule :

I mean, this is very difficult for people who don't know asm, and if it's just to do nothing useful, there's no point in it, an otherwise doing true asm optimizing will really become too difficult.

Crash course in Assembly - all you need to know to pass that rule:

NOP - Does nothing.

Throw that in an inlined function and watch as the optimizer removes it entirely from your program.

It's still a dumb rule because inline assembler isn't the same across compilers, let alone computer architectures.

I'll see if I can think of some nice Acts... apart from the Act of Dog, I think most of the other ones are pretty lame. No offence to anyone.

I put that one

I wrote it partly because, as razor and spellcaster pointed out, the speedhack is a way to learn new things. In this case it would have taken very little time to learn to simply NOP but in the meantime you might have gotten curious and you might have got interest in the subject.

What happens when the rule-o-matic spins up this: (like it just did for me)

Hmm... I think I had to rate twice the Microscopic rule.

Nah, there was a microscopic one and a macroscopic one, if that is what you're thinking of.

There was a microcopic and a macroscopic rule. I had to rate each only once.

Anyway, it's annoying to see the same rule several times. Can't there be a page to browse existing rules, to check if a rule already exist ? (and to get inspiration for the writing style )

Now I am sure there are two different petitions for a world map. Unless the old one was deleted.

Damn. People are rating rules quickly. I added 6 and the scores are already: 36,40,55,34,10,60

On a side note, some of the rules are really short and should be used in conjunction with other rules. Any chance on detecting or rating the complexity of a rule and deciding whether or not if it should bias the random for additional rules on that section?

Marcello

It would be nice if the rules have a flag as to which Speedhack were suggested and which Speedhack were accepted, if only for historic purposes.

No offense intended, but some of these made up rules are pretty terrible.

Hmm... it just spun me this:

Actually sounds pretty good: fear, monkeys, flowers and nothing makes sense.

I'm going to laugh if ML spins it on the day of the competition and we get Bananas and Monkeys together.

Laugh. Until. I. Cry.

I just added the Hot Coffee one. Just to pick up current times

Added some new rules and rated all current rules.

The "No XYZ Rule" just means that rule will be cancelled out. So if two Technical rules are spun, and one of them is a "No Rule," then there will be just one rule.

If the "final" spin results in some lame combination, then it will be re-spun. This is far easier and more practical then trying to get the Rule-O-Matic to detect contradictions or some sort of bad combination.

Oh, so the no xyz rule is just like a wild card, so it isn't really 'no technical rule' it is 'this rule is a dummy rule that does nothing' then? That is how I see it.

If it's the only technical rule spun, then there would be none. That's how I see it.

Ok, I've added 5 rules, rated every other rule and signed up. Forget the compo, who ever gets his rule picked is teh winner!

Some of the rules I rated could make this Speedhack a really good one!

Yeah, but there are also quite a lot of lame ones.

I just added a "Lame Rule"!

I just rated the lame rule. I see a problem with it: how can you tell when a bad effect is following the rule or just badly programmed?

It would have to be too bad to be real!

Nothing is too bad to be real...

Can we see it needs to be ironically bad?

You could add a restriction that the lame effect must have no impact in the actual gameplay. If the rule came up, all I would think of right now is a moving object where the pink background is visible.

[EDIT]

What are the ratings I see now everytime I spin the Rule-O-Matic?

Signed for SH. I am not sure if I will be able to finish this time, but well, worth a try. Most likely I will request a free day for Friday at job to have some more time.

Are previous TINS rules also effected by the removal of previous speedhack rules?

Added 2 more rules.

Just a note, we have #SpeedHack on FreeNode IRC set up for chatting, and we will have it open throughout SH2k5. Join up to see a live countdown to the event, and to chat. I encourage all SpeedHack entrants to join the channel during the competition as well

I had considerable problems wording my rules If they happen to be spun I will gladly add some clarification if needed.
Has been a long time since I participated, I will spend this weekend checking if I still have all the tools needed

Oh, that is right. I just have Allegro 4.2.0 installed

ReyBrujo, want to revive the '4.0 vs 4.2 in speedhack' flame war ?

Don't forget to hop on irc, lambik

Nah. I will use the minimun from Allegro, and keep the deprecated errors around.

