Last updated: March 26, 2008

Competitions at Blockparty will be demo, HiRez, textmode, streaming music, oldschool music, photography, and wildcard. All compos will be governed by the general compo rules as well as rules specific to that compo.

Our intention is to have a compo only if we have enough entries to justify a true competition, so a compo may be cancelled due to insufficient entries. A minimum of 4 entries make a competition -- or it's cancelled.

All entries submitted to a compo will be published on internet file servers, unless a competition is cancelled. Any prizes from cancelled competitions will be joined to other competitions at the discretion of the organizers.

Conversely, competitions may be subdivided if there are too many entries. For instance, if there are a large number of demo entries, the compo may be split into a "64K and under" demo compo and a "over 64K" demo compo.

Photography must be created by single attendees who also attend the party.

Wildcard demos are typically animated short films, or short visual productions. The demos should involve the use of technology in some way. Additional surprise competitions might happen at Blockparty as opportunity presents itself.

If you have any questions about the rules or competitions, please contact the organizers and ask.

Machine Specifications

• Dell XPS 710
• Intel Core 2 Extreme QX6700
• Factory overclocked to 3.2 Ghz (quad cores)
• 4 GB Dual channel DDR2 @ 667 MHz
• Dual Nvidia 8800 GTX SLI w/ 768MB (each)
• 1 TB performance RAID 0
• XP SP 2 with all patches and latest DirectX
• SoundBlaster X-Fi card

General Compo Rules

• Deadline for all entries is 3:00 PM Saturday, April 5th, 2008.
• Only original, unreleased works may be submitted to a competition.
• At least one team member or creator of the work must be physically present at the competition in order to enter. In the case of productions created by a group, any member of the group may serve as a representative.
• All entries shall be submitted in the form of a ZIP file which contains the file(s) for the competition entry.
• The ZIP must contain a "README.TXT" containing:
  1. The title of the entry
  2. The name of the author/group submitting the entry
• Material governed by copyright (images, music, models, etc.) of a third party may not be included in any entry without a written release permitting the use of the materials in accordance with these rules.
• Submissions must be made electronically (CD-ROM, floppy disk, etc.) before the deadline of a competition. Please mark clearly on the media the following information: title, author, and group (if applicable).
• All entries will be made publicly available for unlimited download without fee on internet file servers and web sites.
• All Notacon attendees are eligible to vote.
• All competition entries will be qualified by a jury.
• Jury members will be selected by the Blockparty organizers.
• Juries reserve the right to disqualify any entry for failure to abide by these rules. A majority vote of the jury is required to disqualify an entry.
• Winning entries for each competition are selected by a popular vote point system. The three entries with the highest number of points will be awarded first, second and third place prizes, respectively, in a competition. Points are computed from the rankings on ballots of party guests.
• In the event of a tie in the number of points, the jury for that competition will break the tie by a majority vote of the jurors.
• Points are awarded by individual vote of guests and jurors.
• Each registered guest and juror will cast ballots for 1st, 2nd, 3rd and 4th place in each competition.
• Jurors may not preside over a competition they have entered.
• Staff and Management of Blockparty and Notacon may not accept prizes for any competition; in the event a staff or management member wins a competition; their prize will shift down to the next winner in order of votes. The staff entrants will be recognized as having placed in the competition, however.
• The Blockparty organizers reserve the right to cancel any competition for any reason.
• These rules may be changed without notice, but will be time-stamped and available at this website: http://www.demoparty.us/competitions.shtml.

Demo Compo

Courtesy of Guybrush, demo comp winners will select from a pool of PC game versions of Viva Pinata, Age of Empires 3, and Combat Flight Simulator: Battle for Europe.

• The competition machine specs are here.
• Several "retro" platforms from the classic hardware museum will be available for use in the demo competition. The platforms will be announced shortly as well. Entries targetting these platforms may be judged separately.
• If you need a different machine configuration, please contact the organizers.
• Maximum size is 16MB (16,777,216 bytes) uncompressed.
• Maximum run time is 10 minutes.
• The user must be able to exit the demo at any time when the escape key is pressed.
• No user input should be required beyond an optional initial configuration dialog.
• All demo entries must be self contained:
  • Each demo must contain an executable file that launches the demo.
  • Shall not depend upon any data outside of the submitted ZIP file ("data" does not include things like fonts, DLLs, etc., that are part of a standard OS install).
  • Graphics must be generated real-time, not a simple playback of an off-line rendering.
• All entries will be judged on a machine not connected to any network!
• No entry shall modify any existing file on the disk and any temporary files created as a result of execution shall be deleted when the program ends.
• No entry shall write to the system registry.
• DOS demos must be able to run without any special modifications.

