Last updated: April 02, 2009 (More Prizes, Oldschool Music is Back)

Read this part, it's different this year. For this, the third year of Blockparty, we took a number of looks back, listened to some excellent feedback and reviews, and considered what would be best for the competition. Demo Competitions are a very regimented thing, with a lot of tradition and rules that have been put together over decades. The fact we're tinkering with them means we're stepping in a different direction, and we welcome feedback about this. The goal, in the long run, is to realistically include all manner of machines, operating systems and projects, while trying to leave some of the judgement to the audience in voting.

Subsequently, you will see a few big changes: Non-Windows and Non-PC competitions in the demo, and an additional "old school" competition. We're also combining what used to be the "streaming" and "old school" music competitions into a single "music" competition, and changing the rules for what "old school music" is. We think this allows people who do anything but "mainstream" demo coding and music making to be involved in the main competitions without being relegated to "wild". This will also introduce a level of complexity to the process, but we hope you'll work with us to overcome it. So, on with the rules.

Competitions at Blockparty will be demo, oldschool demo, HiRez, textmode, 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

Read this as well, for it is also new.

"The Beast" (2007-2009) has been retired. Long live the beast.

This year, if you win the demo competition, you win the competition machine. We'll say that again. If you win the demo competition, you win the competition machine.

We are allowing people to enter their own machines into the competition in the event of non-windows demos. You have to let the judging staff know you are intending to do this by 10pm on Friday, the 17th of April. Entries that are made without notification by this time will automatically default to the wild competition.

The way we are splitting up entrant machines into "regular" and "old school" is to go by the definition of "the operating system is still being manufactured or sold". In the case of Linux distributions, we will take distributions that are less than 2 years old. In the case of Mac machines, this means OSX.

General Compo Rules

Deadline for all entries is 5:00 PM Saturday, April 18th, 2009.
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 Comp

1st Prize:	The Demo Competition Machine One Blockparty Golden Ticket $300 in Cash, courtesy of Mindcandy and Hornet One Mindcandy T-Shirt One copy of WIZZYWIG Volumes One and Two courtesy of speaker Ed Piskor
2nd Prize:	$150 in Cash, courtesy of Mindcandy and Hornet One Mindcandy T-Shirt
3rd Prize:	$50 in Cash, courtesy of Mindcandy and Hornet One Mindcandy T-Shirt

The competition machine specs are here.
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.

Oldschool Demo Comp

1st Prizes:	One Blockparty Golden Ticket One copy of WIZZYWIG Volumes One and Two courtesy of speaker Ed Piskor One Mindcandy T-Shirt $100 courtesy of Devi Ever Alex Mauer Color Caves NES music cartridge courtesy of Devi Ever Alex Mauer Vegavox NES music cartridge courtesy of Devi Ever
2nd Prize:	One Mindcandy T-Shirt $50 courtesy of Devi Ever Alex Mauer Color Caves NES music cartridge courtesy of Devi Ever Alex Mauer Vegavox NES music cartridge courtesy of Devi Ever
3rd Prize:	One Mindcandy T-Shirt $2.50 courtesy of Devi Ever Space Quest 6 - Roger Wilco in the Spinal Frontier courtesy of Devi Ever

The OS/machine must have been commercially sold as a home or business computer. Custom jobs are welcome in the wild competition.
The OS should no longer be commercially sold. Please talk to the organizers if you're unsure of the status of your OS.
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

1st Prizes:

One Blockparty Golden Ticket
One copy of WIZZYWIG Volumes One and Two courtesy of speaker Ed Piskor
One Mindcandy T-Shirt

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

1st Prizes:

One Blockparty Golden Ticket
One Mindcandy T-Shirt

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
Only one entry per artist may be entered in this category.

Music Compo

1st Prizes:

One Blockparty Golden Ticket
One Mindcandy T-Shirt

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

1st Prizes:	One Blockparty Golden Ticket $100 courtesy of Devi Ever Bit : Legend of Fuzz effects pedal courtesy of Devi Ever Alex Mauer Color Caves NES music cartridge courtesy of Devi Ever Alex Mauer Vegavox NES music cartridge courtesy of Devi Ever
2nd Prizes:	$50 courtesy of Devi Ever Alex Mauer Color Caves NES music cartridge courtesy of Devi Ever Alex Mauer Vegavox NES music cartridge courtesy of Devi Ever
3rd Prizes:	$25 courtesy of Devi Ever Alex Mauer Color Caves NES music cartridge courtesy of Devi Ever Alex Mauer Vegavox NES music cartridge courtesy of Devi Ever

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.
"Old School" Music in this context is music generated from commercial (non-custom) hardware that is no longer manufactured.
Examples might include game consoles, keyboards/samplers, toys.
You must have this hardware available to play at the event, we can not supply the hardware. Recordings/mp3s can not be substituted.
Only one entry per musician may be entered in this category.

Photography Compo

1st Prize: One Blockparty Golden Ticket
One copy of WIZZYWIG Volumes One and Two courtesy of speaker Ed Piskor
One Mindcandy T-Shirt

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

1st Prizes:	Hand-Made prize trophy by Inspired Chaos One Blockparty Golden Ticket One copy of WIZZYWIG Volumes One and Two courtesy of speaker Ed Piskor One Mindcandy T-Shirt One copy of Geek Mafia courtesy of Rick Dakan One copy of Geek Mafia: Black Hat Blues courtesy of Rick Dakan
2nd Prizes:	Hand-Made prize trophy by Inspired Chaos One copy of Geek Mafia courtesy of Rick Dakan One copy of Geek Mafia: Black Hat Blues courtesy of Rick Dakan
3rd Prizes:	Hand-Made prize trophy by Inspired Chaos One copy of Geek Mafia courtesy of Rick Dakan One copy of Geek Mafia: Black Hat Blues courtesy of Rick Dakan

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).

Updates

2009.01.27 And here we go!
2009.03.03 Added Ed Piskor's prizes.
2009.03.14 $500 and a load of t-shirts from Mindcandy!
2009.04.02 Added even more prizes, and someone demanded old school music!
2009.04.11 A few more prizes!