And I added a Llama rule

Is it just me or are there too many bonus rules that say `your game must...'?
As I see it, a bonus rule cannot restrict or force things on you. Of all the bonus rules I've seen so far, the Act of Dog is still the best one (I'm trying to think of a good Act of Cat).

Your game must have that for the bonus to apply

The Act of Leonardo is really good too. the Acts of Bodhisattva and Goat have been used in previous Speedhacks, IIRC.

I see the Acts as extra things you can add once the program is done, they're not rules to follow inside the game itself.

Hmmm, this SpeedHack thing sounds fun. I'd like to try it out, but seeing as I can't finish a game that I've been working on for 3 months I find it hard to believe that I could finish one in two days. Ahh well.

That's the thing. In three months, you can think you can make an RPG (you're wrong, of course, which is why you never finish it). In two days, you know that you can't, so you already aim for something smaller. Say, Frogger.

Yeah, that's a good point. Well, maybe I'll give it a go. I guess it will be a nice test of my skills.

You can make an RPG, at least, if it's an old rogue-like one

Actually, there is a 7DRL competition, which translates to "7-days Rogue-like". Some are really interesting considering the short development time .

And I must agree with Evert - I have yet to find a really good bonus rule. I rated those that I considered bearable "good" to avoid the really bad ones .
"Act of Leonardo" is quite interesting, but is nonsense when applied to some rules. For example - "Your game must feature wind as a key element of gameplay.". Posibble ways of reversing it - "Your game can't feature wind as an element of gameplay.", "Your game can't feature wind as a key element of gameplay.". Both are hardly a restriction at all...

An opposite of wind could be sucking or inhaling. The trouble with programmers is that they can be quite uncreative which makes SpeedHack rules seem unbearable.

I just noticed lots of absences in the entrants list. X-G, gnolam, Mark Robson, many entrants from last Speedhack and last TINS. Well, there's still time for them to show up.

I don't think X-G took part in last year's speedhack, not sure about gnolam or Mark Robson.

I'm just hoping for some good rules. A few times some have come up previously that I had no interest it..

What was that, you're going to submit an RPG?

"Your game must feature the absence of wind as a key element of gameplay."

Leading to the idea: the Winds are imprisoned by an evil villain and you need to release them (by playing pong or something - be creative).
Ok, so that still can be considered `features wind' too, but the line of thought is affected by reversing the rule.

You get the idea. The idea of the Acts is that you can bend the rules if you are very creative, it promotes original thinking and creativity.

Act of Frog

If the entire game is drawn in shades of putrid green with sound effects of belching frogs then the game qualifies for an act of Frog and become except from all other rules. If more than one game attempts an Act of Frog then they must be pitted against each other in a savage game of Sticky frog sumo wrestling to determine the winner.

Any word on if Johan Peitz is going to do graphics for us this year?

Uhm, he said he would not when you asked him.

I thought I remembered asking him somewhere, but I was just making sure

Spaceshot

Here's something I came up with in three days.
I know it still crappy and ugly. But I took quite a few long breaks playing games.

Edit: Forgot to mention that this is a windows binary only release, and it doesn't use allegro. I'm helping some guys with a summer course, and just thought I might as well do my own game just as they're supposed to do it.

No, but did some time ago, not in a speedhack here from what I remember, but on rpgdx.net.. it proves that it is possible though

Can we get a entry size limit raised from 250 to 400KB like in TINS? Mainly so I can use xm/mod format music.

Marcello

You can still use xm/mod format music - just need to cut down on the samples a bit. You can fit hours of mod music into 250KB [Edit: And that is zip compressed, so you actually have even more space.]

I think, speedhack should be mostly about hacking, i.e. in the sense of coding - and not so much a music/artwork making contest, there are plenty of those around already anyway. The current size limit ensures this to some extent.

Exactly, it should be about hacking, not having to spend all your time squeezing every last remaining byte of quality from your media files. =P

Marcello

I wasn't saying that it is impossible to reverse any single rule. On the contrary, the creative reversals are the reason I really like the Act of Leonardo, and the reason I rated it as "good".

I was just saying that rules could become a no-rule if someone decided to use the Act of Leonardo in the way I showed in my example.

EDIT:

Oh, and about the size limit -- I'm with Marcello on this one.

No doubt, but they just will lose favor when it comes time to voting. You could submit an entry that breaks all the rules if you wish.

A lot of these rules look similar now. I noticed a lot about music and dancing..

Still a lot of people not entered though.