Graphics (HiRez) Compo

• Maximum display resolution is 1024x768 (1024 pixels wide by 768 tall).
• Must be saved in the PNG, TIFF or JPEG format (PNG preferred).
• Entries may be hand-drawn, rendered or raytraced. "Hand-drawn" here means drawing the image in a paint program on the computer, not on traditional media and then scanning. Scanned elements are not allowed.
• Specify the gamma of your image, preferably in the PNG file, for proper viewing. If you don't know what "gamma" is, then don't worry about it.
• At least three (3) intermediate "working images" must be supplied, depicting the progressive steps in creating the final work. The working images must be named "work" followed by a numerical suffix indicating the order of progression from least complete (lowest number) to most complete (highest number). For example; "work-01.png", "work-02.png" and "work-03.png".
• Only one entry per artist may be entered in this category.

Textmode Compo

• Maximum size is 80x1000 (80 columns, 1,000 lines).
• Must be saved in ANSI, ASCII or XBIN format (XBIN preferred).
• Palette and font modification may be utilized in XBIN.
• Each image will be displayed on the screen for 30 seconds.
• ACiD View 6 for Windows will be used to display all entries.
• At least three (3) "working images" must be supplied, showing
intermediate steps in creating the final work. The working images must be named "work" followed by a numerical suffix indicating the order of progression from least complete (lowest number) to most complete (highest number). For example, "work1.ans", "work2.ans" and "work3.ans".
• Only one entry per artist may be entered in this category.

Streaming Music Compo

• Minimum and maximum play time is 1 and 10 minutes long, respectively.
• For songs longer than 3 minutes, only the first 3 minutes will be played for the purposes of voting.
• For non-tracked music, Ogg Vorbis format is preferred.
• All other songs will be judged based on how they sound in WinAmp 5 with no custom plugins. If you are unsure how your song will sound in WinAmp, consider mixing to OGG (preferred) or MP3 format for judging.
• Only one entry per musician may be entered in this category.

Oldschool Music Compo

• Minimum and maximum play time is 1 and 10 minutes long, respectively.
• For songs longer than 3 minutes, only the first 3 minutes will be played for the purposes of voting.
• "Oldschool" in this contest is defined by using sounds from previous generations of computer systems outside of the Windows family of Operating Systems. Sometimes, this is referred to as "8-Bit" or "chip" music, essentially implementing a more primitive sound.
• Tracked music files will be played in the latest version of MODplug.
• The organizers reserve the right to shift music entries between "streaming" and "oldschool" as necessary.
• Only one entry per musician may be entered in this category.

Photography Compo

• Maximum display resolution is 1024x768 (1024 pixels wide by 768 tall).
• Entries can be a larger size than this, but should include a 1028x768 version for display.
• Must be saved in the PNG, TIFF or JPEG format (PNG preferred).
• Entries must be taken using a digital or film camera as the source material.
• Specify the gamma of your image, preferably in the PNG file, for proper viewing. If you don't know what "gamma" is, then don't worry about it.
• If a model is used, a model release form must be presented to the organizers for an entry to be accepted.
• Only one entry per artist may be entered in this category.

Wildcard Compo

• The Wildcard Compo is our open wild competition.
• Entries may be anything from a live performance, pre-rendered animation, short film, interactive video game, console demo, et cetera.
• Submission must not run longer than 10 minutes.
• If you have any questions regarding connecting your device(s) to our projection and/or audio hardware, please contact us in advance. We will not be able to supply special adapters for your device(s).

2008.03.25 Added a ton of prizes. You weren't doing it for the prizes, were you?
2008.01.31 Removed "Both tracked and non-tracked music will be accepted", as it was confusing.
2008.01.30 The first of the prizes are in, thanks to Devi Ever.
2007.12.13 "Freestyle" renamed to "Streaming" to make it more in line with standards.
2007.12.05 The Beast is Back! Competition Machine Specs now up.
2007.12.04 Removed jury 5x vote rule, which was confusing.
2007.12.01 The Blockparty 2 Rules are up! Bugs will be worked out.