Is there going to be any kind of clean up of the rules, or even lame ones will have a chance of appearing?

I would enter but I have a wedding I have to intend and its right in the middle of the compo. Before the real wedding I have to prepare and it takes quite some while, the party itself probably takes more than 24h and after that I'm probably too beat to come up with anything meaningful in around 20h.

But then again I could get a laptop and/or paper to write stuff down and try a few things but I don't think it would be nice to do it in a wedding of a close relative

Too bad, last year I had something else that came up with speedhack and I also couldn't take a part in it.

I joined. How does the score for the rules work, is it just a 0 - 100 score?

I hope the final spin will drop off everything lamer than OK, at least. When it now shows a mediocre or something worse, the rule mostly is bad in my opinion, too. Most spins with rules OK or better would lead to an interesting compo.

Even some mediocre rules are good, but most rules under mediocre are bad (but it seems now the good rules are losing points and the lame rules are gaining).

Johan: I agree. I thought that was part of the idea behind rating the rules - the crappier rules go away

Personally, I'm deleting my own rules after they stay below 50 for awhile. I've deleted 1 out of 4, the others will probably stay.

We should be able to change the type of rule, though
I accidentally made 8-bit requirement a technical requirement. It's really an artistic requirement!

Duplicate rules get deleted. Incorrectly categorized rules get changed. Lame rules have such a bad rating they have no realistic chance of being chosen.

100 is what you would eventually get if you got a lot of good votes and nothing else. The distribution follows the bell curve, with the average score being 50.1 and 67% of them between 40 and 70.

Overall, I'm pretty pleased at how the Rule-O-Matic is working. I spin it lottery style, with better liked rules getting more balls. I will give a bit more weight to well liked rules than what I currently am doing, but I don't plan on excluding any rules. But I will probably make it so that only one rule less than 50 (Mediocre) can be picked within a single spin.

What about doing 3 spins and letting us pick one of the 3 final combinations?

Yeah! We could vote [bad] [neutral] [good] on them and see which one gets the best score!

Good idea. Though it would give us a chance to do something in advance (especially if it will be obvious which rule will win), but I guess it's only a question of hours. Say the three rules would be announced 12 hours before start. And the winner of the three is announced at start.

I was still thinking of 3 different rule 'sets'. Each would have their own advantages and disadvantages for each person.

I would enter if I didn't have to submit rules. Too bad, I was kind of looking forward to this one. Well, I'll have more time for other things then, which isn't a bad thing either...

It's not too difficult to submit 3 rules Miran.

You NEED to submit rules? Why?

It is for me. I care about the quality of my contributions. I don't want to just think of something lame and submit that like a lot of people seem to be doing. And I don't have enough imagination and creativity to come up with something good.

Acording to the sign up page, everyone who wants to join has to submit at least three rules.

Maybe that's why some of the rules are so lame. I had no idea it was a requirement.

If you can't think of 3 rules to submit how did you ever think you would have enough motivation to finish an entry?

Just spend half-an-hour to think of good rules and put them in. If you get lucky your rule could be picked which will make things even easier.

RP: there are a ton of good rules already, though, I think the 3 rule submission thing should be relaxed at this point as it has served its purpose.

I agree Marcello. But what Miran was saying is he couldn't be bothered to add 3 rules, but was bothered about spending 72 hours doing a speedhack.

I found that hard to reconcile.

Speedhacking is more fun than coming up with rules, that's why.

72 hours work versus 15 minutes of thinking... hmmm...

Not everyone is like you. In fact, some people are quite different from yourself. Perhaps it's even you who is different from the majority.

Coming up with good rules it quite entirely a different skill than writing a good game. It's silly to turn people away from the contest just because they can't or do not want to come up with any rules for it.

Marcello

To me it seems that many rules were submitted only for the purpose of fulfilling the three rule requirement, without actually giving any thought to the rule itself. Because of that, there are rules like "your game must have cats and u have to kill them".

If you don't feel like submitting stupid rules like that (although I'm sure you could think of something a little more creative than that), you could be a cheater and submit three dummy rules, join, delete them and hope Matthew doesn't notice.

Or we could give Miran some rules he could submit;
We live in a world heavily influenced by mass-media. Why should your game world be different? Maybe it has some papparazi tailing our hero, a newspaper that features an interview with the Evil Overlord, TVs in a shops window that playback a part of the game you have just completed. Posters on the wall, zeppelins with adverts etc. etc.
Adapt to your liking of course

Your entry must make use of a user input device.
Your entry must make use of an audio output device.
Your entry must make use of a visual output device.

There you go!
3 technical requirements. They haven't even been used yet.

All the enemies in the game must have a silly name, and thus deserve to die. Kill them all!

Thanks. Now there is a remote chance I'll enter the competition after all

The game must allow the player to use electricity on parts of the world to kill enemies.

I didn't know there was a three-rule rule. Matthew, if you're going to impose new, controversial rules like that one, don't call it SpeedHack. It's not true to the competition, and I'm taking the same stance as Miran here. (I don't know whether I'll take part anyway, what with work ...)

How is it changing speedhack

I think it's not so smart at htis point to require 3 rules, because now we are getting flooded with lame rules, but I'd support a rule making you submit one rule or something (and rate most if not all of the other ones).

Yup. Nothing good ever turned out from compulsory voting, and compulsory creativity is probably even worse .

I rated all the rules I could and uploaded 7 of my own before I even knew that was a requirement, so I guess it's not much of a detriment to me... But I can understand people who want to be creative about their games, not abstract rules.

(Supposed to be the sound of a baby crying. Hmm, that would make a good rule.)

In fairness to ML the 3 rule idea was mine.

/me huggles ML

It was? Hmmm... Maybe it was a bad idea then.

There's always people looking to complain, so let them. They will complain if Arron comes up with the rules. They will complain if someone else comes up with the rules. They will complain if they come up with the rules. They just get happiness from complaining. Whatever floats their boat.

I only laugh at that. If Arron cared a lot about the Rule-O-Matic, he'd check up on the site now and then or have replied to my attempts in trying to contact him. People thought Arron's rules were "controversial," so if anything, I'm only following the tradition.

Go jump in a creek if you don't like it. Seriously. Start your own SpeedHack that is more real than this one. I'm not looking to have my butt kissed over this. I'm looking to make the SpeedHack a better competition for the majority of people who seriously want to take part in it.

And for the record, I had (and still have) every intention of lifting the "requirement" (in quotes because you could just add three bogus rules, join, and delete them) the week the competition begins for the late comers. I seriously doubt, though, that someone who is unable to come up with three rules in three weeks will be able to come up with a creative solution and program it within in three days.

So keep the griping up; it humors me.

Still, what's the point of the requirement?

That's what I meant earlier too.

How unprofessional.

And quite frankly there are a lot of good rules that have been added. Some of those may not have been added if the person could have just signed up without doing anything. If some stupid rules get added, it doesn't matter! They will be voted so poorly that they won't be picked by the Rule-O-Matic.

Find something legitimate to complain about. The end result of getting people to enter their own rules has been positive.

I'll kiss your butt anyway!

That covers me then.

There are two sides to this. Placing the requirement has benefits, like ensuring large numbers of rules. It also puts people off; some of us are good at coming up with a game to fit the rules, but not good at plucking rules out of thin air. More importantly, a lot of us enjoy the challenge of coming up with a game that will get played, but don't particularly enjoy trying to come up with rules on the spot when they likely won't even get used. If you're not such a person, you'll have to take my word for it.

Work on your tone. I said nothing to warrant your slanderous or libellous or whichever comments, and nor did miran.

No one is asking you to "come up with rules on the spot". You have three weeks to come up with three rules. Or you can easily work around the system if you so desire. Or you can wait until the "last minute" when the requirement is no longer needed or useful and sign up.

I cannot fathom how that "puts you off". No one is asking you to "pluck rules out of air." I am quite an uncreative fellow myself, and I managed over 30 rules which have the highest average of anyone. (To share the credit, some of my initial rules were based on other people's suggestions in other threads.) One of the complainers in this very thread has the highest rated artistic rule. So much for not being able to think of anything good! Had I not created a clause that forces early registrants to add three rules, they may have easily forgotten about the online Rule-O-Matic.

You, Ben, are far more creative than I. Hopefully over the next week or two, some interesting ideas will pop in your head. If so, add them to the site and join. If not, you'll be able to join anyway. Some unfair restriction that is.

I'm very open to suggestions: I created an online Speed-O-Matic and am entertaining the notion of increasing the size limit. To think that the SpeedHack is already a perfect competition is vain. I'm looking for ways to improve it. To suggest that actively encouraging people to help in the creative process makes this year's SpeedHack unworthy of being called the SpeedHack is quite ridiculous. My response was to that.

Here's another kissie to help the tone:

Hehehe, hope it is not mine, people would really complain

Your kisses are unwelcome and antagonistic. Perhaps taking back the "cry-baby" comment or the "go jump in a creek" comment might help. I've acknowledged the other side, and you could have prompted me to do that without insulting me that viciously. Keep up the good work on the competition, but learn some manners.

I am quite doubtful that statement is true. If someone has a good idea and they want to submit it, they will. It's fun to contribute.

Making it a requirement will add more poor rules than great rules.

I really don't care all that much, I submitted about 6 rules before I even knew about the requirement. It's just so stupid that I need to know why you added it. It still sounds stupid even after you explain it.

Forcing != Encouraging people to help in the creative process. Adding this feature was encouraging, forcing was discouraging. It was very encouraging to add stupid rules, as it was demonstrated in many of the dumb rules that have been added.

Though you can argue that people are stupid Noone was forced to submit STUPID rules. That was thier choice.

No one is being forced to add a rule!

If you want to sign up now you have to add a rule. Why? Because if you sign up now you are likely to forget about the SpeedHack until the time comes. By forcing early registrants to enter some rules, I am eliminating the possibility that they don't add rules out of neglect.

I'll admit that even I am the type of person that will do the bare requirements to meet a condition. If I can click a button to register, that's all I'll do—even if I'm fully capable of coming up with some rules. The restriction is in place to get people like myself to add a rule.

If in the end, you want to sign up the day before the competition without entering a rule, you are more than welcome. People are making a big deal out of absolutely nothing.

I don't agree, some people are simply too lazy.

Well, OK, if the requirement will eventually be lifted, my comment from earlier in this thread is withdrawn.

I enjoyed creating my rules. I really like coming up with stuff like this. But I wouldn't like Miran or BP to not participate because of such a requirement. But if it is to be lifted, that becomes a non-issue. I just hope no-one decides not to participate because of a hurt ego...

I would also like to ask a question. How am I supposed to rate rules which are duplicates of rules I saw earlier? Rate them as if I had seen them for the first time, or rate them "bad" because of the duplication?

Rate dupes as if you'd never seen them. Dupes are eventually deleted, and I usually keep the best worded dupe.

Jakub, at first, Matthew didn't tell us he was going to lift the requirement near the start of the competition. He only told us when he was pressed. If I were new to SpeedHack, I might have found the competition, encountered the requirement, decided I couldn't be bothered to think of some rules, and never come back to find the requirement had been lifted.

I'm more concerned about Matthew's behaviour than anything else though. As it stands, if I do participate it will probably be outside the system. I can do without cry-babies who can't take any criticism.

The reason I didn't make it obvious on the sign up page to begin with is that I didn't want everyone closing his browser and coming back in two weeks. That would defeat the purpose.

I've ran this site for over six years, and I know what it takes to get people to help out. Smiling and asking doesn't cut it. Before I added the "requirement," only three people had added rules. Within four hours of adding it, more then a dozen people had submitted rules.

Would you rather take part in a competition where the rules were created only by me or one that was created and reviewed by your peers?

If you don't know the answer, I can tell you this: I would rather host a competition where I wasn't the one that came up with the rules. Why? Because I don't want to be responsible for the complaints that are going to follow from the half-hearted drop outs.

Was I one of those three people? I had started adding rules and reviewing the other ones when you started this thread, possibly before registration was opened. I'm just wondering..

I didn't look to see who had, I just grabbed the count of the number of distinct user ids. Plus, a few additional people might have added rules during the hour in which I wrote the entry page.

Personally, I probably would use a two possibility login method. Either A) create 3 rules and rate 10 others, or B) rate 30 rules or C) wait until all of the rules have been finalized to join.

B is nice because you are not forced to create rules, but input is required. C is nice because it provides incentive to comply with rule A or B (join early, you get a say in the rules. Join like 3 hours before the compo, you don't, but at least you didn't have to create rules).

I've added 9 rules, and could add a few more if needed.

I wanted to join the speedhack. I would to rate 10 rules, but i stoped to rate just when i got "Please stop by again!". I was thinking about three rules to enter. So i let myself into "creative mode". Tried to create 3 rules, but I could created 12. Actually two are rated as "good", two as "OK", one is "stupid" (maybe i got a very bad idea) and the others are "mediocre" or "poor" (just the best ideas are good, the other just aren't).

And i would like to know exactlly where are these categories, I saw stupid, poor, mediocre, ok, good, great and excellent. What is the rate needed to met the "excellent" (or maybe there is something beyond the "excellent"?), and there is something before "stupid"?

You can see your individual scores under the "My Rules" page. Each scoring label represents a block of 10, so there are ten different labels. Excellent is 80s. (There are no rules even in the 90s.) And yes, if you look hard enough, you'll find things even worse than "Stupid".

Along these lines, the Rule-O-Matic rule submission has been turned off as it has now surpassed my 300 rule goal. I'll be cleaning them up over the weekend, so starting on Monday sample spins should give you a good idea of what just might show up.

The "add three rule" requirement has obviously been lifted, but the "vote" requirement has been increased to 25. On Wednesday the 10th, all restrictions will be lifted.

So if you've been waiting to register, now's your chance. There already are more people signed up this year than ever before. Hopefully everyone is up for the challenge!

We just know we're going to get some dodgy rules coming up don't we?

The best solution would be to use your best judgement, Matthew. Run the rule-o-matic a few times until something interesting or reasonable pops up.

Oh, i've got a new idea for a rule. Just to see that was too late.

One of my rules used to have a score of 95... For a short time though...
And I was amused to see the label it had when I span the Rule-O-Matic.

Could you update the News page to show this change?

I see it's too late for new rules

I just heard today that August 12th is the expected peak for the Perseid Meteor Shower. Are there any meteor-related rules included? There should be!

Pete

Mine are coming down. I have six rules. The best one was 60 something, now it is 52.

I haven't read the entire thread so I might be pointing out something that's been said already, but:

It is my opinion that this year's rule-o-matic is severly broken. Rules are and have always been divided into Genre, Techincal, Artistic and Bonus. So far, so good. The only rule that ever in any real way has affected the actual gameplay choices is the Genre rule, the other rules have always been non-gameplay specific.

I've been given the current rule-o-matic quite a few spins and I think that the current crop of rules mix in the game play aspect everywhere and I think this changes the speedhack spirit. Speedhack has (at least for me) always been about tweaking gameplay ideas into technical and artistic requirements, framed by an overall genre. Not the other way around. As is is now, it's more like ideahack with a random selection of ideas. Also, the rules seem to appead in whatever category their author seemed fit, and the voters abviously didn't care.

Some examples:
-----

Technical: Save a Princess (Good)
Everywhere, there is a princess to be saved. Somewhere, somehow there's one in your game.

Technical: Bananas! (Good)
Bananas must be used regularly in the game. They can be collected, used as a weapon or powerup, or other gameplay element.

Genre: Wind (Great)
The game must incorporate wind as a key element of the gameplay.

Technical: Collecting collections (Great)
Give us something to collect and a reason to do so.

Technical: Balls.. (OK)
The game must feature a ball or balls as a major part of the gameplay! Examples of games that feature this include Marble Madness, Super Monkey Ball, Mr. Do, Virtua Tennis and Bust-a-move games.

Artistic: Growth (OK)
Things have to grow inside your program.
Growth can be aging, evolutionary, biological or genetic. This could be applied to game play, game objects, game AI or any other aspect of the game.

-----

I think it's all severly fcuked up. Technical rules have always been implementation details, artistisc about the audiovisual and the genre set the frame. The gameplay is supposed to be worked out by the contestants, not by the rules. This will make the entries a lot more varied.

As said, this is not speedhack, it's ideahack. I cannot join myself, but if I had, I would have stepped out.

[EDIT]
I realised thia is a bit harsh and I read some posts in the thread so here's a small clarification; I really think the rule-o-matic idea is good etc. But the rules seems to be all over the place with little to no coherence.

Heh, I'm just trying to defend what I think is IMO the speedhack tradition (if there is one) that set's it appart from other hacks. Hope I'm not stepping on to many toes.

This is a technical requirememt. So:
int princess = 0;
will be enough to satisfy the rule.

Hm.. what's that? Artistic?

Well, the three great genres are fantasy, horror and wind.

Um.. um.. give me a second... um.. no. No idea here. Let's move it to gameplay

Ok, somebody here doesn't know the difference between gameplay and technical requirements

Hm.. where would you put this rule?

That's where it all falls apart. There are no gameplay rules in speedhack. There's genre, but the point (again IMO) is to derive your own gameplay ideas from the other rules.

I agree with you, Johan.
I submitted the bananas rule, but I didn't put enough thought into it (I just seen the monkey's rule and it popped into my head ). I should have reworded it without the "Gameplay element" part and made it artistic.

I think "Genre" should have be called "Gameplay" for more clarity. The collecting collections rule is pretty cool, but it doesn't really fit under 'technical' as mentioned. Genre doesn't seem like the right word to classify it as, either.

I guess Matthew will also have to assign them to the appropriate categories while he is doing the cleaning this weekend. I did have trouble deciding where to put which rule myself so I don't blame others

What about "gameplay elements" then?
Genre never had genre rules anyway

I agree. But I guess that's just the difference between having rules carefully selected by Arron, and random lame rules voted on by the same people who submitted them .

Hm, true, the rules remind a whole lot of the ideahack rules.. which is a bad thing.

But I guess, for this speedhack, Matthew has to go through the rules anyway to remove doubles (and there are a lot of that), and so he could also re-assign the category of each (seems most seem to be in the wrong one). Actually, just deleting every rule in the wrong category would be best. And maybe delete some rules which are really not appropriate, even if voted good (e.g. ones that can be implemented in a single line of code, it's just pointless).

Make a garbage collection system and collect all your garbage at the end of the game, then make a mini game out of that where the users have to find that garbage (placed randomly in some map) and collect it Whatever they miss turns into memory leaks

Hehehe

One of my first posts clarified how the categories were to be taken. I made mention that it might be slightly different than the past. So to some point I agree that it is a bit different, but Arron's rules themselves weren't always as clear as you're making it sound. So I'll admit that his tended to be a more on the technical (coding) side than what this year probably will have, but the most common complaint is "the rules suck and didn't help give me any ideas." Whether or not that's a valid complaint is yet to be seen.

Many of the rules are in the wrong category, so perhaps that also is making it seem more different than normal. Had there been more time, I would have implemented a queue system where rules would have to be approved before going live. I specifically instructed people to vote on the rule itself, not worrying about which category it was assigned—because I will be going through each one by hand to make sure it fits.

This is no different than many of Arron's "must have" categories. Must use the number 29. Must use a bell. Must have a donkey. Must have an easter egg.

Must have a princess. How is that different? The rule actually isn't stating that a princess must be saved. (I know, because I added it.) The longer description of the rule would clarify that point.

Past rule: Must contain power ups.

Seems to be along the same lines.

Past rule: Must be a racing game. Must be a puzzle game.

Genres have decided the game play before. I don't see how Wind is any different, other than it's not a "normal" genre, but I think that is better.

Past rule: must have power ups. Must have xyz.

I don't see how this strays far from something Arron would give.

Past rules: must have a donkey.

A difference here is that the new rule states "major part of gameplay." Here, your point is valid. I won't allow a technical rule to determine the major part of game play. If this rule were to be spun, I'd make sure it read something like, "The game must feature a ball or balls," dropping the "major gameplay" portion.

Two artistic rules in the past were: your game must not be stressful, and your game must have the theme of "give peace a chance." Both of those rules are the type that you are claiming Arron doesn't make.

Oh, and "Go Nuclear" was very much a gameplay rule, at least as you are labeling some of the new rules. Artistic rules on at least three occassions were what I call "theme" rules. Kind of a step down from a genre, but more ambiguous and creative than a technical rule.

Don't make the mistake of thinking that technical means "coding". Many of the "technical" rules were just things of a "specific" nature like "must have a high score," "must have international support," "must contain power ups." None of those are any more of a coding challenge than "Must use the number 29, must use a donkey, or must use a pink alien from the planet foozbar."

Even Arron had some of these rules. Must implement the number 29. Must use the BEL sound. How many lines do you think those took?

I think this is basically just a classic case of, "back in the good 'ol days..." If you go back and look at all the rules, you'll see that some years were more technical oriented (create a VM, use a particle engine), while others were more genre/object oriented.

The SpeedHacks did start with more of a technical (coding) slant, but over the years they have dropped more of the coding specific tasks. Look at last year's rules for evidence. You almost would have thought the online Rule-O-Matic spit out the rules:

Genre: Racing Game
Technical: Power Ups, International Support
Artistic: Non Stressed Theme

There are no 100% coding challenges in there like create a VM. The artistic rule was very much a genre / theme rule. The new online Rule-O-Matic is very much designed to mimic last year's style of rules.

There are actually quite a few "coding" technical rules that could come up: limited palette, small resolution, networking, particles, code generated sound are all in the bank. The very people who are participating in the competition have rated most of those types of rules way down. If the ones playing aren't going to like the rules, why have them? I think the competition has to evolve a bit along with the Allegro users.

Remember that you never got to see all of Arron's rules, as you can with the online Rule-O-Matic. Maybe he had rules just like this. I'm not claiming that all the rules are as Arron would have them, but I don't think they are as far off as one might think.

Yay for long posts!

Agreed! I actually felt that when I wrote my post but I still think the same way. There has to be some old geezer crying "it was better before!". I'll happily take the role.

To me the fun of speedhack has always been coming up with interesting way to use the rules gameplay wise. I haven't participated in a while so it's more than likely that I haven't noticed the change. Being more of a designer than a programmer nowadays I feel what I think is the essence of speedhack slip away into yet another programming challenge.

What people want isn't what people need. Having happy-go-lucky rules makes people go implementing something using the same old things they always use without learning much while restrictions and hard rules forces them think in new ways and to be creative.

All in all, let's just agree to disagree.

Count me out. Even if I thought my contribution would be worthwile, I'm going to see Bad Religion live on the 14th.

To sum up the rules, removing any easily implemented requirement:

1999: anything goes
2001: puzzle game, featuring donkeys and particle engine.
2002a: give peace a chance / no external data.
2002b: nuclear theme using code from the Allegro demo, a virtual machine & scrolling message
2003: 3D with fractals / accessibility
2004: racing game with power ups, international support, and stress free atmosphere

The first one was essentially do whatever you want. 2001 restricted game play a lot, plus one code rule (particles). 2002A was theme based with one code restriction (no external data). 2002B was the most code-based competition, but it still had a theme. 2003 was probably the least gameplay oriented one. 2004 was heavily game play oriented with no true hacky, coding technical requirements.

In fact, one of the artistic rules for 2004 stated: "It should fit with the design of the game. So your game design should probably fit the audio rather that the other way around." So here Arron is suggesting the very thing you say he doesn't: make your game fit the design of the rules, don't fit the rules to your design.

My point is that Arron himself jumped back and forth between styles of competitions. Some were more of coding challenges. Some were more of theme based artistic challenges. Some had restrictive genres and gameplay elements. Some were extremely wide open.

If you look back at the SpeedHack entries, most of them do nothing new and just skip over the technical rules with a lame interpretation or implementation. As I pointed out before, some of the SpeedHacks (including the very first one) had little or no technical challenges associated with them. I think the beauty of the SpeedHack is that it isn't tied down to one particular format of rules. You don't quite know what's going to show up come Friday.

I have no problem with anyone liking challenging, technical rules more than themes and objectives. Those can be fun as well. But everyone should understand that the SpeedHack has actually had a quite diverse style of competitions over the years. A twist in this year's competition just happens to be that the rules are peer created and reviewed.

But weren't you explicitly allowed to interpret that as creatively as you could? In other words, couldn't you bend it in such a way that you could still do mostly anything with that rule?

As an aside, Matthew, will you keep the rule-o-matic open for spinning after the competition? I'll be away during the speedhack weekend but I might like to have my own private spin at it sometime later. I know, I can just pick some random rules from somewhere, but this would be a convenient way to do it.

Yes, and I think the current rules (for the most part) in the Rule-O-Matic are very flexible too.

For example, the rule that Johan posted: "The game must feature a ball or balls as a major part of the gameplay!" If you can forgive the "major part" portion, one could implement that rule by claiming the main character ahem had some balls. One past speedhack game was actually called, Maximum Urine for a reason. Even themes can be abused. I remember Matt Smith joked that he read the "Give Peace a Chance" to be "Give Peas a Chance."

I'm not concerned at all that the SpeedHack rules will be so rigid that everyone will be creating the same game. Keep in mind that you are looking at "draft" versions of all the rules.

Yes, but the "add rule" portion will be not be enabled until I implement an approval queue. I'm in no way claiming ownership of the rules. People can use them for whatever they want.